Our One Bantam

When we first got chickens in 2012, we got a few cute little bantams. We got Thelma, Louise, Tiffany Roscoe and Otis. Thelma turned out to be a rooster. Otis was a rooster and he was a bit crazy so we gave him to a friend who wanted a rooster. Roscoe is the one who decided to live outside the coop after he fell in love with Miss Hattie who lived in a different coop.

That left us with Thelma (a rooster), Louise and Tiffany. Anyone who’s had bantams know that the one thing they LOVE to do is hatch babies. I think it was in 2014 when dogs came and killed all our chickens but the mama bantams had been sitting a bunch of eggs. That night, as I was bawling over my lost chickens, we were taking all the eggs out of the coop and we could hear some of the eggs “chirping” so we hurried and put them in the incubator and quite a few of them hatched so . . we had a few bantams. They had babies and then they had babies and we had way too many bantams so we decided to give them away. A friend came over and got all the bantams and all the eggs they were sitting on. There were 41 bantams and they were sitting on 93 eggs and some of them hatched that very night.

One little black bantam hen flew into the woods as they were taking them all out of the coop. It was several days later and she showed up so we decided she must have really wanted to stay here and we kept her. She’s hatched a few babies but none of her own eggs ever hatched since the only rooster was a full sized rooster and I think that didn’t work with her little eggs.

This morning I let them out of the coop and then I went to the greenhouse to do some work. When I came back, she was still on the ramp they go down to get outside. I had turned the heat off in the coop but I thought maybe she was cold so I turned the heat back on thinking she would go back in but then when I went back after lunch to check on their water, she was in the same spot and she was dead. I don’t know if she got hurt when they were all running down the ramp this morning, or if she got too cold . . I have no idea but now, for the first time since 2012, we don’t have a bantam.

It makes me kinda sad but I’ve learned not to get too attached to the chickens. One less . . and one of the hens is sitting on eggs. She’s one of the Wyandottes and she’s a big chicken and she has no intention of letting me see how many eggs are under her. I’ve tried gently poking her with a stick and she attacks the stick . . mean mama! I guess I’ll know how many once they hatch!