Chicks grow fast!  Ours are no longer chicks, more like young adult chickens.  They have mastered the art of putting themselves to bed at night (hallelujah!) and venture out into the yard, hay fields, and sheds on a regular basis.  The other day, I reached in to grab their feeder and one of the rotten things pecked my hand!  Naturally I grabbed her and let Henley hold her for a good ten minutes until she calmed down.  She wasn’t a fan of being held and petted, but she needed a lesson in manners.

Clearly Henley loved the experience.  She was so gentle with the hen and kept telling her what a good and pretty bird she was.

The chicks are so fun to watch.  They try to act like grown-up hens who strut around the yard, looking for bugs and clucking away.  Just when you think they are really grown up, something like the leaves rustling or door closing startles them and the run, flat out, for the cover of the lilac bush, peeping as they go.  There’s an odd resemblance between the behavior of half-grown chicks and toddlers…