Little chick is now a chicken

translated from French by Elena Malec

Oh, yes. They did grow up. We have nine hens and two roosters. In Autumn the hens lay eggs

and the roosters sing. In Winter the chicken house is at rest like all nature.Hens do not

have enough light for laying eggs every day.

Did you know that a hen needs 14 hours of daylight in order to lay every day?

When days are short hens use to rest. Springtime brings joy: everybody is at work.

That is how one of our hens seemed willing to hatch.So we got all prepared to hatch

our chicks with her instead of the incubator.

We know from Alexandra that this is not like in the hatchery; our job for 21 days

will be now done by the hen. And we are not supposed to disturb Mother Hen while she is hatching.

Yet after 15 days we were quite disappointed. Our hen was disturbed by her sisters.

So broken eggs and eggs laid by other hens all over the place.

In short no hatchlings. But Mother Hen seemed very determined to have chicks and she

refused to leave the nest. This is how we took her under our protection and isolated her

from other hens. We’ve moved her to a shed next to the house where she has now

her own nesting box with fresh hay.There we put 9 eggs laid by her sisters two days

before her moving. Happy Mother Hen was happy to try all over again.

We were all set for another 21 days if everything went fine.

Our hen had good reasons for refusing to quit. After three weeks, on July 16, 1999,

when we came for our gardening class, we had the big surprise: she was

surrounded by six lovely day-old chicks.

They were born that night. It was very hot and they were in a big hurry to meet us.