While Decembery tempests blasted Nature outside the barn, inside the coop a Partridge Cochin hen insisted at eight months that she was ready for motherhood. She kept stomping her foot at Don whenever he would pick her up and set her down off the eggs she'd find and set on. "Ok ok," he finally relented and swooped Broody and her adoptees up and nestled them into the brooding box. With the wind banging bare lilac branches against the window, she sat there steadfast under the warm lights on those eggs, and on the 20th day seven of them hatched. They survived and grew and grew. These are the first hatch from eggs laid by our own Green Barn hens in their first year of life.
This week the chicks are six weeks old. For all we know, there are seven mothers of the seven chicks, and Broody the brooder may not even be one of them. We do know Khan is the proud papa.
Here you see two shots of the same six-week-old chick on the occasion we invited her/him/it into the house for a photo op. We won't discover its sex until certain leg and head features develop. Don't ask me what those features are, I'm just la-di-da-ing like Lisa here on Green Acres. Don is the expoit (read farmer, farmhand and farmer's wife). The highlights of these gorgeous days-old feathers look quite different under the lamplight shining on the ottoman, compared to the natural light from the window.
Look, all this from an egg.
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