I've said previously how I had a small hobby farm and would love to do that again. I loved having chickens and this is the time of the year when it is the hardest for me. The new catalogue comes out and there are the old stand by breeds but sometimes some new ones are available.
This is when the new chicks would be ordered and the plans would start to be made for where they would go and how many of what kind. Also had to decide whether to get turkeys.
Anyway, what started this for me was having a shed type building and figuring out that I could make it into a chicken coop. We did the required fencing etc and bought a few chickens from someone that bred several varieties for show. My favourite was a beautiful Buff Orpington (pictured above) hen that was the colour of gold and oh so full feathered. She had a different personality than the other hens. She was like a puppy in that she followed me around, came when I called, and would let me pick her up any time I wanted. She didn't have a mean bone in her body.
She wanted to go broody (meaning she wanted to hatch some eggs) but didn’t have any available at the time. I had just bought 27 day-old meat chicks and brought then home and stepped out of the car with this box of little peeping fluff balls.
When hens go broody they make these particular noises that you have to hear to understand. They also sit in the nest box in a sort of daze waiting for the eggs to hatch. They shuffle around sometimes to turn the eggs and leave the box once or twice a day to relieve themselves and to grab something to eat.
I wondered what my Buff would think. I waited until evening-ish and tucked a couple under her. She made all the right noises so I gave her all of them. She fluffed out and had every single one under her. If she could have purred she would have. I remember lifting her chest off the ground slightly the first morning and seeing all those little feet. She raised them all up and it was so funny, because within three days they all didn’t fit.
Meat chicks grow very fast. It takes only 8 weeks before you can have a three pound dressed weight bird. So these didn't fit under her long. The chicks learned to follow her around. They thought she was Mom. I had done enough reading to know some of how this all works. I knew that the chicks would bond with whatever looked after them. I also knew that a hen will consider them hers if they first start out under her. She recognizes their voices as they do hers. (Chickens are neat in that if they have a mom to get attached to they will, but if they have to manage on their own they can as well.)
A few years later I had several hens with babies and they would be wandering around the yard with the chicks co-mingling. As the hen moved off though, the appropriate babies all went off with the correct hens. If a 'stranger' wandered too close the offending chick would get a subtle ding on top of his head saying "you're not mine, go home to your own mom."
Sometimes a hawk would fly over and the hen would sound the alarm. The chicks would scatter to the four corners so fast and then freeze. I think the idea was that one may be lost but a predator can't grab them all if they are spread apart.
But there is nothing so much fun for me as watching a hen with her chicks when she finds them a treat. They all come running and grab whatever she found for them. And then look at her like isn't she wonderful?!
