My small Silver Seabright hen, Alice, was a wonderful mother. The chicks you see with her here are Barred Rocks. She dearly loved to sit on eggs but her own eggs were not fertile so I let her hatch out the other hens eggs. She would set on any egg and loved any resulting chick. She had the chicks out early one morning and they had gotten wet from the dew on the grass. She brought them over to this old broom so they could all get warm and dry.

Alice did eventually hatch out some of her own chicks and I must say she raised all chicks (her own or the other hens) with unwavering attention and devotion. As you can see, Alice was a particularly good subject for a drawing because her feathers were white and black and her head was gray! This drawing appears in my book Drawing Made Easy: Getting Started.