Schoolyard Chickens Project

So excited to share this new project I'm doing at the local Montessori School where my child attends.Yesterday I "set" 24 eggs in an incubator in the Elementary classroom, and they'll get to experience chicks hatching in three weeks. Projected hatch date is April 13, though we'll likely have chicks born from the 11th-14th.

The eggs shown above include dark brown speckled eggs from French Coppered Black Marans, prized not only for laying the darkest eggs of any breed, but also for its broodiness--hens still retain the instinct to sit on their own eggs and hatch them. They also make excellent mothers. Shown here is Juniper, a beautiful FCBM who wanted to keep the eggs she was sitting on when I came to collect on this day.



Here is what she was sitting on--one of her own eggs and three more from her flockmates.

The blue eggs shown in the pictures come from my Easter Eggers and those of a local friend.  EEs are a breed that is not purebred but is one of my favorites nonetheless. Sometimes referred to as Ameracaunas mistakenly, these funny birds have great personalities and are among the most prolific of egg layers. They have a wide variation in colors and types but they all tend to be smaller than FCBMs and do not tend toward broodiness.  Here is one variation of EE--this roo, Ronald, fathered about half of the chicks we will be hatching out.