Silkies may possibly be one of the best little hens on earth. With 12 eggs winging their way to me, 6 light sussex and 6 Gold Brahma’s, it seemed that both Georgia and Elle had decided to spite me, join forces with the wintering gale and weathermans threaten of snow, and go totally non broody after both sitting on top of each other in the nestbox for several days. Elle was happily running around outside, a piece of potota peeling sticking out from her beak, whilst Georgia looked over her flock from her usual regal poise on her favourite log. What was I going to do with these eggs? I didn’t want to eat them, after all, they were supposed to be “hatching eggs”! newspaper stories flickered through my mind of Waitrose eggs that had been successfully hatched, if those eggs could endure packinging, travelling, being stuck on a shelf and still hatch months later, then perhaps there was hope for mine as well?<\/p>\n
Georgia, being the more consciencious of the hens obviously took my worries to heart and by the end of the day she was settled back in the nest happily incubating one of her sister’s eggs. Chortling happily she did not seem the slighest bit worried when I picked her up and transfered her to the nesting cage, put her on the nest that I’d made and she simply sat there with a look on her face “Well…..you better give me some eggs now”. I readily did the following day when they arrived and she is now happily incubating her six light sussex eggs.<\/p>\n
Elle on the other hand was quite content playing in the mud outside, all signs of broodiness totally removed from her character. Would the 6 Gold Brahma eggs survive? They sat cold and bare in their little polystyrene travelling case. I transfered Elle, who was less than complient, to her new nesting cage and sat her on the nest where she prompty got up, ran off and started tearing up the news paper in search of titbits. This wasn’t going to work. After several hours she wasn’t happy so I moved her back into her normal enclosure. Then – this morning, she obviously decided she would sit after all as I found her sitting on two freshly laid eggs. For what seemed the 100th time I moved her into her new nest with the hatching eggs and hurrah she sat straight down and started to re-arrange the nesting material – I obviously couldn’t create a nest up to her perfect standards.<\/p>\n
So there we have the tale of two broody silkies, boring to some, but not to me! Lets hope that this time I get some chicks to talk about.<\/p>\n
Georgia settles down
\n![\"Georgia](\"http:\/\/i103.photobucket.com\/albums\/m138\/AnthonyTroy\/Gardening\/Georgia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Elle finally takes the hint
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i103.photobucket.com\/albums\/m138\/AnthonyTroy\/Gardening\/Elle.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Silkies may possibly be one of the best little hens on earth. With 12 eggs winging their way to me, 6 light sussex and 6 Gold Brahma’s, it seemed that both Georgia and Elle had decided to spite me, join forces with the wintering gale and weathermans threaten of snow, and go totally non broody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1013],"tags":[932,518],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theguidetogaygardening.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}