More Stories of Animal Rescue From Thailand

Clover the Wonderchicken

We have a lot of chickens we take care of around the bungalow. Clover is our first real domesticated one. She’s had quite an adventure as chickens go, and taught two other chicks an amazing trick.

Our chickens are free range which is becoming a pain. The baby chicks, much like the feral kittens I feed next door, have a high death rate. During the winter months we had three mama hens in a row who only hatched one chick each. I thought it might be related to a recent 5G wireless rollout in our area, but the numbers of chicks hatched has since stabilized. At around this time our 5 month old cat Aqua was developing an interest in killing baby chicks. We suspected that he had grabbed another hen’s sole baby chick a few days before.

One early morning I heard a baby chick chirping right after it had come out of the tree with its mama. Then I heard a cheep suddenly cut short. A few seconds later our kitten Aqua ran under our bed with something in his mouth.

I pried open the cat’s jaw and nestled the baby chick in my hand. I’d had a few that I’d done this to before, but if they got bitten by a cat they all died in my hand in less than a minute. The chick had two bite marks on its upper chest and lower wing. I doubted that it was going to make it.

It was still alive a few minutes later in my hand. The baby chick tried to get unsteadily to its feet and collapsed back into my palm. I held it for an hour until my daughter woke up, then explained that I had an injured baby chick that the cat had grabbed. My daughter set up a small cardboard box with tissue and tried to feed the chick some rice. It tried to eat and drank water but it could stand only unsteadily. If the baby chick was going to survive its injuries it was going to have to be taken care of by us.

My husband looked at the baby chick a few hours later and informed us that it was a girl. “I don’t know if it will live,” I told my then eight year old daughter, “but you have a chicken. What do you want to name it?”

“How about Lucky?” My daughter questioned. I’d used the name Lucky before and thought it was better to come up with an original name. “Well what’s that thing that’s lucky? That plant with four leaves?”

“A four leaf clover?” I questioned.

“Yes Clover!” My daughter insisted. I thought it was a perfect name.

We still had Aqua the chicken killing cat to contend with. Clover liked staying very close to my daughter but the baby chicken, it turned out, was indeed very lucky. Aqua went on a chick killing spree that forced us to rehome the cat in March. By that time he had killed close to one dozen chicks between us and a neighbors flock. Clover is the only one that lived through his attack.

Aqua was an exceptionally friendly cat that I had nicknamed Kitty Purry because he began purring as soon as he settled on my lap, but once a cat in a certain young age range gets a taste for hunting chicks and eating them they never turn back on it. The cat could not stay in an open area with chickens Thais were known to sometimes leave out poisoned food for problematic cats of this sort. Eventually we were able to find a friend in a chicken free area to take the troublemaker half grown kitten.

Most cats don’t bother the chickens unless they developed a taste for it when they were growing up. Feisty has never once attacked a chick, nor have the semi feral cats that we feed next door. Sprout has attacked chicks twice but didn’t eat them or know what to do with them afterwards. He was just being playful.

Clover the chick was unsurprisingly terrified of cats. She lived through the first few days and got stronger sleeping in a box next to my daughter’s bed, but her mama hen forgot about her. Clover’s mom had no other baby chicks so she went on to lay a new clutch of eggs. With no protection the chick was constantly pecked at by the bigger chickens. My daughter’s ninth birthday was coming up and I had promised to take her to a beachfront hotel that she liked in celebration. She was so worried about what to do about the baby chick.

“We can’t leave it alone all night at home!” She cried. “The cat will eat Clover for sure!” She was probably right the baby chick considered my daughter its Mommy by this point, followed her everywhere and chirped loudly when she was away. Aqua the chick killer would get her.

I suggested that she take the chicken with us to the beach hotel. An injured baby chick in a small cardboard box is likely less problematic for a hotel than a dog or a cat is. I thought maybe we could even sneak the little chick in, but my daughter insisted that wasn’t right. She brought the box right up to the front counter and showed them the baby chick. I explained in Thai language quickly that the chick had been bitten by a cat and we had to take care of it. The staff at the hotel were amused and remembered us well. We were the only guests in the place again that night. We’ve returned three times since then with Clover and they always remember the chicken.

Clover the Beach Chicken was thus born. We had a tiny ninth birthday celebration in the room with some birthday gifts and a small cake. It was only me, my husband, and Clover, but the chick pecked at my daughter’s cake after we sang happy birthday. It was unique and memorable.

Clover liked giving herself sand baths on the beach and pecking at ants and other insects by the trees. She liked going for rides to the beach, always settling in her little box and cheeping contentedly for the drive. Neither our dogs or cats cared for the beach, yet our chicken went with us over a dozen times and seemed to enjoy it. I really should have started a Tinder dating profile for Clover the Wonderchick. It might have been good for some laughs.

After our dog Daisy had seven puppies, our little Wonderchick began proving herself. Clover was scared of cats and other chickens, but she had no problem with dogs. My first husband Oh had shown me years before that most dogs were trained not to chase chickens when they were puppies. You put a little chick up to the puppy and smack the dog a few times if it shows the slightest interest in the bird. Our two dogs never bothered the chickens. The puppies did not bother Clover in the least. She discovered on her own that she could peck fleas off of them for a little snack. Once my daughter figured out that that was what she was doing, she trained the chicken to do it. This turned out to be an awesome idea.

With cats, dogs and chickens in a backwoods area of Thailand, flea and tick control is always a problem. It would be shorter to just say that I have tried everything, but I’ll go through the list. I’ve used Advantage drops (okay against fleas but not good results against ticks), knockoff drops (not very good but cheaper) putting apple cider vinegar in water bowls (too many other water sources outside) flea collars (didn’t help) flea powders (Okay in the dry season) shampoos, sprays, baths, bombs, diatomous Earth (Great in dry Las Vegas, not here) and a few essential oils (a little better but not a silver bullet). I have never had anything that controlled fleas and ticks on the dogs as well as a chicken trained to peck off the little bloodsuckers. When the puppies started growing and became a bit playful with the chicken in their midst, we smacked them on the snout, training them to leave chickens alone as Thai dogs should.

When most of the puppies were given away, Clover inadvertently trained two other chicks to do as she was doing. They liked to sleep on top of our two remaining puppies. Soon all three chickens started pecking fleas off of our grown dogs Daisy and Cooper as the puppies didn’t have any more fleas to peck off. They could peck 20 or 30 off in a minute. For anyone out there living in a backwoods area where flea and tick control is a real problem, if you happen to have both dogs and chickens, TRAIN THE CHICKENS TO GET FLEAS OFF THE DOGS. It is amazing and totally organic. So far the dogs haven’t caught bird flu either.

Clover is now 5 months old and sleeps in the trees with the other chickens. She is almost a grown hen, though she’ll still sometimes jump on my daughter’s lap. I’ve learned to appreciate the remarkable intelligence of chickens and I am starting to think I need a monkey next. I’m becoming immune to fear from all these scary sounding animal viruses that are supposedly out there. Is there a monkey in need of rescue somewhere over fears of the newest disease du jour? I might ask for more donations on that.

My daughter now has a new baby chick to take care of, as the mama hen and its sibling tragically died in the middle of the night a few days ago, perhaps from an attack by a bird of prey. This one wasn’t injured, but has no mama. Eliza has named her Millie. The chick is already following my daughter everywhere.

I’m wondering if Millie likes the beach…

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