April 2012

2 April

I set a further 5 nests over the weekend and checked the first three nests checked, 7 from 11 full eggs including 3 from my variegated buff hen and 4 from my lovely self green yellow hen. Clear eggs are part and parcel of the breeding programme, and using a cock bird over a couple of hens or more they're to be expected so not concerned at all.

Pleased that my heavily variegated buff cock that did well on the bench for me last year is firing, having filled four from 4 with his hen. My normal approach is to use unflighted cock birds with just the one hen in the shed, but having lost three of my old buff cocks ( a five year old and 2 four year olds) over the last 8 weeks some of the younger boys will get their chance with a few hens this year. The beauty of my breeding programme approach is that when one of the older boys goes there's birds from the same stock ready to take his place.

Most of the hens have built up now, and by the weekend i expect all of the hens bar 2 to be set on eggs. Wednesday will be a crunch day in the shed, it will be a week since i set 5 nests (from 6 hens), with the exception of one of them which is a flighted self green yellow cock bird, the others are from 5 unflighted cock birds, 3 of which are with unflighted hens, its natural that there will be some clear eggs as it's still early in the season, but i've got my fingers crossed there won't be too many!

11 April

First chicks have hatched out in four of the nests, perhaps most pleasing is I now have young off my three colour special winning hens and the variegated buff hen off the home page of the site (who has become both a mother and a grandmother in the last 3 days!). I have young off 6 hens in the four nests, with using so many unflighted birds there are always challenges with clear eggs, and rather than let hens rear single eggs I move the full ones under "foster" mums at 10 days. That's one of the benefits of having a range of colours in the shed, dark hens eggs are easily fostered under clear hens and one of the benefits of setting a number of hens at the same time.

Still a couple of unflighted hens not showing any interest yet in going to nest but the remaining hens are all on eggs, or having had one clear round are down again. The weather hasn't helped with one week of glorious weather followed by a week of rain, wind and frost!. There's another few nests due at the weekend and i have a couple more nests to set tonight - so by the end of the month the first round will be done and i'll have a better idea on what the numbers for the season will look like!

18 April

Steady progress in the shed with another couple of nest hatching on the weekend, I've shuffled some of the young around to ensure there are no single chicks. I've nests due pretty much every weekend now, the cold weather has had an impact on the hatch rate but i'm pleased with the numbers so far.

I'll be making some changes to the diary section, starting this month and in future months the diary will also incorporate some video shot in the birdroom.

The video above shows my two year old variegated buff hen (from the home page of the site) feeding her first nest of 3 young at about 6 days old.

25 April

It's been a strange old week in the birdroom, I've a number of hens on full clutches, hatch rate is still a bit hit and miss but with the damp wet weather its hardly a surprise!. First young (in the video above) are due away this weekend, the hen has been mated up again with the same variegated yellow cock and i've introduced a new nest pan this morning that she's already started to build up in. The first round stragglers and those that had a clear first round are in their egg laying cycle, including an overyear cinnamon yellow hen that i took off gerald, it bred a colour special winner for him last year, so I'm hopeful the cinnamons will step up a level again this year.

Unfortunately I lost a three year old buff hen on Monday, her and her mate were rearing 5 young for me (from various nests), the young are now 16 days today and the single cock bird still seems to be feeding them, it's a huge ask for one single bird to rear 5, and even bigger to expect that bird to be a cock, at the age they are there's nowhere i can move them, so i just have to hope that he keeps topping them up and that they come out of the nest handy to start picking up for themselves.

My blue hen (in the video gallery) is on a second clutch of clear eggs, its a real blow as i'd paired her with a three year old three parts dark buff cock who i've bred some really nice birds off, but so far with 2 different hens and 12 eggs he's yet to fill one. So it looks like one of his sons will get the opportunity with the blue hen, i'll let her sit the full term and slowly bring her back into condition.

So far seems to be a good spread of colours, plenty of darks out, a couple of white ground birds, a couple of clears and a fawn in the nest at present, obviously still early days into the season but really like the look of the young that are near fledging, here's hoping for plenty more!