Well, I have seen the poor, well loved little thing (it turns out that there is only one hatchling so far) and it looks much like a miniature plucked chicken with a bulging neck and an over-sized beak. (I caught a look while the mother left her nest for a few minutes today). The other truly amazing thing about this baby is that it has tripled, maybe even quadrupled, in size since it hatched only just days ago. It is now the size of a Jumbo sized chicken egg, from something about the size of the ball of my thumb . . . truly amazing! The picture is a bit blurry, since I only had one chance to snap a picture before mommy came back to shoo me off . . . but it really doesn’t look a whole lot better than this 🙂
Tag Archives: brooding
A Face Only a Mother Could Love
Babies, Babies, Babies!
One pair of our rollers has hatched her babies! I was lucky to get a tiny little peek at them today when I went out to feed the chickens, but she was not happy about me snooping at all. I saw what looked like a tiny little fuzz ball with a huge beak 🙂 I think that they are about two days old now, but since she sits on them all the time still, I wasn’t sure if they had hatched yet or not, and I was starting to worry just a little, since the 18 day incubation period has now passed. So I poked my head in, thinking that I might have to try to pull the eggs out for a minute to check them in the light to see if they were viable or not. She puffed up her feathers and hissed at me menacingly, and then she moved just slightly to the side just enough that I got a glimps of one of the two little baby birds. I will try to get a picture to post, but I don’t want to harrass her too much, so if I can’t get one, then you’ll just have to wait until she is ready to leave her nest for a little while. Our other little pigeon mommy just laid her eggs last Sunday so she has another 10 days before hers hatch. What a wonderful little adventure this is turning out to be — Now we just need to find new homes for them all . . .
Meet Our Rollers
Last fall, my husband decided to try raising some pigeons. We now have four roller pigeons, and our newest
aquisition, two homing pigeons. One of our pairs of rollers is brooding and has two eggs. The male has become quite protective and has chased the other pigeons out of the coop. He tolerates the chicken and her chicks, but I think he would prefer that they were not there either. It has been fun to watch the whole process. Zee brought the pigeon’s first egg in the house along with the chicken’s egg the day it was laid and I had him take it back out. I put it in a shoebox with so
me sawdust and wood shavings to keep the chicken and chicks from stepping on it, but at the same time thinking that she would probably abandon it because it had been touched. The next time I went out to check on them I was pleasantly surprised to see her sitting on it. She has been sitting on it for a little over a week now, and from what I have read, it takes 18 days for a pigeon egg to hatch. My husband took a peek in the nest the other day when she was off of her eggs and verified that there was a second egg. I don’t know if the first egg will hatch or not, since it was cold for a day before she started brooding, but from what I have read, that may not matter. I am thinking that we will probably need to get a second coop if we want to keep our birds all happy . . .
