We had a terrible accident this morning. We were busy preparing our breakfast at that moment. Coco, one of our hens, who was visiting inside the house jumped into the baby chicks’ box, and started wolfing down the baby food. I noticed the commotion with the baby chicks and removed Coco from the box as soon as possible. But it was too late. I saw two chicks hiding in the corner, but the other one, Becky, was lying on her side. I picked her up and examined her. She was already dead. Coco probably even didn’t realized that she stepped on this poor baby chick because Coco was so focused on the food. It was such an upsetting morning. We dug out a leftover piece of wire mesh from the garage and covered the baby box for protection. Had we done that earlier, we could have avoided this tragedy. We’ll miss you, Becky. We buried her in our chicken cemetery area in the backyard.

It was even more devastating for my husband Peter, because these chicks were partially for his birthday gift, and Becky was his favorite. I told him that his birthday present is still under warranty, and encouraged him to get replacement chicks. Meyer Hatchery’s minimum order for chicks is three. So I asked him to make final selection of the breeds. These new chicks will be arriving next week.