Good morning from Chicken Paradise Hawaii! Today’s topic is how mother hens raise their chicks — and nearly everything here is what our farmer taught me. Right now two hens and their chicks, maybe two days old, have gotten all mixed together. Hear that “kok-kok-kok”? That’s how a mother calls her chicks.
The cycle
Wild hens lay in a hollow at the base of the grass. Their laying cycle is about 26 or 27 hours, so roughly one egg a day, and a wild hen lays about 12 to 14. She only starts sitting once the clutch is complete, so all the chicks develop together over 21 days and hatch the same size.
In Hawaii, hens mostly raise chicks in spring and fall: about two weeks laying, three weeks sitting, then about two months of care until the mother declares she’s done. Then she rests a few months, so a healthy hen can raise two broods a year. Not all survive, though. Mongooses, cats and big rats take chicks and even young birds, and in the wild only about a third reach adulthood. Here, with cats keeping mongooses away, no big rats and plenty of food, almost all of them grow up — which means a lot of roosters.
What makes a good mother
First, she must protect her chicks, so she has to be tough; in the wild, mothers fight over good spots. Ishiko, a big hen from fighting-bird stock, is stronger than Donut and takes the best spot by the coop entrance. Second, keeping chicks warm: a chilled chick can’t digest and weakens fast. That fluff looks cozy but doesn’t actually insulate, and chicks can overheat too, so a mother moves them into shade. Third, dust baths, which keep off blood-sucking mites that can make tiny chicks anemic. And she teaches them what and where to eat. Nobody taught her any of this!
Little roosters tend to wander off and get lost, so in nature more hens than roosters survive. A mother knows her own chicks’ voices and pecks others’ away, and won’t adopt strays. Yet in about a month, Donut will suddenly declare her job finished and start pecking her own chicks.
Hens who don’t sit
Our bantams and rescues, like Kin-chan, go broody — sitting even with no eggs and forgetting to eat, so our farmer pulls them out for meals. Egg-laying breeds, though, were developed by people to lay up to about 300 eggs a year, compared with around 30 for a wild hen, and they almost never go broody (Luna surprised us once). They’re hatched in big machines, so hens like Cho, Luna and Hachimitsu have never known a mother.
At bedtime, the newest chicks tuck in under their mom’s wings. Good night!