every day is a good day
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When a mother hen senses danger, she’ll spread her wings and puff up, doubling the size of her appearance. She starts showing this behavior even before her chicks hatch. While she is incubating her eggs, she’ll come off the next once a day to eat and drink. A brooding hen will often puff up around other chickens as if she is protecting a brood.
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The chicks are five days old. I opened their nursery so their mother is free to take them wherever she wants. The next time you buy chicken ask your grocer, “Was this chicken raised by a mother?” Don’t worry about the blank stares you get from your grocer, or that this-customer-is-nuts look on their face. You are the one who is going to be putting that chicken in your mouth. You have a right to know everything about that chicken. You have a right to demand that chicken you eat has had a wonderful life. Call me crazy, but customers are not nearly demanding enough about the quality of food grocers sell.
The chicks are four days old today and doing well. In a few more days, I’ll open the nursery so the mother can start taking them outside. Some mothers have their chicks outside right aways, others keep them close to the nursery for a week to 10 days before taking them outdoors. Each mother has her own chick-rearing style. In this age of making everything exactly the same, and turning food products into commodities to trade on mercantile exchanges, I’m taking the opposite approach. At A Man and His Hoe, no two chickens are ever the same. It’s impossible to lump them all together and treat them all the same. When you pick out a chicken in the supermarket, do you ever wonder if that chicken was a shy one, an adventurous one, a kind one, or a bossy one? There are all types of chickens. When you purchase one of my chickens, you can ask me what kind of personality the chicken had. I watch each chick as it grows. I can tell you which mother it had, and what mischief it got into.
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After three days, we get a good look of the new chicks. They are off to a good start and before long, the hen will be taking them outdoors to find lots of good things to eat. Life can be very good for chicks on a farm.
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On a winter day when snow blankets the ground, there’s always something good to eat in the compost. When it is time to turn a compost pile I can always count on chickens rushing over to feast on worms and bugs in the pile. Chickens are far from vegetarians. Skilled hunters, it is a good thing they are small. If they towered over us we would be their dinner.
It’s day two of the chicks, but you can’t see them because mother is being very protective. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a good picture soon.
And here is one of the Turken hens. Originally from Romania, Hungary, and Transylvania, they are a curious, friendly breed. I ended up with Turkens when someone nearby unexpectedly ended up with some this summer and asked me to take them.