Chicken hen with keets

[red horse ranch]

Mama already loves her babies.

I made a temporary playpen just to get them out of the best box, going to work on something more elaborate today.

Beautiful little keets. So glad she accepted them!

 

[Tuhmu]

So far we've made it to day three, even though I'm convinced that they are felons trapped in little fuzz-butt bodies. On thursday we had a mass, pre-meditated "prison" breakout. They found a nice little hole in the corner of the play pen and escaped! Mama hen was in hysterics, as was I when I got home.

Most were hanging out just on the outside of the play pen, but five of them were just missing. So I did a search of the immediate vicinity and found two of them, who were quite sad, in a patch of weeds. The other three were just nowhere to be found though.

Towards the end of the evening, I was searching the very limits of the yard and found the three remaining little stinkers on the road. They were all together, making a break for it off the property. No care in the world, just strolling along, just like it was completely natural for 4 day? old chicks to be out by themselves.

Everyone was recovered and delivered back to the warden (mama hen), and seemed content to just go to sleep. But the funny thing is, the next morning when I moved them back out there (I keep them in a pet carrier in the hen house over night), they all burst out of the carrier and made a run for where the (now-patched up) hole was.

Towards the end of the evening though, they seemed to accept their fate and are sticking close to mama and are acting like she's their mama now.

And here I thought having to outsmart goats was challenging......