The mother hen with the eight chicks, who are now forty-one days old, is walking them through lawn and brush some 250 to 300 feet from the little barn they roost in at night.

How far does she take them each day? Thinking about all the different places I see her and her chicks in the course of a day, one of the grand circuits she makes can run from a quarter to a third of a mile. It wouldn’t surprise me if she took her chicks up to a mile in a single day. For a animal that weighs one thirtieth what a human weighs, that is a long distance to travel every day.

Along the way they encounter all sorts of plants and bugs and animals. Sometimes they are out in the bright sunshine on grass. Other times they are in thick brush. At times they are in forest. Chickens are rarely still for long times. These are animals with a mission. Set them free to live surrounded by nature, and they will thrive.