Monday, July 17, 2006

The Circle of Life....Continued

In a previous post I mentioned that I lost my favorite bird, Lucia...My blue hen. I've managed to save 2 of her chicks and with luck one will be a hen.

On another note of good news and showing how the Circle of Life continues no matter what we do....

My purple hen (Mapp) finally started setting on some eggs. This is her second season laying and after laying 12 eggs (only managed to hatch 1 chick out of those) and not getting the "setting" urge she finally got with the progam. Well that was almost 33 days ago. For those of you who don't know hatching takes 28 days.

This past Saturday morning I went out to her pen determined to take away, what I assumed to be dead or infertile eggs and wait patiently for spring to try again.

To my surprise when I finally got her off the nest...After a lot of hissing and some very dirty looks....Wow....4 chicks...fresh out of the shell. One was still wet and not quite dried off yet. Two eggs didn't hatch but that's 4 more than I expected.

Isn't mother nature grand......

1 Comments:

At 7/20/2006 1:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello Bob,
I was very pleased to see your photo of Mapp, she looks just like my hen Percie, who someone told me was a purple or purple white eyed. We've had her for 3 years now after she just wandered into our yard in Nov and started eating all the seed under our bird feeders. I'd like to have a male for her but can't convince my husband.
Reading your blog with interest, from Waddy.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home