Chicken Update.

The new chickens are all doing well, they are a week old today. 

The Isa mum is brilliant.  Because she was friendly before the eggs hatched she allows me to pick up her babies so they are not getting freaked out by her going off her nut.  They will be friendlier than the other lot as the 2 Mixed Breed mothers go psycho when you go near their pen and that transfers to the chicks who run away in a panic.  None of the chickens that are hatched from the Mixed Breed chooks let us get too close to them.

When the eggs under the 2 MB chooks hatched I counted 9 but 1 must have been hiding as there are 10 there.  The mothers seem to share the chickens and I think the chickens share the mums.  They all huddle down together in the nest.

The daughter still has the 3 that they hatched for me and she will bring them out this week sometime.  They would be around 7 weeks old now so plenty big enough to leave their mum.  She says that they are more Plymouth Rock than Australorp whereas of the older ones of mine 3 are more Australorp and only 1 has the PR colouring.  The reason that I call them my AussieRocks.  All the chickens look the same when they are young and it's not until they are older that I can start to guess what they will look like.

All up now I have 31 chickens but seeing as probably around half will be roosters I am still going to be needing to get more hatched.  I put 7 eggs under a clucky this morning.  Once I have a few dozen females of these ones I will get rid of the Hylines and most of the Mixed Breed chooks.  Unfortunately the parent AR are not all laying so it will be awhile now before I get enough eggs to put under.  I have 2 cluckies out there so am now just waiting on some eggs.