Clever Chicks

by Rebecca Johnson

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Abbey, Hannah and Talika are new recruits at Willowvale boarding school’s Vet Cadets program. Mrs Parry, their science teacher, has given each of the girls a chick to raise and train, but not everyone is happy about it!

  When a game of horseback hide-and-seek turns into a matter of life and death, rules are broken and the friends’ courage sorely tested. This time, a solution might be out of the Vet Cadets’ hands . . .

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  Chapter 1 Bird brains?

  Chapter 2 Oops!

  Chapter 3 More trouble

  Chapter 4 Standing up

  Chapter 5 Hide-and-seek

  Chapter 6 The trouble with seeking

  Chapter 7 An unwelcome surprise

  Chapter 8 Trapped

  Chapter 9 Heartache

  Chapter 10 Suzy the Squeezer

  Chapter 11 Chicks doing tricks

  Chapter 12 Room 12A

  Chapter 13 The wait

  Chapter 14 Slipping away

  Chapter 15 Poor Pepper

  Chapter 16 All a blur

  Chapter 17 A good cause

  Tips for Future Vets

  Acknowledgements

  For my lovely friend Narelle Oliver.

  Sadly missed.

  × R

  ‘They are adorable!’ gasped Talika. ‘Look, there are yellow chicks in this box!’

  ‘And black chicks in this box,’ said Daisy.

  ‘And little rusty-coloured ones in here!’ said Clare.

  When the girls had arrived for their science lesson with the other Vet Cadets, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Along the side wall sat three timber boxes, with lamps hanging down into them, and inside each box were six tiny chicks.

  The twelve-year-old girls were all so excited, they sounded like a coop of chickens that had just found some corn.

  ‘Quiet please, girls,’ said Mrs Parry, their science teacher. ‘Take your seats and let me explain why the chicks are here.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll get to keep them?’ whispered Abbey, hardly able to control her excitement. She had chickens back home on her parents’ cattle station and she loved them.

  ‘Mr McPhail is keen to expand the school’s flock of chickens,’ said Mrs Parry, ‘as many of the chooks are past their laying best. Buying chickens that are ready to lay is quite expensive, so we’ve decided to work together to create a new flock with day-old chicks. The eggs were placed in an incubator for twenty-one days and they only hatched last night, so they’re less than one day old.’

  ‘Ooohhhh,’ was the collective sigh.

  ‘You Vet Cadets are going to help raise the and when they’re old enough to live outside, we’ll hand them over to Mr McPhail.’

  ‘I can’t wait!’ said Hannah with a grin from ear to ear.

  Now,’ said Mrs Parry, ‘has anyone ever heard of the expression “bird brain”?’ Most of the girls put up their hands. ‘Well, what does it mean?’

  ‘Birds have really little brains so they’re not that smart. So if you have a bird brain, you’re pretty daft,’ said Milly, and everyone laughed.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘Your assignment, however, is to prove that statement is incorrect, and that chickens, in actual fact, are very clever animals.’

  A wave of chatter spread across the room, and Mrs Parry let the girls talk for a minute.

  ‘You’re going to keep a diary,’ she said, handing out small, blank exercise books, ‘of how you’ve trained your chickens. You’ll work in groups of three and conduct a number of investigations. You’ll be marked on the notes you keep, and the scientific observations you are able to make.’

  ‘Do you mean train them to do tricks?’ laughed Abbey.

  ‘I do,’ smiled Mrs Parry. She pointed to a list on her electronic whiteboard. ‘By the end of this assignment, I would like to see who has been able to train their chick to determine different shapes and colours, walk through an obstacle course, play a musical instrument and solve a problem.’

  The laughter had begun with the first task, but by the end of the list the girls sat in stunned silence.

  ‘Are you serious?’ asked Hannah, as respectfully as she could.

  ‘Absolutely,’ smiled Mrs Parry. ‘All of these tricks have been done before, many times, and chicks are capable of learning right from the start.’

  Mrs Parry opened the lid to one of the boxes and lifted out a fluffy black chick. It peeped noisily. ‘There have been studies that show chicks can learn things toddlers can’t, and that chickens have twenty-four sounds that mean different things.’

  ‘So do we need to learn to speak “chicken” as well?’ said Bonnie.

  ‘No. But I’d like you to keep a section in your diary for chicken noises, and perhaps in your spare time, visit the school’s adult chickens and see if you can work out what any of the noises mean.’

  ‘I know when that rooster is telling us to get up in the morning!’ said Milly. ‘It drives me crazy.’

  Mrs Parry went on. ‘There are three breeds of chickens here because, as well as doing an indi vidual investigation, we’re going to discuss the results as a class at the end of the assignment and determine which breed was the easiest to train. Believe it or not, there’s quite a lot of dis agreement between serious chicken trainers about which breed is the most intelligent.’

  ‘Serious chicken trainers?’ snorted Abbey. ‘Now that’s what I want to be when I grow up. I can see my father’s face now!’

  ‘Don’t laugh too loudly. You’d be surprised how many people are into this, and how much money they make from it,’ said Mrs Parry.

  She peered down at the little chick that was now nestled asleep against her chest.

  ‘The black chicks are called Australorps,’ said Mrs Parry and spelt it aloud for them to write down. ‘The yellow are white leghorns and the little rusty ones are called Rhode Island Reds.’

  ‘So do we get to pick one each?’ said Hannah, excitedly.

  ‘You do,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘But within your group of three, you must have one of each breed.Once you’ve chosen your chick, your first job is to make it totally calm and familiar with you. Spend as much time as you can doing that today. Frightened chickens won’t be able to learn anything but fear. I have enough boxes and lights so that each group of three has their own. Then the chicks will be exposed to the same conditions to make this a fair experiment.’

  ‘Can we choose them now?’ said Talika, hardly able to sit still.

  ‘Once you have your boxes set up at the back of the room with everything your chicks will need, you can. There’s chicken starter and crumble for them to eat on the bench, and little bowls for water as well.’

  Abbey, Hannah and Talika chose the box in the corner. They shared a boarding room together, so it seemed natural that their chicks would as well. They put clean newspaper in the bottom and set up the lamp, food and water. There were a few items in a plastic bag clipped to the front of the box and a full box of tissues for each group.

  ‘What are these for?’ Hannah asked Mrs Parry.

  ‘You might find them to be of some help in the near future,’ smiled their teacher.

  ‘Can I please have the yellow one?’ said Talika as they stood over the boxes with all the little chicks inside.

  ‘I’d love the black one,’ said Hannah.

  ‘I’m more than happy to have a little rusty chick,’ smiled Abbey, and they reached in and chose their new babies.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything so cute?’ cooed Talika. She held it to her cheek and closed her eyes. Her chick cheeped unhappily. ‘I’m guessing that noise means you’re frightened,’ she said, and hugged it close.

  Abbey couldn’t help but notice t
hat once each girl had their own little chicken snuggled into their lap, they all started whispering and creeping around quietly. She could see that everyone had instantly fallen in love with their babies just as she had.

  ‘I’m going to call mine Rhody,’ she said, ‘so I remember she’s a Rhode Island Red.’

  ‘How do you know she’s a “she”?’ said Hannah.

  ‘Well, I asked Mrs Parry and they only ordered females from the place the chicks were incubated because Mr McPhail doesn’t want any more roosters.’

  ‘Milly’s going to be happy to hear that,’ chuckled Hannah.

  Talika put up her hand. ‘Mrs Parry, how on earth can you tell if a chick is a boy or a girl?’ She was holding her little chick in the air, trying to look at her backside.

  Without warning, Talika’s chick pooped, right on the front cover of her new exercise book, barely missing her chin. Abbey snorted with laughter at the look of horror on her friend’s face.

  ‘Does that answer your question about what the tissues are for?’ laughed Mrs Parry.

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Hannah, passing the box to Talika.

  ‘To determine what sex a day-old chicken is, you actually look at the little pin feathers on the tips of its wings,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘Females, or pullets, have a long feather, then a short feather, then a long, and so on, whereas males, or cockerels, have all long feathers.’

  Abbey considered looking at the tip of her chick’s wing, but Rhody was snuggled up in her lap and she didn’t want to wake the chick.

  ‘What are you going to call yours, Han?’

  Hannah’s baby was also fast asleep in her lap. She was trying to slip a tissue in under the chick’s backside without waking her. ‘Well, I guess I should call her Aussie, to remind me she’s an Australorp,’ grinned Hannah.

  ‘That would mean I should call you Leggie then,’ Talika said lovingly to her white leghorn chick that was now pecking furiously at the crumble in her hand. Without warning, the chick pooped again, this time on Talika’s skirt!

  ‘Seriously?’ gasped Talika. ‘Where is all this coming from?’

  ‘Looks like your chook is going to like food as much as your horse,’ smiled Abbey, as the little yellow chick continued to gobble down crumble while Talika tried o sponge her skirt clean.

  ‘I think I’m going to have to call her Poopy instead,’ said Talika, shaking her head.

  Mrs Parry told the girls they could train their chicks in their spare time, but only in short bursts, and that the chicks must have plenty of sleep while staying warm under the lamps. They must not go outside or be taken into the dorm rooms, and the tissues had to go everywhere with them.

  ‘Your chick will learn to recognise you and come to you if you feed it and are kind to it,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘So that’s what today’s lesson is all about. Bonding.’

  ‘I’ve already bonded with Rhody,’ announced Abbey, feeding her chick a speck of crumble, as she reluctantly returned it to her group’s box.

  ‘We have to do some serious chicken training research,’ said Talika as they headed out the door to their next class. ‘I wonder if they can be toilet trained?’

  ‘I can’t wait to go back at morning tea time and start,’ said Hannah.

  The next class dragged, and when the bell rang the three friends raced to the dining hall to grab something to eat before heading back to their chicks. They heard the yelling before they saw what was going on.

  ‘What on earth are you doing bringing a chicken into my dining hall?’ boomed a familiar voice.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Hannah as they froze in the hall. ‘Chuckles is going off!’

  The girls had been calling Mrs Bristow, the dining hall supervisor and head cook, ‘Chuckles’ pretty much ever since they’d met her. She was a harsh, unfriendly woman, particularly towards the youngest boarders at Willowvale Girls Grammar.

  Abbey and the others crept around the corner to see Milly and Clare, two of the quietest, sweetest girls at school, being yelled at from a very close distance. In their hands they held two terrified chicks.

  ‘How dare you put the hygiene of this dining hall at risk!’ bellowed Mrs Bristow, the veins in her neck standing out like thick ropes.

  Milly and Clare were both crying now, and every other girl in the dining hall was frozen in fear, some of them with their forks halfway to their lips, while others’ mouths hung open in stunned silence. Abbey saw Hannah look over at her big sister, Elizabeth. She was the school captain, and the only one moving – shaking her head from side to side as she scowled at the two girls hunched in front of their tormentor.

  ‘She’s scaring the chicks,’ whispered Abbey, starting to move towards them.

  ‘Stay still,’ hissed Talika.

  The chicks peeped loudly and one squirted a deposit from between its new mother’s fingers.

  ‘Get them out!’ screamed Mrs Bristow, leaping back from the tiny splat on the polished floor as if it might explode.

  Abbey couldn’t help herself. Someone had to make this woman see that she was not only terrifying the two girls who stood in front of her, but innocent chicks as well.

  ‘Stop it! You’re scaring them!’ said Abbey, stepping forwards.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Mrs Bristow snarled between clenched teeth, turning to face her new target.

  Talika touched Milly’s arm and quickly led the two upset girls and chicks from the room. Hannah grabbed one of their tissues as they passed and bobbed down quickly to wipe the mess away. Elizabeth glowered at her sister from across the room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bristow,’ said Abbey, looking down at her hands. ‘I know they shouldn’t have brought the chicks to the dining hall, but Milly and Clare are already really homesick at the moment, and it doesn’t seem right to be scaring their chicks as well. They’re only one day old, you know.’

  ‘Out! Now!’ she bellowed. ‘Don’t you dare tell me what I can and cannot do! I’ll be speaking to Mrs Parry about this, and the principal. For starters you, Abbey Mason, will be collecting the pig scraps for a week.’

  Abbey nodded and left the dining hall without her morning tea. She was not at all surprised when Hannah walked out with her. Abbey’s hands were shaking when they met Talika down the hall. Talika told them she’d found Miss Beckett, their lovely boarding house supervisor, who took Milly and Clare back to their room.

  ‘It’s just wrong,’ said Hannah, angrily. ‘For a start, she’s probably scared those chicks half to death, let alone the girls.’

  Suddenly a familiar voice came from behind them.

  ‘Hannah!’

  They turned to see Elizabeth approaching with two prefects.

  ‘I warned you,’ Elizabeth said, glaring at her younger sister. ‘I said Abbey would get you into trouble, but you still follow her around like a pathetic puppy. I’m telling Mum about this.’ Without waiting for Hannah’s reply, she stormed off down the hall, flicking her blonde ponytail over her shoulder and flanked by her deputies.

  ‘The Sherriff ’s not happy,’ said Abbey, grimacing.

  Hannah’s face was as red as Abbey had ever seen it, and tears were threatening to escape. ‘Come on, pathetic puppy,’ she said, laughing, and wrapped her arm around Hannah’s shoulders.

  Hannah and Talika couldn’t help but laugh too.

  They found Mrs Parry in the science labs. She’d already been tracked down by Mrs Bristow.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said, running her hands through her hair. ‘I totally forgot to say the dining hall was out of bounds, and now Ms Sterling is going to be furious. I had to work so hard to get permission from her for you girls to even raise these chicks. You’ve only had them for two hours and already it’s caused a problem.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ said Talika. ‘I think Ms Sterling knows that Clare and Milly wouldn’t have meant to make any trouble.’ She sprinkled a little chicken crumble onto the table in front of her and Poopy made soft contented peeps as she pecked it up.

  ‘Ca
n we stay in here and play with our chicks?’ said Hannah, still looking miserable.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mrs Parry, kindly. She went to her drawer and pulled out a packet of cream biscuits. ‘Wash your hands and have something to eat,’ she said. ‘I’m going to see Miss Beckett and the girls, and then Ms Sterling.’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t have to send the chicks back,’ said Abbey after the teacher had left. ‘Rhody and I couldn’t bear to be separated.’ Abbey had put her little chick down a few metres away, and was now tapping the floor near a couple of pieces of chick crumble. Rhody peeped a few times then dashed towards the crumble.

  ‘What do you think these clickers are for?’ said Hannah, emptying the bag clipped to their box. There were coloured cardboard shapes and three small dishes each with a clicker attached to their handle. When she clicked one a few times, the chick in her hand stopped peeping and listened.

  ‘Look,’ said Talika. ‘Aussie listens to that thing. Do it again!’

  The girls placed their chicks on the floor. Hannah put a few grains of chick starter in the dish with the clicker attached. The chicks were peeping noisily but, once again, stopped when they heard the clicker.

  Hannah brought the dish towards the chicks and clicked it again, and this time they pecked at the food in the bowl.

  ‘Do it a few more times, then see if they’ll follow the noise to get the food,’ suggested Abbey.

  Within a few minutes, the chicks were catching on.

  ‘You’re so clever, Rhody,’ said Abbey, gathering up her chick and holding her close. The little chick closed her eyes when she felt the warmth of Abbey’s hands.

  ‘I think they’re tired,’ said Hannah, hugging Aussie.

  ‘I have to feed the pigs anyway,’ shrugged Abbey. ‘We should let them sleep until lunchtime.’

  ‘The funny thing is,’ grinned Abbey, as they headed back towards the dining hall, ‘to me, feeding the pigs is a reward, not a punishment.’

  They tiptoed into the hall and towards the kitchen. It was all tidied up and there was no one there. They found the pig bucket beside the recycling bin, which was overflowing with cereal boxes and egg cartons. Abbey carried the bucket down to the school’s very grateful pigs, Henrietta and Boris.