a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Raising Chicks

My Farm Workers

The overnight rain has made the mimosa blossoms look like sad creatures in a Dr. Seuss story. A little rain doesn’t stop me from preparing a vegetable bed for cabbage transplants. A freshly dug patch attracts the attention of a mother hen and her chicks. It’s a prime spot to teach her chicks how to find and catch earthworms. Over and over she picks up earthworms and drops them for her chicks. They grab them and run off to eat them without being hassled by the other chicks.

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August 13, 2014
Tucked In for the Night – Five Week Old Chicks

Chicks grow a lot in five weeks. Here they are, five week old chicks tucked in for the night with their mother. And below is how they looked soon after they hatched. They are all feathered out and looking more and more like adult chickens. They’re no longer the cute little baby chicks. It won’t be long before they are on their own.

August 11, 2014
On the Road Again

This mother hen has learned that the way to the potato patch and vegetable fields is through the road. The fields are protected by a six foot high fence from the rest of the property, but there is only a four foot high fence facing the driveway.

By taking the chicks out into the driveway, she can walk to the potato patch, fly up to the fence and jump down, while her chicks wriggle through the wire fence. So we’re needing to quickly redo the fence between the vegetable fields and the driveway to keep this hen and her chicks out.

This is one determined mother hen. Once I shoo her out of the vegetable fields, it doesn’t take her long to walk her chicks four hundred feet through the woods around the vegetable fields and back out onto the driveway.

Chickens love potatoes. They will scratch through the dirt and once they find them, will quickly devour them. Last year we lost many beds of potatoes to the chickens. This year we are keeping them. The vegetables, they don’t eat that much, but they will destroy entire vegetable beds digging for worms and bugs.

Maybe next year I should just plant potatoes in various places where the chickens roam, so they will leave the potato patch alone.

August 8, 2014
A Mother and Her 12 Day Old Chicks

There is nothing a mother hen won’t do for her chicks. While she takes them around, they are in constant communication with each other. Her chicks chirp often, letting her know where they are and what they are feeling. She talks to them all day long, warning them when there is danger, and telling them when she finds something good to eat. And at the end of a long day, she provides a safe place for them to sleep under her feathers.

While they were developing in their eggs, they heard her heartbeat all day long. At night, when they sleep under her warm body, they sleep listening to her heartbeat too.

I often hear people say that chickens are so stupid. Maybe the reason they seem stupid is that people are trying to raise them in environments they aren’t designed for. Give them plenty of space to roam, interesting things to do, the opportunity to mate, for hens to hatch and rear their young, and you get to see how complex and wonderful these birds are.

August 6, 2014
Butterball Mothers

Mother hens fluff their feathers when they sense danger. They can appear to be twice their normal size. When they fan out their tail feathers, they look like turkeys. This behavior begins before the chicks are hatched. A sure sign a hen is sitting on eggs to hatch, is when she goes around fluffing her feathers.

The whole brood takes a break when mother takes a dust bath. A chick’s day is punctuated with frequent breaks: dust baths with mom, warm naps in her feathers, lazy time in the sun.

July 29, 2014