Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

These two (or three even) are our first poultry 'mums-to-be'. The eggs under them are due to hatch tomorrow, although it probably won't be till Friday that we get our first sneaky peek. When they first hatch, chicks and ducklings stay under mum for a good 24 hours to really dry off and to get used to the fact they are no longer scrunched up in an egg, with their legs curled around their heads!!
The first photo is of Queenie the bantam (on the left) sharing her eggs (but not willingly) with our youngest Indian Game. Queenie is our most patient and tolerant broody chicken and so is being very nice and allowing the Indian Game to stay. Once the chicks have hatched we will remove both them and her to a different place, and give the Indian Game her own set of eggs to sit on and hopefully, she will then stay put and leave Queenie to bring up her chicks on her own.
Banana is in the second photo: she will have been sitting for a grand total of 34 days by the time her first ducklings hatch: that's a long time!! Queenie and all our other chickens sit for just 21 days as chicken eggs don't need as long to incubate. If Queenie wins the prize for being patient and tolerant, Banana wins it for being the most independent and sensible. She has sat on her eggs (18 or 19 we think) without breaking any of them or covering them in poo. She gets off the nest twice a day to stretch her legs, eat, drink and poo and then puts herself back without needing any help from us.
Different broodies do require different amounts of looking after. Some like Katherine (one of the turkeys) need taking off the nest to go and eat and drink as she is not very good at remembering to do it herself. Some, like one of our older Indian Games, can be a bit clumsy and break eggs and then we have to clean all the sticky yolk off the remaining ones before the yolk goes bad and nasty bacteria gets into the shells. Worse are the birds who get off the nest but then poo straight away without taking another step... and we can tell you that 'broody' poo is VERY smelly (and not in a good way). We then have to clear it up pretty sharpish before it gets trodden in or spread into the nest and over the eggs. Lovley!!!
After these two we then have EIGHT more sets of eggs to hatch over the next month with three more broody birds waiting to be given their set now. Busy times ahead