News from the Coop

“You are a REAL chicken farmer,” my neighbor told me the other day. I was showing her the newest additions to our flock. The Red Hen sat on a nest of 12 eggs and had 11 chicks hatch on Sunday. That same day a man who works for us had seven chicks hatch, but then his hen was stolen. We found out about the theft on Monday morning and decided to try to merge his new chicks with ours. David drove into Kalomo to get the chicks and we put them in with Red Hen and her new flock. Alas, she did not turn out to be the nurturing kind and began to peck the little ones that were not hers. One died, and another was badly injured before we rescued him.

All those years of living on a farm in Missouri taught me a few things that linger in the recesses of my memory. I got a cardboard box, attached a lamp over it, and set up a mini-hatchery in the pantry. We worked to try to save the hurt chick. David rubbed antibiotic ointment on his wounds, and I figured out ways to get him to drink a few drops of water now and then. He perked up after the third day, giving us hope he might pull through. At that point we dubbed him T.C. for “tough chick.” He took a turn for the worse on Thursday, however, and died. We also lost four of Red Hen’s chicks the first night—probably from the cold. (It’s the middle of our winter here with temps in the 40s and 50s at night.) Now we have seven little fluff balls with Red Hen in the chicken pen and five little peepers in the cardboard box.

The Big White Hen is once again sitting on a nest, but this time it has six eggs in it. I have decided that she may not be the sharpest hen in the coop. She had been in the nest next to Red Hen for a week or so. After Red Hen and her chicks moved out of that nest, Big White Hen decided that’s where she wanted to be and settled in there. I guess she forgot about the eggs she left behind in her old nest. David saw the eggs in one nest and Big White Hen in the next one and put them together again. The saga continues!