Ollie's Setting!

The nice lady who was going to send me 6 eggs for Ollie sent me an email today saying she was reluctant to do so because she thinks her flock had a virus this spring. She didn't want to take the chance of sending it to me and infecting my flock. I was grateful she informed me of this and thanked her for her offer. I told her I would look locally for a flock with fertile eggs. Well as luck would have it, there's a lady just down the road who has a flock with a rooster. She also has a sign in her front yard that says "Eggs $1.75". I looked in my purse. I had 2 bucks in it. Hurray! Off I went to buy some fertile eggs for Ollie.

When I arrived I could see their gorgeous rooster. He looked like a brown leghorn except that he had a pea comb. I will have to research what he could be unless you fellow chicken owners would like to make a suggestion. He looked like this rooster but with a pea comb. I saw 4 barred rock hens, a few black australorps and what looked like red stars or red sex-linked hens. I imagine that's where the two ginormous eggs came from.

The eggs were laid today and were taken right from the nest boxes. I paid a dollar for them. I think I got two barred rock eggs. They were speckled and much smaller, just like my barred rocks' eggs. I also got one that reminded me of Violet's eggs. She's an australorp that lays an almost pinkish-violet egg. We're certainly going to have quite a variety of shapes and colors! I marked the ends of each egg with a big cross so that there will be no confusion about which eggs are Ollie's. I marked the calendar with a hatch date of June 6 which, concidentally, is the same day Macaroni's clutch is due to hatch! Daisy is due two days before. Oy! We are gonna have baby birds all over the place that weekend! Derek put one egg at a time in the corner of the nest box and gave Ollie the chance to tuck it underneath her.






















She clucked with delight as she carefully nudged each egg beneath her warm rump. We wished her good luck and left the coop to give her time by herself. Gosh it's a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that big Ollie has a clutch of eggs beneath her and she is content to incubate them. Keep your fingers crossed that we have a good hatch.