Chick Rescue: Redux

So I am attempting to rescue another baby chicken. You may remember the chick I saved in training, which is probably dead by now, but…the point is I saved him at the time! And hopefully he got eaten by my host family, not one of those big birds that swoop down and steal little chickens (they call it an “eagle”, but it isn’t an eagle as far as I know).

So today me and Drissa were walking over to Yusuf’s to hang out and have tea. Just outside his compound I heard a chick chirping and looked down and saw one, tiny lone chick on the ground. I bent and picked him up. I looked around. No mommy in sight. I examined him a little further and saw that he had a sore on his head, probably from being viciously pecked by some mother hen whose coven (brood? What do you call it?) he was trying to join. Drissa says it’s possible he doesn’t have a mother hen at all (I wasn’t sure exactly how that would work, but…ok). Yusuf didn’t know anything about it and I didn’t see any mother hens with chicks about his size (he is only a day or so old). So I decided to see if I couldn’t keep him alive myself.

A name came to me rather quickly: Shamu. Like the whale. So if my naming instincts end up as usual, he will probably survive awhile.

Drissa and Yusuf were like, “you can’t raise that chicken! He’s going to die! Just leave him alone! What are you going to feed him?” I said, “millet.” Yusuf said he is too small to eat millet – he won’t eat it. And I was like well we’ll see. Either I leave him on the ground now and he dies or I take him home and try and he might still die, but probably more comfortably. Which is exactly what I said about Yogi when I took him in and he turned out fantastic! I told them this chick is going to end up being the biggest chicken in the village. They were like, “yeah right.” We shall see!!

Anyway, I remember in elementary school we used to hatch chickens in an incubator, no mommy hen required. But I don’t remember what we fed them… Or how long we kept them. But still – it CAN be done!

So I took him home and made him a house out of a USPS flat rate box. I boiled water and put it in a plastic bottle wrapped with a handkerchief to be a heat source/his fake mommy. And I mushed up some of this morning’s seri into a water bottle cap and put it in there. He loves the hot water bottle. He is always snuggling up to it because he is cold. I stuck his beak in the watered down, mushed up seri until he started eating it. We went back over to Yusuf’s and after a few minutes I looked in the box and he was eating the seri out of the bottle cap all on his own! So neener neener neeeeeeeener – he eats!

They said my cat is going to eat him but she appears to have no interest in him whatsoever. But I will still protect his box at night so she doesn’t think of him as a midnight snack.

So we’ll see how long he lives.

LONG LIVE SHAMU!!!

Lil Update: it’s dinnertime and he’s still alive. He LOVES the water bottle, always snuggled up inside there to stay warm. I fed him some more and he eats pretty good. I haven’t noticed him eating on his own, again, but I just feed him until he starts to struggle, which to me means he’s full. I don’t know how much he is supposed to eat. Everybody is laughing at me, of course, but let’s see them laugh when he gets served up for dinner!! “Oh, did you want some of this chicken that you said I couldn’t keep alive? Oh oops, I ate it all!!!!” Yeah, that’s probably a lie. If I raise him I prolly won’t be able to eat him…

Another note: my cat just caught the little lizard friend that lived in my bedroom window. THIS time she decided to play with him before eating him. I was like, “Magellan! JUST EAT HIM!” I could see the poor little guy hyperventilating and trying to get away. She finally ate him, back end first. The circle of life. RIP lizard friend.