We never did anything about our murderous hen because I didn't want to think about it, and there's always plenty of other stuff on the farm to catch our attention.  Then, on Wednesday afternoon, I heard peeping from her coop again.  I wandered over and...chick!  Living chick!  Hatched and dried and playing nice with Mama!

So, I'm revising history.  Perhaps that first dead chick wasn't quite strong enough to make it out of its shell, as sometimes happens.  Maybe Mama tried to help, but the chick died anyway, and the extra pecking was just pecking at a dead thing in her nest.

Maybe Wednesday's chick didn't hatch on day 21 as it should have because of temperature inconsistencies.  We got our eggs from a friend who had been storing them at room temperature for a couple of days.  Maybe it took the eggs a few days after getting under our broody hen to warm back up to incubation temperatures.  Maybe even more chicks are due?

One of Mark's favorite phrases in relation to me is "ye of little faith."  And...I guess he's right!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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