Outdoor Nature Hour Challenge # 4

Why did we choose to take a walk to the barn on this cold, muddy, rainy day?
Because the focus area for our next few nature challenges was waiting!
We have chosen birds for our focus area and....
Monday was day 21 for our mommy hen.  That means on Tuesday morning we had 1 day old chicks.
We were super excited to go and see how many of the 14 eggs she had been sitting on hatched.

Upon arriving in the barn we quietly gathered around the mother hen.  We heard faint little peeps coming from underneath.  We listened for a minute then let daddy pick her up and we found four baby chicks.  The other eggs had not hatched.  We talked about the very cold weather when she had laid the eggs.  We believe that the first eggs she laid had frozen before she started sitting.  There was one egg that had broken and it smelled horrible.  The stinky egg had broken on the hen and the chicks had the smell too! So we did not get to enjoy the chicks as much as we would have liked.  But we did hold them for a minute before moving them to a new nest in the shop with clean, fresh hay.

The smell seems to be fading a little.  We hope to be able to hold them more next week.

By the way....our dogs thought the rotten eggs were yummy;-)

There is not a weed or an insect or a tree so common that the child, by observing carefully may not see things never yet recorded in scientific books. 

Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study