Chicks!

Yesterday was the day circled in the diary for the hatching to start. There had been an incident where both girls had abandoned their eggs for a short while and I was seriously doubting the eggs were still viable. I was only going to give them until today and then I was going to remove the eggs if there had been no activity with them! When I got home last night there was great excitement when I noticed one egg under Lacey was well and truly cracked.

I checked the egg several times over the course of the evening but it didn't emerge.

This morning I checked again but although the wee chick was still chirping away in the shell, no more of it had been dislodged. I ended up taking pieces of the shell off very gently as there was the possibility it would be too weak to do it itself.

I placed this wee chick in the nursery run and went to check if there were any cracked eggs under Buffy - when I lifted her up there was a fluffy chick hiding under her skirts! No need to help this one out!

I put all the eggs, the two hatchlings, and the two girls in to the nursery run and noticed at least another 4 eggs which had cracks on them. There is definitely at least 1 Maran egg started but apart from that I didn't notice which breeds were on the go. The first wee one from last night was a small egg so it will be a bantam - I am not sure if it was a Pekin egg - it is probably one of the hybrid eggs I received.

So, of course, I can't wait to get home now and see what is waiting for us! There could be a whole pile of wee chicks waiting for their dinner.

Now, in other news, Summer the Welsummer bantam, is now broody too. Do you think I ought to ask Granda for some more hatching eggs now that we know what we are doing?