Saturday, February 13, 2010

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

4 comments:

Barb said...

Sweet baby chicks to study! Now that sounds like a great focus. Don't for to read in the HNS about birds and chickens.

Thanks for sharing your entry.

Unknown said...

Must be nice to get chicks the old-fashioned way! My husband just headed out the door to pick ours up from the post office :) We've never had a hen go broody on us if you can believe it!

We're doing a bird focus alongside you, naturally this week we'll be doing chicks too. It's so exciting to see signs of spring isn't it?

Holli said...

We have had two hens to go broody.
This hens mom was our first. I was hoping one of her chicks would take after her mother-looks like I got my wish;-)
Can't wait until spring!
Holli

Pebblekeeper ~ Angie said...

So Sweet! In all of our years of chickens, we never had a broody hen, our walk to the feed store was our great spring experience. Since we may only be in this location for 6 months, a friend has our chickens right now. ;) Thanks for sharing!