Four Little Chicks!

After three suspenseful weeks Stella and Dragon gave birth to four little chicks a week ago. I had bought a dozen fertilised eggs from the Hunter Valley and out of the dozen four survived to the hatching stage. It is hard to know exactly what breeds they are as they are all cross breeds but I will post photos on the Backyard Poultry forum when they get a bit bigger to see if anyone can tell me what they are. The boys are quite taken with the chicks, especially Oliver, who seems to like to spend time watching them. He has also set himself the task of collecting the eggs from the chicken coop each morning and carries them ever so gently into the kitchen. This morning Oliver and I were sitting on the grass talking about the baby chickens. I explained that when they grew bigger some of them might lay eggs for us. He asked if any of them would lay chocolate eggs with paper on them! He is very partial to chocolate!!

Here is Dragon with her little yellow chick at one day of age.

This is Stella with her three little mottled grey, fawn and white chicks. She is very much the doting mother. I have discovered that she particularly likes panir which is a curd cheese I made this week. She very carefully pecked off pieces of it and laid them in front of her chicks to eat.

The chicks are developing very quickly. I am interested to notice that already after only one week they are developing more mature wing feathers. I will update their photos this week.