Surprise! Look what Bandit hatched.

Yes, it's a chick but it's still a big surprise.  We only noticed Bandit was broody last week.  Bandit is a backyard girl, a 9-mo pullet who was herself hatched by Fifi late last summer.

Apparently she was stealthily broody long before last week.  (It takes 23 days to hatch a chicken egg.) And she's an egg thief, to boot.

Unless we swap out the backyard girls' eggs with some likely-to-be-fertile eggs from the hens in the mobile coop, their eggs won't hatch.  Well, except for Mrs. Badger's eggs.  She's a little grey Silkie we added to the backyard on April 30 along with her mate, Badger,  He halfheartedly tries to cover one or two of the fullsize backyard girls but let's just say he hasn't gotten the hang of it yet.  So Bandit must have swiped one of Mrs. Badger's eggs and added it to her nest.

So what Bandit hatched is a little grey Silkie.  What a turnaround.  In one chick pen we have Bandit, a full-size hen, with her suspected bantam chick.  And next door, in another chick pen, is Snowball, a little white Silkie, and her now-2-and-a-half-week-old chicks who will grow up to be full-size chickens.  (Looking like 2 cockerels and 2 Turken pullets but time will tell.) 

And we can't forget Echa, the 3yo Turken and first-time mother in the mobile pen, who decided it's never too late to try hatching an egg. She sat on four eggs in one of the raised nest boxes in the wheeled coop but only one egg hatched. Mama hen and chick are doing fine in the third chick pen we set up, this time inside the electric netting. 

DS is ecstatic that we have Turken chicks. He's hoped for that ever since we got the three original Turkens (Turkey, Echa and Misha) as part of a day-old chick order. DH is very pleased that "his girl, Echa" came through with a chick after several weeks of impatient waiting. And I'm trying to figure out how we can set up another two chick pens because Mrs. Badger, the grey Silkie in the backyard, and Amelia Earhart, one of the new Turkens added to the mobile pen April 30, are both determined to brood their eggs. When it rains it pours.