Chicks, chicks and more chicks

Fall is definitely in the air; the mornings are cool and wet with dew yet the afternoons are still pleasantly warm.  Fall, the foreboden of winter is a time for the dogs to finally quit shedding and start adding a winter coat, for the chicks to gain size so that they can last through the winter, but not for new chicks to be born!

Yesterday, September 6, another hen came off with 8 babies.  Hmm.  These are a slow growing variety that mainly fend for themselves.  That means that this clutch of chicks will barely have any size by the time the cold winds of winter set in.

I knew the hen was fixing to sit on her eggs but I didn't interfere because I felt sorry for her.  Seems that she sat on a batch of eggs for way too long and none of them hatched.  I think this was because as she was sitting there in the corner of the barn, a crippled hen who never really gained any size or maturity started cuddling up to her. 

This crippled hen must have been hurt in the spine when she was growing for she walked with her toes curled and couldn't stand up. When she walked it was with a fast forward momentum before she would fall.  I didn't have the heart to dispatch her and actually she did pretty good and made it into almost adulthood.  Then she took up with this hen that had decided to nest on the floor as she(the crippled one) couldn't fly up to the roosts like all of her family did. 

The sitting hen decided that if her eggs weren't going to hatch she would adopt the crippled young hen which appeared to be more than acceptable for the crippled hen.  She would cluck and call over the crippled hen for whatever morsel she found.  This continued all summer.

Then about a month ago, she started laying in a box in an abandoned building.  The crippled hen would stay below her when she started to sit.  I didn't even think of the ramifications of that but soon they happened-a coyote or other predator took the crippled hen who no longer had the protection of the chicken coop.  It made me sad. 

So I allowed the hen to sit and hatch her babies and I guess we will see if she makes it through the winter with them.  That will depend on the severity of the winter, luck, and predators.  There is a horned owl that comes fairly frequently and will take everything from chicks to adults if they are out too early in the morning or too late in the evening. 

We will see what happens this winter but it is My Farm Life!
Bob