A Job for All Seasons

by Phyllida Barstow

  That was the theory, and no one was more surprised than me when, broadly speaking, that was exactly what happened. It set the pattern for our poultry-keeping, wherever we happened to be living, for the next forty-five years.

  As well as providing a more satisfying life for the flock, it was far more fun for us to see them au naturel – unconfined, busy about their complex affairs, constantly on the lookout for danger or for food, instinctively operating within a strict social hierarchy.

  Top of the pecking-order in that first truly free-range flock was the stately Brahma cock we called Gandhi, who was quick and ruthless about punishing any younger male with ideas above his station. Even a reedy-voiced teenager who dared to crow too close to him received a vicious stab, which pulled out a clump of feathers. Attempting to seduce a hen merited a prolonged chase, which often ended with the would-be ravisher bloody about the comb.

  Like all animals, chickens prefer the company of their own kind, and are acutely aware of differences between breeds. Next in influence and importance were the Brahma hens, always invited to be the first to partake of any delicacy while the old cock stood sentinel over them. The Black Sumatra hens he treated in an offhand, cavalier fashion, letting them eat only when his true wives had finished, and making it clear that although they belonged to his flock they were second-class citizens. When the inevitable inter-breeding between the races produced a generation of Black Sumatrans with feathery feet, he seemed to prefer them to their smooth-legged mothers. By then, though, there were several young cocks coming up through the ranks, and the old boy’s supremacy was on the wane.

  It was a sad day when I found him crouching in a clump of nettles, his head crusted with dried blood and defeat in his eyes. There must have been a titanic battle to reduce him to such a shadow of his pompous self, and though we patched him up physically, he never fully recovered his nerve.

  I had feared that, free to roam where they pleased, the chickens might disappear into the surrounding beechwoods and be lost for ever, but in fact the little flock established its own boundaries, which extended no more than a hundred yards from the farmhouse in any direction, and their days quickly acquired a routine dictated by the position of the sun. They were constantly on the move, but their movements were predictable and I always knew where to find them.

  As soon as the door of their shed was opened, they would hurry off to the sunniest corner of the Dutch barn, and for the next couple of hours you could be sure they would be hanging out there, feeding, quarrelling, preening, laying eggs, and loudly announcing that they had done so.

  Then it would be time to seek shade and scuffle in dustbaths, something we sought to discourage in the vegetable garden, though with only limited success. Afternoon would find them perched on fences or the low branches of trees; as evening drew on they would visit the corn-hopper hanging from a beam outside the stables, and then when the light began to fade they would home in on their shed. One last drink, and they would flutter up to a favourite roost, make a few disobliging remarks to whoever was next in line, and by dusk they would be settled for the night, so all we had to do was slam and bolt the door.

  Another pleasure – particularly for a household with children – is seeing the way chickens dispose of table scraps. Apart from lettuce, oranges and olives, nothing is too exotic for them to enjoy. Curry is a particular favourite, a reminder of their Asiatic roots, and leftover pasta or stale cake sends them into a frenzy of delight.

  Though we tried to keep track of their nests and always had plenty of eggs for the house, we must have missed hundreds along the way. Whenever I found a nest containing more than seven or eight, it seemed prudent to drop them in a bowl of water to test their freshness. Discovering an embryo chick in the eggs one is about to scramble is a sure way to kill one’s appetite. On one occasion Duff invited a gang of visiting children to collect all they could find in the straw bales stacked up high in the Dutch barn, offering a rate of sixpence per egg. Great was his consternation when the search-party returned, covered in bits of straw, with 180 eggs, some of them very old indeed, in their plastic buckets.

  Every so often, a hen would secretly build up a clutch in some hidden corner and settled down to brood them. At first, when I became aware of this, I used to wait until dark and then carefully transfer her into a secure coop, but only the most docile hens would tolerate this treatment. Most of them would start to stamp about and rage at their confinement, smashing their eggs in the process. It was, I found, better not to interfere, and let them take their chance. During the three weeks when she is using all her heat and energy to incubate her eggs, a hen – or any sitting bird – gives off so little scent that a predator can pass close by without winding her.

  In the warmest part of the day, when she senses that her nest will not chill for half an hour, she will leave it briefly while she forages, drinks, and fluffs up her feathers. Hurrying about with ruffled plumes and an air of preoccupation, brusquely repelling any attempt at fraternisation by the cock, pecking frantically at corn as she tanks up for the next session of sitting, her demeanour is unmistakably that of a harassed mother-to-be, and during these short forays I would be able to inspect the nest, remove obviously addled eggs, and sprinkle water to dampen the remaining ones. This gives the hatchling a better chance of breaking out of the shell, particularly if the hen has chosen a dry spot among haybales or on top of a wall.

  Standing there in the quiet of the barn, I would hear the tiny chip-chip of egg-teeth – the prominent hook on the beak which Nature provides as a hammer – as the chicks tapped away at their prison, but despite the powerful temptation to take a peek at what was going on under the feathers, it was vital to leave well alone until the hen herself decided to give her family a look at the world.

  The hatching process might take forty-eight hours if several different hens had contributed to the nest. It was tantalising to catch a glimpse of fluff as the first cheeper moved within the cocoon of feathers, but – as I eventually learned – the iron rule was No Interference.

  In the early days, worried that the first-hatchers might be hungry or thirsty, I tried putting a saucer of water or a few chick-crumbs within reach, but it was always a mistake. Either the hen would reach out to peck the food, crushing any egg still in the process of hatching, or a new chick would topple into the water and get chilled. Having satisfied her appetite, the hen would not be spurred by hunger-pangs into leaving the nest at the right moment.

  One way and another it was much better to let well alone.

  When she did eventually sally forth from the messy, dishevelled nest, she let everyone know the extent of her triumph. Clucking continuously, with legs bent and wings held out like an umbrella, the new mother would usher the tiny balls of fluff into the open, carefully shielding them from wind and rain, and attacking with the utmost ferocity anyone who took too close an interest. In some warm, sheltered spot, she would gather the chicks round and begin to demonstrate vital life-skills.

  Scratching. Pecking the soil. Dipping miniscule beaks into water and raising their heads to let it trickle down their throats.

  While they were thus engaged, I would put on rubber gloves and hastily clear out the abandoned nest, removing broken shells, soiled bedding and unhatched eggs. These burst like miniature grenades, releasing a really horrible smell, but it was imperative to break them, preferably by throwing them against a tree, because if left intact they would lie in the muckheap for months, the smell getting worse all the time, until eventually someone trod on them.

  Many and varied are the survival instincts programmed into the chicks from the moment they hatch. With a single warning cluck, soft and guttural, the hen can silence their incessant cheeping and freeze them into immobility while she waits for danger to pass. Family discipline is tight. If the menacing shadow of a crow or buzzard appears overhead, or a domestic predator – dog, cat, or human – comes too close, she will attack with reckless valour. Even horses and cows retreat hurriedly, their body-lan
guage saying, ‘Sor-ree! My mistake,’ in the face of an onslaught by a furious, fluffed-up mother hen.

  Her colleagues also give her a wide berth while the chicks are tiny. The bold, bossy, bullying cocks stand back humbly while she feeds, and other hens move away if she shows an inclination to scratch in a particular spot.

  Though she will defend her chicks to the death, a hen’s charity does not extend to youngsters from another brood – rather the reverse. Once I had two clutches hatch on consecutive days, but when both sets of chicks were barely a week old, one of the mothers was killed by a dog. I collected up four tiny orphans who had hidden in the nettles, and when darkness fell I pushed them underneath the surviving hen in a secure coop. She moved her feathers to accommodate the newcomers, and settled back with the augmented brood, and I tiptoed away, thinking that come morning she wouldn’t be able to distinguished between her own offspring and the interlopers.

  My mistake.

  As soon as I opened the coop in the sunlight, the adoptive mother gave a loud squawk, sprang in the air, and beat her wings wildly, terrifying all the chicks, which scattered and hid. Then with soft, confidential clucks, she called them towards her, but only her own family recognised her voice and ran to her, while the orphans fled still farther away. Solomon himself couldn’t have devised a neater way of establishing their true parentage.

  For the best part of a month, hen and chicks remain close together, scuttling here and there, pecking and scratching, sleeping as a single unit. Then, gradually they drift apart. As the chicks’ downy fluff is replaced by proper feathers, instinct tells them that safety lies in height, leading them to perch on any handy rail or branch, while the hen’s periods of brooding them on the ground become correspondingly shorter.

  They start to scorn the safety of the coop, perching in a rebellious row on its ridge, refusing to go in unless caught by hand. Few jobs are more frustrating and time-consuming than trying to entrap lively chicks as dusk falls, and at this point I am inclined to throw in the towel, herd them into the shed with the adult birds, and hope they survive attacks by rats or their curmudgeonly seniors. Some do and some don’t. Unless you accept at the outset that Nature provides far more chicks than you can expect to grow to maturity, free-range poultry-keeping is not for you.

  Still, I admit it is harrowing to listen to the desperate cries of chicks when their mother flies cheerfully up to a perch they cannot reach, and stamps about, peering down and calling them to join her. Again and again they flutter as high as they can, only to fall back, defeated.

  One answer is to prop a stepladder against the beam and encourage the chicks to hop up, rung by rung; but it could be argued that this is taking TLC too far. The fact is that, left alone, the hen will solve the dilemma in one of two ways. Either she will accept that she has jumped the gun, and fly down to brood her family on the floor, or the little things will find a perch halfway up, where she will finally join them, expertly tucking them under her wings and silencing the cheeping for the next eight or nine hours.

  For a few more weeks this happy arrangement continues, and then one day – quite abruptly, without warning – the hen severs the family connection. Off she goes to start laying again and fraternising with the rest of the flock, and drives away the half-grown chicks if they try to make a claim on her. It is as if she is saying, ‘Right. I’ve taught you all I can. Now you’re on your own.’

  Curiously enough, given their suffocating closeness up to that point, the youngsters accept this change in their circumstances with very little protest. The strongest will appoint himself leader, and for about three months the little band will behave very much like human teenagers. They hang about on the fringes of society, refuse to go to bed until very late and, in the case of the reedy-voiced cockerels, make themselves a thorough nuisance, harassing elderly females with improper suggestions and sparring noisily.

  How those young cocks love fighting! Anything or everything will set them off, ruffling neck feathers, raising and lowering their beaks in a duellist’s salute, and then suddenly springing together with raking spurs and buffeting wings. The more evenly matched they are, the worse the conflict. They go at it hammer and tongs until one of the combatants turns tail and runs. Even then he may think better of it and swing round for another bout, but despite all the sound and fury these are only practice fights, and it is rare for a youngster to be seriously injured.

  When mature cocks do battle it is another story. You can see that they actually want to kill one another, and once defeated even the most vainglorious supremacist becomes a craven shadow of his former self. The weakness of their vanquished lord is ruthlessly emphasised by his wives, who scold and peck him, for kicking a man when he is down is a favourite sport among poultry. When I asked Duff to shoot one ancient cock with a .22, instead of going through the hassle of catching and executing him, the old bird collapsed with a squawk, stone dead, and in an instant all his mates set on the corpse, stamping and pecking with distressing ferocity, as if they had been waiting for this opportunity for months. Vae victis.

  Brutal as it sounds, putting an abrupt full stop to an ailing bird is often the kindest thing to do. Besides, it minimises the risk of some bug spreading through the flock. When you notice the feathers around a bird’s vent clogged up with whitish discharge, the sensible thing is to cull it at once. Coccidiosis is a common culprit, but there are many strains. Testing a sample of faeces and treating with the appropriate antibiotic is a waste of time and money, because even if the bird recovers it is unlikely to lay again.

  The same goes for the lordly Cock of the Walk, when he is beaten in fair fight. His body may heal, but his spirit is broken, and all the other birds know it. For a week or two he may skulk furtively on the outskirts of the flock, but it is only a matter of time before he fails to make it to the shelter of the shed at night, and by morning there will be just a drift of feathers to mark his passing.

  Chicks face so many hazards in their first days of life that no more than a quarter are likely to reach maturity. That said, I have known some astonishing survivals against the odds, as in the case of a day-old chick, separated from its siblings during a thunderstorm, who failed to reappear when the sun came out and the hen summoned her brood together, yet we knew it must be alive, because we could hear it cheeping.

  Like human babies, chicks have disproportionately loud voices, and we scoured every inch of the covered yard, trying to locate the frantic peep-peep-peep that seemed to be coming from anywhere and everywhere. It was nearly dark and the sound was growing weak when our daughter, Alice, shone a torch through the grille of a storm-drain, and spotted the chick some eighteen inches below ground, balanced on a couple of straws, in imminent peril of being washed down the pipe.

  That was a very lucky escape. More often you see the family dwindle gradually, as one chick after another meets its fate, but as my mother used to say bracingly, if they all survived, the world would be taken over by chickens, and who wants that?

  CHAPTER TWO

  First Friends

  A dog is for life, not just for Christmas warn the car-stickers, and quite right too. Fourteen or fifteen long years may well separate the adorable playful puppy from the creaky, cranky ruin for whom death is the most merciful option, and during every moment of those years the owner is responsible for that dog. He must feed it, shelter it, train, restrain, and entertain it. He must always know where it is and what it is doing. And when that dog’s life becomes a burden, he alone must make the decision to end it.

  Thinking of it like that makes your blood run cold. ‘Quelle servitude!’ as a French cousin once remarked (though in his case the pet in question was a – fairly – tame wild boar.) Even with dogs, though, it follows that anyone with his head screwed on will think long and hard before acquiring a puppy, consider the merits and drawbacks of every breed, its suitability for whatever purpose he has in mind, and whether it will fit in with family life. Once he has settled on a particular breed, he will surely tak
e care to research pedigrees and background, visit breeders and follow up advertisements in search of the ideal animal.

  Since we knew all this perfectly well, in retrospect it seems strange that the first dog we took on the strength was foisted on us in much the same way that so many animals had joined my parents’ household. Young, well-bred, but surplus to requirement as she was, there could be no question of rejecting Kate, the black labrador, when her owner died; nor was his death a surprise since, on the very first occasion he met my husband, Ron had announced in an abrupt, confrontational tone that forbade commiseration, that he had cancer and was living on borrowed time.

  An aggressive, terrier-like man with a wiry pepper-and-salt beard, he drove up to our house unannounced one Spring morning with the half-grown black bitch in the back of his Mini estate, and more or less demanded that Duff should take him stalking deer in the surrounding woods until he became too weak to shoot.

  ‘And when I die, I want you to take my dog,’ he said flatly.

  It is difficult to refuse a man who is under sentence of death, and Duff agreed to both propositions (though he didn’t tell me about the second at the time.)

  While I am not exactly anti-dog, I prefer them to live outside and have never understood why people feel the need to share their homes with these particular small carnivores, whose housekeeping habits conflict in every way with those of humans. Dogs have many talents and uses, but as housemates they suck. Only rigorous training and continual discipline prevents them from turning your home into their kennel, and neither training nor disciplining has ever been my strong suit.

  Take the most obvious area of conflict: food. His magnificent sense of smell tells a dog exactly what is on the humans’ table, and it would be idle to suppose that he would not prefer a shoulder of lamb to the miserable chunks of mixed cereal and soya in his own feed-bowl. Yet his perfectly understandable attempt to exchange one for the other brings a torrent of abuse, if not blows and curses – so unfair when he is simply following his instinct. But at the same time as denying him our own food, we prevent him from scavenging for all the delicacies dogs enjoy and we do not. Carrion. Dung. The contents of dustbins. Rancid curds dropped by lactating cows. And so on.