While I was out of town for Thanksgiving, one of my pullets apparently had a well hidden nest. My husband, who stays home with the animals, discovered a lone chick huddled next to a dead sibling screaming her head off. He brought her in and warmed her up, fed and watered her, and then went out to listen for more chicks. He didn't find any, and he didn't know how to find the mom. Once I got home later that day, I suspected that I knew the only place a nest could do well after the snow we had two weeks ago, and so I checked the doghouse. Lo and behold, a nest full of dead Marans chicks, blues and blacks, very sad to discover. The poor pullet had either been bullied off her nest when the others heard her babies( I saw evidence of a massacre) or she got off the nest and only two went with her since she's only 8 months old and is too young for babies. There was a total of 12 dead. I located the mother by tucking in the little pullet into my warm shirt, and her soft cheeping let me know who mom was when the pullet stood patiently by my feet and accepting back her baby. I worked fast and made her a brooder box using a truck topper propped on haybales on three sides and an old storm door on the east southeast side ( winter winds here are usually from the north and west) and the survivor and her mother are doing well. I will get some pics when I am out there and I think of it again, but I've got one little purebred pullet with a lot of fire in her belly and a spirit of survival. Her mom has very excellent silver hackles, pure and well marked, and handsome may be her sire based on the mix of blues and blacks dead in the nest, and the mother being a black birchen, but we will see, it could be one of several potential parents. Heck, it might be a different mother! Still, I really like her so far. I'm about as certain as I can be that the chick is a girl, her head just screams female to me.
