Yesterday did not go as planned. At all. I had planned to do some mowing, fill the kids’ garden beds and my newer herb tower with soil, and clean the house, as it is rather wretchedly dirty at the moment. It rained on the weekend, you see, so the dog tracked in much dirt, no matter that we wipe her paws.

I did indeed mow.

While I mowed, the kids filled their own garden beds (with the requisite bickering and arguing over who gets which brand of soil).

But when I went in to begin cleaning, things took an unexpected turn.

As you know, we have chickens. 6 hens, 1 rooster, to be precise. But all of our hens are quite elderlu now. I think the youngest is 4, and most of them are 6. They do still lay, but not as frequently as they once did. Last year, two of the hens tried repeatedly to hatch a brood, with 0% success. Our rooster Chocobo was infertile, it would appear. He was also slightly psychotic, so this past December we ate him and replaced him with a MUCH younger rooster. SkyFalling is a bit of a butthead in terms of aggression, but infertile he is NOT.

I heard what sounded like a chick, screeching very loudly. I quickly went in to the barn and saw a small grey chick scrambling about the floor of the pen, with SkyFalling hot on its heels, trying to eat it. (Chickens are pretty dang savage). I grabbed up the broom, opened the pen and snatched up the baby bird. I was quite surprised, because while two of our hens have indeed been sitting nests, they have also left said nests unattended for many hours at a time. I assumed none of the eggs were viable and simply hadn’t gotten around to disposing of them, yet. But here was a surprise chick.

It had minor wounds on both feet, but nothing dreadfully serious. All the same, I wasnt willing to return it to the pen to be attacked again. So, now I had a problem. What does one do with ONE essentially orphaned chick? I don’t have electricity here. I cannot run a heat lamp or electric brooder plate.

For the next several hours, I took the place of brood-mama, with a chick tucked (wrapped in a piece of rag) into my bra. Warmest place I could find to put it, but not exactly conducive to getting work done.

I squirreled about in my mind for “what do we do now?”, and eventually ended up calling husband to come home at lunchtime so we could finish cutting the door through the wall to the outside run, so we could then remove the rooster to the outside pen for a few hours and buy ourselves some time. When we put him out in the run, the dog went BALLISTIC, and I had to wreste a 110lb Rottweiler onto her tie-out line so she coudn’t decide to have chicken for supper. So fun.

Once husband finished the hole, and the kiddos finished lunch, I drove him back to work, and then headed to the feedstore for a load of bedding shavings so we could clean the pen, now that the birds could go outside. It’s been a long time since it was fully cleaned, and was getting rather stinky in there, anyway. Little chick, I tucked into a securely-covered bucket with bedding and food and wee bit of water, in an area that could get sunlight for warmth.

We did the errands, picked husbamd back up from work, headed home and found out that the rooster had flown the fence and was loose in the yard. This is my literal nightmare, but he seemed more interested in looking around than challenging humans for territory. We also found that the chicknhad managed to soak itself in its water dish, get chilled, and was barely clinging to life. Cold, limp, and listless. I wrapped it up agaim in a bit of rag and popped it back into my bra. Life or death depends on getting it warmed up again, as quicky as possible.

While I played brooder hen, heated water and started supper (one-handed), husband strapped on his respirator and began shovelling out the chicken pen. This, of course, upset the broody mamas and they ran back and forth over their nests instead of sitting on them. Soon, he brought me a second chick to keep warm, barely out of the egg, still wet and clumsy. Now I had TWO occupants of my bra. The first was reviving well, peeping and cheeping and trying to bumble around. The second immediately burrowed under the first and stayed there.

He finished putting down new chips, washed up, we had supper (me still with small birds down my front), and considered what to do next. I couldnt SLEEP cuddling birds – not without great risk of them dying – and they wouldn’t likely survive the night in the bucket. The best-case scenario for them would be if mama would take them back. But before we could try that, the mamas would need to be fenced off from the rest of the birds so SkyFalling couldn’t attack the chicks again. A quick search turned up some plastic wire and enough scrap wood to build a wee cage across in front of them.

We hastily erected the fence and then brought the chicks to try to get them back under mama. She was extremely upset and just trampled them for a minute or two, but she finally settled down and let them climb back under her. I think I was hearing peeping from under mama #2 as well, but we didnt disturb her to check.

Not at all the way we planned the day, but if we’re blessed, and the hens do as they should, we will have a refreshment of our flock this year, without the need for incubator and brooder late and a stinky box of house chicks. A blessing indeed.