Mama Hen

 A couple of weeks ago Chickory went missing. The kids mourned her loss, assuming the fox got her. But 2 days later she came screeching into the yard, clucking and carrying on. Then promptly disappeared again. For a week she would show up every 2 days until finally we discovered her nest, safely in a corner of the barn. She was sitting on 20 eggs.

Now Chickory isn't a big bird. She's actually pretty scrawny. So I pulled about 9 eggs and left her with the rest, hoping it was a more manageable number for her to keep warm. I candled the eggs, threw out the non-fertile eggs and set the rest in the incubator. Yesterday was hatch day. We had one peeping in the incubator when we woke up and 2 more working their way out. A peek under Chickory revealed 3 chicks.

By mid-afternoon she had 7. And by evening, when all was said and done she had 9 little babies. And we still only had our 3 inside. We moved her into a safe, enclosed location- our "chick house" within the larger storage area of the chicken house. We slipped our 3 under her as well.

This morning we went out to visit them. Chickory is all fluffed out with her dozen chicks all crammed under her wings.

All but one so far looks to be half Brahma- fluffy feet and all. Only one little one- all yellow and no fluffly feet.

Annika is in love. She was sad to see the chicks leave the house. But is happy to be able to go out and spend time in the barn with the birds.

Here's our rooster, one of them anyway. A big, beautiful Buff Brahma who gave us lots of colorful little babies!