This Mother Hen FINALLY Did It

I’ve had a disastrous year when it comes to parent-reared chicks. A couple of silkies went broody and I popped some excess pheasant eggs under them. The first broke both the rather expensive grey peacock pheasant eggs, and the second silkie sat until about day 18 and then abandoned them. A trio of my khaki campbell duck hens had a co-ed nest and hatched a couple of ducklings - but these went missing after a couple of days. Then another duck snuck off and made a nest in the barn. All 12 eggs began pipping and the following morning I came in to discover every single egg taken and/or destroyed. Oh, and Mrs Goose went super broody and managed to cook and create an entire batch of rotten eggs. Lovely.

So when one of my tiny Barbu D’anvers escaped the coop and made a nest in the nettles I really didn’t expect much. In fact, I dithered about even allowing her to sit as the nest was not hidden in the least and I worried about predators. To my absolute excitement, I heard cheeping yesterday, investigated and found a chick! She had more eggs pipping so I made the uneasy decision to leave her overnight and then this morning found her with five delightful little ones. I’ve now moved her and the babies to a much safer hutch space.

Did I need these babies? No. I mean, they’re not even pure Barbu D’anvers. But after the dismal chicken and duck hatchings this year, I just wanted to enjoy some babies. Chicks are super cute, but there’s nothing quite like watching a mother hen with her babies. It’s wonderful watching her chat, keep her brood together and teach them the ways of chickening; finding food, scratching dirt, picking through long grass and disappearing into the undergrowth at the slightest hint of a predator.

Whilst the flower farm and garden continues to be horrendously affected by the drought and the lack of rain, the livestock are actually excelling. This year’s lambs are growing nicely and the ewes have put on all the weight they lost from feeding hungry babies. It’s actually rather alarming that in only two months, the whole process of lambing will begin again when the rams meet the girls and tupping begins. Talking of rams; they’re currently in the barn. The lack of ground moisture has made the electric fencing rather ineffective and I was dealing with multiple breakouts. This stress, combined with the fact of no grass, led to the decision to simply move the boys into the barn, feed them hay and get them built and stocked ready for tupping. I haven’t many ewes for each to cover, but their duties still take it out of them.

The goats too are on restricted access due to their penchant for busting into the chicken runs instead of browsing the 10 acres they roamed last year. Eve, however, spends most of her time with the sheep though there’s no sign of bagging up or imminent babies.

Meanwhile, the pheasantry lads are thriving. Most of the males have now gone through their first or second moult. The Lady Amhurst, after being drab and dull for the first 18 months of his life, has burst into his amazing coat of many colours. My male grey peacock pheasant dropped his tail, and it’s now coming back as fantastic as before, and there are a couple of new additions to the silver pheasant coop; a pair of ladies. Unfortunately, my silver pheasant male is not keen on them. Pheasants are not like chickens (as I wrote in this article). It takes time for pairs to bond and they really can be quite aggressive to each other. In fact, males can kill each other and their hen companions if they’re not keen on them.

One of my reeves also seems to be rather confused about the time of year and is laying random eggs here and there. I had one hatch the other day (see here for my hatching recommendations) and I have another few in the incubator along with some turkey eggs.

I’ll be honest, the drought this year has been a heavily challenging mental hurdle. Hinging the entire business on the flower farm and market garden, only to have those crops fail miserably, is rather devastating. But I was reminded of my overall dream here - and that is to ‘wild’ my 37 acres using domestic livestock (sheep, goats, cattle etc) and to create a wildlife oasis that still acts as a prosperous farm.

I visited this in my latest video, talking about some of the considerations needed for my rewilding project. I’m glad to have re-discovered my main focus and remind myself why I’m doing all of this! You can watch the video by clicking below.

☕ Enjoyed and found this article useful? Please consider buying me a virtual Coffee. This helps support the content I'm creating, the animals on the farm and the rewilding projects I'm building to help create an oasis for wildlife.