a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

Gathering Eggs

It’s easy to get distracted when gathering eggs. There are iris blooming, a hen exploring a stream bed, stewartia and dogwood in bloom. A tucked up pullover works just as well as a basket for collecting eggs.

Gathering eggs is an opportunity to see how the growing chicks are doing. The chicks below are figuring out where to roost for the night. Slowly, they’ll make their way up onto the main roosts where the adult chicks sleep.

These little chicks at four weeks are now on their own. This is their second night without their mother. She’s gone back to roosting with the rest of the chickens. The chicks have found a comfortable spot near where they used to sleep with their mother. They should be roosting soon.

June 13, 2014
On the Trail

This Barred Rock mother is watching over her chicks as she takes them along a garden path. They are 25 days old and are confident enough to venture a ways on their own. But, she is always watching out for them. With eyes on the sides of her head, she can see nearly all around her without moving her head. So she can see what chicks to the right, chicks to the left, and chicks behind her are doing.

June 11, 2014
Eggs Are Art

I see eggs like this every day. Still, I have to stop and take pictures of them from time to time.

June 9, 2014
On the Roost Already

A blurry picture, but when I went to make sure the chickens were OK for the night, I saw that two little chicks, five weeks old, were on the roost. Their mother is still spending the night with two of the chicks. You can see her head peeking out to make sure the two chicks roosting above her are safe.

So what’s the big deal? As a rule, it’s the mothers who leave their chicks and go back to roosting with the rest of the flock. When she does this, sometimes the chicks follow her up to the roost. More often, the chicks huddle together where they used to sleep with their mother.

This is the first time that I’ve seen chicks take to roosting before their mother is done caring for her chicks. I’ve observed over the years that cach chicken family is unique. They tend to follow a general pattern, but within that pattern there is great variability. Each mother hen has her unique way of raising chicks. Some are strict. Some are lenient. Some spend a month. Others take two months or more to raise their chicks. Each chick has its own personality. Some are shy. Some are curious. Some are outgoing. As a result, there is an infinite variety of chicken families.

Each year, each month, each week, each day there are surprises in store. You just have to be open to experiencing them.

June 8, 2014
Chickens Travel …

The mother hen with the eight chicks, who are now forty-one days old, is walking them through lawn and brush some 250 to 300 feet from the little barn they roost in at night.

How far does she take them each day? Thinking about all the different places I see her and her chicks in the course of a day, one of the grand circuits she makes can run from a quarter to a third of a mile. It wouldn’t surprise me if she took her chicks up to a mile in a single day. For a animal that weighs one thirtieth what a human weighs, that is a long distance to travel every day.

Along the way they encounter all sorts of plants and bugs and animals. Sometimes they are out in the bright sunshine on grass. Other times they are in thick brush. At times they are in forest. Chickens are rarely still for long times. These are animals with a mission. Set them free to live surrounded by nature, and they will thrive.

June 8, 2014