The Beauty of a Story

Last week we got chicks. We got them a week ago exactly, a week of sleepless nights, constant worry, and catastrophizing over the slightest little thing that seems off about them.

I am only exaggerating a little.

This week my brain has been stretched to a whole new limit. I am noticing and remembering things I never would have thought important before. Such as a laaaaarge intake of food by a chick means that it will grow a whole bunch of feathers in the next day or two. Am I getting smarter? I don’t know. What I do know is I now know more about chicks than I ever thought it was possible to know. And I still don’t know much of anything…

Partly for my own amusement, I decided to write down some of the things I have learned as a brand new chicken keeper. If you have chickens, you may end up saying ‘Duh’, out loud a few times, just be warned. I have never had chickens before, my parents and grandparents didn’t have chickens. I went into this whole enterprise blind and naive to what this whole being a chicken keeper thing is. Suffice to say, I will limit myself lest the list get too large.

1. Chicks are lucky to be alive. There are a million and one ways for them to get sick and die, a million ways for them to get stressed and then die, and a million ways for me to mess up and then they die. Let me just say, I think of myself as extraordinarily lucky that my eight chicks are not all dead of natural and unnatural causes. Have you ever held a baby chick? They are so tiny and light, a mere ball of fluff in my hand. They don’t look strong enough to handle the many stressors and germs in the world, but here they still are! What a resilient animal.
2. Chicks are very messy creatures. One would think a sense of self preservation would keep them from clogging up their water with hay, or from using their feed as the bathroom. But no, their baby bird brains do not think that far ahead. Instead they do whatever they want, whenever they want, and their chicken keepers are expected to clean up after them. I do a lot of cleaning, in case you were wondering.
3. Chicks are herd animals extraordinaire. (Yes, I know they are birds, not animals, but ‘herd birds’ doesn’t sound as good.) If one chick is doing something, all the others have to, too. If one is eating, the rest rush over to taste what deliciousness the first found. Probably just the same food as the last time they ate, but at least they are excited about it. If one is scratching their wings, the others realize they have an itch. If one is sleeping, the rest of them get drowsy and fall asleep too. Preferably in cute piles. I haven’t quite figured out how I can use this to my advantage yet. But rest assured I will try.
4. Chicks grow ridiculously fast. Seriously. A week ago they were all balls of fluff, and now they are all fatter than the sparrows nesting in my roof. I can tell which ones probably hatched just a day or so later than the other ones. They are a little smaller, have fewer feathers, and that is just a day or two’s difference!
5. Even if I do everything to the best of my ability, I will still feel completely and unutterably lost. As far as I know, I am feeding and watering my chicks correctly. Their brooder is warm, but not too warm, dry, and sheltered. Yet I am still scratching my head over one of my chicks, and hoping very hard that the symptom of ‘sudden death’ will not apply to my chick any time soon. I do everything I know how to do, and still feel like I am not doing anything properly. Which might mean I am missing something, but more likely means I am too stressed about this…

What this list does not cover is the list of chick ailments and symptoms I have somehow memorized and cycle through every time a chick acts strange. Nor does it have the thorough dog training regime we are attempting to make sure our dog knows chickens are friends, not food. Nor the many other things I have learned this week. But I figured I should stop before I exhaust myself, and you.

Have a beautiful day.

Shaina Merrick