Say a prayer ya'll....Today my hubby and daughter went down to the feed store and bought 2 Cuckoo marans, 2 Easter eggers, and 2 Silver Wyandottes day old chicks. When I got home from work late this evening we took pictures of them by breed pairs ( we hope we got them seperated right) and then snuck out to the coop to exchange the 3 golfballs with 6 chicks. We hope Broody Mama can't count! It didn't help we got tickled while sneaking into the coop, we were imagining the conversation in the morning when everybody woke up....OMG Gertrude! Look Mama had 3 sets of identical twins by seperate Daddys!
Then I quipped " this is like the Tooth fairy...but different!"
We hung out in the dark ( still haven't installed yard lights) for about 5 minutes , but didn't hear a peep (no pun intended). so I snuck back in a shone the flashlight over the nest, Mama looked like she was tucking them in.....yeah!
We started back to the house and as we passed the smaller coop with the 5 week old chicks ( aka the toddlers) my hubby shone the light in the run and noticed they were huddled in the corner of the run! Great! So I go in the run and and start fussing at them about being outside after dark, then I open the human door to the coop....OMG! There was a HUGE snake in the coop! And it had obviously consumed one of my chicks!
I start screaming ( did I mention I'm terrified of snakes), the chicks start hollering,and my husbands hollering at me to keep the flashlight on the snake! After what seemed like an eternity of chaos the snake is dead and the chicks closed back up in the coop, both doors closed this time! We lost one of our Buff Orphington chicks. With all the racket we were making in the little coop apparently it did not disturb the big coop, I went back and checked on Broody Mama and she had everybody tucked in and she looked like she was asleep! Please Lord let this adoption work!
Here's the pictures of the new babies!
#1Silver Wyndottes?
#2 Cuckoo Marans?
#3 Easter Eggers?
btw: hubby just did a google search, looks like the snake was a rat snake. We've lived here 13 years and it's the first snake we've seen!
We hung out in the dark ( still haven't installed yard lights) for about 5 minutes , but didn't hear a peep (no pun intended). so I snuck back in a shone the flashlight over the nest, Mama looked like she was tucking them in.....yeah!
We started back to the house and as we passed the smaller coop with the 5 week old chicks ( aka the toddlers) my hubby shone the light in the run and noticed they were huddled in the corner of the run! Great! So I go in the run and and start fussing at them about being outside after dark, then I open the human door to the coop....OMG! There was a HUGE snake in the coop! And it had obviously consumed one of my chicks!
Here's the pictures of the new babies!
#1Silver Wyndottes?
#2 Cuckoo Marans?
#3 Easter Eggers?
btw: hubby just did a google search, looks like the snake was a rat snake. We've lived here 13 years and it's the first snake we've seen!
