How Time Flies

I spent a bit of time in the garden during the short break in the rain last week, taking some photos of my little chicks. It dawned on me that they're not actually little chicks anymore, they are just the littlest chicks I have now!

These are a family of Pekin Bantams that one of my broody Pekin hens hatched for me. I bought the eggs off eBay, having tried unsuccessfully to break the hen of her broodiness. She was broody for almost three weeks prior to this, the full length of time it took another Pekin to hatch some Buff Orpington eggs. And she stayed broody despite the fact that she was in with all my other chickens. She refused to move out of the nesting box and they all just squashed in with her to lay their eggs, which she promptly rolled under herself. Amazing really as she is bottom of the pecking order and was severely bullied throughout - she just buried her head and ignored them.

Given this tenacity I thought she deserved some babies of her own. I had no more coop space as my Buffs had only just hatched so I made her a nesting box out of an archive storage box and popped her in the shed with her new eggs. She got straight to work and 22 days later ....

Hatching day - complete with empty shells and two eggs that didn't hatch

These were my first bantam chicks and I just can't believe how cute they have been. Pekins have feathered legs and these babies had downy legs from day one - the pale ones looked like they were wearing little pyjamas! Unlike my Buff chicks, which have been going through an 'ugly duckling phase' since around 3 weeks of age, these are just gorgeous.

I was wary of letting them out to free range as they were so tiny I was worried a cat might take them, so I waited until they were about five weeks old before letting Mama take them out and about

First outing - I kept the big hens in to prevent banty bullying!

And now they are 8 weeks old and still super cute! I'm trying to tame them, they will eat corn out of my hand and let me stroke them and pick them up (under protest!)

This little one has quite a sharp beak!

I am desperately hoping that there are some girls here as I'm not planning to keep any boys. I can't imagine having to lose any of them though, they are such sweeties!

I think this one on the right might be a little boy, sadly

They come running to me as soon as they see me and it's super cute - the other day I gave one half a cherry tomato, it ran away with it and all the others chased it in a line to try and steal the tomato! The only thing missing was the Benny Hill theme tune!

Cute feathered legs!

I am trying not to have a favourite - from experience this is a bad idea! But the little lemon one below is particularly curious, it tilts its head to one side to look at me and looks really comical!

Fingers crossed this one is a girl!

I've always thought chickens were great time wasters, I quite often pop out 'to check on them' and end up watching them for an hour! But having chicks is absolutely lethal, they are so cute as well as fascinating, it's amazing that I'm getting any work done at the minute!

The only problem is I don't want them to grow up!