Here took, took, took

This is a 4 day old chick.

I love day 4. This is the day when chicks begin to eat properly and are much stronger. Until now they have mainly relied on the energy supplies from their yolk.

With human babies you have to wait a whole 4 or 6 months before you can feed them, depending on which Maternal Health Nurse you are randomly assigned or the results of the last World Health Organisation study.

This is my recipe for 10 chicks:

2 soft boiled eggs

2 fish oil capsules

A handful of quick rolled oats

1 teaspoon of spirulina powder (available in health food stores)

A sprinkle of flax seed (sold in the supermarket as linseed)

A sprinkle of fine shell grit

A torn up head of lavender

All ingredients are mashed well and served warm.

When I take any food to the chooks I call them saying, “Here took, took, took.”

I started doing this when I realised roosters have a special sound to call their girls when they find a tasty morsel to share. I have identified about 15 different sounds chooks use to communicate with one another.  There are probably more.

Mother hens start using them even before the eggs hatch. Quite a different experience to the hum of an incubator and much more useful for life in the garden.

Whatever is left of breakfast after two hours goes to the rooster for a job well done – I’ll introduce our stunning silver spangled Simon one day very soon.  He is the ultimate diplomat and will probably call his girls over to share the leftovers.

This nutrient dense breakfast is designed to introduce flavours you want the chicks to remember and seek out when they have grown into laying hens.

Lavender helps keep internal parasites under control.  Growing wormwood is also a healthy edition to the diet of your garden flock.

Linseed and fish oil boosts the level of Omega 3 in a chook’s egg yolks.

Shell grit is good for calcium, salts and establishes the chick’s digestion by helping it to grind food internally

Spirulina is a powerful antioxidant and if it’s good for healthy hair and nails in humans I figure it does wonders for growing feathers.

The obedient chicks form an orderly queue and wait for her to feed them from her beak.

After a while she selects small pieces and places it on the grass for the chicks to peck.

Being a chick seems to involve lots of standing in line!

With so many chicks this line turns into more of a continuous circle around Alice.

Some sooky chicks prefer to be fed beak to beak a little longer – usually roosters, like this one standing up to his ankles in breakfast but demanding that his mother feed him.

If you think this looks hectic, wait until tomorrow when they have energy to burn and plenty to learn.