Jet Lag has something to crow about.

Our rooster Jet Lag has been really pleased with himself.  This is why...on the fifth of June he became a dad.


We have been preventing the ducks from having ducklings, but completely forgot that we had 7 hens and a rather active rooster.  The hens are Rhode Island Reds and have never become broody before.  Well, that is what we thought until Clucky showed up with her brood.


We've had a lot of ducklings here, but having a chicken hen with chicks was a first for us.  My chickens were born in an incubator and raised under a heat lamp and so it is fascinating to watch the little family.  It's lovely to see what good mothers chickens make.


I put Teddy on a lead to show her the chicks for the first time.  She was too busy looking at the bread I was tossing, to notice the chicks.  It wasn't until I finished tossing bread, she noticed the chicks.  She let out a big sigh and put her head on my lap as it was like she was fully expecting chicks to show up one day.  She is a farm dog after all.


Soon as I took Teddy's lead off, she went looking for the bread.  Clucky trusted Teddy but our cat, Tommy Two Tone chased the chicks and then was chased by their mother.


Clucky and her brood spent the first night next to the stone house out in the open and she was vulnerable to any predators that happened along.  Her chicks had a little hole in the stone house that they would run into.  The next day I made a pen using these fence boards that we bought to make a chicken-proof kitchen garden.  I pulled a section across when they settled in for the night and put up old glass windows to keep weasels out.  It worked out to be pretty good.  During the day time they can go anywhere they want, and they go on bigger adventures everyday.  I bought 'chick starter', a chick feeder and water dish and have been kept entertained by it all.  Life is good.