Baby Chickums!

This is the world first exclusive photo of the most important new arrival of the day. That's right, forget about the newborn prince, we have baby chickens (or chickums as I like to call them).

Just over three weeks ago, my little Penny went broody again. Its a pretty frequent occurrence for my girls as they have such a good life at Mum and Dad's, free-ranging about the place and dining on premium chook food and seed mixes from Dad's work. I happened to mention to my workmates that she was broody again and my friend Stevo suggested that I take some of the fertilised eggs from his chooks and give them to Penny as one of his roosters had just died and he was hoping to raise some chicks fathered by it. Stevo has silky bantams and frizzle bantams and he couldn't be sure which breed the eggs he gave me were, if the recently deceased rooster had fathered any of them, or even if they were viable at all. So, nothing was certain when we gave Penny the eggs. This was Penny's first batch of potentially viable eggs and we weren't sure that she would accept them or know what to do with them, but it turns out that Penny, who has never even met a rooster, is a natural mum. She immediately accepted the eggs we put in the nest box and gently tucked them all under herself. This was a good sign, and she continued to do all the right things for the next 3 long weeks while Dad and I very impatiently waited.

Well, today was exactly 21 days from when she was given the eggs. We still couldn't be sure that any of the eggs were viable, but Dad and I were both optimistic. Stevo was less optimistic, but he has never met Penny so he didn't have the confidence in her that we did. This morning I got the very exciting news that Penny has successfully hatched at least 3 of the eggs.
More may have hatched since then, but I didn't want to pick her up and disturb her when she is doing such a good job. I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of a couple of the babies when she rearranged herself and that's enough for me for today. Being new-hatched bantams they are ridiculously tiny, but they seem to be doing well and Penny seems to know exactly what she is doing. In a couple of days when they are stronger and more adventurous they are going to be so cute :)