Fifty Words Challenge ~ Theme: Hatch

Here is my submission for this week's Fifty word Challenge:

Having chickens free ranging, it’s expected that eventually a hen will go missing. And, when the missing hen appears again a few days later, and you send your daughter to follow her, you may discover her hidden nest, and if ALL the eggs hatch, you might double your flock overnight.  

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This is a true story about our hen, named “Wellie” back in 2013. She was a Welsummer hen. We got her in the Spring of 2012, the first year we had chickens. She disappeared less than a year after we got her, and just like in the story above. We figured a predator had gotten to her - like a fox, racoon, hawk...?  Then, she suddenly appeared again one day while we were feeding the chickens. Where had she been? She wasn’t injured or anything. She disappeared again, and I started suspecting that perhaps she had a nest somewhere. We did, after all, have roosters – several of them! So, having viable eggs was almost a certainty. The next day I had my daughter follow her to see where she was hiding. We discovered that she did indeed have a nest of over a dozen eggs – behind some wood boards in our shed. We let her keep her nest, but made it a bit more comfortable and safe for her there.  And, once the chicks hatched, we moved her and her chicks to a bin on our front porch where they were better protected. She was an awesome mama to those chicks! It was really fun watching and observing her raise her chicks. She took really good care of them.  

I took these photos of those chicks sitting in an egg carton on our couch. What a cool memory, and a really fun thing for our 5-year-old daughter to experience!  

My daughter is now 10 years old, and we just got 4 baby chicks from the local grange last week. We haven’t had chicks for a few years. I forgot how noisy & messy they are! Having these 4 chicks, reminds us of Wellie’s chicks, and I have to say I think she probably did a much better job than we ever could!