Surprise!!

We went away over the weekend...left Saturday morning, back Sun afternoon...I had planned to clean out the dead eggs from the chook...Remember, her eggs were due to hatch last weekend but her nest was flooded a couple of weeks ago.    Because we went away I didn't get around to doing it but it was smelly and did need doing.  Poor chooky, sitting on dead babies.

I had some more fertile eggs so I thought I'd put a few under her after I removed the old ones, so I collected fresh hay, the eggs, a clean water and food container.  Imagine my surprise when I go to get her off and find a tiny chicken outside her nest area.  It was small so I knew it wasn't the other chicken.  I put it back with the mother and go and get something for a ramp so it can get back into the nest easier...and there is another chicken popping it's head out.  I go out later and see 4.    Hubby reckons I had the dates wrong but I wrote them down so *know* I didn't.

I will put a photo up later but it's too early to go get one now and then I am out all day...

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. 

New Chookens.

Like we need more chooks but Hubby wanted them and they were *only* $3.50 each and the Isas that we have really are past it and 3 people wanted to buy eggs yesterday and we didn't have any and blah, blah, blah...

He has been talking about it for awhile and we have agreed to get rid of the Mixed Breed lot and get some more Isas sometime but Son came out and gave us a number to ring, the place was only 15 minutes away, the chooks were freerange commertial egg layers that were being replaced, blah, blah, blah.

Somehow we ended up with 50!!.  Yep, I really need 50 morec chooks to look after.   He did say that he will start culling the others though but we now have over 80 chooks here and I had too many before he got this lot.

Looks like chooken soup will be on the menu for the next few months. 

On the plus side I already have a couple of dozen eggs if someone calls in wanting some..  And I could onsell some of these chooks.  We have done that before and they seem to go pretty quickly if I put the sign out.

This lot are Hylines though not Isa Browns though they look the same to me.    

Actually we started off with 50 but because one had a prolapse this morning there are now only 49.  Funny, but I'd rather still have the 50 that I was whinging about. 

Not Much Sleep.

I was kept awake most of Wednesday night by this chilcken.  You'd think that he'd be a little more grateful and shutup so I could sleep seeing as I was trying to save his life.

I had this one's Mum and him and his sibling running with the mixed breed chooks during the day but I lock these ones up in the evening.  This time I forgot and this little one got trampled in the rush when I fed the others.  I found him later, laying on his back with blood on his face where he had been pecked.  Picked him up and put him right way up but he fell over so I put him in a crate with a light in the bedroom so he was safe from the cats.

Half way through the night I even found the feather duster and put it in with him but that didn't work, it still cheeped. 

Made sure he had food and water the next day as I wasn't going to be home and when it was still alive that evening I took him out to see if his mum would have him back.  She did so now it is out there running around like nothing had happened.

It is much better when I get one to live instead of finding them dead.  It better not be a rooster!

Thank-you Husband.

I am a bad chook mummy. I counted the 7 Hambough chickens on Sunday night and there were only 6 but I figured the other one was "somewhere" Well I was right, it was somewhere, it was stuck, good and tight, behind a post but I didn't find it until Monday evening.

I couldn't pull/push it out so I called Hubby and even though he wasn't too impressed he spent nearly an hour trying to get it out. He tried digging but the post is concreted in so that didn't work, tried pushing on the tin to make more room. In the end he had to take the screws out of the tin and push it out while I gently removed the chicken. It couldn't walk and was all out of shape, didn't look good at all, poor thing.

We gave it some water and it sure liked that. It probably hadn't had any since Sunday sometime. I put it in the coffee table pen and after a couple of days it was well enough to go back with the others. It still has a crooked wing but otherwise seems fine.
If Hubby had not been home I am not sure what I would have done. I couldn't get it out myself so would have had to rely on others and they are not always available. It would probably have died. I am so glad Hubby was home and I thank him heaps.