It's so hard in the spring, walking into the feed stores and the local Wilco farm store and seeing the big brooders full of cute, fuzzy, peeping chicks. So cute! So tempting! So far, I've resisted the urge to even touch the little balls of fluff, let alone purchase any, but it's like some low-level addiction. I've wanted to increase my flock again anyway...but I'm not sure I want to explain it to my husband.
Well, as is often the way, nature took care of it for me! My game hen cross, who has the not-very-matronly name of Racer X, decided last week that spring had sprung, and that meant she needed to have babies. She stopped laying, started sitting, and is now a big puffed-up ball of hissing feathers whenever I open the coop door. Poor sad little girl keeps switching nests to find the one with the biggest pile of eggs, and I keep stealing the eggs. Right now she's sitting on three golf balls and looking pretty smug about it.
I emailed the gal who gave me Racer X last year, and she brought me half a dozen fertile eggs. Tomorrow we'll reassemble the brooding pen and nest box, install Racer X, and then slip the eggs under her at night. Hopefully in three weeks we'll have a little flock of puffballs running around! The eggs are from a blue cochin father and a buff orpington mother, so I have no idea what they'll look like as chicks or as adults, but they're two of my favorite breeds, so it really doesn't matter!
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