I peeked into Little Red’s nest a few minutes ago and counted 7 fluffy yellow chicks before they ducked away back under mama’s wings!!!

Right on time! Today is Little Red’s due date, and when I checked on her this morning she had kicked an empty eggshell out of the nest. When I went back to take a picture she had kicked out a second one!

Big Red is still carefully guarding her chicks, and showing them what to eat. I gave them some leftovers yesterday and the whole group was pecking away at it. What’s good to eat when you’re a chicken? Everything!

Ok, this is Big Red’s look that says ‘you’ve seen them, now back off!!!’ She’s serious too! She pecked me several times while I was refilling their food bowl.

Big Red (and Little Red) are very pretty birds, they are a mix of Easter Eggers with Game Birds, and they are much smaller than the Buff Orpingtons or Penny the Cochin. However, the chicks they hatched are not theirs. Once they went broody they stopped laying. Normally they would have saved up a batch of their own eggs to sit on before going broody, but since we pick up eggs everyday for our own use, their eggs were already gone. So the eggs Big Red chose to sit, and the eggs I gave to Little Red, are all from the Buff hens, or there could be one or two of their sister’s eggs mixed in there. But the fluffy little yellow chicks are most likely pure Buff Orpington. Not that mama hen cares, she’s just doing what nature tells her to.

Despite the weather switching from sunshine to pounding rain every twenty minutes all afternoon, mom took her new chicks out to show them around the yard. They stuck close to her, peeping if she got too far ahead. The other chickens all steered clear of her. Barclay however went nuts when he saw the little morsels, and so mom and her chicks need to go in a tractor where they will be safe from wandering dogs. If she takes them for a walk into the yard when the dogs are out, it would be all over before I could even catch up – those chicks are bite sized!

Pretty amazing that chicks from the feed store are usually kept inside under a heat lamp for weeks, but mom has her chicks out in 50 degree weather and if they get cold they just snuggle under her for a bit then they all head off again.

I went to check on Red, and threw down some food for her close to the nest, and when she got up to eat, chicks came spilling out! There’s at least three – I didn’t want to annoy her by hanging around too long. When she saw me she gathered her chicks back into the nest. Chickens hate paparazzi!

A nesting update from Big Red Observation Headquarters: Mama hen has kicked an empty eggshell out of the nest! After the dead chick incident my friend Sharon said to reach under there and remove the empty shell, so other chicks wouldn’t get stuck on it. So I reached under there and felt the remaining eggs, and found the broken shell and took it out. I think I got it all, so hopefully the shell she kicked out today is an indication she has another chick under her now. I don’t want to bother her, so I’ll just keep watching.

No pic, unfortunately. When I went to check on Big Red this morning there was a tiny dead chick laying just outside the nest. Looks like it didn’t make it, and she kicked the body out of the nest. I can’t tell if there’s other chicks under her, she has shifted position and is very flat and covering the whole nest. I’ll just have to wait until she chooses to reveal them to the world…

Mama hens are still sitting on their nests. Today was the due date for Big Red, Little Red (pictured above) has another week to go.

Since Big Red did not have any chicks appear, I was wondering what was going on. Also Penny has been sneaking in and leaving extra eggs in the nest, so while Big Red started out with eight eggs, last time I checked she was up to sixteen, and she could barely keep them all covered! Because these eggs were all laid at different times they will not all hatch together, and when the hen has chicks to care for she will abandon the eggs which haven’t hatched yet. So it was kind of a big confusing mess.

My friend and chicken mentor, Sharon from SnoKit Farm, came over and brought her candling light. She pulled each egg out from under Big Red (who was not very happy about the whole procedure) and checked each egg by holding it up to the bright light. Some eggs clearly had something going on, and she said those appeared to have chicks pretty far along in development. Some eggs looked hollow, or had a smaller, odd shaped clump in one end. Those she said were either infertile, or had not developed, or were not nearly as far along as the other ones. We ended up with nine eggs to put back under Big Red, and seven eggs to throw out to the chickens. Then we did the same to Little Red, and of her eight eggs, only one was infertile, and got thrown out to the flock.

Yup, Sharon said to throw them out to the chickens. She said they won’t eat an unbroken egg, but if you break them they will gobble them up. It’s a free snack. They don’t know any different. It was interesting because most of the eggs just looked like eggs, but a couple had some development going on, and had a bit of blood and clumps of meat inside. Sad that it would have eventually been a chick, but the hen would have abandoned it anyway, so that’s just how it goes sometimes.

Penny considers her snack options…

Since Big Red is in the coop I wanted to make an easier ramp for her and her chicks to go in and out of the coop after they hatch. I did just have some concrete blocks there, and the chicks wouldn’t have been able to jump up on the blocks. So I made this nice ramp and installed it. Then I turned around to see this…

And Big Bird attacked me! Little butthead, I saw him watching me! And after all I do for him! I grabbed him by his legs and hung him upside down, hoping some blood would go to his brain and make him think harder about what he was doing 🙂 Then I let him go. While he was hanging I told him about a chicken butchering class I’m signed up for later this summer – if he doesn’t shape up he might be homework! Coq au vin, anyone?