I had a young hen sitting on twelve eggs, in a shed in the paddock. I wasn't sure when she started brooding, but had been checking for chipping every day when she was off the nest. She came off mid-morning and had a feed and a drink and always went straight back.
Last night, when I was bringing my colt in, I saw her scratching around at the back of the shed. I had a look at the nest and there were four chicks, three dry and alert and one still wet, and some of the other eggs were hatching. I thought it strange that a hen with hatching eggs should be off the nest, so I herded her into the run and watched her into the shed.
This morning I was up at 5.30 and went to check the horses. I looked in the nest and found the hen missing and the four chicks very cold and, seemingly, lifeless. My wife had joined me by then so she ran back to the house and filled a hot water bottle, put it in a box, and I brought the chicks. I held them in my hand and held them in my oxter (my armpit, for the cultured among us
), and I could feel some movement in my hand as I made for the house.
We popped them on a towel on the water bottle and put a sheet of tin foil over them, then I went off to find the heat lamp. It needed a plug put on, so I did that and, by the time I'd set it up in a pen in another shed, the chicks were moving around under the foil and cheeping. They were pretty close to death when I found them, lying with their heads back and their feet spread, and cold to the touch, so I was amazed at such a rapid recovery.
I then went to find the hen, got her and brought her to the pen. I put her in, switched on the lamp and, ten minutes later, took the now standing and cheeping chicks and put them, in the box, under the lamp. The hen immediately started making the expected noises and eyeing the chicks, so I lifted them out and placed them on the floor at the back of the pen. The hen finished up her wheat and then sat down and called the chicks to her. Two of them managed to totter over, but I'd to move the other two with a bit of stick (game hens can be violent), and I tucked them just under her breast feathers. She shuffled over them and settled to brood.
I looked in several times over the next hour and she was still brooding them. I've just had a look just now (1.30pm) and she was still brooding them. However, when I got her up, the chicks are all very bright and lively.
It was and old shed she'd been brooding in and I did notice that the chicks were covered in mites when I was handling them this morning. I think the mites may have been the reason the hen abandoned the nest, but you'd wonder why she managed to sit for three weeks then left them at hatching. They've all had a dusting of powder now.
It's a shame about the unhatched eggs, though. I have another hen sitting but she is about a week off hatching, and the only other option to save the eggs was to put them under a hen which only started brooding yesterday, but I want her to hatch her own eggs as she is a particularly nice bird. The unhatched eggs were cold this morning anyway, so the chances of saving them would be very slim.
I'd been thinking last week, if these eggs had hatched,that I would be ok for young birds from that strain this year, and I may even have some for sale. Don't count your chickens, eh?
Topic: Don't count...... (Read 2350 times)
