A hen gone AWOL

One of the ducks when AWOL and reappeared with 7 ducklings 
One of the bantam  hens has gone AWOL , and was found. But she was sitting ( or trying to sit ) on 20 bantam eggs. And they are unlikely to be fertile as  we dont have a male bantam , following the sad demise of Andrew .

So we removed the bantam eggs and  replaced them with some hopefully fertile light sussex eggs. If she spotted the swap, it didnt bother her too much as she just sat on the new eggs.


If you look closely

You can see the hen

chick update

  10 it is.

1 remaining chick has started to peck through the shell .

It has been transferred to the incubator  to see  how it will do .

Mother and 10 chicks doing well so far, and transferred to  a chick run. So we expeect them to be out and eating tomorrow

Update from the incubator later.

Gallussian resuscitation

The latin name for the domestic fowl is gallus gallus domesticus

its time to move the mother and the chicks to the outside run. So 7 have hatched. And when we looked ,the last one was half in and half out of its shell. 

What to do ? Put it on the grass and hope the mother would  keep it warm whilst it escaped from the rest of its shell and  then look after it or help it a bit. So we decided to help it a bit. 

In a plastic bowl floating on hot water ( to keep it warm) , gently removing the rest of the shell and then keeping it warm whilst it dried out.

And then successfully resuscitated  it was returned under the hen and , at the last look, was  starting to explore its new home  .