Chicks, Chicks and More Chicks
Last spring: Hmm, most of our hens are getting older. We are going to need to get some more at some
point. I wonder if I should get some chicks...but I really don’t want to go through the hassle of raising
them...
This spring: We are overrun with chickens! Chicks, chicks and more chicks! Help!
Our electrified poultry pen, recently converted to a chick pen, is currently home to eleven gangly
“teenager” chicks a couple of months old. In addition, four mama hens have staked out separate
territories for their various groups of chicks. They also share space with four 6--week-old pullets halfway
between the chicks and the ‘tweens in size, and Miss Dahlia, a lovely big dignified hen of indeterminate
ancestry recently given us by friends in the midst of down-sizing. The first time little Sara reached
toward her, Miss Dahlia started “talking” to her, similar to the reassuring mewling the mamas comfort
their babies with. When it first happened, Sara drew back, startled, but now she loves to pet her, telling
her, “We love you, Miss Dahlia.”
Our daughter says there is a worldwide shortage of chickens, but you sure wouldn’t know it by us.
Maybe God is blessing us with all these chicks to help others get going, I have thought. Over the past
months, I’ve already given away another four mama hens along with their chicks. In the past year, we
have also passed on countless young cockerels to friends. Every week or two, and sometimes every few
days, I find another free-range hen has hatched out a set of chicks. The little black “Mama Hen” the
neighbor gave us last summer has produced more mamas set on producing. She is a one-hen chicken
factory!
I used to keep a count day to day of our free-ranging poultry, averaging eight to ten hens plus two
guineas. No more. I still pick out individuals...good, there’s Blondie and Dominique, the big light red hen,
Gracie and Paisley. Fancy, Nefertiti, Little Red Hen, Sister (the Americauna, also known as an Easter-
Egger) and King Tut. At various times, hens drop out of sight and we find them later, hatching out more
chicks. Peaches was one of the hens we gave away, along with her babies. Little Sara’s Blackie died,
probably of old age, and we also lost our beloved Charlie rooster. Then there are the rest of the flock,
who come running when I put out feed, too many who look too similar for me to distinguish. To think,
God knows the number of hairs on each of our heads, and when a sparrow falls.
For me, storms a few weeks ago meant huddling under an umbrella in a deluge, flinching with nearby
lightening strikes, trying to usher mama hens and their various broods into additional shelters
strategically placed to avoid flood-prone areas of the pen. A clean plastic trash can placed sideways, the
opening propped on a root, became home for Mama-with-13-Chicks (four blonde, nine black). A cage,
now covered and weighted, still serves as a refuge for the mama with one large orangey-yellow chick of
which she is inordinately proud. I tried to persuade the mama with 8 chicks (1 blonde, 7 black) to
reposition from her spot on the ground of the coop. I had arranged a cage nearby, its open end resting
on a crossbeam to keep it out of puddles. The determined mama refused to vacate her normal corner of
the coop. Knowing that area pools with water during heavy rain, I finally just mounded hay for her to sit
on, hoping it would be enough to keep her chicks dry.
All 11 ‘tween chicks lined the roosting pole stretched end to end in the coop. Four smaller ones sat on
the framework for the first floor of the coop in one area, Miss Dahlia another. Finally I made my way
back to the house. Kneeling on the couch, I looked through the windows that overlooked the summer
location for our chicken pen. I raised the window a couple of inches... and heard frantic peeping through
the pound of rain. A baby out alone in the storm.
While a small-scale tornado was flipping semis, downing trees and tearing off roofs in nearby Prattville, I
was following the sound of peeping to the chicken coop. Opening the large screened window, I peered
in. The lost chick ran here and there in the wrong end of the shelter, its peeping shrill, its movements
frantic. Swinging my legs into the portable coop, I reached to catch the baby. It fled my clumsy efforts.
Rain pounded the metal-covered roof above me. Finally I managed to herd it back near its mama on the
pile of hay. I watched her settle it under her wing. The peeping ceased. Climbing out of the coop and
shutting the window behind me, I started back.
Stopped. Between reverberations of thunder, more frantic peeping. I found a small black chick circling
the roots and edges of shelter. It too fled my efforts at capture, but I finally got hold of it and tossed it
gently in the plastic trash can near Mama-with-13. Even in a storm—maybe especially in a storm-- I
didn’t want to get close to her beak. I wasn’t sure if it was actually her baby, but she accepted it, so I
turned to go, hoping everyone was safely settled.
Sure enough, next morning I counted the chicks. All present and accounted for—but now Mama-with-13
had become Mama-with-14, and the other mama had one less black chick. It became a permanent
switch, with the slightly smaller baby struggling to keep up with his new siblings. I don’t know if the
mamas realized the change or not.
Can chickens count?