Foster Hen

The drama in the chicken coop continues! One of the hens (now dubbed Cruella for soon-to-be-obvious reasons) seems to be suffering from a severe lack of motherly instincts. She has been sitting on her nest for weeks now. Her eggs began hatching last week, but she pushed the chicks out of the nest and refused to come down with them. In the chicken-eat-chick world, the other chickens attacked the babies and killed four of them before I figured out what was happening and began my rescue operation. I started checking the pen every few hours and managed to save three of the balls of fluff before they had too many injuries. I have them safely ensconced in a cardboard box in my pantry where they are doing just fine under my foster care.

Then on Wednesday Cruella came down off her perch with two new baby chicks and started acting like a mother hen should. I thought she had finally come to her senses and might manage to avoid becoming our dinner in the near future. The following day Citronella, one of our original hens, hatched out just one tiny chick. Citronella and Cruella strutted around the yard with their chicks and all was well in the chicken world—at least until dusk. I went out to check on them and found Cruella back up on her high nest with her babies running around frantically below her. I figured I might as well add them to the box in the pantry and started to go in the pen. Just then Citronella came swooping over from her corner and engulfed the two lost chicks under her wings with her own baby. She stared at me with her beady-eyes and dared me to take another step. I watched her for a few minutes as she got settled for the night and left her alone.

Cruella came down for a few hours the next day and took over her chicks, but by mid-afternoon she was back on her nest and hasn’t been down since. Citronella and the three little ones seem perfectly happy without her. I asked my neighbor Mrs. Moono what she thought about Cruella. "Some chickens are not good mothers," she told me. "You should eat that one!"

Maybe we will. Citronella, however, is now in the running for Mother of the Year.