New chicks are so adorable!!! and fragile we found out this year.
This mother, who was all get any closer and I'll peck both your eyes out, hatched four eggs. By the time she got done being the mom, usually about three or four weeks, she had one that survived. That will happen when your favorite place to hang out is in front of the llama and goat feeder.
The chick rearing antics of this mother made us ecstatic when another mother hen came proudly strutting out of the wood pile with about 16 chicks. Little did we know that she was going to be an even worse mother. She hauled her chicks on the road where the traffic roars by at 55 mph, through the garden where they couldn't figure out how to get through the fencing, back by the pine trees where the raccoons live and anywhere else perilous she could find. Two of her chicks are still alive, amazingly, because even though she isn't mothering them anymore, they are still dare devils. When they are at their regular stomping grounds down by the swamp, where who knows what could jump out and eat them, I hear them laughing in the face of danger.
Chickens - not the sharpest tools in the shed. That must be why it only takes 21 days for an egg to hatch, any longer and chickens would be extinct.
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