The Hen in the Loft

At work on Thursday, I got a call from Benjamin, which is odd because we normally talk after I'm off. He was all excited.  He told me that he and Russ had gone out to the barn to feed and heard a chirping noise coming from up in the loft.  When he climbed up the ladder, he spotted an Aracauna hen sitting on a nest of eggs. We had not found this hiding place.  He gently poked her with a stick and a little chick popped out from beneath her.

Sally the Aracauna in her hiding spot

In all of our years of having chickens, we've never had a broody hen sit on eggs and hatch them.  Now we've collected some from their nests and incubated them in our incubator, but the hens have never hatched them - until now.  It is a pretty exciting time for us.  Sally is very protective of her chick.  You can see her scurrying away with her yellowish chick following closely behind her.

Sally and her baby

When she got up I snapped a photo of her nest.  She has 5 remaining eggs on her nest, but something is not smelling good up there.  We shall wait a few days and see what happens.  They are all her eggs as they are blue eggs.  Aracaunas lay blue and green colored eggs.

The remaining eggs on the nest

Our plan is to wait until Saturday morning and move the hen, her chick, and her nest of unhatched eggs to a small chicken coop where she'll be out of danger.  There are rats in the barn and they will kill baby chicks. Also the loft is a long way up in the air, which translates to a long fall.  The hen can fly, but if the chick fell, it could get hurt.  

Momma and baby chick

I hate to report that the picture above that was taken Friday afternoon late was the last that we've seen of the chick.  When Benjamin and I went out this morning to move Momma and baby bird and her remaining eggs to the coop, Sally was sitting on her nest.  I picked her up to hand her to Benjamin and there was no baby chick under her!  I looked around but could not find the chick.

Benjamin is pretty disappointed.  I explained that things like this happen and we move forward - learning a lesson, perhaps, that next time we move them as soon as we see baby chicks.  Sometimes farm life is cruel, teaching you lessons about life AND death.  This afternoon Sally was sitting on her remaining eggs and we'll check again in the morning.  We also set 3 more rat traps to catch those predators. Makes me sad now that I killed the rat snake the other day.  Oh well.  Sally will get over the loss of her chick and so will we.