Clarissa is an elderly Pekin bantam that we were given a couple of years ago by some friends. She was their final remaining hen and was getting lonely without company. She’s a lovely, friendly girl and wanted so much to be a mummy that she sat in the coop for weeks on end despite our best efforts to dissuade her by taking away her eggs, shutting the coop door so she couldn’t get back in, picking her up and placing her on the grass, leaving the coop lid open to the elements and even, as cruel as it sounds, placing iced bottles of water all round her in an effort to chill her body temperature to stop her broodiness.
In the end nothing that we did worked so we decided to get her some fertile hatching eggs. I should explain that we don’t currently have a cock bird so all Clarissa’s efforts were doomed to failure, no matter how long she got into her nest and tried her very best!
She lost one chick but the remaining three eggs hatched out into these beautiful little fluff balls (Pekin bantams). Clarissa was a fierce mother for the first couple of days and clucked and chattered incessantly to her little brood and puffed herself up like a turkey cock when one of the dogs strayed too near her pen but she’s relaxed again now and it’s lovely to see her so happy with her new family.
Foxglove Farm 