I lied. Well…kind of. We’d be stupid to do anything drastic to the Eglu Cubes, but things needed to change.

Way back, when we had chickens surrounded by a sheep-netting fence, we thought that the Eglu Cub’s fox-proof run would be a great way to keep our hens safe if we weren’t around at dusk putting away time. We extended the runs to six square metres, enough for six hens, and if we were going out at any time of day we popped some corn in the run, shut the doors after the last hen in so they would be safe and could go to bed at their leisure.

We could still, just about, move the Eglu Cubes on to fresh grass when needed, but it was awkward.

But then the horrible thing happened – we had a fox attack during the day, and lost our wonderful Light Sussex cock, Ethelred the Unready (or just ‘Red’ for simplicity). It was decided then to electrify the entire orchard, a job which began with poultry netting, and this winter progressed to new chestnut stake fencing with electrified strands over chicken wire, to make it goose-suitable.

Eglu Cubes Run Halved

This has meant that the long runs are a bit redundant – we can leave the chickens out in the day and the electrified perimeter fence keeps them safe, and the runs are just a double whammy safety feature that gets used when dusk is due. Therefore, the six square metres isn’t needed, and we’re dragging around long runs for no real reason – a task made all the more difficult by the fact that the orchard trees are so much larger and more difficult to navigate between.

The solution? We’ve removed two metre sections from all three Eglu Cubes, and we’re going to make two three metre long fox-proof runs. These we can use for new chicks that are fully feathered, rabbits or guineapigs, knowing that they’ll be safe from Mr Fox.

There’s always one!

There’s Always One

Finally the day has arrived and the Marsh Daisy eggs have begun to hatch! Most of the newly hatched chicks moved themselves to the back of the incubator, but this one did its utmost to make its way to the front – a potential trouble-maker if ever there was one!

Three Tired Chicks

The first three out of the incubator and into our prepared broody-box. When I say broody-box, I actually mean a spare black plastic field trough, which has proved perfect for brooding in. We give it a good sterilisation, then line the floor with newspaper and terry towelling towels. This gives the chicks a good surface to walk on, the friction of the towel prevents splayed leg, and they’re easy to fold up, shake off outside and pop in the washing machine. Once they’re three days old we move to shavings, by which time they’ve figured out (mostly) that the chick crumbs are better to eat than shavings!

The More The Merrier

The first thing we noticed is that the usual ‘cheep cheep’ noise made by new chicks is more trilling with these chicks, much more warbling. They are also more active compared to the larger Light Sussex we’ve hatched in the past.

Whilst they’re not that interested in chick crumbs straight away, we scatter a small amount on the towel, so they can learn what food looks like, and we wet the end of our finger with water, offering it to their beaks. This way they learn what water is from our finger (their surrogate mum’s beak).

Sometimes Sleep Hits you Unexpectedly

I love it when a chick forgets what it’s up to, and just stops mid-track. This one was waddling across the towel when sleep took it, and it dozed off!

The only thing we would like to improve is the hatch rate. Of the twenty eight eggs incubated, twenty seven proved fertile at one week, and all continued to grow up to lock down. For some reason, only seventeen of the twenty seven actually pipped (63%), and one of those needed help. We left at least twelve hours between opening the incubator to remove hatched eggs, six more than the minimum recommended. We rely on the bulb thermometer which came with the incubator, and have had good hatch rates in the past, but the previous year we also suffered with the Light Sussex in a similar way. Eggs hatched by another incubator at our other site, also of Marsh Daisies, had a higher hatch rate, so my first thought is humidity issues in the first two weeks of incubation is too high, meaning that the chicks are possibly drowning when breaking the internal air sac. To help, we’ve invested in a digital thermometer/hydrometer and will use this with our next incubation of Light Sussex eggs.