Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

phizzimum

hooray - my girls have started laying again! well one of them has at least. I think they went on strike during the snow, but we've just got constant rain down here now.

I thought they were never going to lay again. It pained me to have to buy eggs from the shops.

poohbear59

Hurray, 3 eggs today!!

phizzimum I thought mine had stopped lying for ever too. I have had hens fr about 8 years and this has never happened before. I hated buying eggs and also buying feed for the hens.

Still can't find any ex battery hens near us to rescue.

phizzimum

poohbear - do you think it was the extreme cold that did it then? my MIL told me to boil up some scraps for them so they had something warm and it was after that they laid.

Frugaldom

Hi guys

My hens and ducks are still getting warm breakfast every morning and now we have great excitement from a Pekin egg that I had put in the incubator to check fertility. It's in with 2 Silkie eggs and this is day 20 of 21



There's a chick chirping from inside the egg! I'm trying not to get too excited, as it's early hours yet, but I'm hopeful of having new baby Pekin by tomorrow morning.

blushingbride_3

oh lovely! hope to see some photos tomorrow

poohbear59

phizzimum wrote: »

poohbear - do you think it was the extreme cold that did it then? my MIL told me to boil up some scraps for them so they had something warm and it was after that they laid.

I haven't given mine any warm food but they did have warm water to drink yesterday.

It was probably the extreme cold that stopped them laying. Mine wouldn't come out of the hen house onto the snow. We were putting food and water into the hen house. Our snow went about a week ago and it is a bit milder this week.

Mumof2_2

Betsy, bless her, has now laid an egg 4 out of 5 days. She looks a lot more advanced than the other chickens. When they're ready we'll be inundated with eggs if Betsy is anything to go by!

I will post photos of them soon so be warned!

Frugaldon how exciting to think you may have a baby chick tomorrow morning - photos are compulsory you know!

Poohbear and Phizzibear well done with the eggs! I hope not to have to buy any more eggs now.

Gigervamp all my girls pile in together in the nesting box bit of the Cube - so warm and cosy!

Frugaldom

As you'll see by the photo, we now have 3 new additions to the Frugaldom household - 3 out of the 3 eggs hatched between yesterday and this morning. The yellow one is a purebred Pekin, one is off my Silkies and the other is off one of my cross bred hens to Silkie cockerel.

blushingbride_3

oh they are gorgeous! is it difficult to breed them?

Frugaldom

blushingbride wrote: »

oh they are gorgeous! is it difficult to breed them?

Not in the least - we need to control their breeding so we don't end up with too many. These three were hatched out indoors in an incubator, I just wanted to test the incubator before selling it, but then decided I'd try some quail eggs in it instead; they'll be going in tomorrow.