A Bucket of Chicks 🐣 🪣

This week, we have a story about one of the latest odd nests we’ve found around the farm– a hen who hid her nest in a secret goat feeding bucket – and the adorable chicks that recently joined us as a result. 

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Transcript

Transcript

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Foggy Oak Farm, Foggy Oak Farm, Come on down to, Foggy Oak Farm!

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Hi friends, welcome to Foggy Oak fairy tales.

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Each week we'll bring you a new story.

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Some weeks we'll share a story based on what's been happening on our real life foggy Oak farm, where we have all sorts of animals and adventures.

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Other weeks, we'll use our imaginations and create new adventures together.

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I'm so glad you're here.

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This week we have a story about one of the latest odd nests we found around the farm, a hen who hid her nest in a secret goat feeding bucket, and the chicks that recently joined us as a result.

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Last week I was preparing to go back to the family farm in Ohio, where my mother and her siblings grew up and which is now the home of my aunt, uncle and their family.

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We had a sick sheep, so I've been spending a lot of time in the barn tending to him and trying to get him well enough for me to leave.

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And one day, as I was leaving.

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After caring for him, I could have sworn I heard the sound of peeping chicks and the clucking of a mother hen.

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Sort of muffled, like.

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We have a lot of wild songbirds who are also raising their own babies, and the trees around the farm right now, so sometimes I can't be certain I had, after all, been on a thorough search.

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Of the farm quite recently to try and uncover any new nests that have cropped up.

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I know I currently have a hen sitting in our chick breeder in the garage on 10 or so eggs, but in all my searching I hadn't found any others.

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So I stopped and listened.

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I heard followed by the of what I thought was a mother hen.

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I walked around the barn and if my ears could have moved to swivel around like a dog's, they would have. I was straining with all my might to hear, and suddenly I heard a song.

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Bird calling to her babies in the tree above my head.

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Hmm, I must have just heard that, I thought, shrugging.

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I checked one more nest that I've been keeping an eye on just to be sure.

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A nest not in an odd place, just in the chicken coop.

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But the odd thing about it is it's being shared by a chicken hen and a duck hen.

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With the hot weather we've been having lately, they were both irritable.

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The chicken hen was puffed up and grumpy sitting on top of the duck and both pecked and bit at me fiercely.

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When I gently lifted them up to take a.

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Look at their eggs.

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No babies there and no more sounds of anything like chicks other than the older chick calls I could hear from one of the rolling pens.

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None anywhere else in the barn, as far as I could tell.

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Either the troughs were empty, no one was lurking behind the wood pile.

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Nope, it had to have just been that songbird.

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And her babies?

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Or maybe the further away older chicks in the rolling pen?

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I'm just making up babies at this point, I muttered to myself as I went back to the house to rinse off after taking care.

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Of the sheep.

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By the time my family got home for the day, I had completely forgotten about the mysterious sounds.

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If you're currently thinking that I was missing something, you'd be correct.

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We'd made it to Saturday by the next morning and we spent the day doing chores around the house and farm.

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I had gone out to feed the chickens there dinner and was checking on the sick sheep when I was absolutely certain that I heard baby chick.

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I had just craned my head over the sheep's stall door, preparing to open it and go in with the sheep when I saw them there just outside the stall in the barnyard was a mother hen and at least two fluffy brand new babies the size of cotton balls.

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I had missed them.

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The babies called to their mother.

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The mother called and then finding something in the grass, she thought they'd like.

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She picked up her call to indicate there was something they should pack, then showing them herself by pretend pecking at the grass where she wanted them to hunt.

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She called them.

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More chicks appeared from the long grass around her, running to her call.

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I couldn't tell exactly how many there were.

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It looked like more than five, but they were moving around too much to be sure there were downy little yellow chicks.

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Some of them, such a pale yellow that they looked almost white, and I saw two babies that were all black except for little white Tufts of feathers on their tiny breasts.

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Adorable and clearly brand new.

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I knew this mother Audrey was.

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Protective hens vary in their willingness to let you get close and handle their babies, one mother earlier this summer was happy to let me check the eggs and babies under her whenever I wanted.

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She'd squawk a bit in warning, saying be careful by going.

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But had never once even tried to pack me.

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Audrey, on the other hand? Well, she'd fly at me. Kick me, Peck me, scream at me. It was not pleasant to try and check Audrey's chicks on a good day. And this was the first day she'd had these babies.

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There was no helping it, though.

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We've had very persistent predator issues this spring and she and the babies needed to be in a secure pen instead of loose in the barnyard.

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I gathered my courage and called my husband on the phone.

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David, I just found chicks in the barnyard.

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I'm grabbing a bucket, but I think there are too many for me.

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I need help.

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You may recall from the tail of the jumping ducklings that gathering new loose babies in a bucket and either carrying the mother or getting her to follow you to a safe pen by showing her the babies as you move along is our go to strategy in these situations.

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It has always worked well.

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I picked a small plastic bucket up in the barn and went back to the stall door to try and get a sense for how many chicks we were dealing with.

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As I watched them, my daughters ran out to help with David close behind.

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After everyone exclaimed and delight over the adorable puffballs, we all counted.

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Everyone kept coming up with eight, two black chicks and six yellowish 1.

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I'll grab the mom.

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You all catch the babies?

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I suggested.

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I held everyone else off and stepped forward to catch Audrey.

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Sure enough, she puffed her feathers up as far as they could go, so that she looked like a feathery ball more than a chicken and let out an angry warning trill.

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Chicks scattered in every direction, hiding themselves in the grass at their mother's.

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I stepped forward again, and predictably, Audrey flew at me, screaming, defiant, like she kicked and packed and scolded me.

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But I've been attacked by enough chickens at this point that I usually don't freeze up.

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I reached down avoiding her kicks and firmly encircled her on either side with my hands.

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Pinning her wings to her side and keeping my hands as much out of reach of her beak as I could.

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She turned her head and angrily regarded me with furious golden eyes.

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Then to both of our surprise, she pecked me on the chest.

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My shirt was thick enough that it didn't exactly hurt, but it certainly didn't feel good.

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I continued holding her while the girls rounded up the checks, finding them in several different Tufts of grass.

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By the end, 7 chicks have been located and placed in the bucket, but one black chick was missing.

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We heard a plaintive.

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Coming from a grass tuft a bit over from where we had been looking and the girls rooted around in it carefully until they emerged with the little baby cupped in my oldest daughter's hands, it had gotten stuck in the long grass when hiding.

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Seeing this final chick emerge and hearing her babies.

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Beep beep beep beep.

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Beeping in the bucket, Audrey renewed her attempts to get.

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Away booking at me and again turning to give me the strongest and angriest Peck on the chest that she could.

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As we have been gathering the checks David had been preparing food and water for them in an empty rolling pen.

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In a procession, we carried them.

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The girls taking turns gently carrying the handle of the bucket full of chicks and me holding Audrey away from my chest and hoping she wouldn't try to twist herself around to get at my hands, which didn't have gloves on instead of my chest.

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We made it to the pen and carefully tipped the buckets of the chicks could.

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Walk out, they.

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Peep peep.

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In confusion and Audrey became upset again once the chicks were safely out into the pen.

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Everyone jumped back and I put Audrey in.

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She immediately turned to try and kick me again, but I shut the door and she promptly forgot about me in favor of calling her.

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Sticks to the food and water to teach them how to.

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Eat and drink.

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She was just as good at teaching them as she was at protecting them.

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She called them eagerly and showed them with exaggerated motions, had to dip their heads into the water for a drink and how to eat from the.

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The feeder, she also stuck her feet into and scratched food out onto the ground.

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And frantically picked up the tiny granules and dropped them in front of the chicks to show them that.

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Way too, this is food.

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Eat this.

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It's good for you.

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All the chicks happily complied and began making the happy chick noises that we call singing.

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It's more like.

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Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep.

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Just a constant little chorus of chicks talking to each other and to.

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Their mom.

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We did still have the question of how to make the pen more secure.

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Mom and her babies were much safer in here than out in the open at night, but the chicks were so small they could easily run through the wire, and that also meant something could reach in and try to grab one.

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We borrowed some chicken wire from my dad and work together to wrap the pen in another layer of the tight wire mesh that would keep its inhabitants secure.

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That took about half an hour, but as we were working, I was puzzling out where on Earth she could have hatched them.

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Was this another jumping duckling situation where she had brooded them in the loft of the bar?

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Surely not.

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I thought that didn't seem like a chicken at all.

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I couldn't rule it out since I hadn't been up there yet, so I decided as we finished wrapping the pen that I'd go over to the barn again.

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New babies just hatched.

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Don't go far from their nest site.

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At least not right away.

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They had been just outside the barn stalls, which to me meant they had either been hatched in the barn or very close to.

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Other candidates included a thicket of weeds by the bar and that I had been meaning to.

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Clear out.

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And I supposed somewhere else on the ground floor of the barn that I had missed, even though I was pretty sure I'd been thorough in my search.

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The kids came with me to hunt.

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I started by checking back into the sheep stall.

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They had been near to see if I could locate the nest.

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I looked near the sides of the barn for a hidden nest.

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No luck.

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I went into the stall next door to check the corners and the goat through no luck.

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I walked back over the first stall to check the corners as well.

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Again, no nest.

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Then I actually walked over to the goat through and looked in.

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This one is built like an open V with part of the trough covered by a wooden platform.

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You can stick a feeding bowl or bucket into.

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It was true that in the main part of the through I didn't see anything and there wasn't anything I was about to leave when I noticed that the covered part had a short rubber feeding pan.

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Inside of it, it was perched along the side of the V at an angle and in the bucket were the shells of eight hatched eggs with two unhatched eggs remaining.

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I had found the nest.

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Somehow Audrey had laid her eggs on the lip of the sideways pan and kept them there, safe and hidden, for the 21 days it took them to hatch, even though I had checked the troughs on previous nest humps, I had missed hers because the black rubber feeding pan was hidden by the covered area of the through. I couldn't believe it. She had kept her nests safe, not just from predators.

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But for me, even being aware of it, she had also, perhaps through her very protective nature, kept the goats from jumping in the trough and jumping on her nest.

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I had already seen what a good mother Audrey was, but my respect for her cleverness and cunning increased significantly.

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I may have missed her nest, but at least I now know about the one in the garage which has about two weeks left before I'll start expecting a hatch.

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That mom, at least, is one that will let me check her eggs and hold her babies. And while I appreciate Audrey's razor sharp, protective instincts, I will be glad that our next hatch is with a slightly.

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Tamer chicken.

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You can see some pictures and videos of Audrey and her babies on her Instagram at Foggy Oak fairy tales.

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I'll keep posting them as she raises them.

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They are very cute.

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It's anyone's guess how many more chick buckets will have to carry this summer, but my guess based on how bad I've been at finding these hidden nests is at least two.

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If you want to hear more about the strange places we found nests this spring, check out our bonus episode odd Nests or our bonus episode leaving the farm subscribers on Patreon or Apple Podcasts get a new bonus episode every month, plus access to all of our prior bonus episodes.

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Please wish us luck with our new chicks this week.

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I'll see you next week.

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Remember, you're part of the story too.

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What did you think of this story?

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What did you imagine when you were listening?

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We'd love to hear your part of the story if you and your grown up want, you can share your thoughts or a picture you drew with our Foggy Oak podcast family.

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You might find it easiest to share with us on Facebook at Foggy Oak Farm, but we have lots of options on our website, foggyoakfairytales.com.

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You can also check out pictures from the farm and learn more about us.

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Thanks for being part of the story and I hope you'll join us next week.