"Where is my Mommy?"

My last post spoke of a hen setting eggs, again;  This setting hen abandoned her chicks and only one survived.  We have nicknamed it the teenager.  Several months later, this setting hen hatched out 10 more chicks taking care of them faithfully and courageously.  She is a fury that I don't want to cross.

Our egg production was down during the very hot spells, 100+ temperature.  Some of the hens went broody meaning they wanted to set the nests and not lay eggs; some I suspected had been laying in out of the way places.  One of those hot days, I was walking to the barn and saw a hen sitting on the concrete, and thought, "Your laying one of my eggs out here on the concrete; why don't you lay in the nests."  Then she got up and eight chicks ran out from under her.  "Well, there are my eggs walking,"  I said to myself.

Sadly though we realized that she had disappeared when we noticed one of her chicks running around frantically, chirping, saying, "Where is my mommy?  Where is my mommy?"  He would chase after the hens that looked like his mommy, and they would take a look and run, saying, "Go a way."  I believe that  chirping chick ran the equivalent of several treks from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north to south each day, back and forth, back and forth, chirp, chirp, chirp, never stopping.  We assumed a fox got the hen and the chicks followed her.

A few days later, I noticed that my setting hen had a very small chick with her; I counted and now she had 11 chicks.  One of the missing hen's chicks had just snuck in with this setting hen and acted like he belonged there, and the hen had accepted him.  More often than not, a hen will not allow a strange chick in with her chicks, so we counted this a miracle.  We caught the chipring chick and put it with the 11 chicks, and the setting hen didn't object; the chick did.  It stood tall, looked around and started running and chirping, "I don't like this mommy.  Where is my mommy?"  This chirping and running went on for several days.  My son's dog must have gotten tired of the chirping because she had caught the chick and was carrying it away when we stopped her.  The chick was a little shaken, but OK.

When I was shutting the chickens up that night, I heard the chick chirping in the hoop house.  It was dark so I thought it had found its way to the hoop house while chasing one of the hens.  But when I shined my light on the chirping, there the chick was cuddled up under my oldest hen.  She was on the ground;  to be safe at night, chickens roost up as high as they can get.  This was a real sacrifice for this old hen.  Our little chick had found a mommy.