Advantages of a broody hen

A week and a half after our newest chick hatched, I'm starting to see the tremendous advantage of letting a broody hen do all the work.  After just a couple of days in the nest, our hen decided it was time to start foraging lessons.  She and the chick hopped down to the ground and went to work --- Mama Hen scratched up a worm and looked excited, broke it into pieces, and did everything she could to get that worm into her offspring's mouth.  She even broke the chick feed into tiny pieces to expedite our chick's early meals.

The mother hen also taught me that chicks can be active from week one.  Although the chick begged for a warm-up session under the hen's belly every few minutes at first, by now it's trotting around the chicken pasture without a care in the world.  Granted, the chick does stay close to its mother's side, and I don't worry about it straying despite the fact that it can easily slip through the chicken wire and out of the pasture.  (Speaking of which, if you don't read our homestead blog, you might like to read the tale of how we moved the chick onto pasture --- it was quite an adventure!)

Tuesday evening, I went to check on the chick and noticed its mother perched up on the roost for the first time since the hatching.  Where was the little chick?  Surely it wasn't old enough to spend the night alone?  I walked closer, and a wee head poked out between the feathers on the hen's underbelly.  Somehow the mother got her chick two feet off the ground before it was two weeks old!  This chick is so precocious compared to our brooder-raised chicks, there's no comparison.