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.




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Any morning with new chicks is a good morning. Himawari-hime’s chicks started hatching yesterday. I could hear them peeping underneath her. This morning, at least one popped out to check out what this big wide world was all about. As soon as she saw me, she ducked underneath her mother, and Himawari-hime lunged at me. She is going to be one feisty mother. With proper training, I think I could get chickens like her to become rabbit hunters. There are too many wild rabbits this year. Roving bands of two to three chickens could easily scare all the wild rabbits away.

Special is not having a good morning. Sunshine is in the nest she uses, and Special is having a fit. After listening to chicken talk for many years, I think four letter words make up a big part of their vocabulary. They seem to have a string of swear words for many situations and facial expressions to match. Fowl mouth chickens?

This morning, Hazel and Colette decided to lay eggs at the same time, and sat down facing each other. Who was there first? It probably was Colette as she doesn’t look that happy. Though when you think about it, she’s be less happy if she had her face in Hazel’s other end.

Hens sitting on eggs become radiant. Their eyes become so focused. They are not about to let anything happen to their precious eggs, so they give anyone approaching them an evil eye. There’s an intensity that beams from them. Get too close, and their feathers puff up. Get closer still, and they start to growl and shriek.

For 21 days they barely budge. Yet, they are gently shifting and turning their eggs underneath them all the time. It’s a mystery how they know what to do. How is such complex behavior controlled by DNA and how do hormones or whatever chemicals manipulating their minds get them to sit for such a long period? It’s like they have a thousand page manual with detailed instructions on what to do buried deep in their little brains.

All of nature is like this, far more complicated than we can fathom.