Marans chicks

The weekend after our last post we had four little Cuckoo Marans chicks hatch out in our incubator. One of them was sadly a little too weak and didn't make it through the first 48 hours but the remaining three all appear to be healthy and are doing really well.

We took the above photo a couple of weeks ago. Since then the chicks have started to feather-up a little more but they move around so quickly that it's quite difficult to get a good photo of them! They'll stay indoors for a few more weeks until they've got all of their feathers and can regulate their temperature properly. After that we'll move them into a small coop in our field, which we kept the ducks in last year when they were little.

Three chicks from a dozen hatching eggs was a slightly disappointing result so we're still on the look out for a few more Cuckoo Marans hatching eggs or chicks to get our new flock off to a good start. Now that we've got this year's pigs sorted (more about that in our next post) it's time to start ringing round a few local breeders to see what they have.