This is what chickens at a man and his hoe® roam through this time of year. The trilliums and bleeding hearts are up and blanket the forest floor. Various fruit trees will be blooming through May. As the flower petals fall, they provide the chickens with a feast.
A forest is a perfect place to raise chicks. The high canopy and undercover provide protection, while the thick layer of decomposing leaves and branches provides a feast of organisms to eat. For chicks with a mother in this lush environment, every day is jam-packed with adventure.
New Pullet Egg and Cherry Blossom Snow
This time of year, every day is full of surprises. This morning I discovered a pullet egg. When hens first start laying eggs, they lay tiny eggs. You’ll rarely, if ever, find them in a store, but they are beautiful and make very cute fried eggs.
The flowers are still drifting off the cherry tree and blanketing the ground like snow. There are more petals than the chickens can possibly eat.
The mint is now growing vigorously.
And the salmon berries are in full bloom. Come late June and early July, the orange-salmon colored berries will be ready to eat. They are best eaten in the afternoon on sunny days, after the sun has warmed the berries to perfection.
On a Wet April Day
On a day like today, it’s easy to imagine this place is high in a mountain valley. The clouds are rolling in off the ocean and hanging low. The air is misty, with big drops of cool water collecting on the leaves and flowers.
Young roosters often like to hang around older roosters. Lately, young Daisuke has been spending a lot of time near Billy. Roosters don’t start competing with each other until they get closer to being a year old. After their mother is done rearing them, if the roosters have brothers, they will stick together. And those that don’t have brothers, may seek out the company of an older rooster.
This is Cognac, a Wheaten Maran, one of my special hens. Marans lay some of the darkest eggs of all. You can see the dark egg she laid below.
Lucky Lays an Egg
It’s a fresh, Sunday April morning. When I fed the dogs this morning, I saw that Lucky was already in one of the dog houses. So while the dogs were eating, I closed the gate to their kennel. A few minutes later while I was making coffee, I heard Lucky clucking. She’d laid her egg.
Getting Lucky’s egg before the dogs do is a game I play nearly every day. Lucky insists on using one of the doghouses as her nest. Some mornings, she lays the egg before I even get up, and the dogs get a pre-breakfast snack. This Sunday morning, I got her egg.
There used to be more hens who liked to lay their eggs in the dog houses each morning. Now, Lucky is the only one. Most hens change their nesting spots from time to time. They’ll use one nest for a month or two, and then switch to another nest. I suppose it’s an adaptation to hide their nesting spots from predators.
Svenda in the Woods
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So what do chickens like to do? One thing they really like is to go hunting in the woods. The underbrush is full of good things to eat. Chickens evolved from red jungle fowl of southeast Asia. So it’s not surprising that chickens enjoy spending so much time in the woods. This is what chickens like to do. So why pack them by the tens of thousands into chicken houses where they never see the outdoors?
Here at a man and his hoe®, what the chickens want is paramount. It’s not about trying to produce the most eggs and meat at the lowest cost as possible. It’s about providing a farm where chickens experience the maximum amount of happiness. And after observing them for eight years, one of their favorite things to do is to spend hours in the woods. This is what humanely raised chicken look like. You can’t raise them humanely in a densely packed chicken house.
Beauty is Everywhere – Do Chickens See Beauty?
Beauty is everywhere. When the chickens make their rounds, do they see beauty? When they walk over fallen cherry petals, do they just see good things to eat, or do they think it’s pretty? When they walk by moss covered rocks, do they just check to see if there is something to eat on the moss, or do they pause and enjoy the lush green?
I’ll never forget the day I ran into Madeleine taking a walk in the woods. She was the first hen I had who hatched and raised a clutch. A day or two after she was done rearing her brood, she was strolling down a path through the woods.
I watched her for some time. She seemed to be more than just looking for good things to eat. She seemed to be taking a much needed rest from having spent twenty four hours a day for over a month rearing nine chicks. It was like she was out enjoying being alone for the first time in a long time.
That was back in 2010. Madeleine is no longer living. But I’ll never forget her. Watching her care for her chicks convinced me that every chick deserves a mother.
Queen Imelda
Queen Imelda cuts a regal pose as she spends part of the afternoon with Billy. Always calm and collected, she lays an impressive egg. Each chicken is unique. Each one has a distinct personality. Each one lays a slightly different egg. Each time they lay an egg it is slightly different.
When you see the Certified Humane label on a carton of eggs, you may think that the hens which laid those eggs are running around on grass like Queen Imelda. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Certified Humane only requires hens to have 1 to 1.5 square feet per hen when laying hens are kept in laying houses. The requirement varies depending on whether the laying house has layers, perches, and roosts or not. You’ll find their space requirements on page 7 of Humane Farm Animal Care Animal Care Standards 2014 Standards for Egg Laying Hens.
This means that in a 30 by 100 foot laying house, a farmer could keep from 2,000 to 3,000 hens and still meet the Certified Humane standards. What organizations like Certified Humane are trying to do is noble, but just because something has a label saying it was raised humanely, doesn’t mean that it meets your definition of what you consider to be humane treatment. Look behind the label and find out exactly what that means.
I asked Certified Humane whether they allowed de-beaking and this is what they emailed me:
De-beaking is prohibited by our program. Our laying hen standards allow beak trimming if it occurs before 10 days of age, and here is the reasoning behind that:
In flocks of cage-free laying hens larger than 120 birds, there is a tendency towards feather pecking and cannibalism. Feather pecking is a natural behavior for birds (actually the source of the term “pecking order”), whereas cannibalism occurs when the birds attack another bird until it is dead. Most of the food production flocks are much larger than 120 birds, unless they are being raised by a backyard farmer or hobbyist.
Beak trimming is performed on birds prior to 10 days of age. Our scientific committee developed this standard as a way to combat cannibalism in cage-free flocks while minimizing discomfort for the birds. There have been studies done which show that trimming just the tip of the beak at that age causes only momentary discomfort, with no long-term discomfort or ill effects. The birds are still able to use their beak in a full range of natural behaviors.
In other words, they allow egg laying hens to be kept in flocks of such size and density, that the hens may cannibalize each other. So, in order to prevent this, they allow chicks up to 10 days old to have their beaks trimmed. In my view, a more humane method would be to research what maximum flock size and minimum housing density is required to keep cannibalization from happening in the first place. Of course, this would result in more expensive eggs, and so to keep the farmers happy and the consumers appeased with being able to purchase inexpensive eggs with “humanely raised” labels, the less expensive method has been approved.
I understand why Certified Humane has gone this way. At the same time, I feel you have a right to know what it is you are buying when you purchase eggs with their label on them.
Billy and the Plum Tree
Billy, the rooster who along with Madeleine, started my education into mother-raised chicken. He’s five years old and no longer the top rooster. But he’s settled into a quiet spot in the backyard where he spends much of the day. Numerous hens come and visit him so he’s a long way from not enjoying life. This week he’s devouring the plumb blossoms as they drift off the plum tree. Not a bad life for an old rooster.
Sometimes the Best Laid Plans Don’t
Sometimes the best laid plans don’t work. After building an incubation suite for the hen who went broody, I tried moving her into the suite Saturday night (March 29), but Sunday morning, she wanted out. She was determined to get back to her original brooding site.
Once she was on her original brooding site, I placed ten eggs for her to hatch. The due date is April 20, and we’ll see how she does. Through the process I did find out that this is one tough hen. She won’t have a problem keeping other hens from trying to use her nest while she broods. This hen can peck!
Chick Adventure in the Wild
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What a morning for these five day old chicks. When their mother tries to lure them through a stream, they panic. The water is too deep for them. Separated from her, the chicks chirp loudly, begging her to come back. One even falls into the stream, and valiantly struggles up the steep bank. Others clamber over a mountain of a bush to reach their mother.
After the wild and terrifying adventure for these chicks, they get a well deserved rest under their mother’s warm feathers.
I laugh when I read of those raising chicks in broilers talk about enrichment programs for their chicks. These enrichment programs consist of providing bales of hay, perches, and objects for the chicks to peck. They certainly don’t include outdoor adventures such as fording streams or trying to keep up with Mother as she forages through rangeland.