Nine Day Old Chicks

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At nine days, the chicks are already adept at scratching and preening. The great thing about having a mother, is that she is always nearby for a warm place to rest. It’s late December and hovering around 40 degrees F, but with a mother nearby, the cool weather is just fine for these lucky chicks.

Seven Day Old Chicks

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The chicks are seven days old now. The mother has brought them out to feed with the other chickens. It’s a sunny, beautiful day today and she may take them outdoors today for the first time.

Six Day Old Chicks

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When a mother hen senses danger, she’ll spread her wings and puff up, doubling the size of her appearance. She starts showing this behavior even before her chicks hatch. While she is incubating her eggs, she’ll come off the next once a day to eat and drink. A brooding hen will often puff up around other chickens as if she is protecting a brood.

Five Day Old Chicks

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The chicks are five days old. I opened their nursery so their mother is free to take them wherever she wants. The next time you buy chicken ask your grocer, “Was this chicken raised by a mother?” Don’t worry about the blank stares you get from your grocer, or that this-customer-is-nuts look on their face. You are the one who is going to be putting that chicken in your mouth. You have a right to know everything about that chicken. You have a right to demand that chicken you eat has had a wonderful life. Call me crazy, but customers are not nearly demanding enough about the quality of food grocers sell.

Four Day Old Chicks

Mother with 4 day old chicks
Mother with 4 day old chicks

The chicks are four days old today and doing well. In a few more days, I’ll open the nursery so the mother can start taking them outside. Some mothers have their chicks outside right aways, others keep them close to the nursery for a week to 10 days before taking them outdoors. Each mother has her own chick-rearing style. In this age of making everything exactly the same, and turning food products into commodities to trade on mercantile exchanges, I’m taking the opposite approach. At A Man and His Hoe, no two chickens are ever the same. It’s impossible to lump them all together and treat them all the same. When you pick out a chicken in the supermarket, do you ever wonder if that chicken was a shy one, an adventurous one, a kind one, or a bossy one? There are all types of chickens. When you purchase one of my chickens, you can ask me what kind of personality the chicken had. I watch each chick as it grows. I can tell you which mother it had, and what mischief it got into.

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Three Day Old Chicks

Mother and Chicks Eating
Mother and Chicks Eating

After three days, we get a good look of the new chicks. They are off to a good start and before long, the hen will be taking them outdoors to find lots of good things to eat. Life can be very good for chicks on a farm.
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New Chicks Hatched Today

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These chicks are just a few hours old. I usually do not let the hens hatch chicks this time of year, but I made an exception for this hen. For 21 days she has been incubating the eggs. Tonight, when it got dark, I moved her and her chicks to a quiet spot in a small house in the covered chicken yard so she won’t have to worry about any rain or snow. She hatched these chicks in a dog house out in the open. Tomorrow or the next day when she takes her chicks out of the house, she’ll have a private yard for her chicks, and then in a few more days, when she is ready, she will take them outdoors to explore.

If you turn the volume up, you can hear the deep, clucking sound she makes as I reach underneath her. That is the call hens make to warn their chicks that danger is nearby.

Eggs after they have hatched
Eggs after they have hatched

And this is what the eggs look like after they have hatched. Normally the hen or other chickens would eat these.

December isn’t the best time for hens to hatch chicks. Usually when hens go broody this time of year, I replace the eggs they are sitting on with wooden eggs. That way they will keep sitting and eventually give up trying to hatch the wooden eggs after four to six weeks. I’ve discovered that if you remove the eggs and leave the hens with nothing to incubate, they can become quite upset at losing their eggs. They go through a period where they are clearly distressed. The nearest I can describe it is that they go through a mourning period. This doesn’t happen if I let them go through a full brooding period and let them give up trying to hatch the wooden eggs.

Does it really matter taking this much care over chickens? It does to the chickens. Compared to our complicated lives, chicken lives are simpler, but they aren’t mindless creatures without feelings and desires. They are more than animal robots. Each hen has her own style of mothering. Each chick has its own personality. When you purchase one of my chickens, it has lived the most natural life a chicken possibly can.