Fact #2 A newborn chick can fall a long ways and be ok.
Fact #3 If you pick up tough little chick, it will imprint on you and scream if you put it down...ever.
Fact #4 That cranky hen will sometimes refuse to take spoiled chick back and attack it if you try and make her.
Fact #5 Spoiled little chick chirps at such a frequency to give surrogate mom a headache...chick gets her way yet again.
So you get the drift of what my day has been like? I learned all of these facts within about an hour of finding spoiled little chick this morning. I also found out that a little dog I had been babysitting ran one of our laying hens to death last night. So I lost one and gained one this morning. Too bad the one I gained will not lay until late this fall. (If she even turns out to be a hen). I have chickens in five different places right now because no one gets long. I have my three remaining laying hens in the chicken coop. I have Twitchy and her sisters in the chick pen in the chicken coop. I have the murderous rooster in the dog run. I have the setting hen and the other 6 eggs in a dog crate in the garage. And spoiled little chick is snuggled into my sons neck and for the moment mercifully quiet.
LOL Sounds like fun!!!
ReplyDeleteWow Chicks are feisty little fellows.
ReplyDeleteYeah it is fun.....for a while. But there are moments it's not so fun. Like 4 am when she's cheeping like crazy because she's alone and wants to sleep with someone.
ReplyDeleteChickens have levels to their personalities and habits that I never knew about. Even growing up with chickens and substituting a hen for a doll at one point in my childhood, I just never knew what they were capable of. I have my brain damaged chick, her body guard, the duck who thinks he's a rooster, the orphan chick, the grouchy broody hen; it goes on and on.
Crazy birds!
I have about six broods going right now. My chickens are free range. Some hens are good mothers, and some are not. Out of every 10 chicks, about 6 reach maturity here. The rest succumb to a number of perils including crows, other hens, getting stepped on by roosters, etc. My wife has a good success rate with abandoned chicks if we can't get one of the other brood hens to accept the chick. When my daughter was a little girl, she would find the abandoned chicks and raise them in our house until they had their feathers. This was a bad idea since chicken diapers don't exist but I could never tell my daughter "no" about anything. I still can't.
ReplyDeletethis was really cute! thanks for stopping by my blog yesterday and your sweet comment! really appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteI also learned those facts about chickens when I first started raising chickens about 12 years ago with my wife. We now know a lot more about chickens and made the site http://kernschickenfarm.com to help backyard chickens owners.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the lose but you did have a gain so its not to at least. Anyway Happy Chicken Raising!