Blucinda's Babies

  If you recall from a previous post, our blue slate hen Blucinda hatched out two of her own poults last week, and they did not make it. Me being the emotional sort I was in tears at the thought of removing the remaining eggs. I couldn't stand the thought of watching her pace around calling for her lost babies. So an idea formed in my head. She had previously adopted some juvenile Muscovy ducklings. In fact she has a permanent limp from defending five of her teenage ducks from a predator. So I thought, maybe I could buy her some babies!
 
   I did some research and checked with my farm bird folk and sure enough! This is actually a fairly common practice even between species (such as a broody chicken taking care of turkey poults). So we decided to give it a shot. The feed store only had three bronze broad breasted poults left so we snatched them up. We will be getting more heritage poults to increase our breeding stock this summer, but we needed these babies quickly as eggs left sitting too long will rot...and explode.

   All of my research said to introduce them during the evening when everyone is getting sleepy. There was a good chance she would reject the poults or even that they would reject her. They were slightly chilly when I introduces them to their new mama so I think that helped! Not much makes a poult happier than a warm place to snuggle.

   As I carried the tiny pet crate out to Blucinda's hut the little ones began peeping their "we don't know what is happening and we are afraid" call. Readers...I wish you could have heard Blucinda answer them! She let out these heart wrenching, quavering, croaking calls. I am very anti-anthropomorphization of animal behavior but I have to say, if she were human she would have been weeping tears of joy. When introducing foster chicks and poults you are supposed to shove the babies directly under the hen but these little peepers were so excited to get out of the crate they all popped out at once! Within five minutes they were all snuggled safe and warm beneath my beautiful girl as she cooed them a turkey lullaby.

    We are now on day four and all three poults are eating, drinking, and thriving. We have since removed the unhatched eggs and some of them did contain poults that just didn't hatch. There were many possible reasons for this, the biggest being the wet conditions at one point in the hut before we fixed a previously undiscovered leak in the roof. However, as fertilization was apparently not the issue both Blucinda and Arpee have cemented their place on our homestead by producing offspring.

  We have learned so much this breeding season. We made quiet a few mistakes, but we also did some things right! But that's the whole point of this lifestyle: constant experimentation, research, and adventure!

 Bronze broad breasted poults. Great for meat production (I have named them Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter) not so great for breeding due to health concerns.

Blucinda lets me peek at the babies every once in a while.  

Then she says, "Nope! That's enough!" calls the babies under her protective wings, and glares at me until I leave haha!