A Hatching House for Grumpy Hen

We have a little bantam. She’s really REALLY grumpy. Apparently she is nine years old (I never knew chickens could live that long!) and she was left here (along with the junk….) by the previous owners. She’s very very unfriendly…. very very loud…. and very very silly. Not long after we moved in Grumpy Hen decided she was going to go broody. She found herself a nice little position safe and secluded…. in the top of an old washing basket filled with dried leaves….

See the white washing basket under the big sheet of steel? Right here… 

Yes… that is where she decided to nest. 

 

We didn’t even realise she was there for a couple of weeks – we thought she’d moved out in disgust after being chased by the kids one too many times (she’s always the one they chase because she’s the only one who runs!).

So once we discovered she was there we put a makeshift cover over her to keep the rain off and left her there. She seemed happy enough. When my stepfather arrived for a visit back in early December we decided to candle her eggs and see what was happening in there. Unfortunately none seems to show any sign of life which wasn’t surprising…. she’s probably a bit old for making babies. But she was so dedicated to her cause we felt a bit sad for her and decided to do an egg swap. So we took away her old eggs and gave her some fertile Araucana/Silkie cross ones we picked up from a B&B in Tai Tapu when we popped in to buy some fertile Barred Rock eggs. The babies are due any day now. Obviously she can’t raise babies in the washing basket… so Hubby has made her a lovely new house especially for hatching and raising her brood.

Now we just have to work out how to move her into it without causing a massive coronary event …. she gets really stressed when you go anywhere near her … and she is VICIOUS! We’ll give it a go tonight, when it’s nice and dark… wish us luck!

Now Hubby just needs to *whip up* two more houses for these girls….

These are two of our original chickens … Henny (the Langshan) and Bossy (the New Hampshire Red). Between them they’re sitting on 14 eggs – A mixture of Barred Rocks and Blue, Black and White Orpingtons. There was 15 eggs… see the tiny little brown thing outside of the nest – that’s a dead chick. One of the girls accidentally crushed the egg at some stage – by the looks of it at least a few days ago. I had seen the broken egg earlier in the day when they got off to eat, but I didn’t have a chance to get it out before they came back to the nest. At first I got a heck of a fright – I thought it was a hatch-ling that had fallen out and died. But when I picked it up I realised that it was too young (and from the smell had been gone a while!) I figured that while turning the eggs one of them has tossed it out of the nest.  The other chickens must have pecked the shell off.