The Ups and the Downs...

All the babies are doing fine, fat and sassy under mumma chook. So no one worry that the 'down' is about them!

The down is instead about one of the Faverolle pullets who came up with what is very likely to be Mareks and had to be culled the other night. The irony that these birds WERE vaccinated against it doesn't escape me... :-/ I don't vaccinate my birds and had decided to breed simply for a healthy, strong flock so nothing I've bred or from fellow hobbiests has been vaccinated. Except for these guys, which I bought and later found out had been vaxed. Everyone else should be fine and their healthy immune systems should bounce it off and the littlies will still have cover from their maternal antibodies.

So where is the good news in this? Well for those who've listened to my ravings before I've got the idea in my head to try to create lavender silkies. To give an idea of what they'd look like, this is an American breeder who has created lavender silkies over there.

Since we can't import (well, not without a spare 40-50K laying around...) anyone wanting it has to go out and make it by "borrowing" a lavender gene off a breed where it does exist. It's a simple recessive so getting the colour should be (relatively) easy with the majority of time after that spent getting type back. It's probably a 4-5 year project... with a year or two being spent building up a loosely line-bred base-stock of each breed to work with. I was recomended to get Lavender Pekins like these guys. Unfortunately the guy I'd originally planned to get mine from next year had suffered a fox attack. However it turns out that someone else has some and he had some spare eggs up for offer! :-D One person got in ahead of me but if they keep laying we may be able to get some of them.

Surprise!

As expected this morning there were seven new little fluffkins cheeping underneath mama hen. The two I'd left pipping the other night had hatched. Eager to get some photos, I bribed her with some scratch grains and while admiring the little crew did a head count.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Hold on... EIGHT? One, two, three, four, fice, six, seven... eight?

My brain mulled this one over. There were definitely seven wyandotte eggs put under her. I'd pulled them out from under Penny and stored them in an egg box inside before putting them under Lily.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Yes, definitely eight. It was early in the morning but the coffee definitely had enough time to have kicked in and it was no trick of my eyes - there were definitely eight. I pulled the empty egg-shells from the pen mulling this over when I noticed that the two "dummy" eggs were one short. For those not familiar, dummy eggs are non-fertile eggs left in the nestbox of a potential broody in order to induce her to go broody. Once she's setting, you remove the dummies and give her some fertile eggs. In my case, Tiger, Lily and Luna had been sharing a nestbox to lay in. I'd left two of those when I slipped in Penny's fertile eggs as she was rather disgruntled with me and I didn't fancy having more pecks. I'd not removed them later as I figured everything had been killed by the heat anyway so I'd just leave all of them to keep her broody until I found some more fertile eggs.

Except apparently it wasn't quite as non-fertile as I thought seeing as how it hatched! It will be interesting to see how it feathers up and see if we can guess who mum and dad are!

A belated Merry Christmas!

I don't know if anyone remembers me mentioning just after Christmas that one of the silkie X's I'd bought for broodies went broody just in time for me to slip the last few partridge wyandotte eggs laid under her. I'd joked it was a lovely Christmas present - joked because this was on the day we hit 40 degrees and over the next week we also had disgustingly hot weather so I thought for sure the eggs would be write-offs. I left them under her mostly to keep her broody in case I found some more eggs to slip under her.

Well... guess what I just found when I went out to check on her this morning?

A little bitty face peeking out, still a bit damp. I was pretty chuffed at one chick, far more than I expected out of that batch! (Erm... actually I was worried they'd explode and was thinking of turfing them to exchange for plastic dummy eggs.) So I carefully lifted her off to check and found three more!

I figured I was on a roll and checked the rest of the eggs. Did I dare hope for 1 or 2 more?

The rest of the eggs are *all* pipping or tapping away so fingers crossed (knocking on wood, rubbing horseshoes etc etc) we should have a 100% hatch out of these! The pic above is a little beak poking through the hole in the membrane/shell and the white blip at the bottom of the hole is the eggtooth. At last check there were six babies and two more pipping. We even caught this little one making it's way into the world just as it tumbled out of it's shell and discovered the law of gravity.

They really are much, much cuter once they fluff up eh?

I'm shocked that this is a 100% hatch. First because their mum (Penny) definitely wasn't broody and the fellow who incubated the last lot was on holidays I was upset thinking I'd no choice but to turf them when I really, really need to build numbers. Then after the minor miracle of Lily the Silkie X going broody, the heat hit and if it was 42-43 outside, I shudder to think what that shed was my attempts to keep it relatively cool aside! Not to mention having great fertility this late in the season when earlier the fertility was a less than stellar 45-50% fertile at 8 days is just weird! I am *making* myself behave and not go peek at these babies until tomorrow to give everyone a chance to dry off and settle in. Meanwhile Lily is doing a great job being mum and is definitely protective of her little brood!

Another shot of the girls, having been carried down to the dam. ;-) Obviously taking to it like... well, like ducks to water... what else?

Bubba L holding one of the Silkie X girlies and chatting to her.

And "helping" daddy put together some more broody nestboxes, which involves, "make pretties (writing) on bawds (boards)" because that is what you must do before putting screws in - although if we followed L's guide screws would be everywhere! ;-) These are meant to go one per broody pen which is why they're so small!

"so dwill (drill) goes BRMMMMM in da nail!" and "make noises" with the hammer. (IOW hitting the hammer on random places where he's laid screws over his doodles. He was immensely pleased with his efforts and clapped for himself after each 'job', cheering, "Oh YAY!" Inbetween this he was a self appointed tool holder and screw hander outer as well as our go-fer!

Welcome Abigail and Agatha

Tish from BYP was looking for a home for her Aylesbury girls and I told her they'd be more than welcome here. (I'm sure everyone who has heard me go on and on and on about my little puddleduck are shocked! Not! I plan to build up numbers so I have a whole flock of them in the next year or two!) Well Miss Abigail and Agatha arrived today and are settling in. They are bred by Jacquie, so most likley related to my lost girl as well. They are also Christmas babies, they turned 1 year old on Christmas day - how neat is that?

Bubby L was *so* excited to see ducks again, I hadn't even shaken their mum's hand when he was pointing to the ducks in their carrier and then pointing to the pens insistantly! LOL As soon as we got them in he scrambled up the pen door and stood on top the door saying, "quok wok wok, ducks!" refusing to come down and chatting to "Jawwah!" (aka Jarrah) when he crowed.

In other news, my silkies are still doing pretty well. :-) The green droppings seem to have cleared up, I was thinking they'd need an antibiotic if it was caused by something secondary but it's gone now. We'll still have a test run now that the vets are open though just to be safe. :-)