Baby making

Well after 3 weeks of sitting pitifully on her nest and not budging we have decided to grant Silkie her wish, babies. Now as we don't have a rooster in the house there is absolutely no chance of any hanky panky for her, so we did the next best thing and ordered a clutch of fertile eggs - kinda like egg donation for chickens!

They are sitting on my bench right now, waiting for night to come so we can shove them under the broody hen and hope that she stays there.

I've marked each egg with the word "baby", so we can tell them apart from the other chook eggs. Silkie has a special milk crate to go over the top of her for a few days, so the other chooks learn to lay somewhere else. If it all things go to plan, we should have little beaks breaking out of eggs in 21 days!! How exciting! We are going to keep the chicks until they are a few months old, then give them back to the breeder. No doubt one will stay with us though, just not any of the crowing variety.

Its all very exciting. Due date for hatching will be around the 7th March, which is my birthday - what a present that would be!