Tuesday 5 May 2020

New chicks

Barnvelder chicks May 20

Some happy news in the midst of the pandemic lockdown: the first batch of eggs we put in the incubator has hatched. Seven eggs were incubated and 6 hatched today. The eggs were from our Barnvelders. We have a second batch of eggs in another incubator though these only went in a few days ago. They are for a friend who lost her hens over the weekend to foxes.

The first incubator will be given a rest over the next week and will then go into action. We will be incubating Rhode Island Red eggs though we will need to separate off our RIR cockerel and 4 hens to avoid cross breeding. This breed is both table and layer and the cockerels are a good size. We may therefore drop our plans for turkeys for Christmas and fatten up the RIR cockerels instead. No final decision has yet been made but were we to go ahead with keeping turkeys, we would have to create a separate run for them as they need to be kept away from chickens. Apparently, turkeys can fall victim to illnesses carried by chickens.

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