Two hens have hatched out chicks! There’s still one more hen sitting on eggs.

What a rough time of year for chicks to be born. We’ve already had a couple hard frosts. The nights are getting down into the high 20’s and low 30’s. The days are in the low- to mid-60s.

Chicks are so fragile. It’s amazing that they can survive in the barn. We do not have pigs or cows this year, so there is no large animal to heat the barn (well, it’s more of a shed than a barn).

One of the things I love about home schooling is that unplanned events can turn into the most fruitful learning experiences. This was one of those times. Our oldest daughter was out feeding the chickens when she saw a chick running around in front of the barn. She looked around and found a hen with eggs hatching.

The children have seen new chicks many times, but they had never watched them hatch before. This was a great opportunity for them.

They got several photos, and even some short video, of the chicks hatching.

Not all learning experiences are pleasant. They put a dish of water

down for the chicks and mother. When they came back later, there were two chicks in it. One was drowned and the other was well on its way. They rescued the one that was still alive and dried it out, then put it back with the hen, and dumped out much of the water from the dish, so that it wasn’t deep enough to drown any more chicks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 9:28 am and is filed under Livestock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.