When I first started with borders, I told myself that I would not want to breed more than 30 chicks per season because it is hard work looking after all those birds. Well, it seems that I have blown that number by keeping more hens, 14 instead of 8, and having enough luck to breed enough birds. I must admit though that I do put in a lot of time to take care of my birds. So much so that my wife often complains.

I have surpassed my target of 35 chicks for this season and I will now only pair birds that I feel will produce the best results. Obviously we all have the intention of producing the best birds from the beginning of the season but many reasons prevent us from getting chicks out of the pairings that we had intended.  Problems such as dumb cock birds that don't know how to tread, birds that don't like each other, sickness, dead in shells, clear eggs, hens not in condition or hens that are overly stimulated by rich foods/vitamins and don't sit tight, and so on.  

Anyway, numbers don't matter as long as we produce birds that are pleasing to us.  As I tell my bird buddies, if I can produce only 10 birds each season that are of the quality that I want, that would be all that I want to produce and it would be a lot less work.

This is the first time that I had 5 chicks hatch in one nest. They were very well fed by the hen but one got squashed on the 4th morning before the lights came on.  I was quite dissappointed because I wanted all 5 to be raised.  The remaining 4 are doing very well and they are the fastest growing nest I have had this year because of the hen's diligent feeding.  I could barely band the chicks at 5 days old because the foot got so big.  One more day and the closed band would not fit.

This picture was taken when all 5 were still alive.

Another first for me is producing a self green bird.  I think I may have 1 or 2 this year.

Minding their own business.

With a -2 in number of chicks hatched, the total chick count is now at 34.  Lost the slow growing 2nd round chick from the previous post.

Kind of silly to be talking about bird crap but the droppings are one of the clues as to how well the birds are doing but firm dry droppings doesn't necessarily mean that the birds are all doing well.  For example the droppings below the nest of chicks (shown below) with the growth issue does not seem to indicate any signs of problems, yet one chick is not growing.   I had previously thought that all three chicks were not growing well but after carefully examining the nest, only one chick is not growing.  I have no idea what is wrong with this chick...it can't seem to absorb the nutrients in the food.

 
The chick on the right is constantly begging and being fed but it is not growing like its sibling on the left.

The "crap circle" below the nest appears to be normal.

No changes in numbers today and that is a good thing as there are no new chicks to hatch for another couple of weeks.  The single chick is still alive under the care of the foster hen that was incubating her own clear eggs for only 6 days.  She is a border/fife cross that I bred for the purpose of fostering and she has a strong instinct to raise young.  Nice to have a hen like this around to save a few chicks.

I have 3 chicks in one nest from an outcross that is constantly begging for food and are being fed by the mother but yet they appear to be skinny birds with very little fat.  They look a bit odd with very long legs and necks but they have tiny lean bodies.  They also stretch up very high and beg aggressively to the point where they are almost falling out of the nest.  I wonder if these birds are having trouble absorbing nutrients.  Has anyone seen this?