One day when I was looking for something, I stood on a stool and found that Ms. Chicken had been laying eggs up on that shelf. Some had even rolled down and fell on the breaker box. To keep the eggs from rolling, I put hay up there. I didn't collect or toss the eggs because they felt warm and I didn't know how far in she was with them. And chicks on a shelf? I'd just cross that bridge when I got to it.
Yesterday I heard a ruckus and figured it was just the usual chicken antics, but I went outside to see what was going on, and found one little chick peeping around on the shop floor. I scooped it up and popped it back up on the shelf while mother hen threatened to flog me. I got to watching her and saw that there were three peepers up there, cute as can be.
It probably seems like I should get them all down and put them in a safe place, but I tell you what. Last year when I found chicks, I immediately put them in a pen that we raised the original bunch in, with a dog carrier for a nest area. The baby chicks couldn't make the jump up to the lip of the carrier, so I put a piece of wood there for them to jump up on; there were two mother hens, so I put them together, and one pecked a hole in the other one's chick's head; the chicks got out of the pens through the holes in the chicken wire (wonder why they call it that), etc., etc. Anyway, after a myriad of issues, the chicks were finally big enough that they were roosting with the other chickens. Then one morning after I opened the pen, I went back out there for some reason, and something had eaten every single one of them.
So this year, I'm just going to let mama hen be the chicken expert. If she wants here babies on a shelf, so be it. I'm not going to put a lot of work into killing them, this time. I'll just keep picking them up from the shop floor and tossing them back in the nest.
Great story!
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