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MARYMARY AND HER CHICKS
A True Story
By EMILY J. RUFFNER
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2012 Emily J. Ruffner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-0558-0
Chapter One
Mary lived on a small farm. It just happened that she was the only White Leghorn chicken. All the others were Rhode Island Reds. Mary was Peter's favorite, and she would sit on his lap and let him pet her.
All of the chickens lived happily together. For a while Peter kept them in the barn, which had nesting boxes where they could lay their eggs. After a few months he let them out of the barn and they were free to roam all over the farm. They always went into the barn to lay their eggs in the nesting boxes, though.
One day in the early spring, Mary decided to raise some babies. She jumped over a fence into an enclosed area so that she could be away from the other chickens and the dogs, and the cats and other animals of the farm. Then she dug a hole in the soil where she could lay her eggs.
Mary laid an egg every day. What she didn't know was that Peter removed her new egg each day and replaced it with an egg from a Rhode Island Red hen. He did this so that the baby chicks would be a real breed of chicken, and not a mixture between a White Leghorn hen and a Rhode Island Red rooster. It was easy to tell the difference because the red hens' eggs were brown, and Mary's were white.
When she had a clutch of twelve eggs, she made herself comfortable on her nest, covering her eggs with her body to keep them warm so that the baby chicks could grow inside the shells.
Well, finally the big day came. It was Easter Sunday, and raining. Peter looked out the window and saw a tiny something moving around. Could it be? He went out with an umbrella to take a closer look, and sure enough – there was a baby chick!!! And then another!!!
Well! He couldn't leave this brood out in the rain. What to do? After thinking about it for a few minutes, Peter came up with a plan. There was an old playpen in the garage, which his little brother didn't need any more. Peter opened it up, put some straw on the bottom of it and a little box with more straw for Mary and her new babies.
Peter then took an old lamp and attached it to the playpen so that its light could warm the little brood. Then he brought Mary, the baby chicks and the eggs which hadn't hatched yet into the garage and put them in their new home. Mary was happy as a lark with the situation, and settled in at once.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from MARYMARY AND HER CHICKS by EMILY J. RUFFNER Copyright © 2012 by Emily J. Ruffner. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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