every day is a good day
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.
