Farmer Finds Hens Raising Litter Of Kittens

There's nothing like an example of a little cross-species love and nurturing to warm a person's heart, and one Japanese farmer got a very cute surprise recently when he went to check on his hens and found one had apparently adopted a litter of stray kittens.

According to Rocket News 24, the farmer posted on Twitter that he was raising some perfectly ordinary red chickens, when one day he went to look at the egg box and check on their laying progress, and he discovered three newborn baby kittens in there, cuddled up with the eggs and one of the hens.

The farmer says there are 400 chickens in the hen house, and normally they would gang up and attack any non-chicken animals that tried to move into their enclosure with all their eggs, but the hens seem to have decided the kittens are OK, and have been mothering them along with the eggs.

The mother cat has reportedly been dropping by to feed the kittens, but she and the hens seem to have reached an understanding, as there have not been any cat or chicken fights, and she hasn't tried to eat any of the chickens.