Feathery panic

A chick emergency starts like this. It’s early evening and you’re about to go out. The children are taken care of, one on a school trip and the other staying with a friend. You’re got barely an hour to prepare for that long-awaited meal out, much looked forward to and carefully planned at a countryside pub. So you choose a basket with which to carry five chicks who have spent the day in a pen in the garden indoors for the night. But when you reach the pen, a cat is prowling and three chicks are missing.

This happened yesterday and we’re still reeling. The two remaining chicks were black, one of them being Motley whose Egyptian eyes are less distinct these days. With heavy hearts we carried them both into the house. Alex was certain we would never find the others while I remained sceptical, having noticed that the cat, a pretty tortoiseshell we’d never seen before, had scampered away empty-mouthed. We listened for alarm calls as we hunted in the long grass but we heard only birds in the trees and cars on the road. To think we had reared five healthy chicks, four of them probably girls and therefore valuable, and then lost three of them. We felt horribly responsible.

Suddenly a faint cheeping started up. It was difficult to distinguish from the background sounds and even harder to place, seeming to come from several areas. All at once, I stumbled upon the remaining black chick, unharmed and hiding among the grasses. Then I spotted a yellow one by the fence which Alex caught. And while I took the black one indoors Alex used the yellow to call to its comrade, which he found cowering in the tall buttercups and completely still.

All five of them are fine now, if a little subdued as chickens usually are after an attack. But the story could easily have been quite different, a sad tale to relate to our children when they came home. Indeed, though we know through which hole the three chicks escaped (and have blocked it), we will probably never understand what really happened, why those particular three fled and what role the cat played.

The chicks are now quite big and becoming harder to catch each time we take them out. They have reached that indeterminage stage where they are neither cute, fluffy chicks nor the sleek, nearly-grown chickens of Lucky’s generation. But their combs already hint at their gender, and anyway it’s hard not to get attached to chicks you’ve watched hatch from the egg.

The meal out was great, by the way. The Mundy Bois pub is deep in the Kentish Weald, with views of a flat countryside of trees, hedges and fields. The food was good and the atmosphere excellent, enjoyed all the more since we knew all was well at home. We hadn’t been so relaxed in ages.

Flight of fancy

They’re three weeks old. The fluffy chicks that hatched in our kitchen and stumbled uncertainly across a box of straw (see below) have become gangly, noisy bundles with a will of their own. This morning they asserted their independence by striking out across the dining room floor in single file.

It’s been increasingly a job of containment, persuading five active chicks to adopt as their home a large but low box in our house. They still need the warmth of the lamp, but they also love to flex their wings and it’s been a challenge to keep them happy. They’ve been gently introduced to the “great outdoors” in the form of a pen in the garden, which they have occupied a little longer each day.

Transport to and from the garden has been by means of a straw-filled basket covered with a cloth, once each kicking, squealing chick has been caught and lobbed in. The basket is then conveyed with its fluttering cargo, fluffy heads swaying with the movement and an extra person on hand in case of escape.

This growing feathered family had to stay indoors when we went on holiday last week. We were near enough to come and feed them once a day, but since we couldn’t take them outside our only option was to close the dining room doors, cover the sofa with a sheet and hope.

The result, on our return, was a smelly room full of tiny poos in various states of dryness. Our first hour at home was spent scrubbing the wooden floor after we had banished the little darlings to the garden. Even with the windows open and a good clean sweep, it was some time before the dining room felt fit to host a human meal.

Now, thank goodness, the chicks spend most of the day outside in an enlarged run with a covered area in case of rain – it poured today. And here’s the best innovation of all: an infra-red lamp that generates only heat, rigged up in the conservatory to which their box has now been dismissed. Civilisation has returned to the dining room at last.