As Lucio, the ten month old senior male here, has simmered down the past four days, I've been able to pay a bit more attention to the broody mums and their chicks. He has introduced himself to the chicks and while not the fatherly type-- at least not yet -- he does seem more focused on watching the sky for aerial predators and giving warnings than chasing the Food Lady.
There are two mums. Each has two chicks.
It's interesting to see how the different personalities of the mums are reflected in their mothering styles. Of course, they do all the same species-relevant things for the chicks: warm them, teach them, show them how to find food, get under cover, and stay out of the way of their elders. But with quirks unique to the mum's character too.
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This is Dusty. She is only 11 months old herself. This is her first brood and she's doing a capital job. Dusty is the most human friendly chicken I have right now. Here she is standing right outside the gate to the kitchen wondering if I have snacks.
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Her chicks are 13 days old and follow mum's amiable ways.
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Tina, the senior hen at 2+ years, is much more stand-offish. She's not nervous or skittish, just more feral. Her chicks are 12 days old. She takes them directly into the forest for shelter and forage. I rarely see them. I leave them food as close as I can get to them and she waits until I leave before calling the chicks to it. When she does bring them closer and I move to snap a shot, she shoos them away.
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This is the more the distance I usually see them maintaining.
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The two mums have met several times with their broods and there's been no fighting. You can see them sitting close to each other in this photo above. This is in contrast to the last time there were two mums with chicks (Tina and Patucha) and they were a few melees when they both brought their chicks out. I attribute the peace to a few possible reasons: Tina is more confident in her seniority and this is her second brood.
Dusty is the most agreeable and low-key hen I've ever had.
More importantly probably, they are housed separately with their broody apartments in coops 80 meters apart so there's no territorial dispute.
A note on the chicks diets, which is not conventional. Re
@Perris article on homemade feed many of you have read:
I bought a small bag of the starter chick pellets (not medicated) because they hatched during a busy week for me and I wasn't sure what else to feed them. I fed them the starter stuff for the first 4-5 days, but dampened it with liquid from the fermented feed I make for the juvies and adults. I also gave them scrambled egg and they were out foraging by day 4 after hatching.
I don't have a mealworm farm. Mealworms and all sorts of other small wiggly things congregate in here under chopped banana trunks, around the compost bins etc. The chickens have access to these areas all day every day. I think I do enough for this gaggle of raptors without serving them what they can easily get for themselves.
Anyway, once I had seen the chicks were eating all sorts of things the mum's produced in forage, I started adding in some soft boiled rice, crumbled cornbread (no sugar), and oatmeal to their diet. The interesting thing to observe was how much more excitedly the mums clucked "come n get it" when I gave them something that wasn't the store bought crumble. I mean, they eat that stuff, but not with the same gusto.
The other day I bought some corn ground a bit finer than the usual I put in the adult feed, and some more finely milled oats and pounded barley along with whole wheat berries (I found a local source) and fermented it all. The chicks love it. They left the wheat berries the first two days, but now they "process" them by pecking and mashing against some gravel until they can extract the germ -- after watching mum do it first.
The chicks seem perfectly healthy, they are bright eyed, active, well formed and feathering well. Normal poop, no diarrhea, no signs of coccidiosis or anything like that, and in a rainforest, the soil is almost always wet.
It kind of reminds me of how my own mom didn't give me pre-proccessed "baby food" -- she just mashed up whatever she made for dinner. And I grew up eating and liking a much wider variety of foods than kids who are Gerber's. Amazing how living things can do so much more than slurp up bland pre-proccessed "food."
. They should try it on the NHS 
