Chicken Yard Behavior

SUMMER 1998 LETTER:

Dear El,

Everything is rich and green. It's about 86 degrees, but a slight breeze and a lazy afternoon baby-sitting my new chicks has kept the heat from getting to me. Life is good.

I make my observations of the chicks as if I was thinking about sharing my findings with Konrad Lorenz, the animal behaviorist. They are so small when we got them that they'd fit through the opening where the door to their pen under the garage stairs is hinged... but only on the first day. By the end of 24 hours, they can no longer fit in the nooks and crannies that they squeezed through and ducked under the day before. Signs of pin feathers show before a week is up. They show the rudimentary intelligence borne in their genes. They scratch for their food, and go under the heat lamp when needed, as they would seek their mother's warmth if brooded naturally.

There are twenty five of them. Sometimes they act almost robotic--as if wired to the same brain, and will suddenly run in numbers from one end of the fenced off enclosure across one of the bays of the garage to the other--for seemingly no reason at all. But on close observation, they all have personalities. There's the "Mama's Boy" who clambers about my feet whenever I go into their chicken run. MB wants to be picked up and 'brooded over... my chin serving as a poor substitute for the warm down of a mother hen.

There's the "Playground Screamer"... the kid who doesn't know how to talk without yelling at the top of his lungs. PS isn't a sissy, even though his loud "PEEP! PEEP! is alarmingly plaintive, and stirs up my maternal watchfulness. After he's peeped his brains out, he butts chests with another chick which resembles the ever present "Playground Bully" in every schoolyard group, and always looking for a fight.

There are the "Pathfinders and Pioneers". They go to the end of the fence to where it bends beyond the side door which opens into an enclosure about four inches high, which I watched them roam until the 3rd day as they hopped right out and into the grass. Then they were exploring the lawn beyond, so I used some of the hardware cloth fencing on the outside giving them some grass to explore while protecting them from predators. The P&Ps aren't afraid of anything! I think the only reason they are shy of me is because I may keep slow them from their explorations if I should pick them up to cuddle them... they are like the four year old child who is too old for that sissy stuff.

There was always a Hunter in the group--a chick with great imagination. He'd pick up a small feather or a part of an old oak leaf in his beak, and run like the wind, peeping like Euripides, "Ureka! I've found it!" And all the others would chase Hunter as if he had a juicy insect. Hunter would be cornered by the Playground Bully who would grab his prize and run away with it in his beak and a it becomes a game of tag. By the time Hunter found an actual bug, he had learned to quietly run and not make a fuss... so he could find a quiet place in which to eat it without dispute.

Now as I watch my three week old chicks, one is taking a dust bath in the mixture of wood shavings and debris near the coop's open door, which, if I didn't know better, looks like he's having some kind of seizure. When they're older, and prone to lice, this keeps those pests at bay. How do these parent-less birds know how to do all these things? Several others--the Lazy Babes--are copying the Dust Bathers idea and are taking a warm bath closer to the heat lamp--a dust-bath-sauna.

Chickens are messy eaters, liking to get right in their feeder and scratch for their food as they must have done eons ago before being domesticated. They don't act very domestic, as they make a mess of the place. I set up a cardboard box with a low open end and put in an open tray offood. They go in there and play like it was a sandbox, and after awhile it looks like one with chick-feed instead of sand.

Yesterday one of the Pioneers/Pathfinders tried to bob under the fence, getting stuck. He wasn't peeping in distress, but just awaiting release. I lifted the bottom edge freeing him and he squirmed through to explore further horizons. I guess a good name for him would be "Little Rebel" as he didn't want to go back in and I had quite a time cornering him. They are not only getting big, but fast. However, they gain weight so fast that they end up lazy, and will sit in the grass outside the coop all day except when they get up to get a drink and get something to eat like a bored teenager in the summer.

We have a large open metal barrel which we were going to eventually use for a burn barrel. It was turned over, but had a gap under so the Playground Screamer got under and started his loud peeping. His own loudness in this metal echo scared him into more frantic peeping. Finding the exit, he scrambled out, then would bob back and forth admiring the loud sound of his peeping in his echo chamber.

It may seem silly to imagine myself as 3" high to observe the behavior of Cornish-Giant Chicks, but when I get this yearly flock, it is the highlight of my year.

Much love,
Jo

(An update): Much has happened since 1998. For one, Elenora passed on to Heavenly hunting grounds, when she was in her 90s. I'll bet she is young and slim again, and can skip around like a young girl with my old dog Gayle, as well as all the stray dogs she's adopted in her lifetime.

We haven't raised Cornish Giants for several years now. For one thing, they grow so big, it's too big a bird for just two people to eat. It was a good thing we had none this year, as weasels found way into the coop where we close in all the chickens for the night.

I only have ONE hen now, and, wouldn't you know it, it's the cross-beaked hen that I chose to let live, though it would need supplemental feedings because her cockeyed bottom beak grew to the side giving her a Groucho Marx look as if she were smoking a cigar. I thought she'd be the first to accidently die like the weakest of a litter. But by this spring I was down to three hens counting her. Cross Beak is a survivor, and must have been hidden in the nesting box when the weasel got the others. I think she's four years old this summer, and living in the garage where she has chosen to stay so that the predators won't find her, as she would not go back into the coop after the weasel killed the others. Her nesting box sits on top of the hay facing the open garage doors, where she can look out and see the world all summer long. So far she has survived.