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Momma Maran and a few of the Fledgling Chicks
Momma Maran is doing a fantastic job of guarding the chicks from danger and showing them the ropes with finding weeds, chick feed, scratch and bugs. At night she keeps them cozy under her belly, wings and tail. They have their own language for letting each other know about great finds of snacks. They are starting to roost at night as high up as they can fly.
Cuckoo Maran Hen (surrogate) and New Chicks
Our farm is surrounded by a residential neighborhood north of downtown Napa, so we don’t have any roosters here. But we do have some beautiful hens, and now a bunch of cute new baby chicks!
I collected fertile eggs from some fellow chicken folks on the Wine Country Chicken List Forum. Here are the fertile eggs I bought from Jess the Vet, John the Napaclucker, and Randy in Santa Rosa. I tried for variety: half are purebred and the rest are mutts. My chicken goals are to have enough eggs to eat and share, that the egg colors are of high variety and quality, and that the hens look different from each other so we can easily tell them apart.
The eggs were carefully sat upon and hatched by this beautiful Cuckoo Maran hen who had been broody. She is a fantastic mother—teaching, protecting and keeping them warm. 
Rob the Bordog helped out with the Mereks vaccinations on day one and the chicks are doing great living inside a coop inside the main coop. When they are three weeks old they will move to a bigger space.
Visitors are enjoying seeing the tiny chicks as they develop. This hatching project has been so much fun!
When visiting the nursery you’ll see our ten hens, happily patrolling the grounds scratching for tasty bugs and weeds. People are delighted to see how friendly and healthy they are. Many of our visitors decide they would like to have chickens in their own backyards. Napa allows folks with regular sized yards to have some hens (but no roosters.) Nothing beats the delicious fresh eggs! Also, hens provide natural insect control. And they contribute to the composting bin or pile—all for healthier gardens. Ask us about using worms to compost vegetable matter if you don’t have enough room for a regular compost pile. You can make your own fertilizer with your food scraps, weeds, prunings, papers and cardboard scraps.
