[hillfamilyloft]

Ok I could not resist telling the story of "RuntZilla". Last fall I purchased a small check hen for $50. I think I have mentioned her before. She is an imported hen from the loft of Erik Berkmoes. She is Marcellis blood. Anyway she is a 2000 hen and is a bit old. My thoughts were that I might get a couple of foundation birds off this sprint blood to help my birds at the 100 and 150 miles races. These distances are my weakest.

Anyway, I could not get the hen to lay. She would go through all stages of the breeding cycle, but to no avail would the eggs come. I paired her with a younger Engels Cock. Berkmoes and Engels fly in the same federation in Belg, so I thought they might make a good pair. No eggs, so I needed a place to foster some eggs so I put them under this pair. They raised the babies healthy. Even know one was "Three Toes" AKA the "Mutant" that Fast Pitch is flying.

To be continued:

 

[hillfamilyloft]

When it was do for the old hen "Boom" and her mate "Tiger", named after "Tiger Woods", I also have "Freddy", "Big Bertha" etc, You get the picture the Golf theme, to sit again, I fostered two more eggs under them. Of course they were eggs from the prolific pair from "Ace in the Hole". Two days after "Boom" began sitting on the fosters, low and behold, she laid a little skinny, oval, scrawny, looking eggs. I knew she could not sit on three eggs, so I took the ugly little egg out and put it under the Dam of "Peanut" who had just laid her first egg. No need to mark the goofy little egg. My thoughts are that "Boom's" next egg would be a nice egg that I would foster. "Boom" did not lay a second, but "Peanuts" moma did.

To be continued:

 

[Msfreebird]

AWH!! Come on, it was just getting good! Is this the commercial break?

 

[hillfamilyloft]

I will call the "Peanut" pair the p-pair for short from now on. My thoughts and curiosity got the best of me so I left the little egg under the p-pair with the other two eggs and waited the 18 days. I checked on the little egg two or three times a day. Odds are that it was infertile and that if it hatched the baby would make "Three Toes" look like Mel Gibson. Well it did hatch and it hatched two days before the other two.

Three babies in the nest. I was lucky or unlucky depending on how you think about it, but I had another pair that only had one good egg to hatch a few days later. Knowing that this little baby growing up with two "Peanut" siblings that it did not stand a chance, I would put it with the single and have them foster the "Boom" baby.

 

[[MN]eXist^_^]

Thats all she' wrote

 

[hillfamilyloft]

Well "RuntZilla" was growing faster than the other two, so I fostered one of the P-pair babies out and left the runt with the other. Slowly the p-pair babies overtook runt like I expected. They grew faster and faster. Runt's crop is always full, but no match for the p-pair babies. I will try and get you some pics of the miss-match in the nest. Seems that "RuntZilla" is doing fine and growing, but just slower than the other.

 

[TerriB]

How cool that you finally got a baby out of that hen! Looking forward to pictures of what hatched out of the skinny, scrawny egg!