Snow White, our white cochin hen is doing a great job as a mama hen. She's teaching her chicks how to do all the things they need to do. Although Snow White is a great mama hen, and a bonus that she lets us interact with the chicks, she was not the most attentive broody to the eggs. She often would be found with one of more eggs beside her rather than under. Cochins are very large hens and 10 eggs would be no problem for them to cover but she was not so good at juggling those 10 eggs into position! This is probably why she ended up with just 3 chicks from 6 fertile eggs. We started Snow White with the 10 eggs knowing that our fertility among the large fowl hens was around 50%. At the mid- way candle of the eggs I was able to remove 3 eggs that were definitely non fertile, no chick had started to develop. I had 5 eggs left that I felt were likely to have growing chicks and 2 eggs that were too dark to know for sure at that stage though I felt those were not likely developing chicks. Eventually I was able to remove one more egg as non fertile. Snow White then had 6 eggs and 3 chicks hatched and they hatched quite early on days 18 and 19. She sat a little longer but eventually abandoned the nest. The remaining eggs were cold the morning I found that she'd abandoned them but I felt I should check them very carefully and possibly set up the incubator if we were just going to have late arrivals. First I listened carefully to each egg. With chicks at term you will be able to hear tapping and/or cheeping. The eggs were silent. Then I tried very careful candling. I felt that 1 egg was nothing and 2 might be quitters. In other words chicks that started to develop but never made it to hatch day. My next step was to open the not good egg carefully and discard, it was a bit rotten but not too bad. Then I turned my attention to the possible quitters. I learned from the site backyard chickens that you can start to open an overdue egg without harming the chick. It's a long process and you must be very careful. If anyone needs this info I would say go to the backyard chickens website and forums. In short I made a tiny hole into the air sac without piercing the inner membrane. Still I heard and saw nothing so I proceed carefully through the steps I had read about. Neither egg needed rescuing though as they were indeed quitters that never finished their development. I would say this is very likely due to Snow White and her propensity to leave an egg or two out to the side or falling out the back or even right in front of her. In the end we're very happy with the three little chicks and I'm glad that I made the decision to set the 10 eggs under Snow White. With the fertility issue (we have a lot of large fowl hens to one large fowl Roo at the moment) and Snow White not always paying attention to what was under her we may not have gotten any chicks if I set less. I was slightly worried that all 10 might hatch and that would be too many for right now but in the end my instincts were right to set 10 in hopes for at least 2 but no more than 5 or 6 chicks.
And here is the happy little chicken family! Snow White is their Mama Hen but they came from eggs that were laid by two Cream Legbars and one Easter Egger. The daddy is Mo our Silver Spangled Appenzeller Spitzhauben. Looking forward to seeing how the chicks feather out.
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| Mo sees his chicks, I think he approves. |
Chicks are so cute!
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