I love my life. But there does seem to be quite a lot of it.
Between my job (not inherited that castle in Spain yet), keeping us well fed, tending the garden, the animals and ensuring the house doesn’t fill with dog hair like an enormous house-shaped pillow…well, the days are full. But I know you’re yearning for news about all the beasties here, so I present to you the Chicken Chronicles: The Reader’s Digest Version.
By the way, before I get too far along, this post is dedicated to my friend Gail, at Clay and Limestone. Not only did she offer the phrase Chicken Chronicles in comments about how she enjoys my chickens’ antics, she also manages to do all that life, garden, job stuff and blog too. My hat’s off to you, Gail!
First, Polish hen Edith went broody this summer. For those of you who are not chicken mammas and pappas, that means she decided motherhood was all she needed to fulfill her destiny in life. She took to her nest box and refused to budge. Well, I have a fairly laissez-faire policy when it comes to nature, so I figured, let’s see where this takes us.
Frankly, as laissez-faire can be, the whole thing was messy. Long story short, all the other hens added to Edith’s clutch so that she ended up trying to sit on about 15 eggs—an impossible task for a little Polish hen. To complicate matters, Tina Turner, a beautiful buff Polish hen, was swayed by Edith’s efforts and decided to hatch a batch of her own. She was easily dissuaded for a more carefree life among the motherless hens.
Back to Edith…After about three weeks it was clear that nothing was going to happen on the baby making front, so I took matters into my own hands. Actually, I took Edith into my own hands and took her off the eggs to get rid of them.
Voila! There was a chick under her!
Now, I will dip into the details just a bit here, even though this is the Reader’s Digest version. Edith is not the birth mother. T. Boone Chickens, our enormous rooster, does not do the wild thing with the Polish hens. I don’t know if it’s because he prefers the more full-figured hens or if the Polish girls are just too fast for him, but I’ve never seen him do the deed with one of the mop-headed girls. I suspect that the new chicken is from Dorthy or Meredith, our Easter egg chickens.
So…to get back to the story. Edith and her baby were separated so that the other chickens didn’t commit infanticide, as chickens will do. After a suitable and appropriate maternity leave Edith and her young were re-integrated back into the flock. It was an endearing sight to see her alerting the baby to bugs, tomato morsels and blueberry treats. At night she would sit with the baby under her. After the baby grew too large to sit on, she would put her wing protectively over the baby as they sat side-by-side.
Baby and Edith, his adoptive mum
The baby is now about 13 weeks old.
So far we’re calling the baby “Baby.” Clever, no?
The reason is that the baby will eventually be named Ricky or Lucy, names picked out by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. But one of the names has not yet stuck because I still don’t know if Baby is a Lucy or a Ricky. We should know in another month or so. But I will tell you this. Baby has really, really big feet like T. Boone Chickens. And Baby looks like a cross between Dorothy and Meredith, the Easter egg chickens. We will never know who the birth mother is without DNA testing.
Oh, and Baby loves Edith, his adopted and devoted mum. She is his true mum.
Robin
Well, perhaps not headlines. But he was recently featured prominently in the Washington Post. I am the mom of a famous rooster!
Make sure that you take a look at the slide show to see his Palazzo di Pollo (chicken coop).
Robin
Overall, the chickens are doing well. They have worked out their pecking order so there is a minimum of actual pecking. When they go out in the afternoons for their walkabout to hunt for bugs, they co-mingle nicely and keep together as a single flock rather than as two separate flocks.
Judging from how they strategically position themselves in the Palazzo, they seem to appreciate the two panel heaters we installed. I have to say that when I go to open their window in the morning the Palazzo is quite comfortably warm.
There is one major, and sad, development.
About two weeks ago I noticed that Maxine had stopped foraging with the other chickens. She had puffed up her feathers and was standing still, doing a repetitive kind of slow bark that involved stretching out her neck. Over and over she barked. When I tried to pick her up, she moved off and pecked for a bit, then returned to her bark, bark behavior.
When this continued, I picked her up and examined her closely. There was no sign of injury, swelling, discharge or any other symptom that I would think out of the ordinary. She just looked like Maxine.
As the days went by, she continued this odd behavior. After about five days, she would initially join the chickens in their foraging, but soon return to the Palazzo to do her barking in private. Eventually, her bark sounded like she had laryngitis. No wonder, I suppose, since she had kept this up nearly non-stop for days. Clearly something was wrong.
One chicken lover I know told me that when she called her veterinarian about a sick chicken they offered her recipes! Thankfully, my vet office staff was more sensitive than that, but they still pronounced, “We don’t do chickens” when I called for help. In fact, none of the local veterinarians in this rural county has any chicken experts on staff either. See, chicken vets are for the most part hired by large poultry operations. Their focus is not on the health of individual chickens, but rather on herd health. It is very difficult to find a vet for a pet chicken.
So I turned to my online network of chicken lovers. Unfortunately, no one seemed to have any idea what would cause Maxine’s unusual behavior.
I continued to examine her to the extent that her patience would allow. Her condition never really seemed to change much, although I perhaps imagined some improvement when she mustered up the energy to go outside and walkabout with her friends.
Then this past Thursday morning I went to open the window to the chickens’ outdoor run. Maxine was by the door on her side. Dead. She apparently had been dead for a few hours.
I examined her closely once again and could find no external sign for her demise. Although I’m clearly no expert, she didn’t feel to be egg bound. There was still no discharge or injury that would suggest infection or an accident. She was just dead.
It rained—and rained hard—on Thursday. After Ben returned from school he headed out in the rain to bury Maxine in the woods. The other chickens went about re-sorting their pecking order. Life was moving on without Maxine.
Now, in general, I am not a suspicious person. I’ll walk under ladders or open umbrellas indoors. I’ll spill salt and not toss any over my shoulder. But given that I have had two chickens die since becoming a chicken mom and both of them were named Maxine, I am going to retire the name Maxine for my chickens.
Despite the setback with our little flock, I still love our chickens. They continue to delight and amuse as well as keep us very well stocked in fresh eggs.
But I’ll miss Maxine—both of them.
Robin
