every day is a good day
It’s a quiet, drizzly spring day. The brooding hen’s chicks are hatching. This is what a hatched egg looks like. For the first day or two, it is next to impossible to see the chicks. The mother keeps them tucked in underneath her. At times you can hear them peeping, but if you approach, she will tell them to be quiet. This evening, we will move her and her chicks into a protected nursery.
Ina-Svenda is one of my favorite hens. She has a face that is impossible not to love.
It’s about her last day brooding. I can hear some of her chicks starting to peep. They start peeping before they hatch so I’m not sure if some have already hatched, or if they are about to. So what drives a hen to sit on a clutch of eggs for three weeks? Is it love? Nothing but instinct? What drives a woman to carry a child to term. Is it love? Nothing but instinct?
Is it just the driving force of hormones? Maybe that’s all love is. What’s in it for the hen? Once the chicks hatch, she will spend one, two, up to three months devoted to them. Then they leave her, she leaves them, either way she doesn’t benefit after that. They don’t dote over her after they are raised. They don’t bring her presents on Mother’s Day or take care of her when she gets old. Since she personally doesn’t benefit, you might say that a hen’s love for her chicks is greater than that of a human’s love for her children. After all, most human parents receive many benefits in return for the love they shower on their children. Many of their children provide plenty of love in return, even caring for their parents as they age. A hen can never count on that.
You need vibrant eggs for a hen to incubate them into chicks. When you buy eggs from a man and his hoe®, you know you are getting very vibrant eggs. My eggs are not dead things. They are very much alive. All it takes is three weeks of gentle heat to turn them into healthy chicks. It’s something we tend not to notice when we buy groceries. Almost all of the things we eat are alive. Any fresh salad is a collection of living plants. If you eat eggs, dairy, or meat, all of those things are the products of living things. And it is love that creates all living things. Love (hormones?) is the driving force which makes things grow and reproduce and grow and reproduce and grow a million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion, undecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattuordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillon, septendecillion, octodecillion, novemdecillion, vigintillion, unvigintillion, duovigintillion, infinite times. (how many?)
Today is the warmest day so far of this year. Many of you may laugh to hear that it isn’t even 60ºF (15.5ºC) yet. But it feels like an early spring heat wave for us. The dogs are loving this warm, sunny day.
Chickens are but a part of a man and his hoe®. The 800 garlic I planted last fall are shooting up. Come May, the garlic bed will provide a bounty of garlic scapes to enjoy. Much of this is made possible by all the manure the chicken produce. Every few months, I start a new compost pile. The current one is heating up. Much of this week it has been around 130ºF. It’s a bit cooler today as I thoroughly broke it down yesterday and rebuilt it. It will be hot again tomorrow. A good reference for composting, is The Science of Composting by the University of Illinois Extension.
Every time I turn the compost pile, I’m always amazed at how full of life it is. There are countless tiny creatures as well as billions of microscopic bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes. Turning the compost pile immediately attracts many chickens. The pile contains a feast for them, and stirring it up makes it easy for them to snatch their favorite things. It’s like a fast food joint for them.
The brooding hen has ten days left before her chicks hatch. Does she have any idea how busy she will be then? What is going through her mind as she patiently waits?
It’s been a cool, drizzly day. When the hens have had enough of being out in the wet, hanging out under the eaves is popular.
At a man and his hoe® chickens have plenty of chances to be alone. It’s early spring, the robins are back and the frogs’ chorus at night is almost deafening. The hens are just starting to go broody, with the first clutch scheduled to hatch around March 26. By mid summer, there will be up to a hundred new chicks running about with their mothers. Now is the time for chickens to have time alone.
In the space where a typical chicken farm will have 3,000 chickens, I have one. In a single hour, a chicken here will walk a greater distance than chickens in most farms walk during their entire short six to ten week lives.
You can either buy chickens which have plenty of chances to be alone, or buy chickens which never experience a single moment on their own.
So what is life like for a mother-to-be hen? Most of the time, day and night, it is sitting quietly on her eggs. She is also gently turning the eggs many times a day. This keeps the embryo centered in the egg and prevents it from sticking to the shell membrane. She also protects the eggs she is sitting on and will keep other hens and predators from getting into her nest. (The squiggly lines on the eggs are ones I drew to mark the eggs she started incubating.)
Of course, a hen doesn’t have a servant to bring her food and water. At least once a day, she has to leave the nest to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, and get some exercise.
Afterwards, she is back on her nest until the next day.
