Mama Hen had been brooding for 21 days, and we had Day 21 marked on the calendar for the chick-hatching. It’s like a little holiday, awaiting a cheery surprise.
If it had been on the weekend, we would have been running out to check in the chicken coop every few minutes. However, it was a Wednesday. The moment we got home from school and work, we ran out to see if the chicks had hatched yet.
Not yet.
Thanks to modern technology, we could keep an eye on the situation. We have security cameras all around the house, but their signal wouldn’t pick up as far as the chicken coop, so we used our phones instead.
I set my phone into the coop’s nesting box and started a Facebook Live feed showing the hen. When the eggs started hatching, we’d see it on video. Inside the house, we watched that Facebook feed on my Facebook page, which was showing on the computer.
For hours, until dark, it just showed a fluffy back end of a silvery gray hen, no action.
We repeated for the next couple of days just to be on the safe side – chicken eggs hatch in 21 days, but we were away at the beginning, so we could only estimate the 21st day, not know for sure.
By the time we knew for sure that no eggs were going to hatch, we had to take matters into our own hands – and hurry up about it, too. When hens decide they want to raise chicks, they incubate those eggs determinedly for 21 straight days. They only get up once every 24 hours to handle all bodily functions. Brooding takes quite a toll on a hen, and the longer it goes on, the weaker she gets.
On her way home from Magna Vista High School that Friday, my daughter dropped by Rural King to buy some chicks. Talk about milestones showing you’re grown up – getting a license and car is one which many kids experience. Choosing and buying chickens without parental guidance is a whole new level of acting as an adult, which not as many kids experience.
There was just one rule: Only get the chicks of hens which are known to be docile breeds. We have lived through vicious pecking orders in our flocks years ago, and we don’t want to ever go through that level of feathered violence again.
When I got home from work, my daughter was ready with the chicks to show me. We would slide them under Mama Hen at night and take away the eggs which by now clearly were not going to hatch.
There was one catch, however: Since we had bought the chicks with plans for the mother hen to raise them, we hadn’t prepared with a heat lamp. Newly hatched chicks must be kept at a temperature of 95 degrees, which a mother’s body heat would provide. We hadn’t taken into account the several hours until dark.
It has to be dark when we do the switcheroo; otherwise, the hen would be alert and very likely might view the chicks as intruders and attack them.
In the outbuilding, Mary hunted down the heat lamp. Unfortunately, the bulb was no longer working. Since it would only be a few hours, we kept them warm with hot water bottles wrapped in towels.
In the dark of night, carrying the chicks, we tiptoed outside to the coop. We went inside the fenced enclosure and to the building. Quietly, we lifted the lid to the nesting box.
Mama Hen bristled slightly. If we had disturbed her like that in the daytime, she would have fluffed up her feathers to standing on edge, lunged at us and pecked us.
Slowly, I reached underneath her to take out the eggs. We gingerly placed them in a basket. We would not eat those eggs, but we also did not want to break them in this process. Heaven knows what we would have seen and smelled. As I reached under her, Mama Hen fluffed up a little and turned her head toward my hand but otherwise did not do much.
Then, the real test.
If Mama Hen would not accept these babies, we’d have to get them away from her right away to avoid her attacking them. Then we’d be dealing with six or eight weeks of raising chicks in the house, which is cute and fun during the first two weeks, then a never-ending nightmare of noisy, smelly, active birds you can’t wait to get out of the house.
One by one, I gently placed a chick under the fluffy feathers of the hen. She half-heartedly pecked at me at first, and then just settled down.
Once all the chicks were under her, we waited and watched to see how she’d take it.
Slowly, she rearranged herself, settling her body and slightly outstretched wings over her little brood. Then she fell asleep.
All night long, we hoped for the best.
Before the sun came up in the morning, we ran outside to check. Chickens don’t start waking properly until morning light, so we witnessed the whole thing.
As the sun rose, the mother slowly rustled about. A chick popped her head out from among the feathers, then back in.
Mama raised herself halfway up, chicks came in and out from underneath her, and she settled her fluffy feathers around them protectively.
She was a mama, and her babies would be taken care of.
