Can chickens swim? The question came to mind a few days ago when we had two days of extremely heavy rain here in central Maine, followed by several days of intermittent showers.
The backyard coop shared by our three hens was never in any danger of flooding because it’s elevated. But the adjacent pen rests on the ground, and at the rate the rain was falling, it was only a matter of time before the encroaching waters that had flooded portions of the yard would pour into the pen as well.
For whatever reason, the hens refuse to go into their high and dry coop during the day, except to lay their eggs, yet a pool of water had developed right outside the pen. The ground was too saturated to absorb the water, which quickly edged its way to the frame of the pen as the pool grew larger and deeper. I faced the prospect of watching the pen turn into a poultry swimming hole.
Applying my rudimentary engineering skills ("nonexistent" would be a better word), I decided that dropping a large pile of newspapers into the pool, and covering them with buckets to collect some of the rainwater, would dry things up.
And it did. Briefly. The newspapers soaked up all of the standing water, and the buckets filled with rainwater. As the downpour continued, though, the sodden newspapers outlived their usefulness and the buckets proved that they were not up to the task. The pool reemerged.
Time for Plan B.
I knew from my past experience using wood chips around our raised garden beds that they are very absorbent, so I figured that would work in this case too. Problem: no wood chips on hand. Normally, I pick them up for free at the local landfill, but this being a Sunday, that was not an option.
We have two big-box home-improvement stores here in Augusta, but the first one that I visited didn’t carry wood chips - topsoil, compost, mulch, all manner of gravel and small rocks - but no wood chips.
As I tried to cook up a Plan C, I raced to the second big-box store, which had pine bark nuggets in stock. Not exactly what I had in mind, but close enough. I bought three large bags of the stuff, drove home, and dumped two full bags of nuggets into the standing water that was lapping at the pen.
Success!
By now, though, rainwater had begun dripping off the edge of the tarp that covered the pen. Actually, “dripping” is an understatement. This was a constant stream of water, like you’d get if you turned the kitchen faucet on just a bit.
Amazingly, the water was trickling off the tarp in only one location, so placing a large bucket in the right spot did the trick. I had to empty the bucket every few hours, but that was far better than the alternative.
The end result is that the pen became muddy, but it did not flood. The hens mucked around in the mud until bedtime, when they trooped into their toasty coop, with its metal roof and piles of dry, clean wood shavings on the floor. They obviously did some preening and grooming before nodding off, because they looked as good as new the following morning.
So can chickens swim? I’ve read that they can (even though their feet are not webbed), but I didn’t have to put that theory to the test. Which was fine by me, because I've yet to find any chicken-sized lifejackets.
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