Chick Update

A mixture of fun and frustrating is how I could sum up the chick raising process for us this summer.  I decided I would give an update now that we are probably at the mid-point.

Yesterday I took some pictures of our latest chicks to hatch.  This White Rock hen hatched 14 chicks on June 21st, so they were 5 days old yesterday afternoon in these pictures, and doing great.  It was fun to see so many chicks hatch! 

13 chicks were dark and 1 was white.  I use the past tense terms because tragedy struck her brood last night.  Lisa saw a hawk attack at dusk while she was in the garden, but the mama and chicks went into their box so we couldn't see how many of the 14 made it.  I don't know how many chicks a hawk could take at one time.  Maybe something else besides that one attack had happened also?  But this morning there are only 7 chicks with this mama, 6 dark and that 1 white one.  There was another dark chick left in the nest dead with an apparent broken neck.  How did that happen?  It is very frustrating to go from 14 to 7 in one evening.

Meanwhile, Buffy still has kept all 12 of her brood, not loosing a single one (yet).  All 12 are dark, but are showing some pretty markings.  They hatched June 12th so they are 14 days old in these pictures.  They have been very fun to watch.

The first chicks to hatch this year are now 25 days old and so much bigger!  Of the 11 original chicks, this White Rock hen is down to just 5; 3 dark and 2 white.  You can see in the above pictures what a pretty pattern two of the dark ones now have.  I think they are both cockerals.  The other dark one is staying pretty much black.  I wrote about the 5 that got taken by the coon and then the very next day, Matthew saw a hawk flying off with another of the chicks!  It was frustrating that while we had the coon captured in the cage, we see a hawk swoop right down above the coon and take another chick!

On another frustrating note yesterday.  One of the White Rock hens that had been setting on a nest since June 16th walked off the job yesterday.  I had been noticing that she seemed to be neglecting her nest more and more the past few days, but now she seems to be done with it altogether.  So those 15 eggs are now no good to eat or to hatch.  (At least they will still be a benefit for the pigs!)

We also found the black hen that I knew had a clutch of eggs somewhere in the wild.  For the past three weeks or so I would see her for a few minutes as she got food and water, but she would always disappear before I could see where she goes.  And then yesterday afternoon, Simon heard chicken sounds under our house right next to the back porch!  We were able to peak under the house and saw the hen, some eggs, and at least one, wet chick!  How fun!

But... it seems that our mama cat was also interested in the strange sounds coming from under the house.  After dark, we heard some wild chick peeping sounds like something was getting them!  We didn't exactly see Fritsie or the kittens with any chicks when we looked all around, but the kitten Puff was not very hungry for the can food when we decided to give it to them.  Not fun!  I hope we gave them enough food that they were full all night and left the mama hen and nest alone!  The nest is in a location that would be very difficult for us to get at and move, and since the eggs were just hatching we thought it would be a bad idea to move them anyway.  At first I thought she was a smart hen for picking that place because it is too tight an area for the dogs to get in, and I know that Luna eats eggs if she can find them!   I guess later today we will be able to see if any of those chicks survived their first day of life, or if our cats continued to feast!  If they can get hatched and established, I think the mama hen will be able to keep the cats away like the other mama hens do.

In addition to the hen under the house, we still have 3 other hens setting on nests as of this morning.  A black hen is setting on 10 eggs in a nest we made in an old hamper and they should hatch this Saturday, the 29th.  A White Rock hen has 7 eggs in the dog house that should hatch the following weekend, and another White Rock hen has a clutch of 14 eggs in a cage set to hatch on July 12th.  I'm sure they will each give us a mixture of fun and frustrating experiences during the upcoming weeks, but I hope they will be mostly fun!

If you are keeping up with our chick count, we now have 24 living chicks between the 3 mama hens as of this writing.  Maybe there are more with the hen under the house.  I'm sure we will have some additional frustrating losses as the summer moves on, but hopefully we will also get to enjoy some more fun hatches as well. 

You know, after thinking about it, those words "fun" and "frustrating" are two words that pretty much describe every aspect of our entire homesteading adventure!  Life sure is complicated, isn't it?