The 8-Ball

Sussex Ponte young rooster

Cast your mind back, if you would, to my post of 28th April this year (http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2013/04/of-hatching-chicks-and-flying-geese.html) and those little multi-coloured fluffy chicks hatched out under Broody Betty on her first sitting of the year. Those little mites are 'all growed up' now and most of them are bigger than the existing hens including BB herself. They are 16 weeks old now and approaching that significant poultry keeper's milestone 'Point of Lay'. Here even the ones which are very difficult to sex like the white Silkies we had back in Kent, and the black Jersey Giants we have here now, should either lay an egg or shout "Cock-a-Doodle-Dooo!" and give the game away.

La Bresse cross with a Buff Orp (head obscured)

There are 8 of them all still surviving and they have formed a tight-knit group who range around the 'farm' quite independently of the 'grown ups', always together. We call them "The 8-Ball" because they remind us of a group of golfers wandering round a golf course bantering with each other about who is playing with Top Flite balls because there's one here in the rough, who's sneaked onto the green, who's just played a blinding wood shot and inventing spurious scores to "card" (a well known 'verb' known only to golfers and sports commentators).

Jersey Giant (black) and Mini-Buff

The 8-Ball were hatched from eggs which came 5 from our own (Sussex Ponte) birds and 7 as a generous donation from Mentor Anne and Simon; a mixed bag of the main breeds they stock - Buff Orpingtons, Jersey Giants and a La Bresse cross. As luck would have it, only one of our 5 eggs hatched but all 7 of Anne's managed to. The 8-Ball now comprises one SP, 2 Buffs, 2 JGs, a La Bresse cross and 2 of a cross between Buffs and something smaller and possibly bantamised; these two are way smaller than their siblings and a lovely dark golden colour - we call them the 'Mini-Buffs'.

Buffs, the Sussex rooster and the La Bresse cross

As I said, some chicken varieties are hard to sex till they are at point of lay. Anne and Simon who are way more expert than us are not even prepared to take a punt on the Jerseys. Others start to show shape differences much sooner, so that we have known that the Sussex was a boy for weeks - bigger legs and feet, sticky-up tails, more developed wattle and combs and so on. They also seem to start behaving like roosters or being treated like hens by our existing rooster, William. He tries to mount them and we say "Ah ha! She might be a girl then!" Two of the youngsters start squaring up to one another as if to fight, and we suspect they are boys (though Simon tells us that sometimes 2 hens will do this as part of the pecking order process).

The 8 Ball gather round (and on) the keyhole bed.

Taking all this into account we think we have a male SP and a male La Bresse. We think the big pale pure Buffs are one of each. Both the mini-buffs may be hens and we have no idea on the Jerseys. I do not need to tell you that this can be bad new for the boys. You can only have one rooster in this set up and William the Conqueror is filling that slot, though the main rooster can tolerate and become quite matey with a 'buddy'. We quite fancy starting a Buff Orpington group, so we are hoping that William will get on with the Buff we think is a male. All the other boys may have shorter careers, possibly in the catering line. All the girls we hope will join our laying flock.

In other news we have been out this evening observing the Perseids Meteor shower. It was, to start with, a gorgeously clear night of the sort we have only ever experienced in Ireland, clear skies and no light pollution. There was a small amount of cloud low down on the NE horizon, just where we were expecting the Perseus constellation to rise. Liz was on an ironing marathon today and still going strong at 11 pm, so I went out to see what I could see. I took the bat-detector with me and very quickly started to hear the patter and squelch of either lots of bats or one bat lots of times. This was at 45-50 MHz, so we guess pipistrelle.

Sure enough, I saw a quick burst of 6 meteor streaks tracking from North across the Great Bear. Brilliant exciting stuff and I was keen to get Liz out there too, so that she could see some. When a hazy cloud came across from the west I feared she might miss the show, so I interrupted the ironing and called her out but sadly, too late - that was it. The bats kept whizzing around, one so close to my face I could feel the draught from his wingtips, but the haze grew thicker and we saw no more meteors. At 11:45 we called it a night and Liz came in to finish the ironing. There's dedication! Never mind, the Perseids are 'on' for a few days yet and we might get another clear sky tomorrow or the next day.

Operation Chick-Swap

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.