Hen Chronicles: Make way for . . . chickens

By the time I go out every night to lock the hens in their coop, the girls are perched on their roost, cooing and clucking softly as they settle down for the evening. Until recently, I’d never actually seen them troop inside from their outdoor pen as bedtime approached, so I had certain misconceptions.

One was that the chickens, who always go into the coop on their own, did so at a precise point in time. The other was that they entered the coop together and in an orderly fashion. I visualized this process as a poultry version of follow the leader, much like the family of ducks in the Boston Public Garden sculpture based on the book Make Way for Ducklings. I was wrong on both counts.

I happened to be outside the other day as dusk approached, so I decided to watch the hens from afar, to see their nightly ritual play itself out.

As the light faded and darkness began to descend on the yard, Snow, our only white hen, walked up the ramp from the ground-level pen to the elevated coop. I then saw her jump from the coop floor to the roost, a wooden bar where the chickens perch and sleep.

If my theories had been correct, Nala and Stella would have followed suit immediately, but that didn’t happen. They both continued to peck their way around the pen and under the coop, as if Snow’s disappearance had gone unnoticed.

Only after 10 minutes had passed, and the yard had grown even darker, did Nala finally approach the ramp and head up into the coop. It took another 5 minutes or so after that before Stella followed suit. Except that, instead of using the ramp to walk up into the coop, as Snow and Nala had done, Stella simply hopped through the coop door from the ground.
 
Maybe I should have known better than to think that Robert McCloskey’s children’s classic about eight baby ducks (Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack) trooping along in single file behind their mother would fit the bill in this case. Chickens, it seems, are more individualistic. Chalk it up to the ignorance of a newcomer to poultry parenthood.