Category: agrarianism (Page 16 of 21)

The Lord has continued to be gracious in granting us broody hens, and here is the next hatching! We believe she hatched out 8 and we lost one early, but the other 7 are still going strong!

Here is a video of them a few weeks ago, and from a few days ago, in the chicken pen area where I moved them, and where the 2nd and 3rd group are as well:

We are always very grateful to God for His granting continued hatchings and healthy chickens!

— David

About a day after the hen from the second batch of chicks went broody, another hen, one of our Game Hen breed I believe, went broody as well, in a garbage can in the barn, if I remember correctly. And so, we moved her into the piano room with a set of eggs under her; and by God’s graces, a day after the other hen hatched out her chicks, this one did too! Nine in all, and eight are still going strong!

Here are a couple of pictures:

And below is their video. There was one chick hatched out that was cripple — it couldn’t stand up and would just lay on its side, moving its legs almost swimmingly, trying to stand up. If you got it standing, it would just fall over. I tried working with it, feeding it to try to keep it alive, making a runway for it to try to learn to walk. I called it Tiny, because it was such a small little thing:

And for a while I thought it might get it — it would walk along, eat the food I had laid down in the trough, even preen a few times, and seemed to be getting better with its balance; but in the end, sadly, about a week after hatching, it died.

Still, one thing that was interesting to me was that I would place it in its runway, come back later, and it would have crawled its way out, and slide-crawled itself through the 1-inch chicken wire around the cage area, I assume to try to get to its mommy. This happened at least twice. It was an inspiration in dedication to me, and led me to think and then pray that we strive after the Lord Christ Jesus the same way. May we be able to hide under His wings, and may He maybe grant a sense of that (see these several Psalms references).

Although I wasn’t able to capture those times with Tiny, you can still see it in this video:

We are once again very grateful to the Lord for granting us the continuation of the flock, and we pray He always glorifies Himself through these things, including in His sovereign giving and taking of anything, in accordance with His will.

— David

As I mentioned in our blog post about the first chicks that the Lord granted us in 2014 ¹, we had another hen go broody, an Australorp, which we showed in our mini chicken tractor, and by God graciousness, He granted that she hatch out a bunch o’ chicks! Out of 13 eggs, 11 hatched out, and all 11 are still rolling along just great, it appears!

Here are a few pictures:

And their video:

As always, we are so very grateful to the Lord for His granting of these provisions. We’ve had to butcher some more roosters recently to get the rooster-hen ratio better, and it is humbling and joyful to be eating the food the Lord has directly provided! We are very thankful.

— David

¹ P.S. You’ll have to forgive me, as in the previous post I said one of our Australorps was the mother of those first hatchlings, and that wasn’t correct — I’ve corrected it since.

A couple to a few months ago, one of our hens went broody, we put some eggs under her, and the Lord graciously granted our first chicks of 2014! I’ve been lagging in getting this blog post done and out, as you can see, since they are about half way to being full grown. But, we wanted to acknowledge and thank God in His provisions of granting additions to the flock!

The broody hen hatched out three, and the three have made it very well, and here they are, with their mama. It looks like they are all hens too, and all Australorps as well, which is a nice bonus gift, since the Australorps are also great brooders:

And here is a little video of them:

Also, we’ve had another couple of hens go broody just a few days ago. Here’s one in the mini chicken tractor:

And the other in the piano room, although she started in a garbage can in the barn 🙂 :

As always, we are so very thankful to the Lord for granting any chicks and continuance of food provisions; and we are grateful for Him showing His graces and mercies in these ways.

— David