A Mother Clucker Has to Do What a Mother Clucker Has to Do

There aren’t any human children at the farm. A lot of you parents out there probably think – well heck, you don’t have a clue what it’s like to stay up late at night worrying about a sick child, cleaning up unending messes, never having enough time to get everything done that you’d like to while stepping around the little inhabitants of the house/farm, or not being able to take a much needed vacation for time away. While I recognize that attitude that some may have, I have to respectfully disagree that I haven’t felt a lot of the same emotions or had the same frustrations that these parents have.

I’ve stayed up late at night worried about my big dog, Ozzie, as he ate something that caused him to become so lethargic that I thought he may pass away through the night. I’ve nursed some chickens back to health from a respiratory issue, removed infections from their feet and then had to gently ease some out of this life into the next. There really isn’t a veterinarian around these parts that would doctor a chicken and really, why would they?

I’ve been able to take one overnight vacation (for 2 nights) in the last year and as the farm grows – that one luxury may be fading too. Anyone know of a good farm watcher?

It’s not that I’m bitter about it, I’m truly not, but there are multiple sacrifices that have to happen on a day to day basis with growing, running and maintaining a farm by oneself. My friends try to be understanding when I bow out of a much needed evening out at 8PM, my need to run home and feed everyone, collect eggs, and lock everyone up for the night so they don’t end up on the coyote/raccoon menu, taking precedence over partying. There’s nothing quite like knowing that the things that you are raising are constantly under threat from being eaten. Imagine that with human children for a moment.  

The mess they leave behind

There are still 19 chicks in my basement at the time of this writing and I can only imagine what the parent of a human teenager feels like as I raise these little ones. They eat voraciously, are incredibly noisy and are absolutely making a complete mess of their inside brooder. It will take days if not weeks to eradicate the dust and the tiny first feathers that they shed to make way for their adult plumage. My “free chicks” that I received from a friend for raising said friend’s birds as well, have totaled well over $50 so far in feed and growing. 

That being said, when these birds “leave the nest” as teenager birds and go to the large coop – I will worry for the first few days that they’re eating enough, that they’re staying warm enough, and that they’re not being picked on too much by the larger adult birds.

No, they are not human children but I think that parents of human children would worry about their teenagers in much the same way. Granted, these human children don’t typically need to worry about getting “eaten” by a hawk or other ground predator – but there are other dangers out there that a teenager has to watch out for.

I may not be a human mother, but being the Mother Clucker that I am – I’m going to raise these little ones and the other animals to the best of my ability and hope that they grow up well and are nice to one another. I'll take their sass and clean up mess after mess just because I love them. When things get too rough and I need a tiny amount of time away, that, dear friends, is why I have a great relationship with the brewery in town. Just know that I'll have to be home by 8:00PM. J

Chickens can be Really Bad Mother Cluckers

As I’m sure most already know, chickens are the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Apparently some research team stuck a long tail on a chicken sometime back and watched the way the bird moved to have an idea of how big, bad, T-Rex would have moved. Welcome to Jurassic Park?

No surprise then, that the chicken is basically a reptile – the scales replaced by feathers and possessing the mentality of a cold blooded killer/hunter, all wrapped up in a fluffy, seemingly docile package of feathers and crazy movements. Who could guess that these creatures would think nothing of ripping a mouse to shreds, or, in some cases, picking on one another to the death? 

When I’m down in their coop I’ll hear their noises that resemble growls, chirps, and downright noises that sound like they’ve come from the very depths of hades. I’ll watch as a group of hens pick quietly at scattered cracked corn one moment and then the next, look at their flock mate and peck at their eye. Growling as they do it. Chickens are just sometimes downright mean.

I’ve watched ruthless chasing from the current flock as the new birds are introduced and watched with horror as the newcomers huddle in a corner, terrified to make a move as their older counterparts size them up, hissing and threatening to take them down in a flash of beak.  It’s a game of roulette every time I have to introduce birds to the big flock and not something that I look forward to doing. It’s stressful for the birds, it’s stressful for me, but it’s a necessary part of flock keeping and one task that must be taken with a very watchful eye to ensure that the new birds make it to adulthood.

Surely you’ve heard the term “pecking order” and it is chickens that this phrase came from. There is an absolute hierarchy established amongst the flock and each bird knows its place in the group. The lead hen (or rooster), gets first dibs on good food, the best perching spots and the first access to the best dust bath sites. The others fall into their respective places and when a new bird or birds are introduced to the flock – it upsets that balance for a time. No one wants to be put on the low pole and so any new birds that are brought in are usually picked on sometimes to the point of their death. It’s barbaric, but that’s the chicken way. They are bad muther cluckers sometimes.

Unfortunately, recently, a friend who is new to chicken keeping found that out with a bird that was introduced to a flock of hens. All seemed well at first, but as the evening wore on – the established birds had enough of this intruder and brought him down. Sadly, he was found the next morning – having been sent off to the big nest in the sky.

I think of all of these things as I watch my birds peacefully peck around grass and grain on a warm afternoon. They seem so docile, so friendly, so scared, but pushed to the test and when it is broken down – they are really a force to be reckoned with. After all, isn’t it the T-Rex who ends up surviving in the movies? J