True story...
Once upon a time, there were two hens: Buffy, a Buff Orpington, and Popsie, a Rhode Island Red. Now Buffy was an excellent mother, and as soon as the weather got hot she decided to hatch out a nestful of chicks. Popsie, not to be outdone, managed to go broody five days later. It was Popsie's first time.
I had already set Buffy on a nest of 15 eggs in a small cage. Thinking it very convenient to set two hens at once, I gave Popsie a nice little nest of 13 eggs in another corner of the cage. They had plenty of bedding, so I thought everything would be fine. And it was - or seemed to be. But a day or so later, I lifted the hens to check their eggs and found that Popsie had about 18 and Buffy only 10. Oh no! I hadn't marked the eggs, so I didn't know whose were whose.
I took 5 eggs from Popsie's nest and gave them back to Buffy. I would just have to make sure Buffy got all the early-hatching chicks and Popsie got all the later ones.
But every few days, I found the same thing. Both hens quietly sitting as though nothing was wrong, but Popsie with more eggs than her fair share. I corrected the problem every time, until the eggs were thoroughly mixed up.
Then one day I went out to see, in surprise, each hen sitting on the
other one's nest. A few days later they switched back. The next day they had switched again. :?: Well, at least they
were incubating the eggs.
Their cage opened into a small pen in which they could scratch and get exercise. But sometimes, Buffy would decide that the little pen wasn't enough. She would fly over the fence, dustbathe and scratch for a few minutes, and faithfully go back to her setting. She was as faithful a setting hen as you'd wish to see, with one little catch. She would forget where her nest was, and instead of flying back over the fence, she would go sit on the eggs in the chicken house. Every time I found her in there, I would dutifully carry her back where she belonged. She would settle on her own nest as though nothing was wrong.
Nothing annoyed Buffy more than seeing uncovered eggs. Whenever Popsie would get up, or I would lift her, Buffy would see the "untended" eggs and instantly squeeze under Popsie to set on them - not realizing that she was leaving another batch of eggs to do so. Poor Popsie, I am sure, found setting on a setting hen much less satisfactory than setting on eggs. After lifting Popsie, I learned to quickly set her down and push the eggs under her so Buffy wouldn't see them.
At last the eggs started hatching. Sure enough, they were all mixed up. One would hatch under Buffy, two under Popsie, then another under Buffy, etc.
When the eggs had diminished to a number that Popsie could handle alone, I gave all the chicks to Buffy and all the eggs to Popsie. But the chicks, in true youthful wisdom, decided they liked Popsie better than Buffy. They kept running back into the cage with their chosen mother, and it was all I could do to shut them out.
At last, by taking Buffy and the hatched chicks away, I managed to get the chicks to follow the mother
I chose for them.
Yesterday evening, I let Buffy and her chicks sleep beside Popsie's (closed) cage. The chicks couldn't fit through the wire...I thought.
But this morning when I went out, I found two of the chicks happily in the cage with Popsie. SIGH. The saga continues...
And the moral of this story is: Never let two fussy women try to run the same house.
