Ruffled Feathers

At the end of last summer my husband and I decided to add to our chicken family! By the time all the searching and asking was over we ended up with four new chickens, two of which are roosters. I was a little hesitant on having roosters due to the noise and yes, we receive a grand wake up call each and every morning! But I have found a reason to love my roosters.
After most of the cold weather past I approached my husband about adding to our chicken family again. This time however, I wanted to acquire the chickens in a more natural way, the old fashioned way! Well needless to say this ruffled his feathers a bit. He was not very keen on the idea of raising babies! He had many concerns due to the fact we know nothing about having baby chicks and that we live in the country and, there are many predators around. Well, after a little research and a lot of convincing he agreed to give it a try.
Shortly after Easter one of the hens started laying on her nest! My children were very excited about the idea of having babies and, myself being a labor and delivery nurse, I was too!  They would go inspect the hen and her nest everyday. Well, it happened! No incubators or anything else synthetic! We had two happy healthy baby chicks!

Now comes the question of what to do with these sweet chirping babies! Do we let them stay with their mother or, do we separate them and keep them warm with a heat lamp?
Well we have done it all natural so far and things are turning out great! We decided to let their mother take care of them. After all, she did all that work of sitting on the eggs, she should be able to mother them right? We did however separate her and the babies from the rest of the chickens. At some point we will have to work on integrating the babies with the other chickens but, for now we are enjoying watching them grow!