Well, I am over the moon with these three new arrivals! If you read my post last week, you’ll know that I was a little anxious about the late hatching of the seven eggs that my broody hen, Speckledy, was sitting on. Since she was the only hen left after the death of her friend, I was really rooting for her to be able to hatch some chicks, and she did!! Her three little chicks appeared early on Tuesday morning, having hatched Monday night with the full moon, and by the afternoon they were bouncing around the hen house with her, eating chick crumbs and sipping from some jam jar lids of water.
It has been such a joy to watch them get braver and bolder with every passing day this week. I had thought the chicks would exist solely on their chick crumbs, but Speckledy clearly has other ideas and has been introducing them to the art of foraging already. They have tried their first taste of autumn blackberries, and of course some fresh spinach and lettuce from the veg patch. Speckledy has been showing them what to do, and I was amazed to see her crunching up some corn and then spitting it out again for the chicks to eat. She did much the same with the blackberries, pecking them apart into tiny pieces before scattering them on the ground for the little ones.
I suspect much of my bank holiday weekend will be spent hanging out with them, building them a bigger run and making sure they have enough shade and protection from buzzards and so on. If the veg patch gets any attention, it’ll be a miracle!