Crunching Gravel by Robert Louis Peters

Author:Robert Louis Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780-299-14103-5
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2012-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

Hens and Chicks

A hen was ready to set when she refused to leave the nesting box, ruffled her throat feathers, and glanced at you from the shadows with a suspicious red eye. Once off the nest, she clucked maternally, as though a parade of chicks followed her.

Three hens chose almost simultaneously to set, which meant a rush on our egg supply. Most fowl could accommodate up to a dozen eggs. For three weeks the setters sat, clucking softly as they turned eggs with their beaks. Turning guaranteed that the embryos would not adhere to the inside of the shells. Every two days we would close the henhouse door to the other birds and scatter grain. The setters emerged, exuded huge, noisome deposits of dung, ate and drank, and returned to their nests.

Of the forty-five eggs set to hatch, forty produced chicks. If a chick had trouble breaking through its shell, we assisted by enlarging the beak hole. By the end of spring, we hoped to have nearly two hundred chicks, which we would fatten, killing them in the fall, keeping only the sturdiest pullets for our new laying flock. My mother canned quarts of chicken for winter eating.

The chicks spent their first days on newspaper spread near the kitchen stove in an area blockaded by chunks of wood. An overturned cardboard box, with entry holes, supplied a hiding place. They ate cornmeal and oats. We each had favorites, which we gave names. Eventually, we divided them between the mothers. Brood hens avoided the main flock, preferring shade and concealment under low shrubs. No creatures are more brutal than hens. Helpless chicks are always in danger of being pecked to death. A hen bitten severely by deer flies is an easy victim of the flock. They peck at her head relentlessly until she dies. Runts are also the victims of this selective killing. We saved some hens by removing them in time and treating them with ointment. Curiously, Crip did not participate in these slaughters, leaving the dreary business to the hens.

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