Introducing Uno

Sometimes, I get a wild hair.
In this case, I had a wild...chicken.
I keep about 30 chickens or better each year. I like the fresh eggs and the chickens keep me amused from time to time. You don't need roosters to get eggs. You just need roosters if you want the eggs fertilized. This is a lot like life. Sometimes you just need the men in your life to reproduce, other than that, (although I love my husband) they can kind of be a pain in the ass.
But I digress.
Anywhoo, I have a couple of roosters. If you're looking for a blog writer than can tell you the make and model of every piece of livestock on this farm, you'll have to look else where. I pick my chickens out of a catalog. I choose the ones that look cool and I order them. I get them as day-old chicks and raise them.
I have a black rooster with a funky hair do. He's balding. He tries to make you think he's the boss so when he gets too cocky (ha! chicken humor) I throw water on him or drop kick him. We have a beautiful relationship. I have another rooster. He's beautiful and red. He's very proud but clearly understands that I rule this roost. I have a "zero tolerance" policy for aggressive roosters. Show aggression and you're taco meat. The last rooster that charged one of my kids got his head slammed against the barn wall, tossed in a bucket and hauled up to the dairy barn where my friend "Chewy" took him home for dinner.
Don't f**k with my kids.
Anyway, I had a hen gettin' broody. This is where we get the term "nesting". A broody hen sits in the nest. She puffs up her feathers a little bit and won't leave the nest without prodding. Her biological clock is ticking. So just for kicks and grins, I left 4 eggs in the nest. I marked them with an "X" and didn't collect them when we collected the other eggs every day.
Eggs have a 21 day cycle, so I ignored them for 3 weeks and the hen kept setting. I figured nothing would happen. I have no idea if the roosters have been "gettin' busy".
About 19 days in, there were only 3 eggs in the nest. My daughter and I went through every egg we'd collected that week. No "X". This meant, potentially, that my husband would crack an egg into a frying pan one morning and get -- well, nothing you want to serve with bacon as worse case scenario and hopefully only a 3 week old egg. My daughter and I decided that we'd say nothing and pray one of us opened the potentially fertilized egg. My husband getting a bad egg would be a very bad thing.
Two days later I went down the barn to do the chores. The hen wasn't on the nest and there were no eggs. The hen was on the floor of the coop.
I'm not always very bright and I spent a few minutes looking at this chicken trying to figure out how in the hell she had moved eggs. So I picked up this hen to see if she had those eggs underneath her.
I'll be damned, there was a chick. A cute, yellow chick. Go figure.
Truth be told, I wasn't sure what to do then. Chickens have been having babies for millions of years so I figured the hen could handle this, but should I help her out? I tried to channel my aunts and grandmothers -- those long departed ancestors who raised hundreds of chickens. Based on what I decided was my grandmother's advice, I sectioned off a corner of the coop so the hen and the chick could have their own space away from the other chickens and the roosters in particular. (roosters aren't always the best father figures)
I put some food and water down for them. Mama was very hungry. Then I finally figured out where those other eggs had gone. At least I think this is where they went. That hen didn't leave the nest for the last week. She got hungry. I'm guessing she ate the eggs. I have no idea if that's correct, but animals do what they need to do. I can't explain the missing eggs any other way as there was no sign of a predator getting in the coop.
I know -- EEEEW --- right?!
Anyway, I named the baby Uno and it's the cutest little thing.

Uno has managed to hold her own.(ok it might be a he, but sexing chickens is too hard to bother with)I worried the other chickens would hurt her, but she figured out right away how to get food -- she sneaks between their feet and eat underneath them.
I have to say it was probably one of the cooler things I've seen in the chicken coop. I don't think I'll get in the business of breeding chickens, but it's kind of cool to have a wild chicken around the place.