I’ve been wanting to post pics of Naruto and her babies. Babies are five days old, and I had expected her to have them out before now. Today she stopped acting like she was brooding and started freaking out instead. My guess is that she wanted out but was afraid that the babies would be hurt by our boisterous flock, warring instincts! I’ve kept the door to her nest closed since she was acting so private, but I opened it and tried to coax her out. Nope! Not trusting of me, and when the babies acted interested, she’d peck them until they hid at the back, then peck them some more. I can totally see how hens turn lethal to their babies... She is not the gentle mom that 9 Ball was, though her situation is a lot more stressful with so much traffic around her... I changed food and water but she was pacing and dumped everything. She left the nest for a minute to run crazily around the run, but came back when her chicks called her, and I closed the nest door again. Then 9 Ball came over and challenged her, so they fence fought for awhile while the babies cowered! Whoa! 9 Ball is third from the bottom in rank and Naruto is No 1! Everyone was all up in arms today! I decided to leave the nest door open so Naruto could get out and fight her challengers away from the chicks, and when I came back, Naruto finally had her chicks out in the coop! She’s very nervous and more pecky than I’d like with the chicks, but holding it together! I got a few poor pics.
In other news, 9 Ball laid her first egg in 2.5 months! And... it reminded me why we were trying to add new BCM to the flock with darker egg laying genes. After two months off, I t’s lighter in color than all 12 of the BCM eggs that we tried to hatch!
I guess that was the signal that her 6 week old chicks are on their own as she kept chasing them away. Here she is with a wheelbarrow load of weeds that we brought in to try to get our agitated flock focused on something else. This pile was hers! Her chicks were chased off right after this. It will be interesting to see what happens at roost time tonight, and those cockerels are on borrowed time. Sad to see her motherhood go but happy to have her back in the laying flock!
