(Photos: The black cochin mama, two of her chicks munching watermelon, and the sister chick of the hen in the story)
Last fall, a black cochin mother hen sat on a nest of eggs and hatched 4 out of 6. It was really too cold, even when she started sitting on the eggs, but she wouldn't quit, so I finally just let her do her thing. One egg was nearly done hatching when the mother abandoned the nest and took her 4 healthy chicks out into the world. Except for this one thing, the black cochin hen which hatched the other 4 was the most exemplary mother--taking care of and snuggling with her babies at night until they were 4 or 5 months old. Even now, the one remaining white sister roosts next to her cochin mama.
You're not supposed to help a chick which can't get out of the egg on his own, but this one was very vigorously TRYING to hatch. The membranes had dried around it because the hen had left it exposed to the air, even though the determined chick had pecked almost all of the shell away. It was like a little mummy, all sealed up inside the membranes that were now like a thin plastic barrier that the chick just couldn't break out of.
So we took pity on it, gently peeled off the membrane, took it inside, and set it up in a box. It was a fluffy yellow chick. It cheeped up to us every time we peered into the box. It hopped up eagerly on our hand if we wanted to hold it. It seemed very grateful for a chance at life.
Carrie took it home to Chicago, since the mother would not accept the chick back into her family. Carrie and Gil raised it as their own (OK, that isn't exactly true.....but it WAS spoiled beyond a normal chicks wildest dreams.)
Most chicks learn from their mothers or from the instinctive behavior of other chicks in their own hatch, but this chick definitely thought that she was a person. Most chickens are happiest when they bond with their own siblings and stay together as a family group all of their lives. Not this one. She bonded to people.
When Carrie brought her back, this particular chick would chirp out a greeting and run TOWARDS anyone who came into the barn (not typical chicken behavior unless you have food). She would get underfoot as I tried to feed and water all of the other birds. She would chirp forlornly when any person left the barn. She would hop up on your finger and settle in there, and later (when she was too big to perch on a finger) she would stand on your arm like a falcon, surveying all those little chickens on the ground who she could not identify with. She even seemed to remember Carrie for a few months after this young hen was supposed to join the flock.
Eventually she began to roost next to the other birds, but never as part of their group. It became apparent that she would never clean her white feathers, although the other white chickens keep themselves spotless. She came of age to lay eggs a month or two ago, and Jeff would find stashes of cracked eggs behind his tool box, on his work table, on the shelves.....all of these locations were up a flight of stairs and in the second floor of the barn, and none of them were on soft surfaces. I would hear her up there sometimes, doing the crazed "I've laid an egg" cackle. When Jeff blocked off all of those locations, she laid her eggs on top of the bare wood of the up-ended pallets on the first floor.
She no longer wanted to perch on your arm, but wasn't acting like a normal chicken, either. And she was still dirty white. Add to all of this the weird combination of genes in her make-up: Her daddy is a Barnevelder, and she inherited his large solid build. She looks like a dirty white Barnevelder, that's how closely her body type resembles the BV hens. She hatched from a white egg, which means that her momma was one of the white Leghorn hens which lived in our Palatine yard for a while and moved with us to the farm. Luckily she did NOT inherit the Leghorn's scrawny body-type or inability to set on their own eggs. But maybe that weird personality is a Leghorn trait. She lays a delicate pearl-colored egg with a nice sheen to it. Strange how those genetics can mix like that.
Her sister from the same hatch looks exactly like her, but is a brilliant, stunningly clean bird, and acts just a chicken is supposed to act, even to the extent of being the first hen to rush over when the rooster calls them.
I'd be surprised if the dirty white hen ever responded to the rooster, much less dashing over so quickly that he would strut around with pride at the behavior of his good little hen. ;)
One night, I noticed that she wasn't on her usual perch. She stands out at night as I make the rounds, not because she is so brilliantly white, but because she perches on the support board of the roost that all the other chickens use. Everyone else is in a nice, cozy line on the roost, and there she sits, 6 inches lower and at right angles to everyone else, by herself.
I got out the flashlight and checked everywhere, but no trace of her. I'm not particularly fond of this girl, but.....she HAS been fed for half a year, and she IS occasionally laying eggs that fill up our daily 3 dozen quota, so she was valuable in a way. She's a living creature, at the very least, and I needed to see if she was in need of rescue. No sign of her the next day either, even though I watched to see if she'd just been in hiding the night before.
There is an old kiln or drying oven outside the barn. The woodworker used it at some point, and it's too big to move, so it has been partially dismantled and pieces have been brought to the scrap metal yard. The shell of the oven is still in place, still needing to be taken apart. The chickens don't pay any notice to it, just dash past it to get to the grass and shade every morning.
While I was ushering baby Solomon to his mama (she had gotten swept away in the frenzy of the chicken dash to get outdoors and left him behind), I heard something scratching inside the oven's metal shell. Thinking it was a raccoon or other unwelcome critter, I had to check it out.
I was met with the most ungodly screech, followed by a dirty white hen giving me the evil red eye as she puffed up her feathers to look as ferocious as a chicken can manage. She was in the process of slurping the inside of one of HER OWN eggs out of a cracked shell. NOT a good sign!
I pinned her wings, avoided the pecking beak, ignored the angry squawking and lifted her off the "nest".
There was no bedding to make a nest, just bare rusted metal. Half the eggs were cracked. There were over a dozen eggs in there, all hers, which explained why I hadn't been finding her eggs anywhere in the barn. And she'd survived at least a few nights outside of the safety of the barn, without becoming a meal for something.
Well, at least the broody instinct is strong with this one. No other chicken instinct seems to have settled into her tiny brain. Strange thing is, I don't think that any of the roosters has ever noticed her, so none of her eggs will end up hatching.
I don't like to leave any animal out in the open overnight. I go to great lengths to try to get the cats inside the barn, to call the house cats inside, to shut the cows in their pen, to shoo even the ducklings back into the barn. It was a bit stressful to try to sleep that first night, and Jeff can tell you that I DID need to go out with a flashlight to move a few things that a coon or possum could easily have used to reach her in the "nest" (by that time I'd added some straw and some fertile eggs, and thrown the cracked eggs to the other chickens, so it did resemble a normal nest).
I slept better after that. Last night, I got a box about the size of where she'd set up her nest, filled it with the same type of straw, and gently lifted her off the nest to get the eggs. The box was made into a twin "nest", put into a roomy dog crate inside the barn, and then the retarded (ahem....mentally challenged) hen was placed on top of her eggs. If she abandoned the nest, not much would be lost--just a dozen eggs. If she kept sitting, then a few chicks might come out of it.
This morning, sure enough, her broody instinct was still firmly in place, and she sat in her new box, screeching loudly as I bent down to peer into the dog crate.
If she has chicks, they'll have to observe and learn from other chickens, or we'll have a whole chicken clan of dirty, unorthodox chickens starting their own little dysfunctional colony.
Laura.
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