Ticketty Wooooooo!

Ticketty

Meet Ticketty (sister of Boo!). She is one of our chicks that hatched last year after being incubated for the last 3 days as the hen got red mite and left the nest. She is by far the friendliest of our hens and likes to think of herself as a dog/cat/parrot - she follows us around and regularly jumps up on us!

On Thursday last week I spotted she wasn't roosting with the others, next morning when she didn't appear I went looking for her and found her sat in the nest box. Sure enough, it's now Sunday and she is still there!

She is very small, a cross between a Pekin Bantam (Pete) and a Belgium Booted Bantam (Pete's Hen)

Pete's Hen



Pete

Tonight I decided that I should just have a quick look and see how many eggs Ticketty was sitting on. I got quite a shock! She had 3 eggs from one of my large hens (they keep escaping into the garden and laying in the little house), 3 from Dolly (a Buff Sussex hen that hatched along with the Ticketty in September last year) which are smaller than average as she is not fully grown yet, and 6 little bantam eggs!!! So my tiny little hen who is no bigger than my foot was trying to keep warm far too many eggs.
I have candled the eggs and removed 2 of the large hen eggs as I can see nothing in there and my large hens are all old girls with slim chance of laying viable eggs. I can only see signs of life in the one remaining large egg and one of the bantam eggs but I have left all the others under her and will keep checking every couple of days to see what develops.

There is one massive benefit to it being Ticketty sitting on them - she is so incredibly tame that she will let me pick her up (she's not impressed but she isn't fighting it) so I can follow closely what develops.......


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