Starting with Chickens

Chickens are one of the most rewarding suburban farm endeavors. They are inexpensive and require minimal labor to keep, yet offer a tremendous amount of entertainment, great learning opportunities and delicious eggs. You can supply your family with eggs year round with just a small flock of four or five hens.  In addition to the practical rewards, in keeping chickens you will learn first hand the many idioms of our agrarian culture.

Pecking order, hen pecked, don’t count your chickens before they hatch, scratching out a living, mother hen. When living with chickens these sayings all become real and one gains a much deeper understanding of how these saying have become part of our collective cultural language.

After having had chickens for a couple years, we decided to indulge an older hen who had gone broody and allow her to sit on a nest of eggs. For those unfamiliar to the chicken scene, a broody hen is one who stops laying eggs and instead wants to sit on them to incubate and hatch out a little chicken family.

Now this sounds normal enough, but it is actually a bit more complicated. Most people who are keeping chickens are doing so for the eggs. Thus when a hen goes broody, on a “real” egg farm, this hen would be destined for the stew pot.

Over the years, through the commercialization of farming with need for efficiency and productivity, many of the modern breeds of chickens have long since lost their natural mothering skills. The “best” breeds are those that do not go broody. Rather the eggs are incubated and hatched artificially in an environment where all the optimum egg hatching conditions can be met. Thus, many breeds of chickens are quite unsuccessful at hatching and raising chicks. They might go broody, but only sit for a few days and then decide scouring the yard for treats is a more interesting pastime. Or, she might sit until they hatch but them abandon them at birth or simply ignore them after a few days.

Left without human interference, a hen will lay an egg every day or so until she has a clutch. (A collection of 5 to 10 eggs) Once she feels she has a clutch, she will sit for twenty one days keeping the eggs warm. She will leave the nest for short periods to eat and drink, but never long enough for the inside of the eggs to cool.

In a coop with several hens and a caretaker who collects eggs everyday, the natural course for reproduction becomes a challenge for the hen. She thinks she has a clutch and then “poof” her eggs are gone! She makes a nest and then three other chickens lay their eggs in the same nest. Almost a clutch in just three days…then “poof” her eggs are gone again. At some point she will get crabby and really cause a ruckus when the eggs are collected, and then eventually she gives up and just sits anyway, eggs or not! When a hen reaches this level of desperation in her attempt to hatch a family, she has gone “broody.” It is too heart wrenching to just not give her some eggs. 

Small backyard farmers who relish the convenience of “free incubation” and enjoy watching a mother hen with her brood in the barnyard have begun to ensure the continuation of many heritage breed birds who might not lay as many eggs, but have other useful qualities, such as foraging and raising their own young.

All the chickens we breed on our farm are of the heritage sort. I love seeing the circle of life in all my animals and my chickens are no exception. So, we stopped collecting from her nesting box and let mama hen sit on 6 eggs and waited to see if the memories from her ancestors would serve her in her quest for motherhood, as she herself had been born in a hatchery and came from a long line of hatchery birds.

After twenty one days, we checked the nesting box and much to our great surprise and excitement there was a fluffy little chick tucked in its mother’s wing. When a chick hatches it absorbs the yolk sack (the yellow part of the egg) allowing it to survive up to 3 days without any food or water. For modern poultry enthusiasts, this is fabulous as it allows day old chicks to be shipped via the US Postal Service, a service they have offered since the early 1900’s. In a natural setting this is useful because not all babies are born at the same time. This allows the mother to sit for a couple of days on yet to hatch eggs, without jeopardizing the health of the chicks that have already hatched.

After two days, mama hen had three babies following her around the yard. If any of the other hens, or rooster, or dog tried to get anywhere near the babies she was right there to scare them off. If a chick wandered too far and started to cheep, she was right there showing it the way back to the others. All day she watched those chicks, keeping them warm under her wings, or showing them the best places in the yard for treats. Then one day about 12 weeks later, she was done. Her babies were grown and she went back to laying her eggs. The babies had a hard time adjusting to the abandonment, but mama hen had done her job well.

Now, when I hear the expression “Mother Hen” in reference to an over protective mother, I understand what they mean, but my daughter and I always laugh to ourselves, because we know that although a hen’s dedication is unwavering, it is also very short lived!