Where there's life, there's cheeps.

This morning on chicken breakfast rounds, I discovered tragedy in the broody box.

A chick!  But it was spilled out in a corner of the box, belly up, wings and legs splayed out, eyes closed, beak open.  Very bad.  It was still alive, barely, and I stuffed it back under her, immediately.  Its legs stuck out straight.  A minute later, after tidying up, I rearranged the chick to tuck the legs in.  Its eyes were still closed and beak open, gasping.  This is usually the sign of imminent death.

But an hour later when I checked, lifting up momma’s front to see underneath, the chick was all life, jumping around tap-dancing on the other eggs. Cheep cheep cheep! Yay!  Recovery, due to the magical properties of momma hen heat.  I found her in time.

At lunchtime, there were two!

This one was wobbly and still damp.

It just kind of sunk, flattened, into the hay, falling asleep, and momma settled onto her.   This is good.

You can still see a closed eye.

By evening, the two were nimbly bopping about.   Momma jumped out to recon when we rearranged her living situation – now in a chickery – but went right back on the eggs. The remaining four eggs show no signs of pipping, unfortunately, but two healthy chicks are better than one or none.

One  is a blue egg, Puffcheeks or Cheeks’ offspring, and one brown- total unknown.  Hatching eggs from my layer flock is a mystery gift bag.  Almost all of them will be crosses of one kind or another.