Spring chickens

My LSOH and I have just done a 1.5 hr round trip to Greensborough to collect two brand new hatchlings to put under my mother hen, Shelley Winters.

Shelley ended up with just the one chicklet hatching, but now the solo hatchling (A Columbian Wyandotte if anyone is into that level of detail) has two adopted sisters (well, hopefully not brothers! No roosters in this little corner of suburbia please).

Thought they are different colours and breeds,  I don’t think chickens are racist.

One is a pale lemon fluffy pom- pom headed Polish (who, if I was a daggy kind of chook owner, might get named "Sherbie" ...and likely will).

The other is a strawberry roan Rhode Island Red who may get called Katie after Katherine Hepburn (one of only two natural Hollywood red heads btw).  Both are bantams and just hatched in the last 24hrs  and in case you thought we were stealing them away from their "real mother"  .

 

 

 

Let me reassure you - their "real" mother was a hot box called an incubator!

I had these wee gals  on my lap in a shoebox all the way home,  my finger hooked through the metal ringed hole about 2 cm across that some fancy shoe boxes have, to keep it steady. After about 30 secs I feel a little tiny nudge on my finger and see a little fluffy lemon head trying to get out the same hole with her beak bumping up against my finger. I poke my finger in a little further and feel a little feathery body nudging up against it and then a pair of little feet hopping onto it like my finger was a perch!. They each take turns to perch on my finger briefly, explore it with their teeny tiny beaks, or snuggle against it for warmth peeping all the while. Periodically they would go quiet having a micro sleep and I take a quick peek under the lid to see them snuggled together for warmth. So I cup my hand over them and they fit easily – in fact I could fit another two easily they are so wee – and they snuggle under, going still and quiet for longer and longer periods as M drives. They are tired. THey were shoved and jostled in a cacophony of peeping by fifty other chicks in the brooder and now it is just the two of them and the sound of my voice, the car engine and the radio.

I am quietly praying all the way home that Shelley will accept them – it is 4 days since her one chick hatched and she went off the remaining eggs two days ago. That does not bode well. When I took the eggs away and opened them, 4 of the seven remaining eggs were infertile and 3 had partially developed dead chicks in them. It was heartbreaking and I did get a bit "damp" as my beloved calls it.

Chooks do know when to give up on their clutch - they can feel when there is ife in the eggs and turn them gently each day to ensure the growing embryo is tended. Shelley had moved a foot away from the dead eggs to make a new nest with her sole chick – a tiny lemon and grey fluff ball that looked to me quite dazed and confused about the whole process of being hatched and out in the world. Perhaps because she had no one to discuss it with? These videos show some of what the new hatchling has to cope with including dodging mum kicking bedding all over her accidentally!

I was very keen that these two new babies would be her half-siblings and friends. Once some years ago surprisingly (as for 5 years her mothering has been usually fantastic)  Shelley did reject one of three chicks we tucked under her when their mother started drinking in the pantry …or rather the chookie equivalent - hiding from them. We didn’t understand why Shelley took such a violent dislike to this one particular chick but it does happen.

About 9pm I was cautiously hopeful and as I carried them out in a shoe box carefully (wishing they would stop peeping so loudly as I wanted to slip them silently under Shelley without even waking her if possible) Shelley started clucking enthusiastically at them from inside the maternity ward from 3 metres away. Mommy radar? What were they saying I wonder ? "Where are we? what's happening ? we are SCARED!!!! " Shell was possibly saying, "You're ok - I'll take care of you - everything will be alright".  When I popped one either side of her and tried to tuck them under her, she readily extended her wings to snuggle them closer readily. She clucked for a bit, they peeped for a bit, and then silence.

Blessed be!

I didn’t dare peek in case I ruined the moment and she changed her mind. I waited for another five or so minutes, sqatting in the dark by her pen listening to our young male neighbours quietly drinking and flirting gently with their female visitors on the other side of the fence - to be sure no chicks were going to be turfed out from under those warm feathers after all, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when they weren’t. I’d be back in an hour to doublecheck they really had settled with her, as if she rejected them keeping them warm would involve the slightly awkward use of a light bulb and a cardboard box as chicks so young need to be kept on heat to stay alive.

Under the warm, fluffy feathers of a doting mum is definitely where I know I would prefer to be if I was a newly hatched chick.  

I’ll be up at the crack of dawn to check again that all is well – fingers crossed! (written midnight Thursday)

*LSOH – Long suffering other half