The Birds and The Bees!

I know I talk about the chickens alot! Anyone who hasn't had chickens probably thinks I'm mad and those who have, could well think the same, but they really never cease to amaze me!  Although growing up I had a fair amount of contact with the countryside and farms I never really paid much attention to what was going on around me and from the questions people ask us about our hens, I can tell I wasn't the only one who didn't know anything about the birds and the bees, or rather poultry and apiculture!

Firstly it didn't make any sense to me that hens can lay eggs every day without ever coming into contact with a cockrel - but they do, it seems very pointless to me and a lot of effort on their part (not that I'm complaining!).  Also they hardly seem to eat anything compared to how much they poo and then on top of that an egg a day has to come from somewhere, it's a real mystery to me how that works. I read the little book from the National Trust about keeping hens which was great, explaining all the science behind things and teaching us how to be responsible hen owners. I thought I had it all sussed until one of the hens went all weird and stopped eating and just stayed inside, sitting on the eggs and biting me when I tried to move her.  Through my conscientious studies of the little hen book, I recognised this as broodiness. This is considered by the book to be an unusual thing in laying hens as the maternal instinct is pretty much bred out of them so that they will continue to be loyal egg producers all year round.  The book says that broodiness is generally a BAD thing which should be discouraged.

Intrigued by the whole thing and with the plan to buy a couple more hens anyway at some point soon, we decided to go against the recommendation of the chicken bible and see what happens. We borrowed a cockrel from a friend and after his week of wild parties with the other girls, we started collecting their eggs to slip under the broody hen who up until that point was absolutely focused on what she considered her important task of keeping unfertile (and sometimes imaginary) eggs warm.  We moved her to a solitary, improvised 'maternity ward' with eight (hopefully) fertile eggs collected over three days but all tucked under her on the same day (so that they should all hatch at once. If not, she might abandon the eggs at the sign of the first chick) and she got to work organising and warming the nest straight away.

Seemingly hens can lay fertile eggs for up to three weeks after just one 'intimate moment' with a cockrel but that until the eggs are warmed steadily and consistently, they wont develop. She has to decide to sit on them and she'll only do that when she wants to, it has nothing to do with the cockrel, some hens never sit on eggs. That's why I decided this was a chance we shouldn't miss! Eggs can lie there for days, fertile, waiting for a hen to incubate them but once she's on, she has to stay on or it's all over, the chicks die half formed.   Our hen seems to know this as she wont even come out to eat or drink. I put food in her 'ward' every day (avoiding her sharp beak) and she eats as if she were starving but refuses to come outside.  In the wild I think she would have starved by now.  I don't really understand how that works, although much of the time she seems to be in a kind of trance, like they go into at night, not asleep but very slow and starey, so maybe she saves energy that way.

We're now two and a half weeks into the three week incubation period, so this weekend, if all goes well we should have some chicks hatching. I have read that the success rate is fairly low without an incubator and especially with laying hens so I'm trying not to get too excited about it. It'll be brilliant if it works though! Cant wait!

Bees seem altogether even more amazing than hens and I did in fact buy a bee bible too from the National Trust but I'll wait until we get bees to go into all the details on here!

So finally, I can say with some confidence that I'm starting to understand a bit more about 'the birds and the bees' and it's  much more complicated than I originally thought!