Hens and Chicks

Reader Contribution by Staff
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Now I’m not trying to make anybody angry, here, and I could be completely wrong about this, but my chickens seem to believe in evolution.

Last year only about 20 percent of the chicks hatched by my hens survived to adulthood. That’s because I did very little to help them stay alive. Faithful to my commitment to do as little work as possible, I left their care up to the hens. It was disappointing when the little critters disappeared, but I was kind of curious to find out if the survivors were going to be a different sort of chicken, or whether it was just luck.

We started this flock three years ago with a mixture of a dozen different breeds from the hatchery, most of them roosters. We saved the two roosters we liked the best. The next year we bought a dozen Araucana hens. With the first two year’s grown-up chicks, including one particularly beautiful homegrown rooster, we now have about 40 hens and three roosters.

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