Hen Chronicles: Snow gets a hankering for eggs

I caught her in the act. That’s what happened to Snow the other day when I lifted the lid on the nest box where the girls lay their eggs. Sometimes I catch a hen in mid lay when I peek into the box, but not this time. Snow, our raucous, bossy white hen, was standing over a shattered egg shell, gleefully wolfing down the contents as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.

She even had a telltale bit of yolk on her beak, leaving no doubt about what she’d been up to.

I discovered quite a while back that someone in the coop has been chomping on the occasional egg, but the incidents are so rare that I figured only one of the three hens was involved. Now the culprit’s been caught red-handed, or perhaps I should say yellow-beaked.

And she shows no remorse.

When I opened the lid and found Snow in mid snack that day, she simply looked up at me for a second and then resumed her munching, until I scooped up what was left of the egg and tossed it into the compost.

What to do with the wayward Snow? I can’t very well send her to her room, because the coop is her room. Nor can I assign her to do chores around the coop as punishment for her infraction; no amount of prodding will persuade a chicken to pick up after herself. I did give her a good talking to, but there’s probably no better way to illustrate the term “wasted breath” than to picture a deluded guy lecturing a gloriously indifferent chicken.