Baby Chick Explores its World

Wait for me Mom!

If you remember in mid April several of the hens went broody, ie: they wanted to sit on nests and hatch eggs into chicks.  I let one of the hens keep a days worth of eggs and two weeks ago one egg hatched.  Mom is a big white hen, chick is probably a Rhode Island Red cross with Booster Rooster. In other words, baby chick is not the biological off spring of the big white hen.  She cares not at all that her chick is not her chick however, so all is well.  I do worry about the cats getting hold of it. They are major hunters. This week alone they have killed a red cardinal, a meadow lark, a sparrow, and a half grown rabbit.  Other times they bring mice, voles, moles, frogs and small snakes to the back porch.  I feed these cats well, but cats are hunters by nature and no matter how much I feed them they will still have the need to hunt.

The chick is two weeks old today. It's very active and is peeping all the time.  When I open the chicken house door each morning, its the first one to hop outside.  From the looks of it, I think it might be a rooster, but time will tell for sure.  It's very active and has the sprouting of a little rooster like tail , so looks like Booster Rooster and Big Chicky might have more competition.

Mom chicken stayed on the nest sitting on the remaining eggs. I let he stay for five more days, then took the eggs and broke them. There were no chicks in side, they were just rotten eggs. For whatever reason only one egg was fertile.  That's probably because Big Chicky, who is at least seven years old which is very old for a rooster, spends most his time knocking Booster off the hens. In the process I don't think many eggs get fertilized.