Single chick - Exchequer Leghorn

Raising a single chick with a hen is never ideal. Realistically I should have culled it on hatching. However being 'soft', believing the chick to be female and it still being early in the breeding season I have kept it. However it has meant a series of compromises. The chick is now 6 weeks old and would normally be separated with its hatch mates, from the hen, who would rejoin the flock. Instead I have moved both hen and chick to a larger pen, still within the layers run. They will stay in the run for a few more weeks until either the chick is big enough to stand up to the layers or until I can put her in with future hatches. I will then be able to move the hen, a Welsh Black, in with the Indian Game flock.

The small ark they have been in until now will be scrubbed and creosoted ready for the next hatch in approximately a months time.