Broody Hens & Baby Chicks

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So this is my little Pavlovskya-mix hen, Pavelle. You’ll all seen pictures of her before, because she is a very unique little bird.

Back in March, Pavelle went broody, but I refused to let her have eggs then because it was still too cold and snowy for little wee things.  She went broody again last month, and after a few days of watching her, we decided to let her have a couple of eggs.

Which hatched into the cutest little babies…

This one was the first one to hatch, a brown and yellowish chick that came from one of our olive egg layers.

The olive egg layers are all the children of last year’s Easter Eggers, Padme (the hen) and Luke (the ill-fated rooster.  Yes, he did father three little hens and one rooster before we sent him to freezer camp).  Best guess as to which hen supplied the egg?  The size of the egg suggested Iggy (the EE cross Pavelle raised last year) or Cocoa and Nutmeg.  Cocoa and Nutmeg I call my “Rhode Island Eggers” because they are the color of my RiRs and have EE cheeks.  I suspect their bio-moms were RiR with Luke as the father.

It will be interesting to see how this little one feathers out, won’t it?

And this little precious came from a small brown eggs.  I have a lot of smaller brown eggs right now, because all of the chicks from Little Dude’s Hatching Egg project are laying now.   This one, as you can see, is all-black and tiny.

I have only one all-black hen, little Bella, the ‘Mad Scientist’ chick that My Pet Chicken slipped into our order.

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Bella, the Mad Scientist. Which is just another word for some kind of cross. My Pet Chicken couldn’t even tell me what breeds went into making her.

Bella must be the bio/egg mom to the little wee black baby.

As to who sired them?  I have three roosters, and haven’t been around much to see who has been hanging out with whom.  I know what Philip (my little Leapy Boy) and Sylvester both have small followings and they are mostly the younger girls.  But it’s hard to tell right now.  Neither of them have feathered legs, which is possible with both of those two roosters.

And lastly… I will leave you with this…

A post shared by Debc@Thereachick (@thereachick) on

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The Australorp in this video is Briar Rose. She seems to think she is going broody right now.

I guess it really is spring here on the farm… finally!

5 thoughts on “Broody Hens & Baby Chicks

  1. Ahhhhh!!! Babies!!! The little black one is too cute! Don’t we love playing guess the parents?

    Bella is beautiful. She should have lots of babies. 😉 She reminds me of my black Wyandotte-Australorp cross girls, aside from the black face and skin part. I wonder if there is Wyandotte in her? There is someone over here trying to create all-black chickens but I don’t know what breeds they’re using. Silkie for sure, as Silkies are the only breed we have here with black skin. I’m guessing you probably have more breed options in the US though.

    I don’t think the video has attached into the blog post properly, but I watched it on Instagram. Briar Rose has a big broody afro going on hehe.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. No, I don’t think the video did what it was supposed to do. WordPress has made some changes that make it near to impossible to embed a video without paying upgrading a paid host package. I guess I will just have to leave links from now on.

      I do not know what breeds they used. Svart Hona is one breed and Ayam Cemani are two all black chicken breeds that I know of and Bella looks like neither of them. When she hatched the MyPetChicken people told me there was a possibility of her laying bright green eggs. She does not.

      Liked by 2 people

  2. Stink about the video hassles.

    If they think Bella could lay bright green eggs there must be some Easter Egger or Araucana in her. Something has to account for her comb too. I see the two all black breeds have single combs. It’s interesting they don’t even know what breeds she comes from. Or maybe they just don’t want us to know… 😉 She’s pretty special.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Yeah, I am a little disappointed that she doesn’t lay bright green eggs. She lays small pale brown ones.

      I need to get more pictures. The babies are a week old now and boy! I was wrong! The bigger chick with the little EE cheeks? Does in fact have feathered legs. Given that the legs are yellow and he/she has yellow on top of his/her head, I am saying Sylvester is the papa. So… genetically? This chick is part Brahma and part… Um… Depending on the bio-mom… EE/RiR or EE/whatever Darcy is. I never did decide. She is yellowish too, but where did it come from? Her father was Luke who had no yellow, and she came from a brown egg. Best guess for Darcy is one of my Buff Orps. The guessing is hard.

      Liked by 2 people

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