When the girls and I do the chores in the morning one of Ivy’s jobs is to let out the chickens.

Notice how Ivy hides behind the door after opening it.

I used to think she was kind of silly.

I’ve changed my mind.

As I was taking pictures one chicken started flying straight at me. Foolishly thinking it had control of it’s flight I ignored it.

Bad idea – it crashed directly into my camera, and then on into me.

Make a note, chickens are really bad fliers!

This was the picture that resulted from the collision.

Also notice that Ivy is still behind the door, not so silly after all!

When the flow of birds slows to more of a trickle that’s when Ivy starts to peek around the door. Smart girl.

For Ivy’s birthday this year she was given an incubator and a dozen hatching eggs.

For three weeks we turned eggs multiple times a day and managed not to knock the incubator to the floor nor throw or drop eggs when Clara crawled up to “help.”

The day we came back from Michigan the chicks had started hatching and by Monday morning Ivy was the proud parent to six baby chicks.

When Ivy first got the eggs we asked her where she was going to keep them when they hatched. Her answer was the were going to stay in a box in her room with her real toys so she could play with them.

I laughed. That would be ridiculous.

The baby chicks lived in the house for three weeks.

So much for the laughter.

At first Ivy was very concerned about monitoring them:

“Mom, you watch my baby chicks for me, don’t let them die.  I’ll be right back.”

Now, baby chicks are not new to my girls. Clara knows that she’s not allowed to grab them but she hold her cheek out for a “nuzzle” when someone else picks them up. Ivy is good about picking them up with two hands and screaming when her sister tries something inappropriate:

“Mom! Clara threw a Dora chair at the baby chicks! …. Don’t worry it didn’t kill them!”

It turns out the house involves a lot of baby chick hazards. Clara was fond of “giving” them toys to play with – read that as chucking random items on top of them. Ivy just worked on rubbing the feathers off with so much handling and making up with a games to play with them. It should be mentioned that baby chicks don’t really play games. Her first game was she would lure baby chicks over to her fingers and then when they would peck her she would “peck” them back with her hand causing them to fly to the other side of the box. Not a good game.

Then there was the other olfactory hazard of baby chicks in the house. At first it wasn’t so bad. Ivy would open the door to the room they where in and when she smelled the hot wood shavings and baby chicks she’d say in a voice full of excitement:

“Can you smell that? – It’s baby chicks!”

In the last week the smell had changed a bit from fresh shavings and warm chicks to plain old chicken poop.

On the upside we had some very nice nights with our bedroom window open for the fresh air.

Speaking of chicken poop… one of the last days they were in the house it was rest time. Clara was napping, I was laying in bed reading and Ivy was playing with her chicks in my bed room. Then I hear:

“Mom? Did you ever have a baby chick poop on your bed?”

Possibly in a slight, although unwarranted, panic I said “IVY!”

Ivy laughed and responded with:

“I was just kidding there’s no poop!”

A thorough check confirmed that she had indeed been joking, but there was a lot of chicken feed in my bed.

Now the chicks are outside, my house smells better, and there’s no more chicken feed in my bed.

A normal mother would be pleased by these events.

Never having been accused of being normal I’m plotting what we can hatch next!