21 Days

This morning I was a tad late letting my chickens out. I got in pretty late last night from an out of town shopping trip and was sorta draggin' my butt around. When I finally rushed out there, about an hour later than usual, here's what I found:

Three new babies!
With their backs towards me it seems they're all camera shy,
and with the way
"Miss overprotective Mama Banty"
was acting I wasn't getting any closer!

On April 4th I let "Mama Banty" start setting on 5 marked eggs, exactly 21 days later we have chicks...and that's what Carla Emery wrote in her book "The Encyclopedia of Country Living." Out of the five eggs, 3 have now hatched, she had added an extra two making a total of seven eggs and she is still sitting on three...if you're wondering about the extra egg, that's a sad one. Mama Banty had jumped out of her box to tend to her new little ones, leaving one who was still poking his way out of the shell. Well when I got there the poor little thing had pretty much given up (I thought it was dead with just it's beak sticking out). I gently picked up the egg and peaked inside, its tiny little beak quietly opened and then closed, at that point I panicked quickly got the rest of the shell off and whisked it away into the house to get some heat to it...but despite all my efforts the little gaff lasted about a half hour and sadly died in my hands. It always bothers me when any animal dies, even though it was "just a chicken," it still bothers me...I wish I would have gone out sooner but hindsight is 20/20 and I'll never know if it would have made a difference.

"Home" for 21 days.
I used a purple Sharpie on the eggs to mark them.

Proud Papa Goofy.
I'm not sure if you can see in the picture but Goofy
has one bent up toe and was the funniest looking bird when he was just a chick, hence his name.
He's actually the Boss in the chicken coop,
so his bent up toe and goofy appearance didn't seem to bother him at all...
besides he's now a "struttin' father!"