Hen and chicks

Credit: Carolyn Herriot

It always starts with a broody hen, and then I have to go on a hunt for fertilized eggs to keep her happy.

Luckily for me, my friend Jeanie has a cockerel for her flock of hens, (not I, who values her sleep!) We put eight fertilized eggs under ‘Mama’ hen, which she took to immediately.

Twenty-one days later (textbook), they hatched into furry little pip-squeaking chicks which are too cute for words!

The brown chick comes from the blue egg from an Ameraucana hen. Who knows what we’ll get, but if that cute brown chick turns out to be male when we sex them, I’ll be sorely tempted to keep him, and then who knows what will happen to my sleep?

‘Mama’ henpecks her little chicks as she should and teaches them to forage around the garden. They are growing fast on a diet of high protein chicken food, almost doubling in size daily.

(Check back in early June for another progress report).

Back to the Victory Garden Program.