For those of you who follow the chicken saga, I wrote about my attempts to incubate or have my broody hen hatch some chicks. I have to report failure on both counts. Nothing in my homemade incubator hatched. I wasn’t so surprised at this, as I had some initial problems regulating the temperature. But for whatever reason, the eggs under the broody hen also failed to hatch. After 23 days, I took them out. Three had complete chicken embryos inside, but not alive. I don’t’ have any idea why, as she was a very diligent setter. I slipped seven day-old chicks from the feed store under her the night I took away the eggs, a mix of Rhode Island Red and Americana chicks.
Two of the Americanas are black, as is the mother. For whatever reason, she rejected the two black chicks. She refused to let them be, but pecked at and chased them around the cage. A self-loathing racist hen? In any case, I had to take the black chicks out and foster them inside.
As I was going to have to raise the two rejects separately, I went back to the feed store got a few exotic chicks to raise with them, two Polish chicks and two Silkies. These six are in an old hamster cage in the laundry room. The the pale, black footed ones are the Silkies, and reddish ones with the afros are the Polish.
When they grow up, they’ll look like this:
In the meantime, everybody’s happy.