So much rain today! About dinner time, Ant came in and said, "you have to do something about Sara, she's soaking wet." Cob-weaver and Mosquito chimed in, "help her, please help her, she doesn't know how to stay out of the rain." I said, "she's fine, she has been in rain before and lived. Remember all the rain we had last week?" But Ant insisted, and so did Cob-weaver and Mosquito, so I went out in the rain and got out an old dog carrier from the shed, cleaned and dried it and put fresh newspaper and an old flannel sheet inside. Meanwhile, Cob-weaver had separated Sara and was making her stand under the eaves of the house because as she said, "she doesn't know to stand under cover in the rain." She was indeed soaking wet. I also noticed that the other younger chickens, Lula and Penny, were pretty wet, but no one was worried about them. So, we put Sara inside the kennel and I carried her in the house and put her next to the heater. And she got to sleep in a house once again.
Sara's story
All of us have a story and all of our lives are interesting. This is Sara's story, as best as I know it. Sara was hatched May 28, 2018 with 6 other eggs in a classroom incubator. Ms. Anjo*, the teacher, got the eggs from a friend of hers. The class lovingly raised all 7 chicks, but Ms. Anjo loved them most of all. She earnestly cared for them, taking them home every night, on weekends and over the long summer break. All the chicks were given names, of course, but as they grew older, it become apparent that only one was a hen, and only one could be kept. That one was Sara. You can still see a picture of Ms. Anjo and Sara together in last year's yearbook.
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| Baby Sara |
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| Sara having storytime with Ms. Anjo |
Over summer break, Ms Anjo with the help of friends and parents bought, delivered and built a coop for Sara and moved her outside into the garden. The coop is palatial compared to the one already in the garden, which already was home to 3 other hens. Why did Sara get her own coop? Well, because Ms. Anjo thought she would have more than just one hen and then when it was apparent there would be only one hen, Ms. Anjo didn't want Sara to be pecked by the other hens already in the garden. Besides, she'd already built the second coop.
So there Sara lived in the new coop, all alone, until Spring, when she started showing signs of being broody. The students could no longer gather her eggs, so we decided to let her raise her own chicks. I got 6 fertilized eggs from a friend and Sara brooded them. Did you know only fertilized eggs can hatch? She sat and sat. She was so protective. You would not even recognize her, her personality changed so much. One egg disappeared. We didn't understand, until much later the fierce battles Sara was having at night to keep her eggs protected. For 21 days exactly she sat and just after Easter, the 5 remaining eggs hatched. There were five fluffy baby chicks! Sara was a good mother and really fierce. Only Ms. Anjo and I could go into the pen to feed them. Not because she liked us or let us, but because we could withstand her blows and attacks. We noticed rat droppings in the coop, and then for the first time I looked at that coop and understood her fierceness. Ms. Anjo and I quickly got to work adding finer gauge chicken wire all over the roof and adding a door to the coop to close each night. We also added wire to the steep, steep ladder, so the chicks could easily walk it. So Sara and her chicks were safe and she raised them well. The garden students voted and named them Jack, Mango, Moonlight, Skittles and Experiment #1. Here is our garden chalkboard from that vote:
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| Broody Sara |
At the end of the school year, Mosquito, Cob-weaver and I took the chicks back to the farm where their birth mothers and father lived and Sara was once again left alone. Then Ms. Anjo moved to the big city. She wanted more than anything to take Sara too, but she could not move her into an apartment, so she left her in my care.
Now Sara's story continues here, at my house, where she is learning finally to be a part of a pecking order. She continues to have new experiences, like walking around the neighborhood and sleeping in my house. The rest of the story, you can read here.
Farmer Ladybug 🐞
*my new codes to puzzle out. I will be sending out a puzzle soon on the Garden math page with more decoding for you.
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