More for the maternity wing...

When a calima hits here, we are guaranteed of several things including no air, extreme heat and a batch of chicks being born. Every time the temperatures begin to soar, the eggs seem to think they are in an incubator and will hatch. We have been missing one of our ferel chickens for a while, and although we searched for her we could find no eggs or nest.

We knew that she would appear at some point, and why did I not suspect that this would be in the middle of the calima! We try and stay out of the heat as much as possible and ensure everything has water then run back into the shade before it become unbearable. However, yesterday "Honeybun" decided this was not going to happen.

My daughter was walking back up the drive when she heard chirping, now chicks chirping is quite a distinctive sound, and in the heat she could tell it was a distressed im really hot chirp. A quick 15 minute search revealed the hiding place of one mother hen and her chicks. Now don't ever be fooled into thinking that these creatures are clever or sensible. Yes, she had attempted to get home with her babies, however, by climbing up a mountain from the barranco, and managed to get herself wedged in between two rocks!!

My heart sank as I realised that this was not going to be a nice simple rescue, and as I carefully scaled down the hillside, I begun to curse chickens and their tiny brains. After 30 minutes, a lot of searching, and some major rock moving, we had mum and chicks in the box, and off to the maternity wing they went. Although the chickens are dumb, and they do cause me headaches, I would never leave them out in this heat...and they are rather cute!