It's a Fricken' Chicken' Miracle!

The hens have not had good luck this year raising chicks. Twice that I know of, a hen sat on a clutch of eggs for the full 21 days (or longer) and then abandoned them when nothing hatched. I don't know why nothing hatched - the roosters have surely been doing their job. A little too vigorously, I might add, with much squawking and flying of feathers. One or two of the hens are looking quite bare about the withers, a sure sign that we have too many roosters for too few hens.

After the two nest failures, I began shooing away any hens I saw sitting on eggs, and trying to collect all the eggs every day. A large percentage of my hens are broody breeds, and unless I break them up, I just don't have very many eggs during the summer months. I hate feeding twenty-some odd hens and collecting only three or four eggs a day. That's just silly.

There was one hen I didn't shoo, because I didn't know how long she had been sitting when I found her. She was up on a high shelf in the mama barn. On the day that we stuffed the mama barn with hay, I thought to myself, I'd better send the kids up there with a pillowcase and get her and those eggs into a better place - but we never did it. All I did was leave a window open so the hen could get in and out to eat and drink.

This morning, when I went out to feed the animals, I saw the mother hen outside with a bunch of babies - tiny little fluffy just hatched babies. A couple of quick counts left me fairly sure there were seven of them. I was extremely impressed - the journey from high shelf to outside cannot have been easy. Alas, I can't find the cord to my camera, so I can't show you exactly how difficult the journey was, but let me try to explain.

After the babies hatched, they had to follow their mama down off the high shelf and onto the tops of the stacked hay. Then they had to traverse the hay bales - a journey across several frightening crevasses that a chick, if it fell into, would be entirely incapable of climbing out of. Upon reaching the open window, the mama hen would have flown out and onto the ground; a paltry drop, for her, of about four and a half feet. But the chicks would have to have hurled themselves willy-nilly out into the unknown and tumbled unwittingly onto the hard-packed earth.

What courage! What valiance! I'm not being sarcastic here, I'm honestly moved by the determination it took for this mother hen to get her babies out into the world. By her endurance, sitting for weeks in that hot, dark barn. And by the beauty and strength of the directive implanted in those babies to follow their mother, come hell or high water. I know it's all instinct, but in my mind that makes it no less awe-inspiring.

The next thing I did, after counting babies, was to open up the mama barn and see if there were any babies left behind. Indeed, I heard a loud peeping emanating from floor level by the window. One chick must have fallen down between the hay bales. Oh no! What to do? On my own, I was totally incapable of moving the twenty or so bales that would have to be moved to rescue the chick. It wasn't even close - there's just no way. I would have to wait for Homero to get home and see what he said. In my mind, I decided to abide by whatever his decision was without complaint - he has been suffering a great deal with his back lately and I certainly wasn't going to insist he hurt himself to rescue one baby chick that would have a very high likelihood of being eaten by a hawk within a day or two in any case.

However, my husband being the man he is, he set about moving hay bales right away. "She worked so hard," he said, referring to the mama hen, "we can't just let her baby die down there." It took him about fifteen minutes to tear down the bales, rescue the baby, and replace the bales. I hope he doesn't suffer for it later tonight, but if he does, I will be there with ice-packs and massages. What a man I married.

Right now, the mama and all eight of her chicks are under the mama barn, where they will be safe from hawks and - I hope - other predators. In past years, we have lost a very high percentage of chicks, mostly, I think, to hawks. I would try to round them up and keep them in a safer place, but I don't really have one available, and that hasn't worked well in the past in any case. I have come to the conclusion that a good mother hen can raise babies at least as well as I can and most likely better.

I wish her luck.

That's not her in the above picture, by the way. As I said, I lost my camera cord, and so I pulled a generic picture off the web. My mama hen is black, and her babies are a delightful melange of colors from jet black to palest daffodil yellow.

Chicken Surprise!

Yesterday, I found the first egg of the year... or what I THOUGHT was the first egg of the year. Most chicken folk I know have been getting eggs for some time now, and so I wondered what was wrong with my hens. I checked them over for signs of egg-readiness (such as a bigger, brighter red comb and a big fluffy bottom) and it seemed to me that were three or four who ought to be laying, by the looks of them. But I found no eggs until yesterday, when I found one in the hayloft.

So today, of course, I decided to go up to the loft and make a search to see if there were any eggs today. As I was poking around, a hen came fluttering out from between bales of hay and flew off with a squawk. Well, I know what that means. Sure enough, when I pulled one bale away from the other, I found a clutch of some twenty eggs. All were nice and toasty warm, which means she's been sitting on them. She's broody.

What now, dang it? Don't these stupid chickens have any idea of the season? Well, to give them credit where credit is due, it is true that we recently had a very hard freeze followed by a dramatic warm-up. In the chicken brain, I guess that equals spring. If I had any way of determining how far along the eggs are, such as a candling setup, I would scare the hen away and then check out the eggs one by one to see if they are still edible or irredeemably fertilized. But then, I'd have to throw away the developing ones, and I just hate to do that.

Oh heck. I'll go out there tomorrow morning and see what's up. Most likely, my disturbance of the nest site has scared away the hen for good and If the eggs are cold in the A.M. then I'll gather them and take my chances.

But if there's a hen sitting on them, or if they are toasty warm, then I'll let them be.

Roadtrip Roundup (World's Best Farmsitter)

We were out of town for the last few days - we drove to McCall, Idaho for my cousin's wedding. Dad is still with us, and there's nothing he likes better than a roadtrip, especially one that takes him over both roads he knows from his youth and over brand new roads he's never travelled before. He gets to reminisce and also see new things. He's as happy in the car as a dog is.

A lot of Eastern Washington is pretty dull - unless you really really like wheat - but once we were a couple of hours into Idaho it got very pretty. Especially 95 south from Grangeville down through Riggins on the Salmon river is just amazingly gorgeous. We came through Grangeville in the late afternoon, and there was a thunderstorm with lightening and hail. We stopped to take a picture of the sunset on the stormclouds, and when I opened the car door, the smell of the earth after the storm hit me full in the face. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever smelled. It was as if all the pores of the Earth opened up to drink in the moisture and then were sighing with relief. It was a sweet, warm smell, of sage and herbs and dirt. I could have stood there forever.

The wedding was lovely; the lake was beautiful and clear and cool with great sandy beaches. We enjoyed ourselves very much, had no car trouble, and got home late last night.

I had been just a little bit worried about the farm while we were gone. The day before we left, two things happened: Iris had a little nodule in her milk, and we found surprise baby chicks. Iris has never had any issues with her udder before, and the nodule, by itself, doesn't mean much - every once in a while, anyone can get a plugged duct and then have to spit out the resulting "milk clot." However, often, such things are the prelude to mastitis, and that IS a big deal which can be rapidly fatal. I didn't know what to do except inform T., our farmsitter - who had come over to go over the duties beforehand - and ask her if she was comfortable giving penicillin injections if necessary and giving Iris an extra milking every day. She said that would be no big deal and that she was used to giving horses injections and a goat couldn't possibly be harder.

Then, as we were walking back from the barn, we suddenly saw a mama hen strut out of the bushes with a whole bunch of obviously newborn baby chicks. Holy Cow! I had had no idea there was a hen brooding anywhere - I don't even know how many hens I have, although it is somewhere between fifteen and twenty. They are hard to count, they move so fast and so many of them look just alike.

"Oh no!" I cried. "Help me get them!"

We scrambled around in the tall grass and soon captured nine baby chicks and the angry, squawking mama hen. I bundled them all into the rabbit hutch (which is where I like to put newborn baby chickens to protect them from the thousand and one dangers of farm life) and gathered straw, a waterer, and chick feed.

"Do you mind? I guess there will be a bit more work than I thought..." I trailed off.

"No! Oh my goodness, they are so adorable." She didn't mind. However, she did look relieved when I told her than I am well aware that baby chicks have a sickeningly high mortality rate and I would not hold her accountable should some of them be dead when I return.

But in fact, everything is great. No chicks have died; Iris is healthy as a horse, and we had a nice, soaking rain while I was gone, which is something we desperately needed. The state of the farm is a perfect 10 - for the moment.

And, no, you may not have my farmsitter's number.

Surprise!!

Speak of the Devil....

No sooner do I post that nothing is going on than I discover that the black hen has hatched out two chicks. Being up in the hayloft, they would fall down and die if I didn't remove the whole nest, so I cleaned out the rabbit hutch and gave her a nice cozy nest to hatch out the others in - if there are any others. She has six more eggs. I'll keep y'all updated - I know you're on pins and needles!

Same-Sex Chicken Experiment

Well, my happy little lesbian hen family has not survived. Chick envy appears to have been the problem. The yellow and one of the black mamas had been happily sharing their little brood of three for nearly two weeks without problems, and it looked like all would be well.

Then I let the other brood out of the rabbit hutch and out into the barnyard. Another black mama (2) has a brood of five, about a week old now. When black mama (1) saw the new brood, she promptly tried to steal it. The two black mamas were fighting viciously.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell them apart, so I had to grab one and hold it while I watched to see if the chicks would run under the one remaining. I grabbed the wrong mama first and had to switch. I tried to put black mama (1) back with her family, but she just kept trying to fight with black mama (2). She didn't even care about her three chicks anymore! She abandoned them to yellow mama.

So I had to put black mama (1) in the mama barn overnight to chill out, and now my same-sex chicken experiment is over.

Is that clear?

My Two Mommies, Chicken Edition

Well it appears that two female chickens can partner up and both be mommies to the same brood. It's been a few days, and both hens are still in full-on mother hen mode. The babies have not yet exhibited any preference for one hen over the other and will run under whichever one is closest to them. Both hens spread their wings and shelter the babies; both hens do the special "food cluck" to tell the chicks where the grain is; and both hens will try to attack me when I get too close.

Apparently same sex families are a poultry possibility. Keep it under your hat, I don't want anyone trying to censor my henhouse.

Chick Update

Still only the same three chicks. The two hens have abandoned the nests now, so there won't be any more. I'm afraid I may have committed an error in moving two hens and two nests into the mama barn: although I gave each hen a live chick and put their nests as far apart as possible, now both hens are trying to cover all three chicks. The chicks don't seem to have a preference at this point but I assume they will soon imprint on one or the other, and then what?

Operation Hayloft

I'm not sure I ever informed you all, but a few weeks ago I noticed that there was a chicken up in the hayloft, brooding. It's kind of late in the season for new chicks, but what could I do? I had no idea how long she'd been up there. Then, a few days later, I saw another one. I decided I'd better make a thorough search, and I found no fewer than THREE hens brooding in various dark and dusty corners of the hayloft. And I got fairly well covered in chicken shit and had a hay-dust induced coughing fit.

Well, hens will be hens, and I never mind a few more chickens around the place. But I knew that I'd better keep a sharp eye on them, because once they hatched, the chicks would fall off the loft and either freeze or be trampled. Or both. This evening, when I checked, I could tell by the posture of the hens, their heightened vigilance and increased hostility that if the chicks hadn't hatched yet, it would be any minute (Why yes, I do read chicken-minds. Just call me the chicken-whisperer.). I checked, and yes indeed, two of the mamas had chicks under them, with several eggs left yet.

Thus began Operation Hayloft. We all trooped out to the barn armed with pillowcases and a camera, and extracted all three hens, distributing them to various safe locations. Was it easy? No. There was much squawking and flying of feathers. But I think I can say that Operation Hayloft was a success: all three are now bedded down in their new nests.

Volunteer Rowan intrepidly risks life and limb on a wobbly ladder and valiantly braves an asthma attack in her zeal to locate and retrieve one of the mama hens.

One of the nests. The little yellow and black one is totally adorable. Hope s/he lives.

Yellow mama safely ensconced on her new nest in the mama barn. Of course, you can't ever tell how many of the eggs might hatch, but if the hens manage a 50% hatch rate, there will be eleven new chicks. Yowza!

Chick Attrition

I know there are plenty of people who raise chickens out there. Do your chicks suffer the terrible infant mortality rate that mine do? The first hen who tried to raise chicks this year lost all five of hers over a period of a month or so. It was so sad, they each met a different grisly end, or just disappeared one by one until finally there were none. The poor mama hen ran around looking for them for a few days.... thankfully, the brain of a chicken is probably not up to the task of long term memory, nor is she likely capable of anything we might call grief. 

When the next hen hatched out three chicks, I determined to keep them in the mama barn until they were well and truly ready to leave. I think it was more than six weeks. They were pretty well half grown by the time I let them out. Even so, one has disappeared, about two weeks after making its barnyard debut. The other two are old enough that they no longer stick with their mother, although they do stick with each other pretty well. 

This newest batch of chicks numbered five. How old are they? Three days? One's gone. It somehow got left in the nestbox and apparently couldn't get out when mama and the other four left it. When I went out to milk this morning, I noticed that mama only had four chicks. I looked for the fifth, and found it alone in the nestbox. At first I thought it was dead, but it wasn't, just extremely cold. After I held it cupped in my hands and breathed on it for a few minutes, it seemed to revive a little bit, so I put it back under mama hen (who tried to attack it). Maybe.....

No. This afternoon, there were only four again. This time I couldn't find the little body. I will, I'm sure, when I'm least expecting to. I'm just not sure what more I can do to try and protect the baby chicks and give them the best chance at survival. They are alone with their mama hen in a closed barn; no other chickens or other animals can get at them. They have special baby chick food and water in a tiny waterer made for chicks (which I bought after a chick drowned in a regular waterer). Mama hen seems fairly competent. Yet I've lost seven out of thirteen born this year. Is this just the natural death rate for chickens? Good lord.

Maybe I ought to let all the broody hens have a crack at raising chicks. If I have seven or eight hens trying, maybe a decent number of babies will survive.

Chick Update

Homero is opening eggs which he says are peeping. He is doing it on camera for his relatives in Oaxaca. Thank the Lord I haven't the technical savvy to do what he asked and set up this computer so we could watch, too. It's a thoroughly disgusting procedure.

If the peeping eggs yield up living chicks, there will be at least five.

Better Luck This Time, Chicks!

I didn't blog about this, because it made me so sad. Remember all the little bantam chicks that I bought at the feed store and slipped under the hen whose eggs didn't hatch? Well they all died. Every last one of them. One at a time. It was terrible. The first one that died, something bizarre and inexplicable happened to it: it somehow got stuck to it's mother's chest and she squished it. It was actually hanging from her body for a whole day before I found it. Where's the missing chick? Ewwwww, there it is. It was really stuck, too. I had to tug hard to get it off, but I couldn't figure out what made it stick there. Anyway. 

One more got stuck in the chicken wire of the coop and died of cold at night. The others just disappeared, one by one. Hawks? A rat, skunk, weasel, raccoon, possum? My own cat? Any of these things are possible. I kind of soured on chicks after that, but these darn broody hens are terrifically persistent. They absolutely insist on brooding. Yesterday, three chicks hatched.

There's one that I think isn't going to make it. It's much smaller than the others and not as fast. Okay, I admit it. I helped it out of the egg after it looked like it wasn't going to be able to do it by itself. I know. I know. Just prolonging the inevitable. But it was PEEPING. 

The other two look great. This time, I'm going to keep them in the mama barn as long as I can, until they are quite a bit bigger than the last batch. About half-hen sized, say. I hope they make it. My kids are getting pretty inured to farm animal death. "Oh," they said, looking at the littlest chick. "I think that one's half dead already." 

On a cheerier note, here's my haul this week from veggie man, my newest trade network contact. He's the guy with the commercial organic farm. What you see above is five pounds of snap peas, three bunches of the biggest radishes you ever saw, and about a pound of various baby lettuces and greens. That's $20 worth of produce, in exchange for 8 dozen eggs. Normally I sell the eggs for $3/dozen, but we decided it would be easier to make it ten bucks a week even. He's very generous with the produce. 

I'm planning to pickle a few pints of peas and just eat the rest like candy. My girls go nuts for them. Once the kale fairy starts bringing me veggies too, we'll be rolling in them. We'll eat so much chlorophyll, our eyes will turn green.

second chance chicks

The yellow mama has hatched out two chicks. There are four more eggs, but I don't think they're going to hatch. I only just discovered the chicks when I went into the mama barn - that's the small barn where I milk the goats, keep the feed, and put any prospective mothers to hatch/birth their babies - to feed the chickens their afternoon ration. Both yellow mama and black mama (my sister says these names are racist) are brooding in there, but yellow mama has been on her eggs for about a week longer than black mama. I had settles them in their own boxes up on the shelf, but when I went in, yellow mama was on the floor and her eggs were uncovered in their box on the shelf.

"What are you doing down there?" I asked, and then I saw a tiny head peek out from under her. The babies must have somehow fallen off the shelf and onto the floor after hatching, but they both seem to be just fine. In the hopes that a few more eggs might hatch, I brought the other four eggs down and placed them next to her, but she paid them no attention. Normally, she'd immediately roll them underneath her breast feathers, but not now. Maybe after some chicks hatch, they abandon whatever eggs haven't hatched after a certain amount of time? I don't know. I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Meanwhile, black mama still has a week to go. I hope that by the time her babies hatch, yellow mama and her brood, however many they turn out to be, will be ready to move on out of the mama barn and join the flock, because I read that mother hens hate each other's babies and will attack them whenever they can. 

And, of course, these chicks have one big advantage over the last batch: the pig is dead (see "sad day on the farm").