Circle M Farm

Our homestead’s first chicks of the year appeared today. This afternoon, I went to collect eggs from the henhouse and found our tiniest hen leading a zig-zagging parade of five black and white chicks around the front pasture.

The petite black Japanese bantam-type chicken, a gift from a neighbor, is really no larger than a Chicago pigeon. But she’s perfectly capable of rearing all the babies, since her main responsibilities are to model eating and drinking, protect the chicks from rain and cold, and scare off any predators that might come near. I feel sure the babies are safe, based on the way the hen flew at Emma, my twelve-year-old, when she picked up a straggling chick.

Few, if any, of the chicks are actually the biological offspring of this little lady. Chickens lay in communal nests, taking turns in a favorite box, hay rack or corner of the barn. When instinct tells her it’s time to sit, usually several times in late spring through late summer, a hen picks a nest and doesn’t get up for days at a time. The eggs must be kept warm for the chicks within to survive. Sitting hens surely must have a need for food and water, but you’ll rarely see them at the feeders. Often they are weak, underweight and covered with mites at the end of their sitting time, as they’ve eaten little and been skipping the dustbaths that wash the mites out of their feathers. Mothering certainly takes a toll, and for this reason, the instinct to sit has been bred out of all modern chicken breeds. A hen also doesn’t lay any eggs during her period of sitting, either, doubly inconvenient in a factory farming situation. When I see one of my girls getting faded (a chicken’s red comb will literally fade in color when undernourished), I remove the eggs from under her and set her outside for a few days in a row until she gives up on the nest. Some don’t give up easily.

My chickens are all heirloom varieties, but even within a heritage flock, individual breeds and hens have differing desires to sit. My smallest, the Silkies, the Pekins, the Japanese Bantams, seem to be those with the strongest drive to warm a nest. They don’t always make the best mothers to hatchlings, however, stubbornly staying in the nest on a few remaining eggs, while the chicks tumble out to fend for themselves. For this reason, I usually take day-old chicks out of the nests and put them in a small brooder cage where I can make sure they stay warm, dry and safe. But the little Banty who debuted her five today is clearly in control of the situation, and they’ll be best off with a real chicken mom. Plus, I’ve got five little mouths of my own to feed in the back pasture where the four bucklings and Lily the House Lamb have taken up residence in a pen next to the imminently expecting Piggy Lou.

“Got Milk? We want some!”