Four Country Gals

For the past week, we've been getting eggs from our new hens. This is significant as these hens are naturally hatched and raised from our older purebred stock.

We had a couple of Buff Orpingtons that insisted on going broody. Not a bad thing since we got a Black Austrolorp rooster from a neighbor. We put them together for a couple of weeks, and then moved the hens and their eggs to a "maternity" coop. They hatched 13 out of 21 eggs, and have raised 11 of those 13. From those 11 we got 6 hens.

As we're in the "egg business" rather than the meat business, we're going to be repeating the procedure this year. But, this year, we're going to try for a couple of batches. If we can get one batched hatched in June and another in September, that will pretty much take care of replacing our old gals, with no extra work or expense.