So, I shifted the first batch of chickens (local breed) to a bigger place.

Some of them from the first batch that hatched had developed curled toes. It was probably due to injuries caused by the other mother hen as the earlier place that they were sharing was too small for so many chicks. I had made shoes for their feet to rectify them and it worked. The shoes were made using perforated tapes and looked somewhat like this. I didn’t document it since I was too depressed about their curled toes. Now they are all grown up ugly, but fine, teenage chicks with healthy feet that take them everywhere with the speed of Road Runner. 

At this stage they look quite ugly. They are probably the ugliest looking chicks that are around. I can’t wait to see them all grown up and in their full glory. It’s hard to relate these tyrannosaurus-like figures with the cute and round fluffy things that they were a few months ago. 

They are quite agile and they eat a lot, which is a good thing for these youngsters. 

They have even had their “fight” to establish the pecking order… that’s chicken hierarchy for you. It made the bigger chicks look even uglier with their wound marks. The bigger ones seem to have gone for many rounds of fights, all the way to the semi-finals and the finals.  

This is the second hen with her batch of chicks. They haven’t yet weaned from the mother but are as notorious as the first batch. 

I thought this was a funny picture. 

That’s the first hen on the top right and the rooster standing near her. And the second hen and her chicks in the foreground. 

They have plenty of straw to play with. And when it rains, they have a great time digging them up and catching earthworms hidden among them. 

They have sprouted. If you don’t then here they are.

They took almost three months to sprout even after getting sown! They refused to germinate before the rains. 

The GoodNewsIndia website is up again after a long time. And this is the story they are starting with this time. The story of a determined ecologist Dr. Deb struggling to save us from (yes from) the aftermath of the green revolution. He currently runs an in-situ farming facility which grows 700 varieties of indigenous hardy species of rice every year to save them from extinction till the farmers can shed the doctrines of the green revolution and adopt them. These seeds were collected from the fringes of east India which was fortunately untouched by the green revolution. He also talks about a ‘zero growth economy’ being the only way to achieve a sustainable fulfilling livelihood. Thanks to GoodNewsIndia for making me acquainted with Dr. Deb and his works. I have just ordered his book, Beyond Developmentality (it’s available on flipkart.com btw)to find out more. I’ll keep sharing whatever interesting I come across.

… Debal was chasing a fast disappearing integrated life in India, in which traditions, cuisine, dialect, music, festivals, the calendar of seasons and behavioural prescriptions played a part in creating self reliant communities. What threatened it now? In a word, ‘developmentality’- a word he has coined, a word that at once conveys the serious malaise of modern man.

First make ‘development’ an unquestionable given. Then make all that is justified in its name, a priority. If you cannot convince people, coerce them. Promise a life with less work, easier money and freedom to ‘enjoy’. In marxist run Bengal every village was politicised with apparatchiks strutting about everywhere. To be a cadre was itself a career. All that that was asked of them was to deliver consent and compliance to the central leadership. “What unites capitalism and communism,’ Debal wryly observes “is industrialisation.”…

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So, Mama and I decided one fine afternoon that we should get some layer chickens since we keep buying eggs from elsewhere. And as the second batch of my chickens that had hatched were pretty strong and healthy and had grown up a bit, we decided to move it to another area which I had prepared for them. This, you can hardly call a poultry farm. It’s just a small enclosed space on our terrace that we had previously been using for roasting fish. 

So, we got three leghorns and two koilers (or is it coilers? at least that is what we call them in Manipur). When they arrived, I showed them to my sister and she decided that they were cute enough to adopt. She was particularly fascinated by the leghorns since she has been seeing black coloured chicks all this while. She admits that she is a chicken racist! 

So, that is how my mini poultry farm got invaded and occupied by the 5 chicks and my sister. My sister is pretty sincere with them though. She has been preparing their feed and even catching them in the evening and putting them inside their night box. But she was quite frightened by these little monsters on the first day and I had to catch them instead. She caught two of them today evening within half an hour… that’s applaudable by her standards! Mama had to catch the remaining three.

These factory bred chicks are very different from my local (almost wild) chicks. The local chicks are very very active and it’s difficult even to count them unless I catch them one by one and put them in a box. These are very tame and their movements are considerably slower. The local chicks fight over their food like crazy while these are clumsy eaters. I hope I can make them more intelligent and intuitive. They aren’t even scared of my dogs when they approach their cage. They need to acquire a greater degree of instinct. 

These pictures are more than a month late and I have been keeping them as draft all this while. But I decided that it is better to share them than not. My first ever batch of chicks hatched on 17th last month and they have grown a lot since then. They are 14 in all with one rotten egg which didn’t hatch… which is a lot, I suppose. My second batch of eggs had also hatched during this period and they are a set of 15 chicks. I guess I am lucky with hatching chicks. Or I am lucky to have hard working hens. 

So, the morning of 17th March, 2012, I was greeted with this sight. I looked into the nest like every morning after refilling the feed to check if the eggs had hatched. Nothing had prepared me to handle such excitement! Not even knowing that chicks come from eggs. I mean, I was always wired to look at eggs as inanimate objects… food kept in cartons or refrigerators… an ingredient in my recipes. But seeing this happening in front of my eyes… these tiny fur balls with life. Nothing prepared me for it!

They were still clumsy and wobbly and were trying to figure out how to walk. And since they had just hatched, they were as tiny as an egg.  

I got a range of browns and blacks with this batch and I am excited as hell to see them grow their feathers. 

During the brooding period, they have been sheltering under the mother whenever the opportunity called. It was funny to see them go under the hen since it made her look almost multi-legged. But now, they have grown out of it. I will try and upload a recent picture of them very soon.