Rainy and Cool

The cold frosty weather gave way to an all-day downpour of rain. Something wonderful is happening in the barn...hens who have been sitting on hidden clutches of eggs are bringing their hatchlings out in the open. I have to watch every step I take. I've purchased day old chicks before and they have to be kept under a light bulb and the temperature monitored carefully. Mother hens know just what to do. Every once in a while they give a signal and all the chicks run under her feathers for heating up. She gives another signal and they come out again. She brushes the side of her beak on the ground in a back and forth motion to teach them how to forage for food. I put a shallow water bowl on the floor in front of a hen just in case she needed a drink, and a bunch of tiny chicks came dashing out and jumped in the cold water! I bet they needed extra time in the oven after that. Chickens and chicks love their water. I'm afraid some of them will jump in the stock tanks and drown so I'm putting out shallow bowls around the barn. Unfortunately they get covered with hay from the big animals and scratching hens requiring cleaning out twice a day. It's hard to keep up with it, but I love my chickens and they eat FLIES like crazy. Good girls! When I pulled in from work I spied little Barack Obama standing in the same place near the rams' fence as he was in this morning. I thought, uh-oh, he's stuck. Mia and I couldn't catch him when she was helping me clip the goats last weekend. Long mohair is deadly around the fields as goats can get caught on barbed wire, brambles, and branches. If I don't hear them calling they are in trouble...and we don't want any more trouble than we already have here on Maggie's Troublesome Farm.