Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We thought you might like to see a photo of our gang of 13 chicks alongside our broody bantam with her four! Are all 18 birds visible though? Possibly not, how many can you count? We won't actually be able to repeat this picture now as the bantam has taken her brood up to one of the perches for the night. Did she do this because she did not enjoy sharing her bedtime roost with so many others OR would she have done it anyway? Teaching her chicks to perch at night is something a broody mum naturally does and for good reason: to protect them from predators! It is also more hygienic as their poo falls to the ground as opposed to sticking to the ground they are actually sleeping on. Again we are noticing the difference between the 'naturally reared' birds and those raised under a heat lamp. Whilst perching is a natural behaviour, we have in the past noticed that the chicks with a 'mum' start perching much earlier. There are only a few days between these two sets of birds: we will let you know when the 13 start to perch but our guess is it won't be for a while!!
The good news from today is that we candled ten out of our 30 Orpington eggs and NINE were fertile. We did not want to stress the birds by candling all 30 so took three or four from each nest. Are we now safe to assume that of the 20 we did not candle only TWO of those may not be fertile (i.e. taking our one out of ten figure from 'actual' candling?) It's a large sample but from a small number so is less likely to be correct compared to candling 100 out of 1000 for example. Time will tell. We are pleased because it has at times been a little chaotic in the broody area, as we have certain individual chickens who come into it each day to lay or steal the chick crumbs (special food for young chicks). The latter is bad but the former is really bad when it means the broody gets pushed to one side whilst the newcomer lays her egg for the day... not ideal!
The duck situation is even worse with frantic nest swopping and a very determined bantam wanting to keep her 11 eggs, despite Banana sitting on top of her... All four of our Muscovy girls are now sitting - we are hopefully going to be overrun with ducklings soon... the first lot are due to hatch in a mere nine days!!!