Mother Hen

Okay, so there is no way around it now...I am the owner of a flock! Saturday we brought home six, count 'em, six baby chicks, to add to our four young hens, making this a bonafide flock! They are so small and fuzzy and really cute, but I MUST have lost my mind to agree to this. We more than doubled our numbers. As to be expected, I am their primary caretaker. Of course my husband said he would take care of them, as did the kids, but really, who else is going to wipe a chick's bottom when it has poop all over it? Yes, you really have to do this for them or they can get sick and die.

It all started when we were helping our local chicken meetup group (don't laugh, there is a group for everything) have a big publicity event to raise awareness for backyard poultry. We did get great press coverage for the event, in fact the kids and I were on the news that night. Unfortunately, we had more chicks than chick takers. My husband signed us up right away to take some chicks off their hands.

We took them home and made a bed out of shavings in a cardboard box and then a plastic tub with a screen on top. They have a heat lamp and heating pad because they need 95 degree weather in my laundry room. They are so soft and they peep just like you imagine.

I worried about one of the Americana's (they are the brown striped ones in the photo) at first, but she just needed to be taught how to drink out of the water dispenser, which I solved by dunking her beak into the water. She figured it out after that and I became a Mother Hen in the true sense of the words. I'm in...all the way now, my heart has been given to these tiny peeping balls of down. They love me too. They peep VERY loudly when I came in the laundry room and they are thrilled to be held by me. I am a Mother of Multiples.