I went to give the hens some food.
And i saw this
Egg prodcution goes down at this time of the year anyway . And the hends are getting elderly , so we assumed that one missing had been got by an otter, or stoat, otr just died in the undergrowth somewhere.
But she hadn't. There were 4 chicks with her. ive had a hunt and cant find the nest and broken shells. So its nowhere really close to where they were found/fed. And we assume more than 4 hatched but they succumbed on the way - fell down a hole, or into a stream or got lost in the vegetation .
Survival chances wouldn't be great this time of the year - there are plenty of predators around and chicks arent well-endowed with intelligence.
So we rounded them up and brought one of our chick runs back into action and mother and 4 chicks are protected and doing well.
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