Some of the very few photos of the May 2023 chicks, courtesy of my mom. Mykerion was the one who sat on their eggs and did all the work of raising them (as she was always so good at), while Jamie and/or Willow were actually their mothers.
Mykerion was the second chick to ever hatch from their egg at my house—one of three chicks that were ever born from chickens I already had. On a June night in 2013, I held Mykerion, still in her egg, as she fought her way into the world. She was the only child of Georgia and Raven, two of the bantams in my original flock. The other two chicks who hatched that night belonged to two other chickens from the same flock.
When Mykerion hatched, she was impossibly tiny and very, very cute. Sadly, neither of her fellow chicks survived for very long, and so I was extra determined to help Mykerion thrive.
I was afraid of something happening to her outdoors, so I raised her indoors and spent a ton of time with her, showing her all around the house and introducing her to the other pets.
Mykerion strongly resembled her mother, Raven, when she was a chick, and so I was excited to find out what she would look like as an adult. I tried several times to show her to my bantam flock, but neither of her parents seemed to really care, and Raven went so far as to try to attack her young daughter. Ruthie, the broody hen who had sat on the eggs, also didn't seem to care now that Mykerion was no longer in an egg.
So, Mykerion stayed indoors until she nearly adult size. As she grew, she started getting these beautiful reddish-brown feathers around her neck, making her look like a nice mixture of both of her parents. She also had the feathered legs of her father. Once I was sure that Mykerion was female and big enough to take care of herself, I tried once again to introduce her to her family flock... to no avail. All of them tried attacking her, and it was beyond the level of normal pecking order aggression.
As a young adult, Mykerion lived in the backyard, always hanging out right beside the other chickens, but safe from their aggression, as they lived in a pen and she did not. (I had not yet lost enough chickens to predators to be afraid of letting them free-range.) At night, she slept in a repurposed rodent cage safely indoors until she outgrew it. When she no longer wanted to be contained in the house for sleeping, she took it upon herself to find the perfect new sleeping spot—an uncovered slow cooker pot on a shelf in the garage. I always wondered if she recognized the irony in that. We spent a lot of one-on-one time together in those days, and I really enjoyed it. I was with her when she saw her first snowfall, holding her as I stood on the back porch, watching her watch the snowflakes fall.
A few months into 2014, several members of my original bantam flock had passed away, and I ended up being able to integrate Mykerion, then almost completely grown, in with Alaska and her then-newly-hatched son, Alex. As soon as Alex was grown, he took over as the flock leader, and these three lived together as their own new family.
For some unknown reason, Mykerion once again became the target of aggression—this time from Alex. They had lived together peacefully for a long time, but then he began attacking her and not letting her eat. I have never understood why that happened, and I used to get frustrated about it. Mykerion was such a sweet hen.
In 2016, Mykerion found her calling in life when she got to raise chicks for the first time. When Alaska sneakily hatched eggs she wasn't supposed to and brought JD, Jamie, and Willow into the world, Mykerion was as loving and doting over the chicks as their mother was. From the first time I saw Mykerion with the chicks, it was evident that Mykerion was an excellent mother hen, even if the chicks weren't hers. If Mykerion knew they weren't hers, she didn't care.
Mykerion did just as much as Alaska did to raise the three young birds. When Alaska and Mykerion teamed up to sneakily hatch more eggs just a couple of months later, she added Spearow and Pidgey to her group of adopted children and protected them fiercely.
Spearow and Pidgey were rehomed (I had no more room to separate roosters, and Pidgey went with her brother to keep him company), and as JD, a cockerel, got older, I had to separate my flock again. Since Alex was not fond of Mykerion, I separated him and Alaska into their own pen. Mykerion's new flock consisted of the three young birds she'd raised, and she spent the rest of her life with JD, Jamie, and Willow, with the four of them always remaining close.
Mykerion spent probably at least half of her adult life being broody. She would determinedly sit on non-existent eggs for weeks at a time, refusing to move, eat, or do anything else until I physically removed her from the nest. Oftentimes, she would go straight back. Most times, she would peck at me relentlessly as I tried to move her. I usually had to block off the nest completely to keep her out of it. She wanted so desperately to be a mother, it seems.
She got that opportunity again in 2017, when I gave her two eggs to sit on. The eggs belonged to Arizona and Georgia, making them her half-siblings through their father. Mykerion was delighted, and didn't seem to notice that the eggs, containing standard-sized chicks, were much bigger than normal. She hunkered down for 21 days straight, and I'm pretty sure the only reason she survived is because I put food and water in the nest with her. I never saw her leave those eggs for a second. She even stayed put during a hurricane, when everything in the pen threatened to blow away in wind strong enough that it took down trees and ripped up roofs. She sat there like nothing was going on.
Only one egg hatched, and Jamal came into the world, Mykerion's half-brother. She raised Jamal like he was her son. She adored him and watched over him with a warmth and love that I've barely seen elsewhere in the animal world.
She taught Jamal all the basics of being a chicken, and shot nasty looks at any of the other adult chickens who got too close.
Even though Jamal very quickly caught up to Mykerion in size (due to him being standard and her being a bantam), she didn't seem to mind. That was still her baby.
Mykerion never really seemed to think of Jamal as grown, even when the day came when he had to be removed from the flock—he was much bigger than everyone else, and was starting to pick fights with JD. He was never out of sight, though. He moved to his own pen, started his own flock with new hens, and Mykerion could see him from across the yard. On a couple of occasions when Jamal was out for supervised free-ranging, he would walk back over to the pen where he grew up and greet Mykerion through the fence. She was always happy to see him.
For several years, it was just Mykerion, JD, Jamie, and Willow. Mykerion firmly held her spot as top hen there, and the favorite hen of JD. She never used much violence to hold her rank. I know this is probably anthropomorphizing the situation, but I kind of wonder if the other hens just respected Mykerion for raising them, and for seeing how wise and calm she was in most situations.
Mykerion never had any biological children of her own, something that I regret in a way. I know it probably wouldn't have mattered much to her, since she seemed to love all chicks equally, but I personally would have loved to continue her bloodline. If she had ever had chicks with Alex, it would have merged all four bloodlines from my very first bantam flock, which would have been cool. However, Alex never did really fully like Mykerion again after he started harassing her. I know that JD and Mykerion would have gladly been parents together, but with JD being inbred, I was afraid of intentionally continuing that bloodline, so I never let any of Mykerion's eggs hatch. When she stopped laying eggs for good, I couldn't help but be sad about it.
Though her time had passed for ever having a chance to raise biological children, Mykerion got to be a mom one more time when the bantams pulled another sneak-egg-attack and hatched more chicks that they definitely weren't supposed to. Mykerion would have defended these little guys with her life. I had always noticed that she seemed to get a little bit fiercer each time she took care of baby chicks, but there was a pretty dramatic leap this time. For the first time in her life, just before her 10th birthday, Mykerion attacked me and other people—because we got too close to her babies. She was trying so hard to be scary, but it was really endearing. Two of the babies were kept and have since grown up—Dominic and Jakob. Mykerion got to see them make it to almost a year old, and she continued to love them and care for them like they were her own.
At 10 years and 8 months old, Mykerion passed away from old age. She slowed down a lot towards the end, and never appeared ill. I suspected it was coming for a while. But 10 years is an impressively long, full life for a chicken. She was the oldest chicken I've ever had. She was there with me as I navigated my late teenage years and young adulthood, and it still feels really weird that she's gone.
But as far as an end of life can go for a chicken, hers was relatively peaceful. She was surrounded by JD, Jamie, and Willow, who she had lived with for six years at that point, and the younger boys, Dom and Jakob—all five of which she raised from the day they were born. She was with her children, in the same home she had been born in herself. I don't think she would have wanted anything different.
Several months ago, Mykerion had one of the most severe broody episodes of her life. She went into this cat tree and stayed there, not sitting on a single egg, for a little over a month. She was determined to hatch something. I don’t know what exactly, but something.
