Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

And here they all are: our first chicks of. One of the eggs has still not hatched (and probably won't now) but the other four have and as you can see we have two very cute yellow bundles of fluff and two adorable black ones. Although this lovely golden bantam hatched these eggs, she did not lay all of them so these four probably all have different mothers (and possibly fathers too) but as far as the bantam is concerned they are all hers!! When we went to pick up the chicks, we got a small warning peck from her which did not hurt at all but was enough for us to know that she is taking her 'mum' role very seriously!! And a good thing too!! It is now her job to look after these chicks, to teach them how to eat and drink and to protect them from danger. She also has to keep them warm by encouraging them to snuggle in underneath her.
At this early stage the chicks spend a fair amount of time under mum but this gets less and less at their feathers grow and they are able to start keeping themselves warm. We will keep them all indoors for a few days - the weather is awful again at the moment - but as soon as we can we will give them a quiet outside area of their own. Here the chicks will learn how to scratch around in the soil and find bits to eat as well as enjoying exploring their new environment. By around six weeks, they may start to fend for themselves a bit more but that will depend on 'mum'. Some chickens stay with their chicks for a few weeks only, others for a few months...
We don't know how good a mum this bantam will be but we do know we may need to keep a little bit of an eye on her. Three days before the chicks hatched she left the eggs as usual to pop out for her usual food, drink and poo break BUT she appeared to get confused as several hours later we found her back in the main poultry area sitting on a single egg in a nestbox there. We took her back to her own eggs in the barn (now a trifle cold) only for her to do exactly the same thing the following day. Fortunately, growing eggs 'can' be left for a few hours without the chicks dying of the cold but these had been left quite a long time and for the one that has not yet hatched, it may be that it was too long and it died in the shell. Bless her: let's hope she does not leave her chicks for a few hours in the same way: unfortunately unless it was very warm, they may NOT survive being left for a few hours at such a young age as they would get too cold!