The Miracle of Life – watching chicks hatch
During lockdown – as we couldn’t go anywhere – I thought we might try hatching some eggs in the incubator. They need to be turned three times a day so it’s impossible to manage under normal circumstances. After 3 weeks of patiently turning the eggs (had to set an alarm on my phone!) and topping up the water every day, 3 eggs pipped.
The first chick died in it’s shell, the second chick climbed out all on its own, the third chick (bearing in mind I didn’t help the first one and it died) I helped out, it survived for a while but it’s legs were very weak and eventually it too died. So, we had one ‘Cheepy Chick’ left. In the meantime, a fox took Dillon, my beautiful cockerel – in broad daylight – and a few days later – despite my being vigilant and outside most of the time – he took the 3 brown hens as well.
So, I decided to put the rest of the fertile eggs in the incubator. We eventually had 4/7 chicks hatch. It was quite traumatic waiting for them to pip (on the 23rd day – not the 21st day as anticipated) – and then being patient and letting them climb out of the shell themselves. I made sure the water pot was properly topped up this time so the humidity was better and probably helped with hatching success.
Dane managed to get a video of the first chick hatching – it took ages so he created a condensed version – but I can’t get WordPress to add it to this page yet – so here is an image from the video. The magic of life – how can an egg change into a chick?
In the meantime, back in the hen house, both the ducks went broody and sat on eggs. Duck eggs take 28 days to hatch (much easier to let the ducks keep them warm and turn them every day!). As Mr Fox was still around, I shut the ducks in most of the time, only letting them out when I was around. Jemima eventually hatched 5 tiny ducklings, three of which have survived. I have found ducks and hens are not terribly good mothers and don’t seem to be able to keep their babies together and out of harm’s way but it’s definitely easier than hand rearing so you just have to leave them to it and hope as many as possible survive.
I’ve read somewhere that ducklings are not waterproof when they are tiny so shouldn’t be allowed in water, but our ducklings immediately found the water bowl and were happily splashing about. I always put a stone in the bowl to make it shallower so they can get out.
While I was clearing up the hen house, I heard a frantic quacking and turned around to see all the ducklings in the pond – and of course they were too tiny to get out, so I had to rescue them. I’ve filled the pond right to the top now so they can get out. So much for not being waterproof!
One night last week we forgot to shut the hen house door and Mr. Fox returned and I found the ducklings without a mother the next morning. Happily, the others survived and Jake the Drake is now a very proud father taking parenting duties very seriously – it’s quite touching the way he’s now looking after the ducklings when he wasn’t terribly interested in them before.
