Must and two new chicks.
I put a total of 8 eggs under Must (5 August). My mother in law did tell me to collect several days of eggs and put them all under at once. But of course I knew better. I got the number of eggs I wanted from the Araucanas over four days and put them under over those same four days, 3+0+3+2 (on the zero day the eggs ended up in the frying pan by mistake).
What happened was that the first chick hatched not on day 21 but as early as day 19. For the first two days, while the chick stayed in the nest, Must kept sitting. On the third day, though, once the chick started moving about, the mother hen made herself a new nest in the hay for the evening, and by morning the other eggs had gone cold. One more chick hatched (I put it under another hen in the morning), but sadly none of the rest.
All in all: of the 8 eggs, one broke in the nest right at the start, two were rotten, two hatched into chicks and three were dead in the shell. Next time I will believe people who know better.
The chicks, though, are sturdy and lively and very handsome. One is turning out black, the other a brown little bird. Our rooster is a Brahma, a very fine specimen, as the pictures show. The Araucanas come in three colours (there is a picture further up). Of course I have no idea whose eggs the chicks finally hatched from. The brown one is most likely a chick of the brown Araucana mix. But whose the black one is, that I really cannot say.
