Things Are Looking Up

It’s 63º. Almost all of the snow has melted. The air feels balmy to us and Dennis is sitting on the deck with a lapful of paperwork and a bottle of beer.

In the cold frame spinach and lettuce are going to town, but the arugula is putting up seed stalks. There’s a good reason it’s also called “rocket.”

Leaves on the 18-month-old sweet potato I discovered sprouting in the basement last week are growing and turning from maroon to green. Meanwhile the garnet yam is showing a few sprouts but the Japanese yam has only one tiny root.

Best of all is the Lucy news. Yesterday morning Dennis came in from the chicken house to announce that Lucy had died overnight, but when he went back to dispose of her body, she jumped up and ran out into the yard. 

I have been watching Lucy closely from the kitchen window. She has spent all her days since the attack 13 days ago standing in one or the other of the far corners of the chicken yard. She even trudged through deep snow to reach a refuge. She didn’t seem to be eating and we were sure she would starve to death. Then, when Dennis took a bowl of vegetable scraps to the hens, Lucy came running but didn’t get any of the scraps because she was afraid to approach the other hens, who were gobbling up the scraps. 

Chickens are very mean-spirited birds toward one another. That’s what the term “pecking order” is all about. They seem to have no tolerance for disability and will drive off a wounded or sick member of their flock. Once, back when we still kept a rooster, a hen sat on a clutch of eggs. When the eggs hatched one of the chicks was slightly deformed. The mother hen shoved it out of the nest! I put it back and she shoved it out again. She had no intention of raising a deformed chick. So, none of the hens has cared a hoot whether Lucy lived or died and they didn’t want to associate with her.

Realizing that the other hens were keeping Lucy away from food, I crumbled a leftover biscuit in one of her safety corners (chickens love any kind of bread) and some “scratch” in her other safety corner. She ate and she revived. By evening of the day we thought she had died, she was, as Dennis said, “almost a new person.” Today Lucy has been out and about, eating, but avoiding her flockmates. She, of course, is the one on the far left.

Yep, now that we’ve made it through the winter, things are looking up.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

The Little Chickens

Dennis and Annie visited the little chickens last evening. The twelve little chickens, all pullets, are nine weeks old. In order to allow them to go outside without being attacked by the old hens, Dennis and Grant built a fence to divide the chicken yard and rigged up a temporary fence around the main door, giving access to the the little chickens' side of the yard. At first the little chickens were afraid to venture out more than a couple of feet, but now they roam freely, scratching for worms, dusting and chatting.

Annie finds chickens fascinating and is very helpful in rounding them up when they fly the coop.


The little chickens follow Dennis around like goslings after a goose. He says this is because he talks to them a lot. I suspect it is also because he provides their food and water.

The Barred Rock hen in the foreground is one of the old hens from last year's flock. She is the smallest of the seven remaining hens and at the bottom of their pecking order. Somehow she has been getting into the little chickens' side of the yard and seems to prefer their company. She mingles quite peaceably with the little ones, unlike one of her sisters, who snatched an opportunity to peck a little chicken on the head.

Incidentally, the little chickens are red sex-link, which is a cross between a red chicken and a white chicken. They are supposed to be great egg producers.

Postscript: Now the little chickens number eleven. A careless person (me) didn't securely fasten the gate. Six escaped but only five were retrieved.

Post-postscript: When Dennis closed the chickens in for the night, all twelve little chickens were on their roost. Even though we both counted chickens several times earlier, we somehow miscounted. We're both relieved. I had spent the last hour saying, "Mea culpa." When creatures are in our care we grieve when one comes to a bad end. Now we are rejoicing.