The first momma Coco has taken her chicks outside for the first time and the older chickens don't seem to mind or bother them now that the curiosity has passed. Only 1 hen has pecked a chick that kept following her and it appeared to me she was gentle about it like hey I'm not your mom and it turned and followed the rest of the chicks. Seeing how rough they have been with each other when establishing the pecking order I was a worried they'd be rough with the babies too so I'm glad they are mingling well. One chick had pasty butt and Coco was trying to clean it without much luck so I cleaned it off. Some of the chick are already trying to dig in the dirt and wood shavings mimicking mom but as hard as they tried kicked their little feet nothing moved under them and it was the cutest and funniest thing to watch. They are swapping chicks too, yesterday one had 4 and today the other has 5 and they don't seem to care who has who so that's interesting. 2 are Brahma mixes, 1 blue orpington mix, and the other 7 are either speckled sussex or Wyandotte mixes, hard to tell which is which since they all have the chipmunk stripes with different shades of brown and mahogany. And Coco raided the other 2 hens nests and took the egg shells that were under them and ate them with the babies lol is this to deter predators that could be attracted to the smell of blood in the shells? The 2 chicks that hatched today share my birthday too, today was supposed to be hatch but most of them decided to come early. I'm just glad they all made it happy and healthy.
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