Hen Chronicles: They say chickens are tough, but is it true?

Nellie

When one of our hens had some health problem or other a long time ago now, Liz’s coworker, Joan, who has far more chicken-keeping experience than we do, told her: “Sometimes, they get better.”

And so they do. Sometimes.

Snow, our Plymouth Rock “problem child” who periodically needs human intervention to help her lay, has been fine of late. (Knock on wood.) But on Sunday afternoon, Liz came in from a trip out to the coop to report that Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, wasn’t eating.

We’ve had Nellie and Hope, the other Rhode Island Red, since they showed up at the Post Office as pullets back in May of last year. Until this week, they have been the picture of health, going about their business day after day and week after week without so much as the poultry equivalent of a hiccup.

Then Nellie, as the old saying goes, went off her feed. Literally. And she became mopey.

After avoiding a fresh serving of feed Sunday afternoon, Nellie wouldn't touch the stuff first thing Monday morning either, although she remained interested in snacks. I knew a big test would come at dawn Tuesday, because if Nellie continued to turn up her beak at this mainstay of her diet, it could be a sign of a serious problem.

Fear not. The news was good. When the girls emerged into the pen on Tuesday, all three of them wolfed down their breakfast. As I cleaned out the coop moments later, I found the rubbery remains of a very soft, thin shell from an egg that Nellie obviously had had trouble laying. Once she succeeded, she perked right up. 

Chicken owners are wont to describe them as hardy birds, but I have found that to be only half true. With the proper care, for example, they can withstand extremes in temperature. Our chickens have weathered everything from 15 below to 95 above without ill effects. And they have to be tough to produce and lay eggs day after day, week after week, even in stifling heat and bitter cold.

But in another sense, they are fragile birds susceptible to all sorts of complaints and diseases, some of them fatal. (At 320 pages, Chicken Health For Dummies, by Dr. Julie Gauthier and Rob Lulow, is an eye-opener.) We have lost two hens since December 2012. One simply upped and died that month, suddenly and without warning, for no obvious reason. I buried her in the yard. The other became sick, refused to eat anything but snacks, and lingered for a month or so before we had to have her euthanized earlier this year. A necropsy on that second hen was inconclusive, although cancer was listed as one of several possible causes.

That’s the thing about chickens that devotees, in their zeal, often fail to share with the rest of the world. Not only can they develop myriad health problems, but it can be extremely difficult to diagnose, let alone treat, their ailments. A veterinarian once told me that it’s often impossible to figure out what’s ailing a chicken unless a necropsy is performed after it dies. And even then, as our own experience shows, a definitive finding may be elusive.

This time, at least, the problem was a temporary — if temporarily unnerving — glitch in the laying apparatus. It’s no exaggeration to say I breathed an audible sigh of relief when Nellie began chowing down first thing Tuesday morning.

Losing a chicken is especially problematic if you have so few of them that they become pets. But sometimes, they do get better.