Well, we lost a little one today. One of our baby chicks just couldn’t hang in there. Actually, she was questionable from the beginning: smaller than the rest, fragile, and didn’t huddle with the others. It took us a day or so to figure out that one of her problems was that she couldn’t see. She seemed to find food and water, but after two weeks, it just wasn’t meant to be. It was very sad to discover her laying still and unmoving, but I had already worried about her life in the coop, unable to freely roam. With a cat living on the farm keeping a close eye on all aspects of our days and nights, and a pair of hawks nesting in the trees above, this little chick would never have been able to safely scratch and dig with the others. So I witnessed another of Nature’s lessons: only the strongest survive – in the coop AND in the garden.
On a happier note, the rest of the chicks are doing well. Their wing feathers are coming in and they are starting to look more like what their adult coloring will look like. We are allowing them to come out of the chick house on warm days to explore. They think they are so big!