Musings of a Swag Chick: Oh it’s getting warm around here (May 24th)

The weather is getting more and more beautiful by the day. The sun is shining the birds are chirping, buds are coming out and it is getting warmer. The garden is coming along. We got the fence up and some of the beds tilled.

The lilacs are almost in full bloom. You can smell them everywhere mixed in with the scent of apple blossoms. Last night Jeter was sitting in the window near the lilac bush and when he came in to sit with us on the couch he smelled like lilacs.

And of course every May, Sugar decides she wants to have babies (or bo bos as we call them around here). So we let her sit on some golf balls for about 3 weeks and we bought 4 Rhode Island Red chicks at Agway. We got them yesterday morning and they spent the day in the office with me, much to the chagrin of Jeter who was not allowed in.

We went out around 8 last night when the big chicks went to bed and tossed the babies under Sugar. Just like last year, she thought she hatched them. She took to them right away. One of the babies kept poking her in the eye and pulling her comb. These chicks are about a day or 2 older than her first batch so they were a little more rambunctious and didn’t want to go to bed so Jimmy had to reach in and lift Sugar a little and shove them under so they would go to sleep. We checked on them a couple of times before bed and they seemed just fine. This morning I went to check and I had 5 faces staring at me from the nest box. I had to get them all moved to the brooding area so I had to fast-grab Sugar before she could attack me and get her moved. Of course I knocked one of the chicks out and to the floor. I scooped up all the babies and moved them to Sugar’s new brooding area. She will stay with them there until they are a bit older so the big chicks don’t kill and eat them. Which they will do. Chickens are mean little animals. So the babies names are Titleist, Hogan, Butterfly and Noodle. Everyone asks me about the big kids too so here are their pictures. They posed the other day for the first time. If you think it is hard to take pictures of children, try taking pictures of chickens.