Everyone loves a happy ending and here we have a strong possibility. We seem to have swapped out the ducklings at ten days old, with our new 'Hubbard' variety one-day-old chickens in a move so successful that even Mentor Anne and Simon were amazed, both knowing enough about chickens to know all manner of things which MIGHT have gone wrong, but luckily didn't. The general concensus among friends and contacts on the internet poultry forum is that we have, in Broody Betty, one amazing chicken, a 'keeper' worth her weight in gold and worth hanging on to and keeping happy!
To recap the story, BB had already done one brood of chickens this spring, successfully hatching 8 babies who are now 14 weeks old and strolling round the place collectively known as 'The 8 Ball' because they remind us of a gang of golfers wandering round a golf course discussing who's playing with what brand of ball, who's in the rough, and who can invent the most proposterous score card. She'd then gone broody again and , having no fertile eggs to put under her we had borrowed ten Indian Runner duck eggs from Anne, for BB to sit on. She sat tight on those for the 28 days required, successfully hatching 5 ducklings on Monday 22nd. We rescued the remaining eggs and Anne subsequently hatched 3 more in her incubator.
Feeling for poor old BB and not wanting to steal her new babies without giving her something else to 'mother', we hatched a plan to obtain some day-old chicks of the meat-variety of chicken which is used widely in Ireland where birds are free-range or grown organically, the "Hubbard", but we were unable to get hold of these quickly and it was not till the ducklings would be 10 days old that we'd be able to do the swap.
The chicks were duly fetched from up by the 'Norn Iron' border on Thursday 1st Aug (Anne and Simon had gone up to get chicks for three 'customers' including Broody Betty) and delivered at 5:30 pm. With all sorts of apprehensions, Simon and I crept into BB's house, lifted out the 5 ducklings and put them in sight in a box on the floor, in clear view of BB, who was only a bit concerned, being used to me lifting her ducklings down every morning to let them out free ranging.
Then, instead of letting her down we slid in the 8 confused, LOUDLY cheeping chicks who milled around her feet drowning out any duckling noise. Betty then amazed us all by starting to cluck contentedly and gather the chicks to her, the ducklings apparently forgotten in the racket. He who shouts loudest gets heard, obviously!. We disappeared the ducklings in their box to outside the door and watched while Betty clucked and fussed the new chicks into her 'bedroom' and settled down with them on the hay nest, completely enclosing them under her skirts, looking every inch the contented hen. Not for her to worry why her babies had turned from 5 puddle-ducking, wet-loving ducklings into 8 dry chicks (as well as grown younger). Everything seemed right with the world.
We checked on her hourly that evening and brought them all breakfast in the morning (back to finely mashed hard boiled eggs and chick crumb!) which Betty immediately started to show them how to peck and scratch at.
Obviously we are not out of the woods yet, these babies are still only 3 days old as I write this but it's all looking very promising. As I said, so much could have gone wrong. Betty is not even 'meant' to be a broody, a "clocker" as they say here. Sussex Pontes are a modern egg laying hybrid developed by a huge commercial hatchery, where broodiness would just be a nuisance. They try to breed it out of the birds. Then there is the going broody twice thing. Then there is getting them to accept ten duck eggs which they know they didn't lay. Next up, the low chance of a hen sitting for the full 28 days - chicken eggs only take 21. Next is them keeping up the mothering of ducklings for ten days - ducklings are programmed to do all the wrong things by hen standards - they love to get wet and play in puddles, they do not scratch for food and they do not eat much seed and grain. This 'disobedience' can quickly upset the hen who will abandon the babies and go off in disgust. Finally there is the chance of a successful substitution after ten days of duckling fostering by which time mum and ducks will be well bonded and babies are very active. Broody Betty had to not only accept the change, but also almost a start-again-from-scratch (if you'll forgive the pun) with newly hatched chicks. The ducklings, of course, also have to cope with being wrenched from 'Mum' but in this case they were slotted in with their (12) incubator-finished and reared siblings and the multi-fowl life of a bird on Anne's place and appear to have thrived on it.
So, for now Broody Betty is disguised as 'Old Mother Hubbard' and we will report her continuing adventures on here.
No comments:
Post a Comment