Chapter 2: Growing Pains Me

The chicks turned 2 weeks old yesterday. Save for one of the Buff Orpington's two-hour recovery from the chicks' travels via U.S. Postal Service to my house, they have all been healthy, hearty and growing robustly.

However, this morning one of the Buff Orpingtons (possibly the star of Interlude No. 1—there are two of them that I cannot tell apart) began to act as though ill. She would not stop pecking at the feathers underneath her wings, which seemed quite sparse by the time I took notice of her behavior. She would occasionally stop to burrow into the bedding (which is why I think it may have been the star of Interlude No. 1).

Soon the other chicks were pecking at her feathers, as well. The sky was falling fast. And my heart was sinking right along with it. I thought about going to work and hoping for the best. I was late due to a migraine I had earlier in the morning. Then I thought about coming home to a dead chick in the brooder. That was like a lead acorn against my already-aching head.

I set up a separate box in which to isolate the sick chick, checking on her periodically as I ran around wondering how much time until the sky had completely crashed down around me. Things seemed to be getting worse. She burrowed into the bedding behind the water dish, which is a very tight space. Was she going there to die? Did chickens do that? Or was she trying to hide from the onslaught of the other chicks? And why is all of her feathering looking so sparse? Could the other chicks have pecked her that much in the few minutes I'd been gone?

Off I went to finish setting up a separate place for her. Once done, I went in to get her—only to find that all of the chicks were now doing what the "sick chick" had been doing. What was going on? Lemonhead seemed to be the worst off. She seemed to have difficulty walking, and looked like she was wet.

It was time to "talk to the king", meaning search the internet, of course. I searched "feather pecking chicks", "chick obsessively preening" "chickens sick chick" "chickens chick illnesses", "chicken burrowing in bedding" and a few other odd combinations of words that brought up various chicken, porn and "girly" websites. None of the chicken websites offered information on what I was witnessing. Neither did any of the porn websites.

Back to the brooder I went, bracing myself for the worst. And found that the sky, as well as the chicks, had been restored to their former selves. The sun, singing "What a Wonderful World" and backed by an orchestra of fair weather cumulus clouds, hung solidly in a firmly blue sky. And the chicks were all fluffy again and back to playing the game they came up with a couple of days ago (inelegantly named "Snatch-the-Random-Pine-Shaving-From-the-Beak-of-the-Chick-Running-Around-With-A-Random-Pine-Shaving-In-Her-Beak").

I have been noticing the lessening of fluff in many of them over the last several days, and new, harder feathers have been coming in but those few moments of strife this morning seemed to signal a more profound growth spurt. This evening they all look bigger, shaggier, ganglier—not as cute as they were, but certainly more beautiful in their way.

Moral of the Story:  Chicks growing bigger (hence closer to the sky) does not equal the falling of the sky.