I reckon nature has it totally worked out. There’s hens and there’s a rooster, nature takes it course, 3 weeks later or thereabouts there are baby chickens. Problem of course being the rooster crowing.
We’ve got this problem (as far as noise is concerned) that we live next to the Yuendumu Old People’s Place who provide a range of services including palliative care. We don’t want to have a rooster waking up the neighbours when the people staying there need rest and quiet.
So we’ve got this bantam hen that goes broody at the drop of a hat and having read all the chicken books and web articles we could find, we decided to get fertilised eggs from an Alice Springs person Trevor knows.
It’s not that easy – for one thing our trips to Alice are infrequent and generally unplanned so we didn’t have a nesting box ready for the eggs and the bantam. The hen house where the normal nesting boxes are gets really really hot in our area and having the bantam in there all day has already put her at risk a few times before when she has been in her broody state.
So Trevor made up a makeshift box after work with his usual care and bits and peices he has found at the tip and it looked really great. We put it in the run on a couple of pieces of steel to keep it off the ground a bit and under the bit of the roof to make it relatively cool.
Next get the bantam out of the hen house where she was coincidentally in her broody mode on a nest and trying to hatch 2 unfertilised eggs. Fortunately chickens are really easy to manage at night so she didn’t protest too much. We stuck her on the nest and put the fertilised eggs in around her as best we could.
She sort of looked OK for a few minutes and then emboldened by the beam of light from Trevor’s head lamp she leaped out. I grabbed her and stuck her back in and Trevor got some fence grating and put it up against the entrance.
I dreamed that night of little chickens. But next morning she was no longer broody and the eggs were abandoned.
Consultations with the local chicken expert revealed that we should have put her in the nesting box with the eggs she had already warmed up. And then gradually introduce the new eggs.
So next time that’s what we are going to try. But I can’t help but think a rooster might be a better bet. Or failing that I’m on eBay bidding for an egg incubator.
A bit later the same night ….
Trevor’s got his old yoghurt maker out and set up an incubator. This is a great site for all sorts of information about artificial hatching - http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/resources/egg_to_chick/procedures.html
POSTSCRIPT – The yoghurt maker overheated and the eggs are now history. Back to the drawing board.
