A week or so had passed since I had first heard about the chick and I had pretty much forgotten about the whole baby chick thing, when one early morning I was down front drinking coffee, half awake, when out of the tall grass came an egg layer and running behind her was a little baby chick...so like the un-prepared, fumbling, bumbling moron I am at 4:30 in the morning I barely got a pic of the little thing before momma saw me and took off running with it close in tow...sorry for the quality. I was moving fast!
Joel gets a shipment of egg layer chicks about every year. He raises them up under heat lamps and when old enough he puts them outside to pasture them. I see the chicks only after they become pullet sized (A egg layer chicken with feathers under a year old). Up until then they are in a box somewhere. Well apparently the last batch of chicks contained a few randoms that turned out to be roosters..He decided to keep the roosters for whatever reason and I don't need to explain to you the birds and the bees- so now Joel has a baby chick on the farm. I'm really surprised that there is only one. I've never counted, but he has got to have at least 100 egg layers and out of all of them only one baby chick so far.
I have got to tell ya. This is what is so great about working for a farmer like Joel who really believes in allowing his animals to be animals. This life was made in nature not in a controlled environment. Not in some lab or chicken house. This chick was an egg laid in the grass nurtured and protected by it's mother. Momma chicken was allowed to be a chicken and exercise her natural instincts. He want's his chickens to roam, scratch, dig, peck. He want's his pigs to root and his cows to be out in the air free to graze on endless pasture. He, to me, is a great example for those of us who want this sort of life style where we are not only good farmers, but good stewards. Thanks for reading!
