every chick deservers a mother
Being a mother hen is a twenty-four hour job. It’s mid afternoon and it’s time for a break. Some of her chicks are taking a warm nap under her, while others still scamper about. Her chicks may nap during the day, but Lucky doesn’t. Which might explain while mother hens tend to go to bed early. By dusk, they are bedded down with their chicks underneath them.
It’s gradually becoming the cool, wet time of the year. For Lucky and her chicks, it means having a big breakfast before spending the day outdoors in the cool, drizzly weather.
In the village, the last flowers of summer are as beautiful as ever. The butterflies are enjoying the last sips of nectar. The beauty of the Pacific Northwest is that the seasons change gently and slowly, giving plenty of time to enjoy the transformations. Each day is just slightly different than the day before it.
The first fall leaves are dropping. Ahead of me are weeks and months of gathering leaves to compost and use in vegetable beds in the spring, summer, and next fall. They are much more satisfying to use than artificial fertilizer sold in plastic containers. Raking the leaves provides plenty of exercise. The earthy smell as they break down is enjoyable. The crumbly texture of composted leaves soothes my fingers. And as the leaves break down, they attract an infinite variety of bugs the chickens love to eat. The bugs eat the decaying leaves. The chickens eat the bugs. I eat the eggs of the chickens. In a way, when I crack open an egg and eat it, I am eating the autumn leaves. If I close my eyes, can I taste the autumn leaves in the eggs?
On the way home from delivering eggs, there’s time to enjoy my favorite cows.
After just two days, Lucky has taken her chicks outdoors to enjoy life. In the clip below, you can see how little chicks bury under their mother when they want some warmth.
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During the day she takes them further and further into the grass to explore and find good things to eat.
Lucky’s eggs hatched. After watching hens hatch eggs for five years, you’d think it would be no big deal. But each hatching is wonderful. And Lucky is a very special hen. As a tiny chick, she had an unfortunate accident and scraped the back of her head and neck. We had to separate her from her siblings as they kept pecking at her wound. Oh she peeped and peeped and peeped to be with them. They didn’t have a mother. Someone had ordered some chicks from a hatchery and received the wrong breeds. The local post office called and asked if we’d take them.
We rigged up a space with chicken wire just for Lucky so she could be right next to her siblings while she healed. She grew up to be an outgoing hen, with a very distinctive look. She’s usually the first hen to see what we’re doing when we go to work in the gardens.
We weren’t sure if her eggs would hatch. She decided to brood her eggs in a nest a few other hens also liked to use to lay eggs. Sometimes we’d find her in the next nest while another hen lay an egg in her nest. We marked the eggs we put under her for her to hatch, so we were able to remove any eggs other hens added to her clutch.
From time to time, we found her sitting on new eggs in the nest next to hers and had to move her back onto her eggs. One morning I found that she’d even spent a whole night on the other nest and her eggs were cold. I had my doubts any of her eggs would hatch. But they did, and now she has a happy brood to raise.
Mothering is hard work. This is one serious, committed mother. Hens don’t have a choice of leaving their chicks at day care or hiring a sitter when they need a break. They are on the job twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. From the crack of dawn until evening, they are teaching their chicks where to find good food and how to stay away from danger. At night they become their chicks’ feather bed, keeping them warm and dry all night.
Six weeks ago these chicks were tiny balls of fur. Now they are half the size of their mother and will soon be on their own. At this size, much of the time they are the ones leading their mother. Six weeks ago, they stayed as close as possible to her, following her every move. Another four to five months, the hens will be laying eggs and the roosters doing what they like to do. Below is what they looked like five weeks ago.
This afternoon, when I went out to collect eggs and check on the chickens, I spotted a hen with chicks taking an afternoon break in the shade of a mimosa tree. The chicks were just a few days old and it wasn’t one of the hens sitting on eggs in the coop. It was a hen who had hatched her chicks in the brush somewhere and was bringing her chicks around for food and water for the first time.
Recently, there had been a hen who acted very broody when she came into the chicken yard to feed, but I never did see her sitting on eggs. Now I know why. She had a clutch of eggs in the brush or woods somewhere. It makes me wonder how many other hens will come popping out of the woods with chicks in tow.
I have plenty of little helpers eager to lend their feet as I clear land for new fencing. These five week old chicks are very curious as to what I am doing. They’ve made the connection that my clearing land means plenty of bugs and earthworms to eat. Their mother is ever vigilant. A mother hen invests so much time and energy raising chicks, I wonder what they feel when their brood is finally raised and on their own. Do they feel a sense of accomplishment?
Two days ago when I heard an eagle cry, I went into the field where I knew she was, to make sure she was safe. I found her but none of her chicks. She had told them to spread out and hide in the grass. They were so well hidden, I almost stepped on one. While they hid, I chased the eagle off. Once it had flown away, I went back to check on the mother and her chicks. One by one the chicks popped out of the grass they were hiding under, and I herded the mother and chicks out of the field.
Chickens have tiny brains. There is no denying that. But they aren’t small robots with no feelings. They feel joy, exhilaration, angst, fear, rage, jealousy, a rich spectrum of emotions. They deserve to be treated with great respect and love.
Do chickens count? The mother hens seem to be able to count rather well. While they herd their flock of chicks around, they are keenly aware if all of the chicks are present. If a chick or two or three are missing, they will go looking for them. Or if they are leading their chicks on to a new place and there are stragglers, they will go back and fetch them.
So the mother hens have a concept of “all my chicks are here” or “some of my chicks are missing”. Whether they count or not, who knows. But they certainly know if all of their chicks are present or not.
In his New York Times article Are Chicks Brighter Than Babies? from 2013, Nicholas Kristof writes:
For starters, hens can count — at least to six. They can be taught that food is in the sixth hole from the left and they will go straight to it. Even chicks can do basic arithmetic, so that if you shuffle five items in a shell game, they mentally keep track of additions and subtractions and choose the area with the higher number of items. In a number of such tests, chicks do better than toddlers.
I’ve had hens raise as many as 12 chicks, and they keep track of every single one, so perhaps hens can count up to at least 12.
These chicks are just one day old. They hatched yesterday morning. We moved the hen and chicks into a small barn for some peace and quiet. This morning when we opened the door for her, she was ready to show them the world.
She’s got them on a full scale life enrichment program from the get go. You’re not hatchery chicks so it’s sink or swim, little ones! Let’s find some worms. Move those legs. It’s not nap time yet.