On Breeding

I may have broken the rules and committed a cardinal sin when I decided to let the six (yes six) clucky silkie pullets sit on their combined nest of 25-30 eggs. I am not as obsessed with genetics as my husband; he shakes his head at me when I say "well I just want to see what colours I might end up with". That's not how it's done, apparently. I already have straight white, straight black, lavender and red/buff. I just want to see what cross might develop by mixing them up a bit before the girls head off to their respective colour pen and have to conform. They're chooks, not cows; it only takes three weeks to hatch a chicken, not nine months. You can change your breeding plans in less than a month. Relax.

There's 7 pullets total- 4 black, 1 white and 2 partridge. The rooster is a busybody black, with silver grey neck feathers. The first five chickens hatched last weekend...and nearly every day since there's been another one or two or three. Each night I collected whatever was born that day and slipped them under an unsuspecting hen that I'd already removed. One hen went from having 4 under her one night to having 7!

Overnight, the 15th and 16th chickens were born....and I was right....there's some really great colours in the newborns. These will change as they mature but there'll be variety in the chookpen again! This little one was veeerrryyy lucky to survive the day......

because of this.......

Poofy sat in the pen doorway, salivating. I kept chasing him away but he kept coming back. I turned my back for a minute to catch a mother hen and 7 chicks and when I turned back he was gone, up near the vege garden gate. I looked at him; he looked at me. Then he looked at the ground. I gasped! "Poofy, what have you done".........I walked over and saw the little chick; I picked it up. It was only wet on one wing. He must have been so gentle with it when he picked it up in his mouth. If it had been Coco, she would have raced away with it, triumphantly tossing it in the air like a rag doll as she went. I know this because I've witnessed that exact event previously. So I roused on Poofy and he looked sheepish (more than usual) and I picked another clucky hen out and put her in a new pen with this little one under her (along with Number 16).

So now there's three hens in separate pens with 7, 7 and 2 chicks.

There's 5 eggs left to hatch and I've thrown away 10 or so rotten ones. It's going to be quite a wild pen when they're all big enough to leave their mothers and live as a group.