This Memorial Day weekend is like Christmas morning for our children: Chicks are hatching!

They wake up early and want to go straight to our baby chick coop.

I’ve been downsizing and these two hens were going to be sold, but they went “broody” which means that want to remain sitting on a nest for 21 days to hatch eggs.

What’s interesting is that these two hens were hatched from a mama hen on the farm too last year.

Usually you get chickens that were hatched in a machine, but not this group.

After we moved the hens to their new nesting spot, we chose the eggs we wanted them to hatch.

So, one mama has only dark brown eggs, one has only green/blue eggs, and the white group in the middle were abandoned by another mama hen who did not want to be that close to the other mama hens. These baby chicks are from the dark group of eggs.

So far we have had 4 chicks to hatch. You can see 2 peeking out behind mama and one under her front wing. I think the chicks are having fun under mama’s protective feathers.

We are still waiting on the blue/green eggs. Ducky is that mama hen, and we don’t want her disappointed.

These chicks are for my daughter to raise, but since “Doughy” only has had 4 hatch, we may need a plan B.

An idea is to either keep this group or sell the whole group to a new good home and then let my daughter buy a bigger group of baby ducks to raise.

A lot of farm management is about logistics, and a mama with chicks requires a lot of time and separation from the bigger flock. So, we’ll see what happens and report back later.