Raising Chicks Archives

February 19, 2014

Surprises Every Day

When you let your chickens run free, you never know what they will do or where they will go. A few days ago I heard a rattling in the shed we use to store hay and straw, and where our wonderful UPS driver picks up and leaves packages. When we have an outgoing package, we put the package in the shed and leave the doors open for the UPS driver. Our regular UPS driver then closes the door when he picks up the package.

What he didn’t realize is that one of our hens had jumped up into the shed earlier and was quietly sitting on a bale of hay in the corner. He closed the door, trapping her inside, and I was hearing her trying to get out later a few hours later.

Now we leave the shed door open so she can lay an egg where she wants to. These are pictures of the shed, Yuki-hime on the bale of hay, and the egg she laid today.

And below is a photo of a two and a half month old daughter with her mother. The mother is laying eggs again and is checking out the elevated dog house used by other hens for laying eggs. An older chick, she still spends much of the day with her mother, and roosts with her at night. Even with their tiny brains, chicks display a need to be with their mothers, even when they are well able to be on their own.

Which brings to mind this article by Nicholas Kristof, Is That Sausage Worth This, where he describes the dreadful conditions under which most pigs are raised. One has to question the sanity of modern farm industrialists who treat animals as if they are just machines. Spend time with any farm animal, be it a cow, a pig, or a chicken, and you realize that they are full of emotions. As youngsters they love to play. Even little chicks play with each other and with their mothers.

The drive to raise these animals as cheaply and as quickly as possible is making farmers to act as monsters. And all of us who go along consuming these products without thinking are their unwitting accomplices. The next time you go shopping for chicken, ask your grocer, “Was this chicken raised by its mother?” Does it matter? Did it matter to you that you were raised by your mother?

February 16, 2014

A Chick Grows Up

Words lack the capability to describe the love and care a mother hen showers on her chicks. You have to see it to understand how important mother hens are to chicks. Born at the end of November, the chick at 2 and a half months of age is nearly halfway to becoming an adult. At times, she ventures out on her own, but she still spends much of the day with her mother, and roosts with her at night. This is what humanely raised chicken looks like. The chick is 13 weeks old now. You can scarcely find a chicken that has enjoyed life so long in your supermarket. You certainly won’t find any that have had the joy of being raised by a mother. At a man and a hoe, that is the only kind of chicken I raise.

February 12, 2014

Edible Recycled Chicken Manure

So what happens to chicken manure when it is reincarnated? It turns into edible wonders, like these over wintering onions I pulled this morning. Most chicken farmers get rid of their egg laying hens by the time they have gone through two egg laying seasons. However, on the micro scale that I operate, the manure these older hens is as valuable as the eggs they lay. I’ve had hens live more than seven years. Billy, the oldest rooster, is five years old this year.

Eight week old chicks with mother — Eight Week Old Chicks

The chicks born on December 19 are 8 weeks old now. They are still spending their days and nights with their mother. Most commercial broiler chickens are in the supermarket by 8 weeks of age. These chicks are still having the time of their lives foraging for food with their mother. Here, they are digging for earthworms next to a compost pile.

February 9, 2014

Staying Warm

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These chicks are seven weeks and still have a ways to go before they are independent. Many broiler chicks have already been butchered by the time they are this old, and most only have another week or two before they are off to market. These heritage breed mix chicks are many months away from the dinner table.

February 2, 2014

All in a Morning

So just how far do chickens travel in a day? Much further than most people realize. In just three hours, the mother hen has taken her chicks over 600 feet through woods, pasture, and gardens. Over the course of a day she will take them from half a mile to a mile. This would be the equivalent of a person walking three to six miles.

I wonder what the psychological effects are on chickens which have very little room to move. I look at chickens being raised in 10 by 12 foot chicken tractors and can’t help but imagine they must be going mad. I’ve yet to see any of my chickens limit their daily movements to such a small space. Some of them travel so far I’m surprised they don’t get lost.

What I’ve observed with my chickens is that they don’t like to stay in one place very long. Even when they are in the midst of plenty to eat, they won’t stay more than five or ten minutes eating before moving on. It may an instinctual behavior to keep from being found by prey. Wild chickens which stay in one place too long may have a greater chance of being eaten than those which keep on the move. And if chickens have this instinctual need to keep moving, what happens to their psyche when they can’t?

January 29, 2014

Six Week Old Chicks – A Long Way to Go

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When you watch these small six week old chicks running around with their mother, it’s hard to imagine that many broiler chickens are six pounds and ready to be butchered by six weeks. How is that possible? What happens to a chicken when it grows to six pounds in sex weeks. What would happen to a human child if it grew to the size of a large adult in four years?

January 24, 2014

Hanging Out With Mom

It doesn’t seem like January. The sun has been out all day and the chickens are having a great time. When you see how the chicks enjoy hanging out with their mother, even hopping on her back, isn’t it obvious that every chick deserves a mother?

Modern agriculture is all about efficiency. What is the least amount of feed we can give these chickens to raise them in the least amount of time to maximize profits? What is the least amount of money we can pay workers? What is the cheapest way we can ship this food? Those are the driving forces behind filling supermarkets with vast quantities of food. It’s not about maximizing your life and happiness.

But we are going to be on this planet for millions and millions of years to come. We need to expand our viewpoint and instead of running madly in a system driven by this quarter’s profits, we need to envision a system that will endure for millions of years and maximize happiness for everyone and everything, even the animals we raise. We are all interconnected in ways we can’t even imagine. Energy flows from one living thing to another. If you think about it, we are all just recycled chicken shit. The chickens eat the grains, the grasses, the berries. Their shit fertilizes the fields to grow incredible carrots, cabbages, and other vegetables. We eat those, so in a sense we are just eating recycled chicken shit. It all goes round and round. We all need to be healthy and happy, including the plants and animals we eat, to carry us through another million years.

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January 22, 2014

Learning How to Bathe

A mother hen teaching her chicks how to take a dust bath. — Learning to Bathe

Chickens are born knowing how to take dirt baths, but when they get to learn this behavior from their mother, they sure enjoy it.

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January 18, 2014

Dirt Bath in the Sun

On a sunny day, chickens enjoy taking dust and dirt baths. They can really kick up a storm, turning upside down even to work dust and dirt deep into their feathers and onto their skin. They do this to clean themselves, and to get rid of parasites. How this works is that the dust clogs the breathing pores of the parasites, killing them. Smart birds.

That’s why when chickens shake their bodies, sometimes they leave behind a cloud of dust.

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January 17, 2014

Up a Tree

Chicken producers talk about providing enriching environments for their birds, but none of the large producers ever provide trees for their chickens to climb. During the day, a growing sequoia is an enticing place to hang out, either underneath it or up in its branches.

I certainly don’t want to lump Mary’s Chicken with the likes of Foster Farms or Tyson, but even an outstanding farm like Mary’s Chicken which takes chicken welfare seriously can not provide the rich environment like a man and his hoe®.