Babies, babies, babies. We got ’em around here. As you know, we have baby goats, called kids. Suzy is still expecting. (She’s the one in the back left corner.) She’s due about May 20. The other 4 babies are about a month old.
One of our Buff Orpington layers has gone broody and has been sitting for 19 days today. She should be hatching her babies on Tuesday. Yesterday, we had another Buff go broody. That’s OK by me. We will let her sit and hatch about a dozen eggs too. I will stick all of today’s eggs under her and 21 days from now… Typically you get about half roosters and half hens. We can use another dozen hens for eggs next spring, but we will be looking to get rid of the roosters.
Our turkeys are broody too. We have 3 hens sitting on eggs. They are due about Mother’s Day.
I’ve also been incubating eggs we’ve collected. I have 10 younger turkeys in the brooder now, every thing from about 2 weeks to 2 days. I had 5 more hatch in the incubator yesterday. They will join the others in the brooder later today if all is well. Yep, that’s a young Buff Orpington Rooster in the mix there. Believe it or not, turkeys aren’t too smart about the feeding and water thing when they first hatch. Having a young chicken to show them what to do helps out tremendously. He’s getting big now, about time to leave the brooder. Wonder if he will think he’s a turkey or if the turkeys will think they are chickens.
Once we’ve finished kidding and hatching, I think we’ll be done with babies! That will be enough for this year.