Bohemian Antiks Continue

Chicken Surprise

Some languages do not share the same counting words as those with our number system.  One of these is the Piraha tribe of the Amazon.  In a culture where it's not important to know exact numbers such as this, things can be classified simply as "one" "less than many" or "many". 

When we first started keeping hens, and for the ten years that followed, we would do a head count every evening.  At this point they were named after my Great Grandmothers. If one was missing, an extensive search would be launched.  

After so many years I realized that the search was futile.   We never found a chicken alive. The best case scenario was a pile of feathers somewhere.  We were either on site and saw an incident ourselves and intervened, or it was simply too late.  

After our first batch of hens - which were from a commercial farm somewhere, a year old so "rescue" - they arrived in a shocking state of featherless neglect and soon became healthy and productive, enjoying their free-range life - we bought an incubator and went through the adventures of hatching eggs ourselves.  Seeing a chick come out of a shell is a truly special experience.  It's such a well-balanced process, but every step must be in harmony with the natural order.  It was lovely to watch these little beings fluff up from their weirdly dinosaurly appearance and then go out into the world after a few months in various states of captivity.  The dog crate, then the  "ark" we made for them.  All of these steps needing much care from predators. 

Finally we learned to let our hens just get on with it.  If a hen was sitting in the laying boxes at dusk, that meant that she had gone broody.  Should we want more chickens then we put her in a safe place - an old rabbit hutch, with a clutch of eggs. We open it every day and close it every night, allowing her to go out for the few minutes a day she'll be away from the eggs.  After twenty one days the chicks pop out.  Then we pretty much let the mother free range around the garden with her chicks during the day, and return the group to a safe, enclosed space overnight (by training them that we put grain out for them in the rabbit hutch at bed time).   This is the least labour intensive way of rearing chicks.  

And a mother hen is FIERCE.  If she thinks that you mean her chicks harm, she will go after you.  You may be a cat, a pig or even a dog, but the wrath if a mother hen is  awesome.  We have to be careful not to let kids chase the chicks about as they will get pecked.  

As well as the mother hen, we also had some other pretty cool chicken guards on the team.  Since since our llama-faced alpaca-fleeced half-breed joined the flock, there has been a drop in interest from predators in the back paddock.  Even if a hawk does visit, and by visit, I mean swoop down and attack a hen, then our Giraffe will go over and see what the fuss is about - thus scaring away the predator.  I have also seen the house martins who live in our eaves mob a hawk who was out hunting after a mother hen and her brood.  

Anyway, with just one or two broods a year, and great animal-on-animal protection,  we found that our numbers of hens were becoming  kind of high. High enough that it was actually becoming difficult to count them.  I'd have to recount two or three times.  And then I realised. Counting them was actually pretty pointless.  We had "many".  If they were missing, they were dead.   I stopped counting.  

We now have enough hens that any time we find one going broody, we have to put her in chicken prison - the dog crate on the back porch - until her hormones calm down and she's back to normal.  This works most of the time, but once a year or so, we do just have a mother hen turn up with a clutch of chicks she's managed to smuggle past our system.  

Well. We do what we can. But nature finds a way.