Child Protective Services

Now that backyard chickens have become a trend, there are lots of folks who got to participate in the hatching experience this spring. I know a lot of them discovered it's not always a pleasant experience, because I've been reading their posts on Facebook. Take my word - bad parenting is not limited to human beings.

Last year several of my mutt hens got together and raised 6 babies together. This year, 4 hens sat on 3 nests and hatched 10 babies. They have been fighting worse than a bunch of soccer parents.

One hen was sitting on 8 eggs. I had to pull two babies out of her nest. One afternoon I heard frantic peeping and saw a newly hatched chick laying on its back a few inches away from the hen. It was the first one hatched and she was pecking it like it was an intruder, trying to keep it away from her precious eggs. I rescued it and brought it into the house thinking it might not make it. But it did. 

Four days later the hen had 4 other chicks. She left 3 unhatched eggs in the nest. I fished them out, thinking I'd candle them to see if they had chicks inside. Two were infertile, but the third had a chick that was already partially out of the egg. He had obviously been left in the open by himself all night and was just about dead. The shell was stuck to him, so I peeled it off carefully. The chick's neck was crooked and weak from pushing against the shell. It couldn't stand very well, nor could it keep its head up, but it seemed interested in living. No problem. I wound Kleenex around it to hold it in an upright position and made it a nest of paper towels in a strawberry basket, then put it in the hatcher for a couple of days. I gave it electrolytes and liquid food with a watercolor brush until it was ready to stand and feed itself. It still doesn't look exactly right, but it's incredibly determined. My show birds, especially the white Old English, are scarcely ever this strong. If their little worlds aren't perfect, they often just give up. I can sometimes convince them life is worth living by giving them some live mealworms.

The two mutt chicks in the house are fortunate, I think. Their siblings have to live with a mama who covers them in dirt when she tries to scratch in their food. She's constantly running over them to chase other babies away from them.

The best parent in the mutt pen is Alan, the little rooster. He's very patient and kind. When the hens are squabbling, all the babies can take shelter under him.

I don't usually have show birds raise their own babies, but this year after I'd hatched enough white Old English eggs in the incubator, four little hens showed an interest in hatching their own. One pair hatched 5 babies and did a good job with them. The other pair of hens hatched 8 babies. I had to rescue one (the scalped baby) the first day. After a week of observing the babies huddling together in a corner as their mamas sat high on the perch away from them, and hearing their mournful little cheeps in the chilly morning, I finally brought the whole batch in and put them in a brooder under a light. They are infinitely more happy, I can tell because they're cheeping happy songs.

Mother hens, when they do a good job, are fun to watch with their cute little ones. Not every hen makes a good mother.

It's not just hens who are sometimes bad parents. The new feral cat mama has proved to be a flake, too. Before I could trap her she moved the kittens. I took the trap away because there's no way I wanted to catch the mama without knowing where the kittens were. For a couple of days I saw the mama sitting here or there, but she had hidden the babies well.

Yesterday morning I took a small bowl of cat food out to the hay pile, hoping it might give her an easy source of food. I have never seen her in the woodshed eating with the other cats, I don't think she goes there. When I got halfway to the hay pile, I could see a kitten lying in the bare dirt of the road, in the full sun. I thought it was dead. I picked it up with the corner of my T-shirt and discovered it was alive. It seemed to be fed. Maybe the mama was just moving it again and dropped it? So I put it back by the hay pile, out of the sun and the road. But last night by 7:30 the baby was back in the road. This time it was frantic, cold, and hungry.

So now I have another mouth to feed.

Kittens this young have to be fed every two hours. It was a long night. At first it wanted nothing to do with the bottle, and it was miserable and unhappy. There's something about a crying baby of any kind that just grates on my nerves. You want to help it and do the right thing, but it seems impossible.

By this morning the baby was eating pretty well, though. It's in a carrier that's sitting half on a heating pad, so it stays comfortable between meals. I found that it would latch onto the nipple better if I kept pulling it away a little. I called SPCA to see if there was a rehabber who was bottle feeding other babies this age who could take him. No, but they offered to send me other babies to feed to keep him company. I'm not inclined to do that.

By this evening things have calmed considerably. The chicks are doing well, the kitten is full and sleeping peacefully, and I'm sure I'll sleep sounder in my two hour segments, too.

Here are some recent pictures from the yard.

Some sunflowers popped up in the flower bed and are standing sentinel duty at the gate. I'm pretty sure their flowers will pull them over, but for now they're interesting.

Here are a couple of hydrangea blossoms that have poked their heads through the railing to greet visitors with their happy faces.

My favorite lilies, the red ones. I still have to finish the painting of them I started last year. Or was it the year before?

It's hard to get the color right, they're almost fluorescent. Leenie, any suggestions?

This picture is for Beverly, who fights with her mulberry tree every spring. Mulberries are nasty little purple fruit that will stain your carpet if you track them in the house. Beverly spends a lot of time cleaning up the berries in her yard when they fall. This picture is the ground under my own mulberry tree.

Please note...scarcely any berries there. The ground was covered when the berries first started falling, but the robins and jays packed them all off. I didn't have to rake at all. I consider myself fortunate to have a neighborhood full of fat little bird pigs.

This photo is for Linda, who is trying to get great pictures of her hummingbirds in Colorado.

It's hard, I couldn't do it. Even though the birds come right to the feeder, less than a foot from the camera, it's hard for the automatic camera to focus on the little busybodies. When I finally got a picture that isn't as blurred, you can see all the dirt and cobwebs on my window sills. I think a better hummer picture could be taken with a zoom. Have you found that, Linda? My problem is I have a really hard time focusing when I'm using the zoom. It's not like my old film camera with manual settings. I'll keep trying. I only have one feeder and 5 birds, all the same kind. Linda runs a cafeteria for hummers. It's also hard to capture the colors in a photo. In the picture the bird looks brown. In real life it reflects lots of gorgeous color.

I'm off to bed now. Just fed the baby, he ate so much I might even get three hours sleep before the next feeding. It's not like I can't take a nap tomorrow, anyway.