The Great Chick Swap

Two crucial issues aligned, a broody hen and a request that I give the Children’s sermon at church.  This lead me to pick Mathew 6:26

Look at the birds: they do not plant seeds, gather a harvest and put it in barns; yet your Father in heaven takes care of them! Aren’t you worth much more than birds? 

A verse that gave me hope during a lonely time in my life.

I calculated the date of our broody hen’s eggs hatching and realized she was a week later, than my sermon Sunday.  Of course, I didn’t need live chicks to bring to church, but once I’d thought of it, there was no going back.  Luckily, chick days came to one of the local farm stores.

5 Bared Rock and Bufforpington chicks were procured and with the help of THE Grandson, named Ryder and Gold Bug (a Paw Patrol and Richard Scary book reference).

Chicks in church?  Yes, it was a fun surprise and all went well.

We now had 5 chicks to keep alive in the kitchen until our broody hen’s eggs started hatching.  We only ran into one problem, well, maybe two.We had 2 hens fighting over the clutch of eggs, jostling for position.  They did a really poor job of keeping all the eggs warm and turned and no eggs hatched.  It was time for the swap.

I gathered up the growing chicks.I outfitted myself for the dark of night…and snuck into the hen house.  I removed all the unhatched eggs.and replaced them with 5 live chicks, shoving them under my broody hen the best I could.  My Loving Spouse checked on them when he got home at O’Dark Thirty.  Stuart (the mother hen) was protective of her new brood, even if she didn’t quite realize how they’d gotten there.The next afternoon, we were delighted to see everybody out in the hen yard enjoying a bit of spring!

Mission accomplished!