TheBanyanTree: Tales of a Woodcat

[NancyIee at aol.com]

Some  folks have chicks, some people HAVE chicks.  I got mine by mail, 50 
day  old reds, forty-eight survived to adulthood, and all were named, the 
names  coming as they grew and assumed personalities or markings to distinguish 
them  from all the others.   They lived in a  roofed pen off the barn  with 
a chicken wire playyard attached. As they grew, the outdoor pen was  
enlarged to accommodate their romps and wanderings, and where they had access  to 
the compartmented bookcase where they lay their eggs. 
 
We supplied the neighborhood with eggs and jobs, when I had need to hire  
youngsters to help with occasional cleanup. Normally, the commercial chicken  
people only kept their hens two years. I kept mine as long as they 
continued to  lay, five or six years.  The older the hens got, the fewer feathers 
they  sported, but the larger came the eggs, most of them double-yoked. 
 
The old hens started disappearing when the flock reached seven years in  
age. The laying became more sparing, so the disappearance was not  
heart-breaking, except when a favorite did not show for morning feeding.   We 
eventually found out that the neighboring pair of eagles, nesting in the dead  top 
branches of a four-story pine, were feeding their chicks my  chicks.   By the 
time the remaining hens were reaching their eighth  year, there were only a 
couple left.  Then there were none. 
 
That flock was my one and only venture into chick-keeping, and I still miss 
 the morning ruckus and the chasing about after my shoelaces.
 
NancyLee