A hen from Dan Kramer's farm came over to the horse barn and made a nest in the last few bales of hay left after winter. One day I noticed about a dozen white "store" eggs [my family will get that one] laying on the hay and had no idea who had put them there. The next time I came the hen was sitting on the eggs and I learned they were actually hers.
A few days later she left the nest to eat and I counted 17 eggs in that nest. That's some serious eggs there!
On Friday Dan came over while I was in the barn working and asked me to watch the eggs while he was away for the weekend. He was expecting them to hatch and wanted the hen and chicks to be taken over to a safe place at his farm so cats and chicken hawks wouldn't get them. Do we have chicken hawks here? Think I'll Google that!
What was most alarming were his instructions of how to carefully lift the hen off the nest keeping the chicks underneath her while placing them all together in a bucket for transportation.
Ok, did he really think I was capable of doing that? Has he not heard the stories about me and moths...or of the little birds that fly uninvited into my house?
Thankfully they waited till he was back home to hatch, and if you look very closely at her back feathers you can see one of the newborn chicks peaking out. So cute! Of the 17 eggs sixteen survived and were taken in a bucket back to Dan's house - but not by me.
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