Baby announcement!
Meet Snapchat, our very first baby born on the homestead.
Snapchat is a silky chicken, as you can tell by his/her small stature and extra toes. Snapchat is an adorable teeny sleepy little baby chick. And I am in awe at God’s little miracles and this tiny life that hatched in our chicken coop, discovered by the hubby when we he stopped in to gather the eggs. The telltale peeping gave it away and I couldn’t wait to run in and snap a few pics.
But things don’t always run so smoothly on the the homestead! Due to severe and surprising rooster aggression, we had to say farewell to our beloved Captain Jack a few weeks ago. There is no reason to keep a roo gone mean and we made sure his farewell was as kind and polite as possible. It was sad and disappointing but necessary for the safety of all who reside on and visit our homestead, including the chickens. But he left in his wake 2 broody hens with only unfertilized eggs to sit on. So we borrowed a few fertilized silky eggs, because those hens were new to laying and showed no signs of being brood. We delivered them to the broody wyandottes, hoping that all would work out well. But it didn’t.
The broody mama sitting on the silky eggs just didn’t take to Snapchat and gave her a great big peck and a wound. So we rescued poor Snapchat at just a few hours old and she is now quietly resting in the piano studio. To be honest, we weren’t really sure if Snap would make it through the night. But she’s a fighter and so far seems to be doing everything a baby chick should, peeping, drinking, sleeping, and hopefully, eating, too. Sometimes, broody hens get confused and kill their babies, so we’ll have to keep a close eye on those eggs to see if any more babies hatch. If they do, we can bring them in to snuggle up to Snapchat. If they don’t, we’ll need to ‘break’ mama hen of her broodiness, which is a whole other post and a whole other day. For now, we are just enjoying our baby grandchick and hoping she recovers well from the henpecking she received.
In the meantime, we have a silky hen whose gone all broody on us. Perhaps there are more grandchicks on the way!
Edit: We found another tiny baby in the coop! Still ‘wet’ from breaking out of the egg. Meet Baby Twitter!
