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Category: About My Chickens
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Off to Bed
The hen above has four chicks. Two of them are completely hidden underneath her warm feathers. You can just make out the gray and white tail feathers of a third chick to the left of the one chick who isn’t quite ready to snuggle underneath her mother.
The seven chicks below are too big to snuggle under their mother anymore. She’s on the roost behind them, making sure they are safe on their roost. From late afternoon onward, the entire flock comes home to roost. The oldest ones are the first to bed. The mothers and chicks are next. The last to come in for the night are the young juveniles. Not much different than many people.
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Tiger Mom
For baby chicks, their mother is their teacher. They watch her every move and mimic what she does. In the first photo, look how intensely the chicks study her every move. If she pecks at something, so will they. If she flees from something, so will they. If they see her drinking, so will they.
As she teaches them life’s lessons, she watches out for them like a hawk. Some hens are more protective than others. You see the same thing with human parents. This hen, 紫雲姫 – Princess Purple Cloud, is a tiger mom. She keeps all the other chickens a safe distance away, and makes sure her chicks are always nearby. When she was incubating her eggs, if I got my hand or arm too close, she gladly drew blood. She is not a hen you want to mess with.
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Mom on the Move
Every mother hen is different. This one is a mover and a shaker. Some mothers don’t take their chicks out of the nursery until they are a week old. This one has them running around outdoors the day after they hatched.
When I see day old chicks exploring the great outdoors, running through grass, scratching the dirt, I chuckle at the environment enrichment efforts of large scale poultry farms. These efforts include adding string bunches for chickens to play with and sand boxes to use.
These day old chicks experience more enrichment in their first day of life than do most chickens do during their whole life, and they get a mother to boot.
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It’s In Their Eyes
Born just a few hours ago, this chick looks up at me, trying to make sense out of what she is seeing. Snuggled next to her mother, safe in a soft, straw bed, she has it made. Only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the 25 million chicks born in the USA today were born under the warmth of their mother’s body. A world of fun and adventure is awaiting her and her siblings. With a mother to look out over her, she should have a great childhood.
Hens on their nests can have piercing eyes. Kuma-hime 熊姫 (Bear Princess) glares at me with eagle eyes. Hens usually stay perfectly still until you get too close. Then they erupt, squawking and batting their wings, making a fuss and sometimes running away.
Curious Becky wonders who approaches. I find it amusing that chickens will cock their heads just like people when they are trying to figure out something. It points to a behavior we inherited from a very distant common ancestor. If so, it means that animals have been cocking their heads for hundreds of millions of years.
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Into the Woods
On a hot summer day, a mother hen and her chicks find a cool spot in the mulch under Iris plants. I find relief from the heat in the woods. What do chickens make of these trees? They often scratch for food on the forest floor. Do they look up and marvel at the towering trees?
