Babies on Board - Chicks!

    I am a chicken lady.  I'll admit that I go all squishy when I see a chicken.  Not just a chick, a full grown chicken.  Chickens make me happy.  It's hard to be depressed when you watch a flock of chickens doing their thing.  A friend of mine called them Captains of Industry.  They get up in the morning and they are busy doing something until the sun sets.   I'm not entirely sure what they're doing, but they do it with gusto.

Betty Boop - my Buff Orpington - looks like this.

    I've had chickens on and off for years.  When we moved to Wisconsin, I was distressed to find that our City Council had recently banned home chicken keeping citing a fear of roving packs of feral chickens roaming the streets and causing havoc.  I do not exaggerate.  They even brought in a vet to scare everybody with the threat of an avian flu epidemic caused by backyard chickens.   It was a sad state of affairs for us since the people who had bought our house in California were delighted to keep the chickens we had there.  

    I was chicken-less for quite a number of years until a group of us hippie-type, tree-hugging, chicken lovers banded together to petition the City Council yet again to permit backyard chicken keeping.  I think we succeeded only because all the nearby towns and cities, including Madison, allowed chickens.  We were surrounded by happy chicken communities, and our town was the lone exception.  Nobody likes to be the odd man (er, bird) out, so the City Council relented at last.  For the record, a number of the group members tried for bees as well, but that was a complete non-starter.

    I've had two flocks that were all the same breed, but all of my other flocks have been a variety of breeds.    They're more colorful, and since they all look different, I can give them names.  Sometimes, however, these names have had to change.  We aren't allowed to have roosters in our town, so all of the chicks I have purchased were supposed to be female, but there were a number of slip ups: 

The chick who was supposed to be a hen called Jane Bennett turned out to be a rooster and had to be renamed James Taylor.  Aretha Franklin became Arthur Hull.  Stevie Nicks became Stevie Wonder.  You get the idea.  All of these boys were complete gentlemen and found loving homes where they could oversee a harem of hens of their very own.

And there was Marilyn Monroe.  Note to self: never name a chicken after a dead movie star.  She didn't make it beyond the first few days.

My original flock is now four years old, and three of the six girls from that flock are still with me:  

                                                              Betty Boop, the Buff Orpington

Selena Fox, the Barnevelder

                                                            and Lilly Daltrey, the Speckled Sussex

   As middle-aged ladies do, these girls are now in various stages of "eggo-pause".  Betty still lays about two to three eggs a week in spring, but she will taper off to nothing by fall.  Selena lays about one or two eggs a week, and Lilly is now laying mini-eggs about half the size of a regular egg when she lays at all. The last one I saw was about three weeks ago.  

    If we had more room and no limit on the number of chickens we could keep, these old girls would be with us until the end of their lives, laying or not, but we keep them for their eggs, so soon these girls must find forever homes where they can live out their golden years pecking and scratching and laying the occasional egg.  I won't give them to someone who intends to put them into a pot.  A four year old hen is  basically inedible anyway, and there are plenty of chicken people who are even crazier than I am and will shower them with love and dried mealworms.

After the old girls find new homes, I will still have three chickens left, all two-year olds:  Elizabeth Tudor, Isis Coble, and Judy Blue Eyes, and they've got at least two to three more egg-laying years yet, so it's time to get new chicks to add to the flock members who will remain.  

    Remembering my luck with girls who turned out to be fellas, and the possibility of losing one of the chicks in the first week, I decided to get four of them:  a Black Australorp, a Black Star,  a Golden Comet, and a Barred Rock.  

    This is what each of the little darlings looked like for about the first week:

Golden Comet - Goldie Hawn

Black Australorp - Hattie McDaniel      

                                                 Barred Rock - Barbara Streisand

Black Star - Shirley Chisholm

These little fuzzballs are the reason that people love chicks, and they look this adorable for about a week.  Then a rather remarkable, and somewhat horrific, change begins.  Let me inform you from experience, dear reader, that there are few things homelier on the planet than a four week old chicken.

     They look like one perpetual bad-hair day, and they are grumpy and sulky and sad.  They've lost all their cute fuzz and are in the process of having all those poky feathers sprouting all over their body - something that would probably make anybody grumpy.  If there was ever any doubt about the evolution of chickens from dinosaurs, a four-week old chicken will assure almost anyone that velociraptors once roamed the earth and are now living in your neighbor's backyard.

    This particular group of youngsters was hatched on March 19th, and until two weeks ago, they have spent most of their time in a nice, warm dishwasher carton in the basement.  I sing them a wake up song every morning and a goodnight song every night.  Two weeks ago they were transferred to a large pen in the garage where they can get outdoor air when the doors are open, but they are still sheltered from the rain, cold, and wind and no predators can get at them.  

This is what Hattie looks like now. 

Shirley looks like this.

                                                                                                   Barbara looks like this.

And Goldie looks like this.

    They're not quite the beautiful hens they will be, but they look considerably more like chickens than dinosaurs.  They each have their own personality.  Barbara is particularly bossy, and only Shirley is willing to stand up to her. Hattie tends to be the peacemaker or the "nothing to see here" chick, and poor Goldie appears to be the low bird in the pecking order, but she takes advantage of that by being at the bottom of the pile when they sleep together which means she stays nice and warm.  

    And they have discovered that humans have treats which allows me to handle them a lot more than I was able to before.  They are getting a bit cheeky these days, though, and they'll peck at my sleeves if I don't have anything for them.   On the other hand, all of this interest has worked to my advantage recently as we have now created a playpen of sorts in the backyard so they can peck and scratch around in the grass under supervision (they seem particularly taken with eating apple blossoms).  We've taken them out twice this weekend, transporting them one chick at a time from their pen in the garage to the playpen outdoors and back to the garage pen some time later.  On both occasions, the remaining chick in the playpen has flown over the fence and found herself standing alone in the yard with none of her sisters in sight, wailing for someone to come help her.  When I arrive moments later, the orphan will walk right up to me and make no protest at all as I carry her back to the safety of her pen with the other chicks.  

    Since they're only about half the size of the adult birds in the coop, they're going to be enjoying the hospitality of the garage pen for another month or thereabouts before they're large enough to begin the process of moving in with the adult chickens who will remain: Elizabeth Turdor, Isis Coble, and Judy Blue-Eyes.  That is going to be a new adventure and a new post since it's quite the process to introduce the new kids on the block to the old gentry.  I've warned Barbara Streisand already that if she thinks she's going to win in a contest with Elizabeth Tudor, she should just surrender to the inevitable now.  Nobody ever picked a fight with Queen Elizabeth I and won.  We shall see.