Elvis a mum again!!

This is becoming a bit of a recurrent theme on this blog.

Just over three weeks ago Elvis started to sit on her eggs and peck any hand that came near, so we placed ten blue eggs under her, in the hope that this time we might get a few more female Crested Cream Legbars.

They were due to hatch on Saturday evening, a special birthday present for Sue, or Sunday morning. Late Saturday afternoon the guinea fowl were inquisitively hanging around Elvis's coop. Goodness knows how or why, but they always seem to know when a hatching is imminent. I guess they could hear the pipping of the chicks inside the eggs.
When I went to lock up the hens on Saturday evening, I too was fairly certain I could hear a chick and on Sunday morning the first fluffy heads were poking out from under Elvis's feathers.
But Elvis was still sitting tight, so presumably there were more eggs waiting to hatch.

Fast forward to today and I was finally able to count seven chirpy chicks. Elvis had added one of her own eggs to the blue ones we had placed under her.


Elvis has hatched a right motley crew.

Only one, though, is a female Cream Legbar. The good thing about Cream Legbars is that they are autosexing - that means that, unusually in the chicken world, male and female chicks actually look different and can be told apart. As for the rest, well I guess the lady Cream Legbars have been mixing it up a bit with the other young cockerels, for none of them looks pure. We're not too bothered - if we were, we would have isolated the Legbar trio before collecting eggs from them. Goodness knows how one of them seems to have come out pure white!