Chicks defy nature to hatch in sub-zero weather

A clutch of chicks have “defied nature” by hatching six months early in sub-zero temperatures just in time for Christmas, photographs show today.

The six chicks arrived on a snowy, bitterly-cold night last week at a community farm in Swindon, Wiltshire, baffling the owners.

The two-year-old free-range mother hen braved the weather to make a secret nest in a wood shed at Lower Shaw Farm and was warming the eggs for nearly a month before she was discovered.

Farm manager Matt Holland said it was only the second time in 28 years of keeping poultry that chicks had hatched in sub-zero autumn conditions.

Mr Holland put it down to the hen being adopted in spring, putting her breeding cycle “out of sync”.

He added that the farm might be under a fertility spell as two sets of human twins had been born to couples who had stayed there.

He said: “Hens normally do their hatching in May or June, but for this one to hatch eggs successfully in sub-zero temperatures is bizarre. I know of no other hen in the country that is doing it.

“It’s more common for bantams to go broody at strange times, but this is a free-range hen who lives outside. It defies the natural cycle.

“She’d made her nest of her own accord in a woodpile in an outbuilding. When I noticed she was missing I went to look and found it.

“She laid nine eggs, of which six hatched. In spring and summer the success rate is 90 to 100% so around 60% in the freezing cold is pretty successful.

“It was a shock. There’s less food and the weather is changing – the only other time this happened was 15 years ago and we’ve run this farm for 28 years.

“She was given to us to look after in spring and my theory is that it took her some months to settle in. I think basically she was out of sync, whereas had she been with us from birth she would have followed the natural cycle.

“On top of that we seem to be a very fecund, fertile place anyway. Two sets of human twins have been born here.”

It was the unnamed hen’s first brood, he added.

Visitors have flocked to the picturesque haven, which offers rural lifestyle breaks for adults and hands-on farmyard activities for schoolchildren.