Baby-baby

It would appear that Sam is a daddy, Chicky-baby surrogate Mom and Lady-bug the egg donor.

Chicky-baby will hatch a rock. Girl is the broodiest little hen I ever saw. So when Ducky-baby flew away it didn't take long before Chicky-baby was setting again. She'd sit on anything any of the girls laid. They'd sit on her to deposit their eggs and she'd tuck those eggs underneath and sit. Of course she sat just where everybody else wanted to lay their eggs so it wasn't a surprise when her comb started looking kinda ratty from all the girls using it to pull her off the nest. I finally let her have ONE egg. It was Lady-bug's egg. I was pretty sure it wasn't fertile. Not that the boys hadn't done their darndest to go forth and multiply but anytime they cornered a girl and got down to business the other girls hauled feather across the yard and chased the boys off. So that egg wasn't a gift, it was a decoy--to get her away from the other girls and get the other girls off Chicky-baby.

Every day I'd gather eggs and leave Chicky-baby and her egg alone. She sat through the heat of August and if anybody tried to mess with her egg she showed her dinosaur genes (Velociraptor I'm pretty darned sure). I figured 21 days would go buy and I'd toss the egg and Chicky-baby would have got her broodyness out of her system and peace would reign in the backyard. Ha!

We took a trip to Charlotte over Labor Day weekend--got back on a Sunday evening. Went out back to check on the girls and toss that egg before it exploded. It already had.

Baby-baby (what else?) was hatched sometime Sunday. She was the tiniest little chick I'd ever seen and pure white. It was pretty obvious that Sam was a proud papa--she had feathers down to her FIVE toes--just like dear ol dad and a blue beak. At one month she's showing some black in her wings and some light brown--mama's side of the family for sure--she has a little crown of feathers right on top of her head and fluffy cheeks. She shows every sign of being a hen--and if nurture plays a hand--she's gonna be as ornery as her adopted mommy. She's already chasing poor little Milly. I finally made friends with her this week. Mealworms are the ultimate peace offering in chickendom. Chicky-baby is teaching her the skills she'll need to be a proper chicken and Baby is already well established in the pecking order. Both Sam and Buffy keep a close watch over the baby--from a distance of course. Not because they wouldn't get close--but because a ball of chicken motherhood would peck their eyes out if they got too close to her baby.

Mama Lady-bug

Papa Sam