Brooding chicks

I bolt upright. My eyes fly to the clock. It’s five a.m. A scream pierces the silence … then growling. Someone or something is getting hurt. Is it the cats? No. The sound’s coming from outside, from the backyard … from the hen house. I shake my husband. “The chicks…” I sputter. He’s already out of bed, pulling on a shirt, racing outside.

“Come here,” he calls.

I stagger outside. The dawn light is murky and white. It smells like rain; the air’s heavy with moisture. My husband gestures above the chicken coop. Two raccoons stare back at me. They’re in our neighbor’s birch tree, teetering on the branch that extends into our yard.

I drop my gaze to the coop. The door’s latched; the red glow of the brooder light eases from beneath it. The gate to the run is also secure. The hens are okay. I turn my attention back to the raccoons. It could be the uncharacteristic morning mugginess, but for a moment, they look like monkeys and it feels like I’m in Tanzania – not my backyard. We go back to bed, but I don’t sleep much.

A few hours later, I let the hens out for the day. They waddle out of their coop single file and race onto the grass, pecking and scratching. I inspect their run. It looks secure, but raccoons are smart, and they have hands. I’ve heard they can unlatch gates and open coops. They’ll also reach  through a wire fence if you don’t have netting and pull chickens through, or dig underneath. Nighttime in the backyard seems a lot more wild and scary now that we have four vulnerable hens.

A few days later, there’s a knock on the front door. I open it, and my neighbor from across the street is standing on the porch holding both of our brown chickens. “These girls were striding down the middle of the street,” she says. “They walked right by my mini-van.” I put them in their run and search for the hole they squeezed through. It’ll be a lot easier when they’re a little bigger.

We invite some friends over for a barbecue, and the hens are a big hit. The kids run after them and pet them, and most of the adults seem pretty taken with them too. By the end of the night, a number of my friends insist they’re going to get backyard chickens too. A week and a half later, one of them calls. She’s already built a coop and bought four full-grown hens on Craigslist. That morning she ate fresh, backyard eggs for breakfast.

Our hens won’t start laying until August, so I’m jealous that my friend already has eggs. But it’s fun watching our little flock grow up. They’re so friendly with each other and fond of us – I think it’s worth the wait.

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.

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I’m not sure I can really call them chicks anymore. They’re not full-sized, but they have all of their feathers, and they hardly resemble the sweet little balls of fluff they were a short five weeks ago. This week, the plumes around their legs flare out, making them look much more grown up.

The chickens explore every inch of the backyard this week and find ways to slip through the gate into the front yard several times. The second I hear them cheeping in the front yard, life seems to shift into a Three Stooges episode with me trying to wrangle four chickens into the back yard, while keeping three cats at bay and watching a baby. Hijinks tend to ensue. By midweek, we get all the gaps in the gate blocked, and the chickens roam the backyard for much of the day. Near the end of the week, we can even let the cats into the backyard at the same time- with supervision.

We’re feeling more confident that maybe, just maybe, we got four hens. Except – the black (and now white) one without the comb is still much bigger than the other. But it’s turning mostly black, and the other is turning mostly white… so we’re hoping maybe they’re different breeds. We’re waiting to name them until we’re sure we don’t have any roosters – hopefully within the next two weeks.

In the last few weeks, I’ve become increasingly aware of how many words and idioms come from raising chickens: the chickens have come home to roost, cocky, don’t count your chickens before they hatch, full-fledged, chicken-hearted, flew the coop, no spring chicken, rules the roost, and so many more. I can’t help but feel like I’ve joined a big club of English-speaking chicken-keepers.

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One, Two, Three, and Four.

The chicks wander further from their coop this week. They stay together, pecking grass, eating weeds, and scratching dirt. They discover the shed, and spend hours in there eating spiders. One evening, we come outside, and they’re lined up on the pole to my husband’s old wash-tub bass. They’re sleeping. I rush in to get the camera, but of course, they’re awake by the time I return.

Another day the chicks’ peeps are louder than usual, and I glance outside to see a neighborhood cat streaking across the yard. At first I can’t find the chicks. Then I discover a black one separated from the group, hiding behind the begonias. The others run from beneath their coop, making a beeline for the stray one. They all seem relieved to be reunited and go about their pecking and scratching, seemingly unruffled by the episode.

In the evenings, we don’t have to pick the chicks up to put them in their coop anymore. We stand at the gate and call them, and they run across the yard and file inside single file.

I’m much more fond of these chickens than I imagined I would be. They’re a tight-knit group, but I’m starting to notice some individual personality traits. When I’m taking photos, one yellow chick always steps to the front. It’s almost like she’s posing.

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One, Two, and Three.

It seems like everyone’s brooding chicks these days. Three of my friends are building coops, and I hear hens clucking and squawking all over the neighborhood. We inherited a stately hen chateau when we bought our house last February … and we couldn’t think of a reason not to take the plunge this spring and adopt some chicks.

Warning: we are not the people to instruct others on the care and upbringing of hens. (Translation: we have no idea what we’re doing!) However, maybe our clueless bumbling will inspire you to jump in and adopt some feathered egg-laying friends of your own.

Chickens in the city?

Backyard hens are gaining popularity for a reason. If you feed them well, they’ll produce eggs so delectable you’ll never want to order an omelet in a restaurant again. My neighbor’s hens lay eggs with bright yellow yolks that taste infinitely better than the $5.00-a-carton organic ones we splurge on. Hens dine on weeds and bugs, so they’ll help you in the garden. And their plentiful droppings are a boon to the compost pile. Chickens are also relatively easy to care for. I’ve been assured that they require much less babying than our three spoiled cats. Of course, you’ll need a coop and a very-secure pen to keep predators out.

The adoption

On Thursday, my husband goes to buy the chicks at our local feed store, while I stay home with our napping baby. We have decided four chicks will be a good number, in case one doesn’t make it, or one turns out to be a rooster. My husband says he will ask the salesperson what kind of hens will be the best egg-layers for our backyard habitat.

He comes home with two black chicks and two yellow chicks in a paper bag, a bag of medicated chick starter food, and a brooder light. The chicks are balls of fluff with reptilian eyes and giant feet. I love them immediately. “What kind are they?” I ask, gazing at them.

My husband looks perplexed. He shrugs. Then he assures me he knows he got egg-laying pullets (girl chicks). He thinks the breed of the yellow one might start with a “B”. Yes, I’m just a tad concerned that we have just purchased four roosters. But I try to tell myself that our chicken adventure has just gotten a bit more adventurous.

Home sweet home

We move the chicks into the home they will live in for the first few weeks – a box in the guest room. We line the box with a towel and use shredded newspaper for litter. But it seems to get dirty instantly (Chicks poop a lot!), and I am changing the litter at least twice a day. We buy some more absorbent “pet litter”, which works much better. Now I only have to change it every other day. Although I’ve read we might want to buy special water and food containers, we use regular bowls instead. They work, but I have to change their water and scrub their food bowl often. (Chicks poop a lot!)

Over the week, I watch them and talk to them. They’re entertaining, as they wander around their box, peeping and scratching at their litter. At first they seem scared when I pick them up, but soon they relax. I rub their backs and they sing.

They grow fast. By the end of the week, they are more feathers and less fluff, and they’re much bigger. I hit myself for not taking a photo of them the day we brought them home.

Bonded

On the first sunny day of the week, we take them outside. I’m sure they’ll try to run away, so we sit with our feet together and our legs extended to form a diamond. I lift them out of the box one-by-one, ready to block their escapes. (Most people use chicken wire for this purpose.) But they don’t run away at all. They move closer to me. One of them climbs onto my arm. The others follow. They love me!

I’m completely sold on backyard hens.