Just wanted to say that I checked out your pics! Oh so cute! Just curious, how long was your hen setting before your chicks came? We have a little hen named Button, who doesn't lay anymore - but every spring is bound and determined to have her some babies!
My Mom and Dad kept her for a while last year when we were redoing our pens and my Daddy would laugh and say that Button laid phantom eggs. She would get up in the nest and sit for a while and then come off just a cackling - and Mama would always go check to see if she had laid an egg - but there would not be one.
She went broody and we let her set on some eggs - in fact she started setting over at Mama's and we transported her and her nest back over to our place in the back of the van and she just set right there - not worried about anything. I fixed her up in the nesting box in our new coop and she just kept right on setting. It was too funny.
This year, I let her set on 6 eggs and all hatched but 2. I have some really cute pics of her sitting on the roost with her half grown babies still sitting under her wings - I will try to post those soon. I am not sure the life span of a chicken - but we have had Button about 6 years, and she was grown when we got her. She use to lay a little white egg - but she has not laid in about 3 years. She is our favorite chicken ever!
Less than a week old as of today and they are already roosting /melt
