Hen and Chicks ~ White Silkie Bantam

OH these cute little fluffy white silkie bantams really have the momma thing down pat.  The first one "Crystal" hatched out the beginning of April and now wants to brood again!  We're trying to convince her otherwise.

Her sister "Snowball" just hatched out 4 little eggs for us.  Now 2 of these eggs have miracle stories.  We put 1 Americauna/Danish Leghorn egg under her and 3 brown eggs from our Isa Brown/Brahmas.

 My Mom did chores for us one day and found a green egg on a cage underneath the nest and thought "weird, a chicken laid an egg on the cage".  So she put it in the egg pail and the into the house it went.  We came home, did our things, then Mei went to wash the eggs.  Filled the pail with lukewarm-cold water and when she picked up the green egg she saw the pencil marking on it "OH NO!"  So I quickly wrapped it in a tea towel, took it over to the heat of the fireplace and looked into it with a flashlight.  Sure enough, there was something in it.  I thought maybe something moved, so we warmed it by the fireplace quickly and Mei ran it back out to the hen.  We thought we'd check it in a few days and probably throw it out.

Checked in a few days and it was cruising around in the egg!  Well, it survived HOURS away from the hen, a bath and everything.  Beautiful little chick that Mei named "miracle" and is she's praying it is a hen.

Rosie with her 4

Snowball with the lightest chick ... Brahma/buff orpington and Isa brown cross

Chick I helped on the left, Miracle has the stripes, then 2 more in the feed dish

The 2nd miracle egg was a brown egg that had pipped but didn't make progress.  It was a day late already and so I tapped around the shell to see if the chick would then pop out.  Nope, so I pulled some of the shell away and saw the membrane was tight around it's head and it couldn't break it.  So I loosened all that and then stuck it back under the momma.  Thought for sure in the morning I would need to toss it as well. In the morning I was SO happy to find an empty egg shell!  Beautiful little golden yellow chick, not white and not brown.

Unfortunately, another slightly older chick got into that pen and I think it pecked this little miracle chick and there was blood on it's neck.  So we washed it up and dried it and it's with it's momma and seems fine.  Hopefully in a day or so we can blend the two bantam hens together with their 4 chicks each.  "Rosie" and "Snowball". ~   UPDATE:  This morning the little one I had helped, then it got pecked, it died.  It got steadily weaker, so maybe more damage had been done than we thought.  I couldn't get it to drink really and now it's gone.  Better now than later I guess.