Talking Chicken

Some people lack an understanding of chickens. Well, maybe most people, but some have even less.

For example, several visitors to Paradise – all of them men – have asked me where our rooster is. When I say we don’t have one the visitors ask, “Then how can you get eggs from the chickens?” Duh.

I explain by asking whether women ovulate whether they have relations with a man or not. Immediately the visitors color a bit and say, “I get it.”

People don’t understand chicken psychology either. I once watched four people tearing around the chicken yard, trying to herd the chickens into their house for the night. Feathers flying, people grabbing and missing, ‘round and ‘round they went.

Fact is, you can’t herd chickens. That’s like trying to herd cats, except that herding scares chickens silly and they won’t lay for a week while cats just don’t give a damn and do as they please. Cats are very good at both fight and flight, usually in that order.

Not all people are chicken-understanding impaired. Take my neighbor Mary Lynn, who regularly brings our hens fruit and vegetable scraps from her kitchen. She knows all the chickens’ favorite foods, such as melon rinds and banana peels.

My neighbor Laurie, co-owner of this years’ pullets, has a natural way with chickens. I first recognized this when our chicks were about ten days old. Baby chicks can’t roost, of course, and in nature they would huddle under their mother’s wings to sleep. Our baby chicks had no mother hen, but they had a heat lamp to keep them warm. To sleep, they simply sat down and closed their eyes. 

Tending the chicks on evening, we noticed that one had fallen asleep sitting on a big poop which subsequently dried and cemented itself to the chick’s fuzz and tender skin. We had to get that blob off the chick’s bottom. 

Laurie gently but firmly picked the chick up, cupped it between her hands and brought it in the house. I was the poop remover while Laurie held the tiny chick. I used wet Q-Tips to dab away at the blob and release it from the chick’s fuzz. It was slow going, a delicate operation. Laurie was steadfast in holding the chick and comforting it. The chick was quiet in her hands. Ten minutes later she took the chick back to its lamp mother.

Now, seven months later, Laurie has developed a close relationship with those chicks who are now full-grown pullets. She has given each one a name – Olive, for example, who we now suspect is laying the olive green eggs. Laurie visits the pullets every evening, sits with them, talks to them and feeds them goodies from her hand.

Laurie’s children were grown by the time she and Greg moved to our neighborhood so I’ve never seen her mothering style with humans. Judging by her treatment of chickens though, I’ll bet she is a perfect mom.

Copyright 2012 by Shirley Domer