It all started with boredom during the pandemic.
Courtney Sugarman and her husband Caleb were looking for a way to pass the time.
Animal lovers decided to expand the farm, taking into the house six ducks and three hens of a rare “silk” breed.
Chickens and ducks kept a respectful distance and did not interfere in each other’s affairs.
Suddenly, in mid-November, Courtney discovered that a chicken was hatching a duck egg!
“We naively thought nothing would happen.”
The owners decided to leave the hen alone.
They didn’t have the slightest idea where the chicken could get that egg, but they were pretty sure nothing would happen.
Shortly after the discovery, the hen herself laid seven eggs, and has already hatched eight.
No one believed that she would cope, and the eggs would hatch.
In December, Caleb discovered that the first chicken egg gave new life.
His wife moved the mother hen and eggs into the heat – after all, it was very cold outside, and the babies could die.
In a cozy environment, the eggs began to crack one after another.
And after a while, the shell of the last egg burst with a crack, and a little duckling was born from it.
The baby immediately recognized the hen as a mother and accepted her with all his heart.
The hen didn’t seem to notice the difference between the yellow and white chicks.
She treated them all in exactly the same way.
But everyone else noticed the substitution, especially since the duck was already starting to grow at an unrealistic speed.
“He acts like he’s just a big chicken.”
He tries to get under his mother’s wing, even if he doesn’t fit in there!
In the end, the mother hen was transferred back to the coop when she became too anxious.
But that didn’t change anything for the duckling and its chicken siblings.
“The chicks are now snuggling up to the duck, as she is now as big (maybe bigger) than the mother,” Sugarman said.
