“One little, two little, three little … chickens?”

That is what we had a month or so ago. Fifteen peeping balls of yellowish fuzz. Oh, so cute.

Now, they are chickenish teenagers, scruffy half-feathered squawkers nearly ready to meet the rest of the flock.

Our 25 grown hens and two roosters occupy a partitioned portion of our big old barn. Two teardrop-shaped runways stretch into the field on the barn’s south side.

A half-dozen years ago, when we got our first batch of chicks, we raised them to layer size inside the garage, in a series of cardboard boxes. We started with the egg boxes one can get in supermarkets and finished with appliance-size cardboard containers from the good folks at Syktich Appliance.

That worked, after a fashion. But the natural dampness of our garage, and the chick-supplied dampness from their doo-doo, made for messy, smelly boxes that required frequent replacement.

So I made a “young chicken condo” from discarded paneling and chicken wire. It can sit on the dirt floor in the main chicken house, separating the youngsters from the adults while allowing each group to get somewhat used to the other group.

Two weeks ago, the once-cute peeps had attained the aforementioned teenage status, and thought pretty highly of themselves. They would attempt to flutter-fly out of the cardboard boxes and chirp and squawk as though they were important.

My wife and I carried the teenaged chicks, box and all, into the barn and plopped them into the condo, separated only by plastic mesh from full-grown chickens at least four times their size.

The two roosters ignored the chicks; their interest lies exclusively with breeding-age hens. The hens eyed the newcomers suspiciously, anticipating the day when they would be initiated into the bottom of the pecking order.

It’s a standoff, for the time being.

Full integration of the new chickens into the flock is always accompanied by a month-long flurry of re-establishing the pecking order. Young full-grown birds will attempt to displace older birds near the food and water, on the roosts, in the nesting boxes. Much squawking and flapping, and less bloodletting than might be imagined, accompany these rituals.

In the meantime, the grown chickens provide their own amusement.

The hens themselves are collectively quite smart – and individually stupid. Call “Chick, chick!” Throw out some scratch grain. Two dozen hens come a-running – while one hen putt-putts in the opposite direction.

On most late afternoons, we open the gate to the chicken run, giving the flock free rein to ramble over the 5 acres of land next to our house and barn.

Ramble, they do.

But, faithful to the cliche, they do return through the open gate and back into their chicken house to roost, well before dark.

The trick, for me, is remembering before I go to bed to go down and close that gate, keeping nighttime predators out and keeping the chickens inside.

Why keep the chickens locked up?

That gets them into the habit of laying their eggs inside the three nesting boxes attached to the chicken house, where they are easily found and retrieved. The hens usually finish the day’s egg-laying by midafternoon. After that, we turn them loose.

Leaving them free to roam earlier would mean that we would have to seek out the eggs that the hens would instinctively hide in long grass, odd corners, beneath bushes, etc.

So we don’t leave them free – intentionally.

It is a fallacy that roosters start to crow at daybreak. Ours crow near 4 a.m., waking the hens, and starting their “day.”

That frequently makes my “day” start at or near that ungodly hour.

“The chickens are out! The chickens are out!” my wife chortles, en route back to bed.

Mumble, grumble.

Slap on slippers, fumble for eyeglasses, slip into yesterday’s dirty jeans, grab a flashlight, stagger to the barn, shoo the wayward chickens back inside, shut the gate.

Start back to the house. Aha! One dumb cluck is still outside. Grab a large fish landing net, suitable for muskies. Stagger after the hen, which does not want to be caught. Trot after the hen. Break into a run. Lose slippers in wet, cold grass. Fling net toward hen and catch hen, sometimes on first fling, sometimes not. Dump squawking hen back into chicken run. Replace net.

Running through dew-cooled grass in bare feet will wake you up. Running of any sort after age 70 will yield pulse-pounding eardrum throbs that sound like the percussion section to a Sousa march.

The hens settle back down. The dogs curl up once the commotion ends. My wife slumbers on.

I am bug-eyed, staring at a computer screen, a full hour or more before daylight. And a whole new crop of chickens is about to add to the excitement.

So who really is the dumb cluck here?

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net