Category: chickens (Page 8 of 11)

About a day after the hen from the second batch of chicks went broody, another hen, one of our Game Hen breed I believe, went broody as well, in a garbage can in the barn, if I remember correctly. And so, we moved her into the piano room with a set of eggs under her; and by God’s graces, a day after the other hen hatched out her chicks, this one did too! Nine in all, and eight are still going strong!

Here are a couple of pictures:

And below is their video. There was one chick hatched out that was cripple — it couldn’t stand up and would just lay on its side, moving its legs almost swimmingly, trying to stand up. If you got it standing, it would just fall over. I tried working with it, feeding it to try to keep it alive, making a runway for it to try to learn to walk. I called it Tiny, because it was such a small little thing:

And for a while I thought it might get it — it would walk along, eat the food I had laid down in the trough, even preen a few times, and seemed to be getting better with its balance; but in the end, sadly, about a week after hatching, it died.

Still, one thing that was interesting to me was that I would place it in its runway, come back later, and it would have crawled its way out, and slide-crawled itself through the 1-inch chicken wire around the cage area, I assume to try to get to its mommy. This happened at least twice. It was an inspiration in dedication to me, and led me to think and then pray that we strive after the Lord Christ Jesus the same way. May we be able to hide under His wings, and may He maybe grant a sense of that (see these several Psalms references).

Although I wasn’t able to capture those times with Tiny, you can still see it in this video:

We are once again very grateful to the Lord for granting us the continuation of the flock, and we pray He always glorifies Himself through these things, including in His sovereign giving and taking of anything, in accordance with His will.

— David

As I mentioned in our blog post about the first chicks that the Lord granted us in 2014 ¹, we had another hen go broody, an Australorp, which we showed in our mini chicken tractor, and by God graciousness, He granted that she hatch out a bunch o’ chicks! Out of 13 eggs, 11 hatched out, and all 11 are still rolling along just great, it appears!

Here are a few pictures:

And their video:

As always, we are so very grateful to the Lord for His granting of these provisions. We’ve had to butcher some more roosters recently to get the rooster-hen ratio better, and it is humbling and joyful to be eating the food the Lord has directly provided! We are very thankful.

— David

¹ P.S. You’ll have to forgive me, as in the previous post I said one of our Australorps was the mother of those first hatchlings, and that wasn’t correct — I’ve corrected it since.

A couple to a few months ago, one of our hens went broody, we put some eggs under her, and the Lord graciously granted our first chicks of 2014! I’ve been lagging in getting this blog post done and out, as you can see, since they are about half way to being full grown. But, we wanted to acknowledge and thank God in His provisions of granting additions to the flock!

The broody hen hatched out three, and the three have made it very well, and here they are, with their mama. It looks like they are all hens too, and all Australorps as well, which is a nice bonus gift, since the Australorps are also great brooders:

And here is a little video of them:

Also, we’ve had another couple of hens go broody just a few days ago. Here’s one in the mini chicken tractor:

And the other in the piano room, although she started in a garbage can in the barn 🙂 :

As always, we are so very thankful to the Lord for granting any chicks and continuance of food provisions; and we are grateful for Him showing His graces and mercies in these ways.

— David

As we noted in the third hatching of chick the Lord granted us for this year, the mother hen that hatched out our second batch of chicks was broody; and by God’s graces and mercies, here is the result! She hatched out three more chicks, but sadly a week or two ago, while spraying fire ants, I broke my own rule that I had made after the last time I lifted the mini-tractor when I crushed a chick, and ended up with the same result — just stupid, and I knew better. And so now there are only two.

But we are thankful to the Lord for granting these He has granted! I have a feeling they’re both roosters because their combs are already showing a little larger, but we’ll see, Lord willing…

And here is their video:

As always, we are so very grateful to the Lord for graciously perpetuating the flock, and may they bring glory to Him and benefit His Church in some way.

— David

As hoped for when we showed the broody hen in our last chicken hatching blog post, the Lord granted the momma hen to hatch out some new chicks! She hatched out 8 out of 11 or so — one had the shell cracked all the way around, but sadly didn’t make it out; and it looked like another one had died during the incubation process.

From the mini-tractor, I moved them into the piano room so they have a little more room, and to get them away from the ants (although ants get into the summer kitchen, but just not as badly as sometimes in the mini-tractor). Once in there, one day I noticed there were only 7; and I ended up not being able to find hide nor hair (or skin nor feather) of it. And then a day or two later, one of the other chicks I found dead. I did see one of our smaller, homestead snakes in the piano room, so I’m wondering if it got either or both. Or the first one maybe got out of the fencing, and one of the hens we have running around the summer kitchen, while their backs are recovering from when the roosters service them too much and the feather are removed, got the chick. Not sure. But, we are thankful to God for what He has allowed to continue, and here is a picture of them — I thought I’d try to get them a little younger this time:

And a short video:

And here is another hen the Lord has granted to get broody. This is actually the mother hen from that last hatching blog post mentioned above, going for another round apparently; and she’s about a week into it:

We are so very grateful to the Lord for the granting of these continued provisions. May His works, both spiritual and temporal, bring glory to Himself!

— David

At the end of our blog post on our first chick hatching of this year, I showed a broody hen in our mini tractor. Well, the Lord granted she sit on them to term, and she hatched out 9 chicks out of I believe 10 eggs!

And here they are, several weeks later. We had to move them to one of the summer kitchen pens because they were getting too big for the mini chicken tractor, and then the ants kept invading as well:

But, by the time I took that picture, they were getting almost too big for the summer kitchen pen, so I believe it was that same evening of the day I took that picture that I moved them out into the chicken pen area, which gives them more room and the opportunity to start doing chicken things on the outside, in the dirt and hopefully eating bugs:

And here is their video:

And a couple of weeks ago, another hen went broody, and here she is, waiting patiently; and the chicks are due to hatch out in a day or two!

We are very thankful to the Lord for granting the provisions of these new chickens, and we pray for a healthy hatching for the next broody hen in just a couple of days, Lord willing!

— David