Three out of my four Barnevelder hens are moulting and off the lay, and this summer, I didn't have time to incubate a new batch. It's a lot of work and not compatible with business travel. And we'd have to acquire some eggs as we don't have a rooster at the moment. So when an email arrived from a friend over the long weekend that they had 17 two-day old chicks free to good home, I jumped on their kind offer. One of their hens had taken herself off to her own private nest and managed to hatch 17 out of the 20 eggs she was sitting on! So we collected eight super-cute balls of fluff on Sunday (seven yellow and one black) and reduced the load on mum. Although I felt kind of sad taking them away from her, in a few weeks I guess she won't want to know them.
The new chicks have now settled in to their new temporary accommodation in our garage. They are a mixture of mainly New Hampshire with some Australorp so it will be interesting to see how they turn out and which sex they are. They look quite different from Barnevelder chicks.
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