One of the battery hens has fulfilled her life's ambition, she has hatched out a chick. Of course she chose a pretty inconvenient time to do it, one of those Saturdays that Aimee was off fund raising and suddenly kitten pens were put up, mother and baby inserted into pen, chicken pellets put in the magimix and made into crumbs.
Just what you need when you are busy and trying to get Aimee donkey clean, loaded and out there strutting her stuff.
Mum says that chick is now getting quite big and is convinced it will of course be a cockerel given she already have 4 of these useless things already. She's not even convinced that the hen that thinks it is the mum is actually the mum. She is a typical red/brown battery hen, but the chick is black with silver legs, which is suspiciously like the cochin hens she has, and the daddy has to be the cuckoo speckled maran cross.....so she thinks the mum has to be the cochin but for whatever reason the little battery girl has claimed it as her own.
She is totally made up about it. In the daytime, she and the baby go into Molly's stable and run around. She has been teaching it how to scratch and dig, and mum says she isn't quite as ferocious as she was on day one, when she would have killed you if you tried to go near her baby.
I am pleased for her, it must be sad to lay all those eggs with no result! She is a very very proud mum and at night time you can see her, sitting down to sleep, with the little head of the baby sticking out from under her feathers. Aw. I want one of those too.
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