Author: Anna & Mark

Our last hatch of the
year netted 11 chicks out of 20 eggs.  I ordered the hatching
eggs
from the same place I bought my cuckoo marans eggs, and they were all
supposed to be black australorps this time.  Imagine my surprise
to see this little naked-necked chick — must have gotten a turken
mixed in by mistake!  Regardless of variety, this batch of chicks
seemed to be the perkiest yet, with every chick that pipped hatching
and staying alive.



Even
though my hatch
rate was a hair worse this time compared to the cuckoo
marans hatch rate from last time, I was happy to get so many living
chicks.  One day into the incubation process, we had a two hour
power outage, and the temperature in the incubator dropped to 84
degrees.  Sure enough, when I autopsied
the unhatched eggs,
six of them were “yolkers”, meaning that the eggs either were infertile
or the chicks died within the first few days.  Since the fertility
rate of the cuckoo marans eggs I bought from the same hatchery was
100%, I figure the power outage was the obvious problem during hatch
3.  That’s good news because it means I would have had a 79% hatch
rate without the power outage — definite progress!



As you can tell from the
photo at the top of the page, we
tricked our broody hen into taking on the mothering responsibilities
once the chicks were out of the shell.  The first month of our
chicks’ lives has been very problematic this year, with us losing
nearly a quarter of the chicks to power outages or predators, so I’m
hopeful the hen will do a better job.  Maybe by this time next
year, all of my experiments with the incubator will be moot and we’ll
have a broody hen doing all of the hard work for me.

A few weeks ago, we ate
our mean rooster. 
Up until that point, twenty-two
chickens of various ages had been living in relative
harmony in the same pasture/coop combo.  The chicks were
completely ignored by the adults as they slid through the cracks to
graze wherever they wanted, and the four adult hens all stuck close to
their rooster.



Within days of killing
the rooster, the dynamic changed completely.  Suddenly, the adult
hens were scattered into three groupings, and they quickly learned how
to fly over the divider and eat up the chicks’ feed.  The hens
also started to pick on the tweens, so the youngsters weren’t getting
enough to eat and had to retreat to the over-grazed forest pasture,
closed off to the adults but open to anyone skinny enough to slip under
the gate.  I took to feeding our young pullets and cockerels in
their own space and the hens at the furthest end of another pasture,
but our white cochin couldn’t seem to figure out how to get to the new
feeding spot and had to be given yet a third feed area.  The only
peaceful zone was the other coop where chicks from hatch two were
happily exploring their ragweed-covered pasture.

I almost started to
wonder if it would have been worth keeping a rooster who flogged me to
instill some harmony in the flock.  But I figure our crazy
menagerie can live their scattered life for another month or two until
the cockerel we choose to keep comes into his own.  I’ve never
looked forward to hearing a rooster crow with such baited breath!