I'm a little chicken

Can it have been so long? I suppose when you write for a living, it can be hard to find time to write recreationally. Check those tweet links on the right for a few examples.

About the time of the last post, one of the hens decided she wanted to sit on some eggs. We chicken people call this being "broody." It took her a day or two to decide which nesting box to sit in, and I moved the eggs accordingly, but with a dozen hens, new eggs can appear in the batch, so we weren't sure how many, if any would hatch. She finally settled on one in the upper level. We had occasionally caught the rooster doing his duty (it takes about one second per hen) so in theory that's only about 12 seconds a day, but occasionally we heard these peculiar squawks...

Last Sunday I got an early start on the yard work and had to run an errand out in the far shed, which is one third hen house. I had disturbed a Chickadee (as usual) so I was used to being scolded, but on this occasion the cheeping sounded different. I checked the coop, and there was a little peeper on the floor, all lonesome and forlorn. I stuck him (or her) back under Mom, and discovered a brother (or sister) snuggled underneath too. By the end of the day we had seven. On Monday the hen rolled two eggs out into the droppings bin under the perches. Later I disposed of them.

We fill the nesting boxes with straw piled onto old cafeteria trays that I had scavenged from the dining room at Dade Behring a few years back. So that evening we arranged a protected corner on the floor, and it was easy to slide the nest out, hen, chicks, and all and put them down where no one would fall. She took the trip calmly, and the chicks immediately set out to explore their new surroundings.

I'm told that a mother hen will drive off any of her companions who show too much interest in the chicks, and apparently the other hens are aware of this, too, because I haven't seen anyone bothering them. Everyone is taking the new arrivals in stride.

Here's a family portrait. It's pretty hard to get all seven to poke their heads out at once.

Val said today that she can distinguish differences. Two are obviously darker, two are showing furry legs, so they are Cochins, and another appears to be a Wyndot like mom. Two appear to be connected to the Rhode Island Red lineage. Since the hen pretty much got one day's production, it's reasonable that she got one from each of her colleagues. We don't know what breed Dad is—he was put in with our order to add to the number of warm bodies. You only need one rooster for about 20 hens, so roosters are kind of extra to a hatchery. I thought I had a picture of him, but I don't see one, so I'll have to go out and take one tomorrow. Then you can see what the proud Papa looks like.