Things I've Learned

This year's attempt to hatch chicks has ended disastrously. It makes me realise we might have been lucky to get chicks at all previously: so here are some lessons I've learned from this episode.

• A hen won't stay broody for ever. Get those fertile eggs under her quick as you can after she goes properly broody.
• Just because a chook can jump out of a pen, it doesn't mean she's bright enough to jump back in to get back on to her eggs.
• Don't bother the hen too much once she's on the nest.
• Dark is good for broody chooks.
• Candling the eggs part-way through the incubation period is probably a really good idea, to find out which have developing embryos. Remove those eggs that aren't developing.
• If the hen kicks an egg out of the nest, there's probably a good reason for it. Don't put it back under her.
• If a hen kicks an egg out twice, definitely don't put it back under her. Listen to what she is telling you, stupid.
• Rotten eggs smell really, really bad.
• An incubator might actually be a good investment.

 These, ahem, learnings, arose out of my attempt to hatch a batch of Light Sussex X Brown Shaver chicks using our one year old Light Sussex hen Kitty. We got fertile eggs from sister Nicky who took custody last year of our Light Sussex rooster (litter-mate - if that's the right phrase - to Kitty) and gave him a harem of Brown Shaver girls to look after. So Kitty went broody and dutifully sat on 12 eggs holding her potential nieces and nephews for 19 days before giving up and hopping off the nest. Nineteen days. It isn't long enough.

Twenty-four hours after I knew they should have hatched, I broke open all 12 eggs to see what had happened. Seven contained almost fully-formed but very much dead chicks. Three showed no particular sign of embryo development, and two were rotten. Nastily rotten. I confess I ran away once I had cracked them open. I believe I may have shouted at the kids "Run, run!". I may also have been too scared to go back down to collect the day's eggs from the other chickens, because I would have had to walk past the place where I broke open the rotten eggs. It was a bad experience.

Why did she give up incubating the eggs? I can't be sure, but suspect it was a combination of reasons. There was a delay of almost 10 days between her going broody and getting the eggs under her. We fiddled around her run a bit trying to ensure it would provide a safe place for the chicks while they were very young and vulnerable to cats, and perhaps this disturbed her at a critical time. We enclosed the walls of her run but she was able to get over the fence - and possibly was too silly to find her way back into the run and back on to her nest. And finally, we allowed her to sit on infertile and rotten eggs. I am speculating, but wonder if she could smell the rotten ones and this fooled her into thinking the whole lot were bad. I feel quite sad that our poor management (probably) resulted in the death of seven chicks who were developing nicely until they got abandoned. Cousin Suzy asked if we would try again this year - at the time I thought "no" - but that resolution lasted all of a week until our next hen went broody a day or three ago.

A note on breeds, and a double-standard

Being the sceptical type, my automatic response has always been to scoff at the notion that the commercial breeds (Hyline and Shaver) lay well in their first year or two but don't have the laying longevity of the more traditional breeds. However this year for the first time in my chicken-owning history I have a number of two year old hens - Hylines and Araucanas.  Though the Hylines still lay more and go broody a damn sight less, the quality of their eggs is well down on their first season, while the Araucanas' eggs are fine and dandy. The issue is not the number of eggs laid - which is still prodigious, but the enormous size of the Hyline eggs in their second season - large eggs have thinner shells and are more prone to breaking in the nest or while being handled. They have a greater proportion of eggwhite to yolk, so the yolks (still beautifully orange from all the free-ranging) get diluted and my eggy dishes aren't so stupendously brightly coloured. I also have to adjust the quantities of other ingredients in baking because the big eggs add too much liquid. And the egg cartons don't close properly over the outsize eggs - I've carted eggs all over town to deliver to friends and workmates and worried that the large thin-shelled eggs are going to break all over someone's dry-clean-only work clothes. It hasn't actually happened, but I need something to worry about. In short, really big eggs are really annoying.

I concede that my observations are still fairly new and not tested yet across all my breeds, however I've come to the controversial conclusion (controversial in my family anyway - this isn't yet getting much support from my fellow chicken-dispatcher) that I am going to be utterly ruthless every year about getting a new batch of Hylines, and letting the others move on to a happier place. I appreciate them for their egginess, and their placidity, and their chickeny pottering about the garden. However I don't love being irritated by yet another smashed up egg in the nesting box. The "breed" chickens can live with me for as many years as they remain healthy and lay reasonably well, simply because they offer so much variety in their character and eggs. Well, and they're pretty.

Flock catch-up - Light Sussex

Light Sussex chick, 5 days old

A year later we set fertile eggs once again under Gretel (she goes broody so reliably you could set your annual calendar by her) and she duly hatched out two Light Sussex chicks. This time one proved a cockerel and one a pullet - and by golly they've grown up to be magnificent looking birds.

Half-grown Light Sussex cockerel

We found a home for the boy with Nicky down south, where he lords it over a bunch of shavers and is crowing his head off every day. He survived babyhood to lead this life of unadulterated roosterish joy only because we were prepared to pay an outrageous sum (given his value, which could generously be stated as nil) to send him south with a pet courier. If nothing else, we learned from this that there is such a service as a pet courier - who knew? We kept his sister, Kitty, and she lays smallish pale cream eggs. I don't suppose she qualifies as a very economic converter of feed to eggs - she must weigh twice what the brown commercial varieties weigh, and her eggs are smaller - but we love her. Not least because although she's enormous, she's...well... a bit of a chicken, and allows the others to boss her around.

Flock catch-up - Araucanas

Hyline, bantam and Araucana eggs

Bantam with Araucana chicks

The flock has changed membership again - we set some fertile eggs under broody Gretel in October 2009 and she hatched us three Araucana chicks - two pullets and one cockerel. We gave the boy away to a workmate of Colin's (I'm pretty sure he was for the pot) and kept Polly and Frieda, who do a lovely job of laying us pretty eggs with a green-tinted shell. They're rather gorgeous. The eggs that is; the hens are kind of weird looking. Polly and Frieda are slightly inclined to broodiness, but nothing like the bonkers bantams.

Not-an-apology

It seems customary to start off a new post after a big break by offering a self-conscious apology for one's utter slack-arsedness. So of course I'm not going to. Pttthhhhth (that's a raspberry).

Gale force northerlies

My bean plants have lost all their leaves, and most are leaning dangerously. We're not happy bean campers today.

And meanwhile…

While the hens have been growing in number, the vege garden has also been expanded. We started with a dug-out patch of lawn with a trailer-load of "topsoil" added. The topsoil seemed to have been scraped off a clay hillside somewhere, because it certainly wasn't the loamy, friable, crumbly soil Dad had in his vegetable gardens.

In patches though, the soil is coming right with monotonously regular applications of gypsum, home-made compost, sand, blood and bone and a bit of NPK fertiliser.

With the help of a small polythene greenhouse that Colin put up for my birthday, I'm experimenting with raising vegetables, herbs and annuals from seed. My first seedlings started going into the garden in September. Most of them promptly died. Every time a new punnet of seedlings got popped into the ground, yet another southerly blew through. More than one batch were just sheared off at ground level. I don't know that if that was slugs or the wind – though I suspect the later. My garden seems to be almost slug and snail free – I figure the wind blows them away.

We're now into the second week of November and finally some things in the garden are actually starting to grow. Latest entrants to the fray are four varieties of climbing bean. They've gone along the base of a newly-constructed bean fence on the bank at the top of the driveway, against the neighbour's garage. It's protected from the south, gets lots of sun, and a bit of extra water from the unguttered garage roof, so my theory is that it should be a good spot. Other perhaps than the fact that it will get every gale force northerly that comes our way.