Hen Chronicles: Harmony in the coop

When it comes to our chickens, I’m easily pleased. If the hens eat well, lay regularly and show no signs of disease, I become positively gleeful, however briefly. Then my worrywort gene asserts itself and I cook up a problem - real, imagined or prospective - to agonize over.

As it happens, I’m in cheerful mode at the moment. It won’t last long, me being me, so I figured I’d take note of it before it evaporates, like facts at a political convention.

First, some context. We have four hens: Snow, Nala, Nellie and Hope. The Plymouth Rocks, Snow and Nala, are our veterans. We bought them in April of last year. The Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope, are six months old, and we’ve had them for about two months.

Since the Reds arrived, all four hens have been sharing a coop at night. But for the first month or more, we separated Nellie and Hope from Snow and Nala during the day because the Reds were still eating “growth feed” and the Rocks were on “laying feed.”

By mid June, the Reds had grown enough to make the switch to adult feed, so they started sharing both coop and pen with the Rocks during the day. At least in theory. Thanks to what was then a relatively new pecking order, the Reds basically refused to leave the coop during the day to join the Rocks in the pen, despite all my cajoling with food and treats. This continued for more than two weeks.

Things got so bad that, when the temperature climbed to 93 degrees one day, we found the Reds on the elevated roost in the coop, which was the hottest place they could possibly have parked themselves. They were so overheated up there that their breathing was visibly labored, so we removed them from the coop and put them in a freestanding pen, away from the Rocks. Their breathing immediately returned to normal.

Last week, Liz and I entrusted the care of “the girls” to friends while we took off for our annual vacation on the coast of Maine. As the mercury climbed, I fretted about the Reds holing up on the roost again. But the folks who were caring for the chickens assured us that the Reds were getting out into the pen more than they had been.

I remained skeptical, but now I’ve finally seen this change for myself. When I opened the coop door at dawn on Monday to let the girls out into the pen, Snow and Nala burst forth like feathered whirlwinds, as they always do. But instead of hanging back fearfully in the entryway, the Reds followed suit.

Within seconds, all four hens were strolling and eating and drinking and clucking their way around the run. At long last, the pecking order has been accepted by all. Each hen knows her place, so there’s no significant fighting and far less hiding. Everyone is getting along - of a fashion. Harmony, or what passes for it on Planet Chicken, reigns. Just as Mother Nature intended.