Hen Chronicles: That troublesome bird will be the death of me

The problem child

You might think, after more than two years of keeping chickens, that I have a good handle on the ins and outs of this hobby.

In which case, you would be wrong.

Let me explain.

Usually when I unlatch the coop door at dawn to let “the girls” into their pen, they come bounding out so rapidly that sometimes two of them — or even all three — get smushed together at the door in their zeal to escape into what passes for freedom in their constrained world.

Not so Monday morning. Sure enough, Hope and Nellie, our Rhode Island Reds, raced out of the coop and down the ramp. But Snow was in the nest box. She was not laying, and she refused to budge when I tried to nudge her out.

This was unprecedented. It would be an understatement to say that Snow, a Plymouth Rock, is at the top of the pecking order in our small flock. Snow owns the pecking order. She is by far the loudest, most demanding, bossiest, goofiest, hungriest, most talkative hen we’ve ever owned. If we give the girls strawberries, for example, Hope and Nellie will peck away at theirs, bite by bite, but Snow will grab an entire strawberry in her beak and run around like a lunatic while squawking and trying to swallow the strawberry whole, even if it’s so big it sticks out of her beak on both sides.

So the sight of Snow sitting silently in the nest box while breakfast was being served out in the pen could mean only one thing: something was seriously amiss. Not knowing what was wrong with her, we isolated her in a separate pen so she could rest without being overly stimulated by the presence of the other hens.

As the morning progressed, I went out to check on Snow periodically, but there was no improvement. She was alert, but inactive and quiet. In other words, nothing like her normal self. We were worried. There aren’t too many vets hereabouts who treat chickens, but I made an appointment for mid-afernoon with a vet who is located 30 miles away. 
  
Snow was showing signs of being egg bound, meaning an egg was stuck inside her. That's a condition we would normally try to treat ourselves, at least initially. But Snow had deposited an egg on Sunday, so I discounted that explanation. I've always assumed that a hen had to go at least a couple of days without laying before she could be plugged up badly enough to be bound, so I assumed there had to be some other explanation. 

That's right, I made an assumption. And it was dead wrong.

When I went out to check on Snow yet again at noon, everything had changed, and for the better. I could see even from a distance that the old Snow was back. She was on her feet, bouncing around, bobbing her head in that curious chicken fashion, talking up a storm and throwing herself against the side of the pen, eager to get out.

As I got closer, she began pecking gently at something on the ground.

An egg.

Snow had been egg bound all along. Yet I had mistakenly assumed that was impossible under the circumstances, so I discounted the most obvious explanation for her behavior until she proved me wrong. Amid much flapping of wings, I carried her back to the coop before canceling the appointment with the vet.

I learned something new and important about chickens on Monday -- that a hen can become egg bound very soon after laying -- but I still know far too little about these birds to feel like anything even vaguely resembling an expert. With chickens, as with so much in life, it's important to acknowledge our own ignorance.