Broody Hen Saga - Part Three

What can I say - the chicks hatched early.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I put 8 eggs under a broody hen on Saturday night, April 21st.  The first week they kicked two out, which left six, plus a few extra that were laid in the box by other hens - at a certain point, it became too hard to get eggs from under the broody hens.

Friday morning I saw two, then three chicks, and by the afternoon there were five.  We weren't sure of anything else at that point - if anymore would be hatching soon, how many total eggs there were.  Finally, Saturday morning both hens got out of the box and I was able to see what was left - five more eggs - one from the original six, three more bantams and a Rhode Island Red.  I don't know a lot about this kind of stuff, so I'm going to speculate for a minute.  I'm not sure the RIR egg is fertile.  I have seen Silkie try to mount a RIR hen, but without success.  The sixth marked egg I'm having my doubts about.  Saturday night is 21 days, but all the others have hatched already.  That leaves the three extra bantam eggs - those will probably hatch, except maybe for the fact that no hen was sitting on them for two or three hours this afternoon.  Like I said, I don't know a lot about this area.

I was going to wait until all the eggs hatched before posting this, but we're still waiting.  I'll have to add a part four, or more, to this series of posts.  Stay tuned.