Cheep, Cheep, Cheep

It seems that most days we wake up and there is a question I have…usually about chickens or chicks as it were.

“What happens if the chicks fall out of the nest box?”

“Can they walk?”

“How will they get water?”

“How many chicks do you think we will have?”

…and because these questions come before My Loving Spouse is sufficiently caffeinated, usually the response is

‘What?’ or ‘I do not really know’….

The day where we could expect the first cheep from a chick came and went…but the next morning…we had our first little black chick…fairly ugly at hatching…but fluffy and pretty darn cute within hours…new life…new hope.Twenty four hours later and there were 3 fluffy balls of cheep, cheep, cheeping…My Loving Spouse devised a plan to move Crow, the chicks and the remaining eggs into a temporary safe single nest box in the tack room of the barn.  The plan was to move the family at dusk.  I was handed the three chicks…whoops, and then one more…along with an egg in mid hatch!  We settled the hatching egg and chicks in the box along with 4 more eggs.  We were a little nervous about whether Crow would gather her brood together…since she doesn’t exactly have a very good history of taking care of her eggs…and yet, it would seem that after 21 days of doing nothing much other than sitting on a pile of eggs, Crow has turned into a regular Mother Hen, with all manners of appropriate clucking and settling softly on her eggs and gathering her little chicks to her as they cheep, cheep, cheep.