every day is a good day
New life! Chicks are hatching today. No matter how many times I see new chicks peaking out from under their mother’s feathers for the first time, it is pure joy.
And in about two weeks, if all goes well, a clutch of tiny chicks will be peaking out from under this hen.
Chickens spend much of their day hunting. I was turning and adding leaves to a compost pile. Lucky spotted me working and came running, her chicks in tow. She knows that when I’m turning a compost pile, the hunting will be easy.
In the short clip below, you can see Lucky plucking earthworms out of the ground and dropping them for her chicks to devour. You can also hear the staccato clucking sound mother hens make when they’ve found something good to eat. The louder the sound, the more delicious the food. Watch how excited Lucky gets when she finds a big worm. Chicks seem to know from birth what this sound means.
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How is the meaning of a sound transferred via instinct? If we could figure this out, maybe we could change our DNA so that we could encode hundreds of languages so that children would be born knowing English, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Swahili, any language you could imagine. Entire encyclopedias inscribed in our genetic code so that as our brains develop all this knowledge would be at the tip of our tongues.
Lucky spotted me scooping duckweed out of the pond for the chickens. She’s come running to give her chicks a treat. All the chickens go nuts for fresh duckweed. Not only do they like the fresh green duckweed, they scratch through it to pick out all the bugs that live in the duckweed.
I never tire watching the interaction between the chicks and their mother. All day long, the chicks are watching every move she makes. All day long, they are at her feet or scurrying close to her. When she finds something good to eat, their beaks are immediately next to hers. When she rests, they rest. Her chicks are now two weeks old.
Sadly, on Saturday she lost one of her five chicks. I was in the kitchen looking out and saw her chase a Coopers hawk. I ran out to check on her. She was safe and so were four of her chicks. One was missing.
Giving chicks as much freedom and space as I do has its consequences. It’s possible to protect them from land predators with adequate fencing, but it’s a challenge to keep them safe from hawks and eagles. The dogs do a pretty good job, chasing the bigger raptors away. It’s the smaller raptors that manage to sneak in and snatch the chicks. Maybe a fleet of heat seeking drones could detect hawks and eagles and automatically chase them away, or at least alert us ground animals to their presence.
On a rainy day, the best place to be is indoors, looking outside from underneath a mother’s warm feathers.
Below, it’s time for a short, afternoon nap. You’d never guess Lucky has her five chicks tucked underneath her.
Out they come, one at a time.
Nap time is over, and it’s back to exploring the world, having fun, and growing up.
Only a mother can provide the warmth and security a little chick craves. I was aware that hens have a variety of calls to instruct their chicks. There is the sound they make when they have found food. Another for danger. And yet another call which means, “get your butt over here now!”
Today we learned they have another sound which means, “hide, stay quiet, and don’t move until I come.” While she was with her chicks on the open grass, a raven came flying in. Lucky sent the chicks scurrying under a bush, while she went running in another direction to distract the raven. A raven will easily eat a small chick. She waited until the Raven was gone before she went back to fetch her chicks.
A favorite spot for chicks is right in front of their mother, half covered by her feathers. Sitting snugly, they can peer out and watch the whole world go by.
