Ridin’ Fence ~~ Community (the cat & the hen)

One of my half-bantam hens decided she was going to incubate her eggs in the milk barn but the milk barn is dedicated cat territory. I moved her to the brood house.

She abandoned the nest and returned to the milk barn and started another clutch. I moved her to a corner of the chicken house. She abandoned that nest and started another clutch. I shifted her to a kidding shed. She left that nest too and returned to the barn. I gathered her eggs for a couple weeks, hoping to encourage her to find a better place to set. Nothing doing. She was going to incubate her eggs right there in the corner of the milk barn under the edge of a roll of used carpet destined to be next winter’s door coverings.

“You loony hen, the cats are going to eat all your chicks,” I told her.

She wasn‘t listening. Her wings and beak had educated many a cat and she figured the barn was the best place for her nest. After the raccoon raid, I decided maybe I was the loony one. That rotten raccoon killed several of my setting hens and ate all their eggs, but it never did find her tucked away under a corner of used carpet that will be next winter’s barn insulation.

One day when I was checking on the grumpy little hen, I discovered that one of the young barn cats had delivered five kittens within eighteen inches of the hen’s nest.

“That was dumb,” I told the cat. “That hen will kill your kittens and eat them. I‘ve seen her kill and eat mice and your kittens are about that size.”

Momma cat wasn‘t listening. She was purring away, feeding her brood of black-and-white carnivores under the edge of the same piece of carpet hiding the hen.

Ah, it’ll be okay, I decided. She’ll move them in a few days. Long before the chicks hatch and that hungry hen comes off her nest.

I was partially right. When the kittens started opening their eyes, momma cat moved them three feet to the west – to the other end of the carpet.

Now that it was close to time for the chicks to be hatching, I was developing another concern. How to keep the cat from eating the chicks. A fluffy day-old chick is about two bites for a barn cat and ideal hunting practice for the now ambulatory kittens.

I checked on the hen every day, hoping to catch her with her chicks before they left the nest. I fixed a spot in the brood house with water and feed and she was going in there – like it or not.

One day it was mid afternoon before I peered through the barn window to check on the hen. Momma cat was on her side at the end of the carpet feeding her kittens, purring and kneading the air as only a happy cat can.

Momma hen had left the nest and was calling her fuzzy, fluffy, newly-hatched chicks toward the back of the barn where she was scratching in the straw.

In shocked surprise I watched as twelve chicks tumbled and bumbled their way out of the nest, across the carpet, over momma cat and her kittens, through the panel and over to momma hen.

Momma cat never moved. Not even when one of those bite-sized morsels stopped to rest on top of her, and another tumbled into the kitten pile.

Momma hen attacked me when I tried to move her chicks, so I left them. Three weeks later, they were still there. I checked daily, sometimes several times a day, just to remind myself that the world is full of wonders.

I have now seen kittens and chicks huddled together in a pile when an afternoon thunderstorm cooled the air unexpectedly. I’ve seen a lost chick follow momma cat around until momma hen came back for it. I’ve seen momma hen wade through a pile of five playful kittens and never peck a one.

I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, but if a cat and a hen can raise their broods together, why can’t humans teach their children not to eat one another?

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