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| Farm lesson #1: Watch the babies around the baby chickens |
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Many folks who grew up on a farm can remember the arrival of baby chickens. This happened in March at our place and it’s hard to say who was more excited: Mother, the kids or the chickens.
The brooder house was cleaned and disinfected, a bale of peat was scattered for bedding and the brooder lights were all checked. Everything had to be just right for the health and safety of the chicks.
The peeps arrived by mail in most cases and the little fuzzballs were removed from the box and carefully placed under the brooder. This was the most dangerous part of the operation, especially if Mother had helpers.
An old cartoon by Bob Artley reminds me of the many hazards toddlers posed for baby chickens. Artley’s cartoon shows Mother carefully removing chicks from the box and instructing the older children on how to handle them. At the same time, a two-year-old is reaching into another box and lifting a chick out by its head.
The baby of the family was always the most interested and certainly the most dangerous for baby chickens. Mothers learned quickly that you don’t just give a chick to a toddler without taking some precautions.
A toddler could drop a chick, of course, but that isn’t likely. Quite the contrary: The little ones are so fond of baby chicks they squeeze them like a tube of toothpaste, with nearly the same result sometimes.
I still remember handing my little brother, Merlin, a chick when he was about two years old. You should have seen his eyes light up! The chick’s eyes got pretty big, too, but we got it away from him just in time. Excitement is contagious, and Mother was surely excited by the time we got all of those chicks out of the boxes.
That’s one of the problems with kids: They always want to help with things they aren’t ready for. Then, when they get big enough to do something, they are no longer interested.
The days when every farm had a flock of chickens are long gone. Folks just don’t have time for that kind of thing anymore. That’s too bad, I think. Feeding the chickens was one of the few things smaller kids could do to learn some responsibility. Even a kid who couldn’t be trusted with the eggs could help feed the chickens.
My wife and I took a trip to Europe some years ago, and noticed all the farms in countries such as Switzerland had a few chickens running around. The tour guide said chickens that are allowed to run loose are called “happy chickens” in Switzerland. They bring a higher price at the grocery.
I guess we could compare that to “free range” chickens in the U.S. It seems the more exercise they get, the more they are worth.
All of our chickens were free range when I was a kid, and most of them were fair game, too. Anyone who wanted to learn how to lasso calves generally practiced on the chickens first.
If exercise had anything to do with price, some of those chickens would have been worth a fortune.
Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may direct them to him in care of this publication.
This farm news was published in the April 23, 2008 issue of the Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 4/23/2008 |
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