My chick is breaking all the rules...

[ColoradoChicks]

Little Liberty was hatched in one of the nesting boxes on the 4th of July. (My meanest hen Maude went broody so I got six fertilized eggs for her.) Unfortunately, Liberty is an only child.

I decided my parenting style this time around would be "less is best". But since the nine hens have 24/7 access to the barnyard and share it with a goat and a pig I was sure precautions would be necessary.

So I put up a foot high chicken wire fence around the nesting box and a bit of the coop floor to keep the chick in while letting mama have access to the outside world. I put chick starter and a small waterer inside. I put a heat bulb close and turned it on at night, since our temps were dipping into the high 50's.

I saw that Maude and Liberty were snug inside the nesting box at night, so I stopped turning the light on after a couple of nights. On about day six, imagine my surprise to see mama and chick in the barnyard! It was only sixty degrees! There were huge animals nearby! I hurriedly put Liberty back in the coop, much to Maude's protestations.

A lot of good that did. I daily watch Maude as Liberty jumps on her back, jumps to the top of the 1' fence, waits for mama to jump over the fence, jumps down on her back and onto the ground. Liberty follows her mama outside into the 60 degree mornings with no problem, and spends all day learning how to peck and scratch around the other hens (with mama VERY close by). There's no stopping them - and I wouldn't want to because the clucking and cheeping an. The goat and the pig couldn't care less, and seem somewhat afraid of Maude.

So all the "keep them in a brooder, keep them warm, keep them away from the other hens in the flock" stuff does not seem to apply at all.

Is it just my chickens, or does this happen all the time?

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is the way chickens have been raised for thousands of years. Chickens are barnyard animals. They are living animals and anything can happen, but as long as they have room, they do great this way. I firmly believe the problems come in when they don't have enough room.

Many people on this forum simply don't have enough room to let their chickens be chickens. I'm not criticizing them. You do the best you can with what you have. But the difficulties come in when space is limited.

You can easily integrate chickens of practically any age, keep multiple roosters, let a broody raise them with the flock, and do about anything if they have enough room to get away from each other when they need to.

Broody hens have been raising chicks with no human interference/interaction for thousands of years in all kinds of weather. Their built-in heater never has a power outage. Those chicks are a lot tougher than most people believe. When they get cold, Mama will warm them up.

The surprise to me is that the chick needs help to escape a 1' fence. I've seen 2 day old chicks hop up into a nest that is higher than that. I've seen 2 week old chicks fly several feet to get to a roost when Mama tells then to.

 

[ColoradoChicks]

Thanks for the input Ridgerunner. I've gotten all of my limited chicken knowledge from the good people on this forum. While I"m a bit disappointed that I don't have a specially talented and gifted chick

I'm glad I'm not doing the wrong thing and I'm looking forward to integrating my new chicks that are arriving in early August in a similar way. I appreciate the support!

 

[Ridgerunner]

There is a ton of knowledge on here. We all keep chickens in different circumstances so we have different experiences. It's great to hear all these different experiences, but you need to decide if that experience relates to your circumstances. There is a world of difference in someone keeping four hens in a tight space in an urban back yard versus someone out in the country letting a large flock free range all day.

Disasters can happen. There is no doubt about that. But I really believe most of the disasters from behaviors come because they chickens don't have enough room to work out their instinctive social behavior.

 

[RonC]

Thanks for the input Ridgerunner. I've gotten all of my limited chicken knowledge from the good people on this forum. While I"m a bit disappointed that I don't have a specially talented and gifted chick

I'm glad I'm not doing the wrong thing and I'm looking forward to integrating my new chicks that are arriving in early August in a similar way. I appreciate the support!

She's had the best teacher a chick can have,a mama hen. We all aquired our knowledge of chickens second hand, she's the expert. And you do have a special chick,she's yours.

 

[donrae]

This is why I wish everyone brooding baby chicks could have at least experienced a broody hen raising chicks. Folks FRY their baby chicks trying to "keep them warm". As you can see, they don't need to be that warm all the time! They spend a lot of time out from under momma, esp after the first week. I just hate reading the posts of dying chicks and heat lamps and confined spaces with no air flow and did I mention the dying chicks?

Sorry, rant off.

 

[wingstone]

This is why I wish everyone brooding baby chicks could have at least experienced a broody hen raising chicks. Folks FRY their baby chicks trying to "keep them warm". As you can see, they don't need to be that warm all the time! They spend a lot of time out from under momma, esp after the first week. I just hate reading the posts of dying chicks and heat lamps and confined spaces with no air flow and did I mention the dying chicks?

Sorry, rant off.

I couldn't agree more !!! I changed alot of things even how I set eggs after watching my first broody, and it was still fairly cold outside when she hatched those chicks, and everyone of them thrived and seemed to be healthier than anything I have brooded.

 

[Back2MyRoots]

I wish I had the option of brooding with a hen, but since I started my flock from chicks, we are still brooding in the house. I am a firm believer in having a warm end and a cool end in the brooder. I figured that out with my first chicks after only having them a couple of days. I was keeping them as warm as it called for (90 degrees for the first week), but they had very watery poop. The fabulous folks here let me know that was an indicator of too warm/drinking too much water to cool off. We dropped the temp and took out one of the lights to create a cool end, and the watery poop disappeared within a few hours! My chicks all seem to be doing well and I am on my second set of chicks in the brooder(building my flock, slowly but surely). Haven't frozen one yet!

 

[erniemcmurray]

i live in france. have 12 red star and 12 black plus ducks and geese. all perfectly happy i interfere as little as possible. they eat corn and barley plus what they scratch up in their wanders around the village. i dont participate in the hatching mother dissappears for arround a month and then comes back . last one came back with 14 chicks. all survived. you know these birds have been doing this unaided for a long time. ernie

 

[ColoradoChicks]

Thanks again everyone!

I just got five live chicks that had been on order since January (!) and put them under another broody hen. She rejected all but one. She is the polar opposite of my other mama hen and hasn't let that poor baby out of the nesting box for over a week.

It takes all kinds. I'm sorry for the four in the brooder (no mama), but maybe even more sorry for the one with the helicopter mama in the nesting box.

I shall, however, take the advice of all you smart people and leave them alone. I'm sure both me and my hovering hen will learn a little bit about raising chicks in the next few weeks.