Thread: Peeps!!!

Stuck 11 fertile eggs under my broodie Little Hen on April 22nd.
Wednesday evening the eggs started to pip.
Last night we had 5 peeps. This morning, 10 with the last one trying to hatch!
Cute little buggers.

You have a good brooder. Cute chicks . My 8 Black Giant Jerseys have feather out and today is their big day . Leaving the brooder box and out into the wilds of the big pen .

She's turned out to be a very good brooder. She went broodie on us like 4 times last year so I said if she did it this spring, I would get eggs. Sure enough, she went broodie on the 20th.. She's done a great job so far, if the last one survives hatching, that's 11 out of 11.I put a bunch of chick starter in my hand this morning and put my hand down low in front of momma, she called the peeps and they all came. She pecked some food from my hand & then all the peeps started eating out of my hand.
The chicks are still fearless, let me pick them up. When I tried to put them down, one jumped back into my hand.
Full size broodie hens are not real common, I could probably "rent" her out.

Were you able to determine their sex? I eat roosters and keep hens until their production slows down. It's an awesome feeling hatching your own. I had an australorpe go broody and started sitting on eggs, she hatched two. I'm glad they hatched, my in-laws damn dachshund killed one of my favorite hens(New Hampshire Red) last night.

Not yet, I need to look up how to sex these breeds by color. The rooster was a silver leghorn, hens were Ameraucuna and silver leghorn.
So no telling what they will look like or what color eggs we will get, should be from cream to light blue or green.
If I end up with too many hens, I will be giving some away, we can only keep 5 at a time and I already have my 2 2-year old hens. So I will probably keep 4 new hens since my older ones are nearing the end of their productivity.
We will be eating the roosters unless someone wants one.

Correction, daddy rooster is a Light Brahma:

thats a good looking rooster. My speckled sussex rooster "Cogburn", for yall that have seen True Grit, is mean as a snake. He is the mack dadddy at our farm and has 28 hens to choose from...hes in heaven. The two chicks we hatched are sussex/black australorpe and the other I believe is pure bred or sussex/RIR mixed.


Attack pose

Two days old

I checked their wing tips at about two days old and they appear to be hens. I'm no expert at it like at the hatchery. They're both about 2 weeks old now.

Nice looking rooster!

I raised Rhode Island Red x Barred White Rock black sex links in high school.
My rooster was one big mean son of a b*&ch.
Had to be 8-10 pounds and 2' tall full grown.
He had 9 hens to look after, in a free ranging flock, and we never lost a single one to any critter.
He didn't mess with me, we had an "understanding" as to who was boss.
But after a while he started going after the neighbors' kid (who probably deserved it), knocked the kid down a couple of times.
I had to lock the rooster up after that.

That's funny. We were chased by roosters and a big damn goose when we were little, and no, they were never locked up for going after us. We were laughed at and told to stay out of their way, which was not really possible because they had the run of the place. Often wondered if my granny liked chickens more than grandkids.

My rooster and I seem to have an "understanding" every two days. He spurs me, I kick the crap out of him, then we chill until that testosterone builds back up and he's back at it again. My border collie don't even go around him. He ran off a full size hawk a few months ago. I'm going to put a sign up soon saying, " Don't mind the dog, beware of the rooster!"