6-1-13 Chicken Hatch

The first (of many, I hope) hatching of the season happened a couple of days ago.  Actually, some of them hatched on May 31st because we could hear the cheeping.  Most appeared June 1st, and the last one, on June 2nd.  That last one allowed Timothy to witness the hatch, which was pretty neat!  The mama had left the nest with her 10 chicks to soak up some sun yesterday when there were still 3 eggs in the nest.  Two of the three eggs were not viable, but one of them was moving and soon pipped!  We checked on it off and on for the next few hours, and more slimy black feathers could be seen each time.  Timothy was especially interested in it, and watched it until it was completely out of the shell.  It was another black chick!  It was still wet and not moving very much when nightfall came and the mama resumed her position on the nest.  Today, I let the mama out of her lot altogether and she had 11 perfect looking "bitties" following her!

 

 There are 8 dark chicks and 3 white ones.

The mama hen is one of the white rocks that came to our post office July, 13th of 2012, so she is just under one year old.  She seems to have excellent mothering instincts and has been a great protector so far, keeping the other chickens away from them.  She has even flogged Augusta when she got too close, and also chased Tigger away with much vigor!

The rooster that fertilized the eggs is a Buff Orpington/ Black Giant cross that we hatched out early last year.  The rooster is more buff colored than black, so I don't know if the dark chicks are getting their color from him, or from some of our black giant hens.  I'm not keeping track of which hens lay which eggs this year, so when this white rock hen went broody, I just selected the biggest, nicest looking eggs to set under her.  We have four hens that we hatched late last summer from eggs we had gotten from a friend.  They were from mixed chickens, but he said that his hens were mostly Black Giant hens and his rooster is a Black Giant rooster.  So, I'm thinking that perhaps I chose eggs laid by the black hens, because their eggs are likely the largest.

The last chickens we butchered, Lisa skinned them instead of plucking the feathers.  It seemed to work very well, and since most of us are not big fans of the skin when we eat chicken, we're thinking that this skinning method may be the way to go from now on.  I was going to try to stay away from raising black chickens because it was harder to get them clean looking when plucking the feathers, but if we stay with the skinning method, that objection is negated!  I like large chickens and I like large eggs, so if they be black chickens, then so be it!

You may notice that some of the dark chicks have white coloring on their faces, wings, and bottoms so they may lighten up some as they mature.  It will be fun seeing them change and watching them grow!

And it seems that the mama will keep a watchful eye on their growth, as well!

On a related note, our oldest buff hen (we sometimes call her Buffy) has now been setting for a week and a half.  I selected the largest, best looking eggs to set under her, as well, and they are due to hatch on June 12th.  It will be interesting to see what those chicks look like!

Thank you, Lord, for our new baby chicks....