Hen Chronicles: Getting their ya-yas out

It's starting to look like our hens, Snow and Nala, have worked their way through last week's rebellious streak, but I'm still holding my breath.

On Monday, when my wife Liz opened the lid on their nest box to check for freshly laid goodies, she caught Snow, our all-white Plymouth Rock, greedily chowing down on an egg. (I wouldn't deny the hens an occasional egg if I thought they could control themselves, but the experts say egg eating can quickly become a bad habit that is very difficult to break.) Liz scooped up what was left of the egg and tossed it into the compost.

This sort of thing is not unprecedented, but it hadn't happened in a long time. In response to a prior attack of the munchies several months ago, I placed wooden eggs in the nest box, on the theory that pecking them (ouch!) will discourage “the girls” from going after the real thing. This little trick seems to have worked well, but obviously it isn’t foolproof. 

Then on Tuesday, when Liz went out to the coop to give the hens an afternoon snack, she spotted an egg smack dab in the middle of the outdoor pen. This, too, happens rarely. Since we bought our hens last April, I can count on one hand the number of times the girls have laid eggs outside in the pen rather than in the coop, where the easy-to-reach nest box is located.

The pen, which is wrapped in chicken wire, is largely inaccessible to mere humans because there’s only a narrow opening on top of it. So Liz spent quite a bit of time using a long stick to roll the egg along the ground toward a point where she could reach in and grab it. Of course, by the time she got the egg into position, it had cracked.

Two eggs wasted, two days in a row.

When I let the hens out of the coop first thing Wednesday morning, I lectured them on the importance of laying their eggs in the appropriate spot, and then leaving them there, unmolested. Don’t ask me why. Berating chickens for their antics makes about as much sense as scolding cats for scratching the furniture. In either case, ranting may make me feel better, but it won't really change anything.