Front Porch: Miss Chicken a capable mother for unruly brood

It’s time for the summer update on Miss Chicken and her pals at Joan Nolan’s home for wayward and unwanted chickens. The big news this year is that our gal is a mama again.

As has been reported in previous years, Miss Chicken – the formerly feral chicken whose life and activities I have followed for several years – again went broody in the spring. This is not uncommon in chickens, but what is somewhat unusual is that most chickens will move on eventually if you wait them out. But Miss C has an iron will and can out-wait even the most determined human.

Joan admits she is a pushover when it comes to this particular chicken and yields much too easily – as she did in 2011 and 2012 – and again got her some chicks to raise this year.

Of course, it never goes in a traditional way with Miss C, who hunkered down in the setting box late in the season, past the time when most suppliers had newborn chicks available. After searching, Joan did find one who was filling a pullet order and managed to secure three Plymouth Rock babies. Trouble is, Joan was out of town when the babies arrived, so they were 5 days old when she was able to pick them up.

“That’s a tricky time,” she said. “I usually put 1-day-old chicks under Miss Chicken while she’s sleeping so in the morning she thinks they are her hatchlings. At five days, the chicks may not accept her as their mama and she might not accept the babies.”

Not having the luxury of time to set up the nursing pen, Joan just popped the chicks under Miss C in the daylight as she sat in the nesting box. “She took to those little fuzz balls in a heartbeat. Not a chance I could ever pull them back. She has always been just the best and most protective of mothers, and is again.”

The babies – Penelope, Princess and Peaches – are 9 weeks old now and thriving. Princess is the independent one; the one who takes off and does as she pleases, even getting through the gate to the garden next door, attracted by the earwigs eating the rhubarb leaves – but leaving her distraught mother on the wrong side of the fence.

Since Joan manages that garden, she now opens the gate in the morning so Miss Chicken and her three babies can enjoy the feast and Mama C can stay close. “Earwigs are like candy to chickens, so this is a nice solution for everyone,” Joan said.

Hawks are Joan’s greatest fear for her girls. They can swoop down and scoop up baby chicks and banty chickens, so for years she’s been putting out feed for the crows that inhabit her Spokane Valley neighborhood because crows, a species Joan really likes, are also good at keeping hawks away.

Earlier this month while she was outside, she heard one of her chickens squawk, alerting the others. There was a crow in the sky taking after a hawk. “Miss Chicken immediately hustled those babies under a spruce tree. She is the fiercest mother.”

Only recently has she stopped pecking Joan’s hand as she tries to hand feed the chicks. But then again, Joan is a pretty intense protector of her charges as well. She does a beak count every night to make sure everyone is tucked in safe and sound after lights out. One night she came up short by one. Woody, a bird who came to Joan because she kept escaping the pen where she lived previously, was missing. With flashlight engaged, a half-hour of searching across the quarter-acre free-range area found the mixed-breed banty setting on six eggs underneath a car ramp in the lean-to next to the chicken house. Joan only gets to go to bed when all her charges are accounted for and secure.

Overall, things are going well for Miss Chicken and her flock mates. At age 6, she is the second-oldest in the group of 19. Good thing she hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down because this crop of babies is proving to be the most challenging.

Normally, chicks follow their mother around, but these Plymouth Rock babies scoot around as they please, and their mama needs to chase after them – sometimes in three different directions. Even so, no upstart, independent-minded children are going to get the best of her or venture too far away unprotected.

She survived her own first year homeless and on her own – hiding from coyotes, surviving snow and traffic and any number of hazards. She knows about survival, and just as she successfully raised her other chicks, she will surely get these three successfully raised, too.

That’s just what she does, fiercely.