Chicky characters

(Photos:  Chicks from the preschool hatch in May--as new arrivals at the farm and half-way through the summer.  "Chump" is one of the smaller brown ones in the last photo.) It's funny.  I'm not writing about leaves changing color, or cooler weather, but about the sound of little chicken feet running on and eagerly scratching in dry leaves on the ground.  For the past few years, that's been a new feature of autumn.....for me anyway.  In Palatine, I would have the patio door open and could hear the little "scritch, scritch, scritch" of chicken claws digging through the dry leaves.  Here I have the French doors open to bring some of the delightful cooler air into the house, and it caught me by surprise---the same chicken-scratching noise that I had forgotten.  The ones I'm hearing now are from Marlene's preschool hatch in May.  They are 4 months old or so, about half-way grown, and still small enough to hop through the livestock fence and run wild through the acre surrounding our house and garage (and it's truly a WILD area--overgrown where I haven't gotten to ripping weeds out or taming wild blackberry thickets.  They have plenty of places to forage, and plenty of places to hide in the case of a hawk flying overhead).  Sometimes guests will pull into the driveway and announce "Do you know that your chickens are right next to the road?!!!"  Usually that means that the younger group is in the ditch, scratching for whatever yummy stuff they can find there.  I don't panic anymore when I hear how close to the traffic they are...... Back to the story:  It's one thing to hear them scratching in wood chips or on dry ground or gravel when they aren't supposed to be out, but it is totally endearing to hear them in the dry leaves, scratching here and there for little bugs or bits of food.  Doesn't really make sense, does it? One other little guy is fun to watch each morning.  He's a Rhode Island White or maybe a White Plymouth Rock (they came in the same batch of eggs from E-bay, and hatched together in late May/early June).  Every morning when I go out to milk Bessie, he is right there ready to eat all the sleepy flies that aren't moving quickly yet.  He hops up to where Bess is munching her grain and steals bits of oats or corn, picks flies off of Ruby's stall with no effort at all, or stands on tiptoe to peck a fly off of Bessie's leg while I'm milking her.  Today he even pecked a few times at my jeans, and I knew that there must have been a fly or two that landed on me (hopefully he got them!)  Bess doesn't pay any attention to him, but little Ruby gets a bit frisky and tries to play.  A big calf playing with a little white chicken isn't a fair match, and the little guy usually gives a baby-style squawk and hurries out of Ruby's stall.  The cows accept this little one, but Bess snorts in annoyance if any other chicken tries to steal her feed at milking time.  It's too bad that the "he" is not a "she", because the fate of all the boy chicks is pretty much sealed, no matter how cute or endearing they may be..... One boy chick that we may make an exception for (although all the existing chickens on the farm have a short life-span expectancy because of the respiratory sickness they all seem to be carrying) is called "Chump".  He is from Marlene's hatch and runs with the laugh-in-the-face-of-traffic-danger crowd.  Chump is always very brave and comes right up for either a bit of sandwich or whatever else we were eating, or to peck at my toenail polish or at a red mosquito bite on anyone's leg....he made a real pest of himself when a church group was here last Saturday and he was overly bold in demanding people-food.  Sometimes it's obvious which chicks were hatched in a classroom and handled a lot!  Chump was hopping on one foot at the end of summer, and we caught him to find out why.  One leg was grossly swollen and purple, and he couldn't put any weight on his foot.  His leg-joint was completely swollen and bruised.  That was enough for us to make a pet out of him.  Jeremy was able to scoop him up easily for about a week after that, and we would set him on the picnic table or on a hay bale and feed him the choice bits of grain or bread, while the other chickens had to scratch in the straw or grass for theirs.  Jeremy would make nests of hay for him, and he'd snuggle down and sleep in comfort while he was recovering.  I called him "Hop-a-long", but the name "Chump" stuck instead. Gradually the swelling went down, but his leg still seemed to bend at an odd angle for a few weeks more if he stepped on it wrong.  No idea how he was injured, but now his leg seems to be healed.  He is still bold, and comes up to beg with urgent little cheeps when I'm scooping cow feed.  I'm soft-hearted enough to toss some grain out to the other chickens and then furtively give him a little pile where the others can't see, and he's tame enough to wait for that special ration and gobble it up before the others know what is happening. Again, he's a male.....Jeremy has asked if we could keep him....we'll see how long that lasts.  It's just too bad that the young hens aren't the ones that we get attached to! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/