Last year, we got a new batch of chicks and one of the turned out to be a rooster, then later in the summer we adopted a second rooster, so hypothetically, we could start having chicks. Raising chickens is funny, because you walk a fine line between not wanting hens to get broody and sit on your breakfast eggs, but secretly wanting a few new chicks too. A couple of our backyard chicken friends had hens become broody this year, so we were hopeful it would happen for us too.
Finally, a few weeks ago, one of our Marans sat on a few eggs and we were off to the baby chick races. We tucked a few additional eggs under her and hoped for the best. We are terrible, I mean, extremely busy chicken farmers, and we forgot to mark which day she started (don’t do that), so the last few days have been torture. Finally, last night, we checked her and there were two cracked shells. Mama hen did a great job of hiding them, but I could hear the cheeping and finally, I found them!
They were so tiny and new, I left them alone to snuggle their mama.
This morning, our favorite local photographer, @photo_nerd, came over and captured a few adorable images of the new members of our flock.
Meet Butterscotch, born 7/6/17
And Charcoal, born 7/6/17
We are in a drought in Iowa, and I’ve almost completely given up on growing corn this year in the garden. All is not lost, as the chickens love taking their dirt baths among the (pathetic) corn and tomato plants. I’m told by one of my fellow backyard farmers that chickens like a take baths in the dirt to clean their feathers and get cool. This is definitely the place for them!
I’m starting this post with a photo of the chickens happily munching on our peach cuttings from our peach tree. They’re happy here, and I need to focus on that. It’s taken me a few days to write another post after the last one, where my nine chickens looked so happy running around our yard. A couple days after I posted that, someone broke into our fenced back yard, tore apart our chicken run, and terrorized our girls with a hack saw that the criminal(s) brought with, and a sledgehammer we’d left out from some construction. When my husband found them, our girls were still loose in the yard, two were out of the yard, and one had been either chased or beaten to death (it was during the 100+ temps heat spell, so chasing a chicken to exhaustion wouldn’t have been impossible). I can only call this devastating to all of us, humans and chickens alike. As our nine year old daughter put it “This is awful two ways, one because they look so lonely, just the six of them, and now they’re going to be harder to mother.” (Yes, I could not love that child and her animal loving heart any more).
Miraculously, the chicks have survived their first week with us! And they are growing like crazy. Sometimes, I will walk by them an hour later and I swear they’re bigger. They’re super cute, and pretty funny interacting with the kids and trying to hide from the cats. Luckily, the chicken coop is moving here soon, and we will no longer have predators and prey living together!
Hatton House Diaries 