Miss Izzie and Her Babies

Izzie teaches her 5 day old chicks to eat scrambled eggs-their first treat. I thought I chopped them up small enough, but she breaks them into smaller pieces with her beak and sprinkles them on the ground. Some things only a mother can do.

Izzie's chicks were born one week after Phoebe's. She hatched six of seven eggs-five Black Copper Marans and one Olive Egger (EExMarans). We should have a multi-colored basket of eggs in about six months. Izzie and her babies live in the pen next to BFF Phoebe and her brood.

I was out in the yard when they were two days old when I heard a chick peeping in distress. Seems the hens had been scratching along the boards between the pens and dug a tunnel big enough for two of Phoebes chicks to join the two-day olds, and one of Izzie's newborns was chirping her little head off as she found herself in the midst of the "big kids". Izzie was very distressed, but Phoebe just eyed the baby with amusement as if to say, "hey, it's not my kid".

The families were reunited and the tunnel filled in. We buried the wire around the perimeter of the pens to keep out predators, but not between the pens; forgetting that the chickens are pretty good diggers themselves.