Wings

There was a big development this weekend: wings. Last week, the chicks were cream coloured fluff balls

Last Thursday

This week, the chicks are cream coloured fluff balls with brown, black and white wings. In fact, they are more chicken than chick now.

This morning, Tuesday

We've also noticed a few new habits with the sprouting of wings.

Preening - they preen regularly and follow their mother whenever she does

Wing flapping and stretches - if you watch them for more than 5 minutes, you'll catch someone in action

Flying - They are lifting to about 6 inches off the ground, on average, and I saw one fly to about 1 foot in response to the overhead sounds of a low flying jet from the nearby naval air base. They are able to fly onto their mother's back with ease. However, as they get heavier, it is increasingly apparent that she doesn't want them riding on her back anymore, and she lowers her back and wiggles until they tumble off. I had no idea that this circus act would be so shortlived.

A namesake

The first 10 people to post a comment on Suburban Chicken will have a chick named after them. The clock starts now.

Come one, come all to the big box

Precocious and talented, they're our chicks.

Baby chicks are considered precocial because upon hatching, they can leave the nest, follow their parent and feed themselves almost immediately. In contrast, birds such as woodpeckers, songbirds and pigeons are labelled altricial because post hatching, they are naked, blind (eyes closed), and helpless.

We have made some unscientific observation of just how precocious these birds are, and have concluded from recent sightings that when that you are a chicken, it is never too early to develop job skills. In fact, we may have a Cirque du Soleil chicken training camp operating on the front porch.

The amazing Peeper

And the Triangulating Trio

A visit from Dad

Dad has been visiting our lawn on and off for at least a year now, but we've seen him every day this week.

The question is: is he being an attentive father, or does he want to eat these chicks? We're not sure. However he is keeping very close company with the hen mentioned in yesterday's posting. Suburban chicken finds the parading of his new hen hussie in front of the chicks and their mother to be in very poor taste.

And in today's chicken news

Yesterday was a big day at the chicken commune. A hint: Glen and I had quite a workout chasing baby chicks. But before we get to our action packed chicken drama, there have been some questions about the chicks on the barbeque in the last post. No, we are not planning to eat the chicks! This picture was in response to Garth's comment (see May 12) about the barbeque. Perhaps Garth is fantasizing about barbequed chicken because of the limited supply of chicken in Korea as a result of Avian influenza. Second, for those representing the chick unions, please be assured that no chicks were used in the production of this picture but rather it was a product of Glen's amazing Photoshop skills.

Back to the chick chasing. It all started when we were doing our morning chicken feeding: we went to the usual spot under the camellia bush and no one was there. After some searching, Mother Hen and the little ones were located on the side of the house moving toward the left-hand neighbours' property. While most of the people in our neighbourhood are reasonably okay with the roaming chickens, some neighbours aren't wild about them, because the chickens mess up their landscaping. This, and the fact that the attrition rate for little chicks roaming around a suburban neighborhood would probably be pretty high, we decided it was time to round up the chicks.

Our first move was to encourage the chickens to move back to home base. Once they were in place, Glen donned his welding gloves while I gently moved the mother chicken with a broom. We had no idea the reaction that we would get: Mother Hen started lunging at Glen and squawking loudly. Wow! With this, the chick started to scatter. We learned something about chicks during this process; these two inch creatures can run like demons, can fit under almost anything and yet are so delicate that one needs to be very gentle when catching them. During all of this chaos, 4 went into a box, most returned to their mother at home base, and a few went elsewhere. After another repetition of this - with Mother Hen in the background running about issuing loud warning noises, we moved 8 chickens to the box in the garage. Glen had hung a heat lamp over this box.

Once the chicks had food and water with them in the box, we resumed chasing chicks around the front lawn. In our focus on catching chicks, we didn't notice their mother's absence - it was only when Glen went to the box to deposit a couple more chicks that he discovered that Mum had flown into the box and was calmly attending to her chicks. Through this and many other things we've observed in the past few days, she has earned our utmost respect!

At this point, we had 11 chicks. During the first chicken scurry, Glen saw one go under the fence to the backyard, so Jasmine and I went to retrieve it. He also found something else near the fence which I'll talk about later. OK, now we're up to 12 chicks. One more under the shrubbery and two on the other side of the porch. We are at 14. We searched around the front yard in vain for Number 15, attempted to recruit Jasmine's noise, with me mistaking every bird noise in the neighbourhood as a chick's cheep (an aside: the park a mile away from us is designated by UNESCO as one of the most significant migratory points in North America so there are a lot of bird noises around here right now)

After reluctantly agreeing that we were unlikely to find Number 15, we started to move the box with Mum and her chicks from the garage. Wait, was that a cheep? No. Yes, it is. We were so happy when we realized Number 15's coordinates. Interestingly, at less than a week of age, Number 15 knows a lot about protecting oneself from potential predators.

Rule #1: Stay quiet and make noise ONLY when Mum is heard clucking nearby.

Rule #2: Dive under leaves and stay absolutely still, even when the predator is rustling the leaves around you, trying to find you.

Once the entire family was reunited, calm was restored.

Dear fellow fowl. Today I arrived in poulet prison unexpectedly. You wouldn't believe how I got here...

So, what's the other big news? We may have a repeat performance... This is what Glen saw in a hidden nook near the fence during our search for the last of the chicks.

Yes, you saw right. More eggs!

That likely belong to another hen who visits regularly

More pictures tomorrow, including some chick action shots.

Chicken Watch Tuesday: More exciting than Hillary vs Obama

When we arrived home today, a welcome party had assembled on the front lawn. With all the eating, the little dudes have almost doubled in size since we spotted them on Saturday. We've decided to build a coop for the chicks but had no idea that we would need it so soon!

After the excitement of the excursion, everyone returned to their nest beneath the shrubbery and hung out underneath Mother Hen. As of 9:30 PM, everyone has crashed for the night.

Garth, we're a bit concerned, look what we found this evening. Any ideas how they got there?

And we thought that a roving band of chickens in our neighbourhood was unusual...

So by now, you've probably heard about the "roving band" of neighbourhood chickens that visit our front porch regularly. On Saturday afternoon, Glen and I were sitting on the front porch enjoying the afternoon sun. Jasmine was very restless and wouldn’t settle down – we asked her to lie down, she would, but shortly after would get up and look at the ground below the porch through the metal fence.

After a bit of this, Glen looked down to see what she was looking at and below was one of our neighbourhood chickens. But she was not alone...there were 4 baby chicks beside her!

After recovering from the shock of seeing the chicks, we watched for awhile and eventually counted 8 chicks darting in and out from underneath our neighbourhood hen. We looked again a bit later and saw 11. As of yesterday afternoon, we have a mother hen with 15 chicks living underneath the shrubbery on the front of the house.

They are hungry boys and girls. Typical scenario: we put 2 cups of food down near them and within an hour it is gone! This morning Glen bought a 50 lb bag of chick food, and at this rate, it should be gone in no time.