every day is a good day
You’ve got a reason to pop that champagne bottle open, the one you’ve been saving all these years, waiting for that special occasion. Hazel’s a mother. Her chicks started hatching yesterday. She’s two and a half years old and this is her first clutch. She’s a sweetheart. A chicken Dr. Seuss would draw. One of her chicks has a bare neck too. Cheers!
Raising chickens requires a PhD in psychology and conflict resolution. Hens have a tendency to believe that it’s all about them and that everything is theirs. Mine! Mine! Mine! That’s what they seem to be saying much of the time. It’s what Tangerine shrieks when she sees Special laying an egg in the nest she wants to use. Never mind that there are two empty nests right next to the one Special is using. Tangerine wants to use that one.
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?
