Saturday was a miserable, cold, dreary day. It also happened to be a day that Matt and I were at a wedding open house for a friend from Matt's work. So we were gone for many hours and I never bothered to open the coop since it was so wretched out side. I went in to do evening chores rather late and to my chagrin I found a new baby running around shrieking at the top of his lungs. GREAT......Now I had to try to figure out who it belonged to and look for more. All the chickens were now eating and so he really did look abandoned.
I quickly put him in a container and waited for Mama to begin her clucking to him. Shortly I was able to figure out the mother.
She was a young one who had been dutifully sitting on her clutch and I thought she would be very successful. However the last week other hens were laying on top of her eggs and she wasn't roosting so I figured I needed to clean out the nest. Another thing on my long list of to do's.
I went over to the nest and began to clean it out. Everything was ice cold. Not a good sign. Unfortunately as I cleaned I found 3 other chicks cold and wet who had not survived. From this I surmised that the little trouble maker who was still shrieking very loudly had jumped out of the nest and she had followed forgetting the rest of her babies.
I collected the eggs, the baby, and the mom and headed into the warm kitchen.
I was deciding what to do with my problems when I began to hear tapping and chirping. So upon closer inspection while sorting I separated about 10 eggs that looked like thay might still have a chance. As of yesterday we had 6 babies and one casualty. That is pretty amazing and a testament to the will to survie and God's miracle of life.
Now to just figure out where to keep these little buggers until they can go outside.
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