Does any animal sleep more soundly than a chicken? I don’t claim to know the answer to that question, but it’s probably a safe bet that chickens are right up there in the snooze rankings. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about chickens since we started keeping them almost two years ago it’s that when they hit the sack, they’re out cold.
Our four hens dutifully troop into the coop at dusk and hop or fly onto their roost, where they perch, side by side, for the night. They seem to stay put up there until the crack of dawn, when they slowly rouse themselves, jump off the roost and wait for me to let them out of the coop and into the pen.
“When chickens sleep, they really sleep,” Kimberly Willis and Rob Ludlow write in Raising Chickens for Dummies. Total darkness makes chickens go into a kind of stupor. They’re an easy mark for predators at this point; they don’t defend themselves or try to escape.”
I’ve seen plenty of evidence that chickens are championship sleepers, but it never ceases to amaze me, perhaps because I can’t possibly imagine myself mastering the art of sawing wood as well as they have.
And so it was this morning.
We had yet another snowstorm here in central Maine last night. First thing this morning, while it was still dark outside, I shoveled my way to the small coop at the back of our lot, to clear things out before “the girls” woke up and started squawking to be released into the pen.
I got out there at 6 a.m., which, at this time of year, is only about half an hour before the hens’ alarm clocks go off. First, I shoveled a short path directly behind the coop. Not a peep. Then I shoveled the snow off the lid that cover’s the coop’s nest boxes. Dead silence within. I cleared a path around all three accessible sides of the pen, removed snow from the tarp atop the pen and even shoveled off the coop’s roof. But I didn’t hear so much as a chirp, a peep or a cluck during the entire process. A mere 35 minutes later, "the girls" were bouncing around inside, demanding that I let them out.
Keep in mind that our coop is 51 inches long and 50 inches wide, with a pitched metal roof. The roost is just below the roof, so when they’re roosting, the girls are quite close to the peak. Close enough, certainly, that the sound of a shovel scraping snow mere inches above their heads should be audible in the coop. Yet even that is not loud enough to wake “the girls” from their slumber.
“If you need to catch a chicken,” Willis and Ludlow write, “go out with a flashlight a couple of hours after darkness has fallen and you should have no problem, provided you know where they roost.”
Our four hens dutifully troop into the coop at dusk and hop or fly onto their roost, where they perch, side by side, for the night. They seem to stay put up there until the crack of dawn, when they slowly rouse themselves, jump off the roost and wait for me to let them out of the coop and into the pen.
“When chickens sleep, they really sleep,” Kimberly Willis and Rob Ludlow write in Raising Chickens for Dummies. Total darkness makes chickens go into a kind of stupor. They’re an easy mark for predators at this point; they don’t defend themselves or try to escape.”
I’ve seen plenty of evidence that chickens are championship sleepers, but it never ceases to amaze me, perhaps because I can’t possibly imagine myself mastering the art of sawing wood as well as they have.
And so it was this morning.
We had yet another snowstorm here in central Maine last night. First thing this morning, while it was still dark outside, I shoveled my way to the small coop at the back of our lot, to clear things out before “the girls” woke up and started squawking to be released into the pen.
I got out there at 6 a.m., which, at this time of year, is only about half an hour before the hens’ alarm clocks go off. First, I shoveled a short path directly behind the coop. Not a peep. Then I shoveled the snow off the lid that cover’s the coop’s nest boxes. Dead silence within. I cleared a path around all three accessible sides of the pen, removed snow from the tarp atop the pen and even shoveled off the coop’s roof. But I didn’t hear so much as a chirp, a peep or a cluck during the entire process. A mere 35 minutes later, "the girls" were bouncing around inside, demanding that I let them out.
Keep in mind that our coop is 51 inches long and 50 inches wide, with a pitched metal roof. The roost is just below the roof, so when they’re roosting, the girls are quite close to the peak. Close enough, certainly, that the sound of a shovel scraping snow mere inches above their heads should be audible in the coop. Yet even that is not loud enough to wake “the girls” from their slumber.
“If you need to catch a chicken,” Willis and Ludlow write, “go out with a flashlight a couple of hours after darkness has fallen and you should have no problem, provided you know where they roost.”
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| "The girls" last summer, outside their nighttime zone of silence |
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