Month: June 2015

The way to a hen’s heart is through her beak. Which is why roosters spend much of their time looking for good things for the hens to eat. When they find delectable morsels, they let the hens know, and the hens come running. Old Billy, six years old now, still knows how to romance the hens. He’s no longer king of the hill. Younger roosters have taken over that role. That hasn’t slowed old Billy down. He can turn on the charm and attract an audience.

Of the hundreds of millions of egg laying hens on farms just in the US, how many have a rooster to romance them? Romance and love and flirting and being coy and teasing and seeing who is making out with whom are just as important to chickens as it is to us. The next time you pick up some eggs, ask your grocer, “Do the hens who lay these eggs have a rooster they can flirt with?”

Does she glow? She just started sitting on a clutch of eggs. They should hatch July 5 or 6. She’s ensconced in one of the nurseries, safe to sit in peace, undisturbed, not having to worry about another hen wanting to lay an egg in her nest.

The trickiest part about using nurseries for the brooding hens, is moving them into a nursery once they go broody on a regular nest. I have to move them at night, when it is dark. After a night sitting on eggs in a quiet spot, the brooding hens seem to enjoy having so much peace and quiet for themselves.

Little Skunky is nearly grown up. There is just a hint of the eyeliner she had as a chick. The skunk stripes on her back are now cascades of black and gray and white feathers with tinges of brown. It’s quite a transformation she’s gone through from chick to young hen. This fall she should lay her first egg. Next spring, will she become a mother?

• How Is Skunky Now?
• Here Comes Skunky
• Skunky and Family
• Where’s Skunky This Afternoon
• Skunky In the Woods
• Skunky At One Week
• A “Skunk” in the Chickenyard

Whatever you do, don’t get too close to a mother hen with chicks. It’s like approaching a mother bear with cubs. I got too close to Himawari-hime while filming her taking her two day old chicks into the brush by the creek. She charged at me, and I did what you’re supposed to do when a mother hen charges, I rolled over and played dead. See her checking me out to see if I was still alive or not? Satisfied that there was no more life in me, she went back to caring for her chicks. The real reason most chicken farmers don’t have mother hens raising chicks is because too many succumbed to ferocious mother hens.




[wpvideo cFnS0wf9]