The third litter

Hajas has done it again! This time there are 7 chicklets.

There were 11 eggs at the beginning. And one was added, without our knowing, later on - this, of course, went crap. 2 proved to be infertile, so there were 3 craps. Two of the babies died. Oh, the horror. Let me explain.

On Sunday morning we found Hajas behaving oddly. She was just sitting and panting, barely opening her eyes. Was it exhaustion? Heat? Some illness?

We thought the eggs would all die if she went ill.

Well, we tried to subsitute Hajas with Lepke, an old hen in the hope that she would sit just for one or two more days on the eggs.

The result? She broke one of the eggs. The underdeveloped chiclet died, of course. Plus, the no-so-good-at-subsituting-the-real-mother Lepke defecated on all the eggs. So, I tried to clean them and... broke one egg again. The underdeveloped white Turken baby died. Whew.

In our last hopes, we put Hajas back on the eggs and tried to make her feel better - by cleaning the house, by giving more ventillation: leaving the door ajar through the night. My husband slept outside, beside the house to repel predators from entering the hen house. Some of you might remember 18 December... Well, we did, and that's why he slept in a sleeping bag in the crunchy lawn.

And today, on Tuesday, here's what we saw:

All the 7 are here in one photo. There is one Turken (at the far left. S/he's turning her head back to adjust the feathers. and below is Hajas with one of the babies.

Well done.

- the photo above is just the way I was able to manage to change 'my photo'. From a blurred photo of a forest road I have now this one of a tree on the edge of a forest :)