Like humans, if you spend time getting to know your chicken girls, you’ll likely find they each have their own unexplainable and entirely lovable special needs. I don’t say this to make light of any being living with challenging disability. I say this because we are each unique and perfectly damaged in some small way and we each, chickens included, have special needs and ways we can be supported that allow us to shine and enjoy life. That said, a growing hen with a parrot beak needs a little more help to be healthy and to be her best egg-laying, free-ranging, and feather-preening self.
Phaedra was part of the third brood that we brought home on August 13, 2022. She and her sisters were adopted at Rural King. If you haven’t been to a Rural King and you live near to one, definitely check it out. They’re like the underrated cousin to the (way!) overrated Buc-ee’s. Perfect example: Rural King has free popcorn for all and we once saw someone walking a standard-poodle-sized bobcat at the entrance of a Rural King, but I digress.
Sweet Fay, as she is also called, was plucked from a bin promising Speckled Sussex. No such luck, but even better, we got Phaedra: a Welsummer Goddess. In addition to being a Goddess, Phaedra also has parrot beak, which means she has an unbelievably small lower mandible. It is so small that her upper mandible curves down around the front of her lower. This shapes her visage more like a fruit-loving parrot, than a worm-grabbing gallus gallus. How did she come to be this way? No idea. Maybe a birth defect or some genetic disposition of the breed. Could have been something in incubation. We didn’t notice it when she was very small, but it’s grown more prominent as she has.
Phaedra did well for the first four months, or so we thought. Cute as a button. She seemed to be able to navigate and benefit from chick crumble and then layer pellets. It was when we had a ridiculous cold snap in December that we realized she needed our much-closer attention. On one of those crazy cold December days we let the girls out for a supervised run. Wintertime in Tennessee means double-your-trouble hawk season, so our winter time free-range is always (at least moderately) supervised.
Because of the extreme freezing cold—like single-digit Fahrenheit, y’all—the girls hadn’t been out in a while. When released, they exited their run with gusto, headed straight for what was left of the grassy lawn to get their greens. It’s a bit of a sprint from their yard to the greens and about half-way there we watched as Sweet Fay-Fay gracefully stopped, bent her little chicken knees, fluffed out her feathery petticoats, sat down by the wood pile. . . and stayed. “Oh no!” I said, “She’d starving.”
She’d been a bit slower to develop, true. While the other girls were really filling out and starting to look like hens, she was still pretty pullety in appearance. We just hadn’t put one and one together until she stopped putting one little foot in front of the other. She simply was not getting the protein that she needed hunting and pecking and pecking and pecking. . . and pecking at the pellets. It was too way much work and for the nourishment in return. Trying to roll each pellet around with her over-bitey upper mandible, clamp it up with her tiny one-third sized lower mandible, and then kick her sweet head back to toss it down her throat. We should have named her Houdini.
But what could she eat easily? How could she eat easily? What would her parrot-like hook easily scoop up it into her sweet face to stuff her cinnamon-feathered crop to its brim?
And so, snarf was discovered. Snarf and snarfing-time in an isolated eating area so the other perfectly normal (boring) beaked girls wouldn’t push their way into her pot. Phaedra is not meek, but she is a gentle soul and all the others will quickly shove in and eat her squishy food, the only food that she can really sink into.
What is Snarf? Snarf is simple: layer pellets soaked in enough water (about 1.25–1.5 times the food) to have a soft, almost liquid consistency. Adding to this and important to this is that snarf is served in a deep dish (3–4 inches) for easy scooping. At first, we added some nyger / sunflower chip mix too, small enough to easily mix into the goop so Phaedra could get a protein boost and have a healthy treat. Her sisters were snarfing up black-oil sunflowers as treats, it was only fair.
How did Snarf get its name? Isn’t it just what most people call mash? Not at our place. When Fay-Fay dives into her meal, there is no better adjecti-verb to describe the experience. Phaedra snarfs up the snarf. Because of whatever else may be going on in her palette and facial structure her nostrils get a bit involved which adds some snarfy-ness. Then, there’s her tongue, which seems about normal size and that means it sort of lolls about (just barely fitting) in her lower mandible. This adds some more snarfity-ness, and a little drool. You heard it here, chickens (sometimes) drool.
When Fay-Fay is done digging into her din-dins, or breakfast, or mid-day snack, it almost always results in a few spackled flecks of snarf on her saddle or down her breast. Sometimes it gets in her comb or is stuck to her wattles. The feathers down the front of her throat will be dampened by the process. But none of that really matters, she’ll get preened up after. The important result is the big smile on her sweet little face, because she’s had her fill and she has also trained mommy and daddy to make it happen.
The proof in the snarfing? Once Sweet Fay had a few weeks of custom food, her beautiful comb and wattles filled in. Cue foley sounds of red rubber bladder inflating. Phaedra has a magnificent comb. And, just a few weeks after her sisters, she presented to us the most magnificent colour of egg we’ve had the pleasure of collecting: a stunning light brown base absolutely coated in dark cinnamon freckles.
What’s more, when it’s free-range time, Phaedra will at first join in the flock blasting across the yard, but in 5-10 seconds she’ll set her sites on the parent of that day’s gate-opening and croak out her sweet request: “Snarf please!” She’ll follow whichever of us to the porch and listen intently as we go into the kitchen and pack a bowl, sometimes barking out a few sweetest-ever reminders at us of why we went into the kitchen in the first place and, also, time is of the essence. When we return to the yard with an overflowing pot o’, she’ll tail us to wherever we put it down. She may have a tiny mandible, but Sweet Fay-Fay has the fastest little feet of any chicken girl we’ve known.
She’s still a bit lighter than the other girls, weight wise. She still seems not quite as filled in as her brood sisters, but she’s happy, and she’s beautiful. She’s our sweet parrot-beaked Welsummer Goddess and we’re so grateful that she let us know, on that frigid winter day, that she was too tired to run and that there was a special way we could support her that would allow her to shine; enjoy life; and be her best egg-laying, free-ranging, feather-preening self.