Farm Report: Hybrids, Freezer Burn, Egg Count

In a previous post about our new Hybrid Cochin/Bantam chicks, who I called the Three Heathers, I speculated that some of the Heathers might be Heathcliffs. Well as it turns out, two of them are. Here is all of the Hybrid birds together:


In the center foreground is Heather the hen. Behind her are her two brothers, Heathcliff and Heathcliff Too. Peaking in on the right, is our white-faced hen, "Freezerburn". You may recall that she was hatched later than the other three, from an egg I had accidentally put in the refrigerator for two or three weeks.

Andy bet me that it wouldn't hatch after being refrigerated, so I tried it as an experiment, and well, it hatched! She was raised by a Bantam hen who hatched the egg. She turned out smaller than the others, with a white face. I called her "Sputnick", but Andy and Pat call her "Freezerburn" because of her white face and her, uh, history of pre-hatching refrigeration. I've relented and gone with their name for her, because, well, if the shoe fits...




Freezerburn was not accepted by her siblings at first, because she was born later and hatched by a different hen. I had to keep her and her surrogate mom in a separate cage at night, let them loose in the daytime, and put them back each evening. Because of that she was handled a lot and became very tame. When her mother weaned her, Freezerburn imprinted on me for a while, because she had no siblings to hang out with. But slowly, gradually, her other hybrid siblings accepted her as one of the gang.




They hang out together pretty regular now. They all have feathery feet like their mom, so I call them the Feathery Foot Club. They can all fly, almost as well as the Bantam's can, and better than their Cochin mother (who can't really fly at all). The Orange-brown rooster seems to be growing a bit bigger than any of the Bantam roosters, but it remains to be seen if he will grow big enough to cross breed with the Pullets.

The Egg Count for June was as follows:

Pullets had 74 eggs, Bantams had 129, for a monthly total of 203. That's 15 more eggs than the prior month.

Hopefully we will have two more Pullet hens coming on-line soon, as our three new Buff Orpington's are maturing. Here they are with Pat:




One of them is a rooster, so if the Hybrid Rooster doesn't get big enough to cross breed, this rooster may be able to fulfill that role for the bigger birds. The three Orpingtons are living in the nursery section of the coop right now, to get used to being with the flock. They will probably get their first venture outside, free-range, this weekend.

End of Farm Report!
     

Farm Report: "Heather has Two Mommies"

Last month the first chicks of the year began to hatch. I've been letting the chickens hatch eggs from Turendot, our Chinese Cochin hen, because I want a hybrid cross of her with the Bantams.


I nick-named the first chick "Heather", because she has TWO mommies. The Hen on the left is Turendot, her biological mother, and the hen on the right is the Bantam hen who hatched Heather.

Heather imprinted on the Bantam that hatched her, but also was attracted to Turendot; she would run excitedly back and forth between the two hens, taking turns napping under each one. Both hens started to treat her as their own, and shared the chick; hence the name "Heather" (from the controversial book).




But Turendot has since hatched two of her own eggs, and now there are three hybrid chicks. The third was hatched on Easter Day. Here are the three "Heathers" with their two mommies:

Maybe they aren't all Heathers. I'm hoping there is at least one Heathcliff in the batch. I'd like to have hybrid rooster; it would likely be larger than the Bantam roosters. The Bantams are too small to breed with our full size Barred Rock, Bluff Rock or Road Island Red hens.

Hawks have killed our big hens because they are slow and can't escape quickly. The Bantams can fly and escape quickly, but their eggs are too small to be useful for much. I'm thinking that if I can cross breed the two kinds, using the hybrid rooster as a kind of plumbing "step-up" to... "make the connection", the resulting birds would be medium sized, with some of the Bantam's speed and agility, but with bigger eggs. Anyhow, it's an experiment.

We have a fourth chick now, it was from a hybrid egg that I discovered that I had accidentally put in the refrigerator for a few weeks. Andy said it would not hatch out, but I put it under one of the Bantam hens anyway, to see what would happen (yes, another experiment). Well, it worked:




Eggs that have been refrigerated can indeed hatch. Whodathunkit?

The mommies and chicks have the run of the yard in the daytime, and I lock them up at night. They seem to get bigger every day. Now we just have to wait and see what the little thuglets turn out like as they mature.

Never a dull moment on the farm!