Hen Chronicles: Some warnings should not be ignored

Chickens have a lot to say. They have a remarkable variety of vocalizations, some of which are not comprehensible to mere humans without a Chicken-to-English dictionary, which I have yet to find. But I can translate some sounds into an approximation of English. And there's one in particular that I never fail to recognize, even though I rarely hear it. That’s because I know from past experience that it requires immediate action on my part.

As soon as I let “the girls” out of their coop at dawn and give them their breakfast in the pen, I close the coop door to keep them out, so I can clean the coop without having any feathered beasties popping in to get in the way. The roof of our small coop is hinged at the peak, so there’s always at least a slight risk that if a hen wandered in while the roof was propped up, she might fly the coop, literally. That’s to be avoided at all cost on our city lot, which is in a densely populated neighborhood with busy streets. A loose hen is an evasive hen.

The other morning, I went through my usual routine of releasing the hens into the pen, closing the coop door and cleaning the poop from the coop. But before I reopened the door, I decided to remove and store the tarps and plywood that I had placed on top of the pen when it rained the day before. As a result, I didn’t get around to opening up the coop as quickly as I usually do.

That’s when it started.

One of the Rhode Island Reds began making a shrill, plaintive sound that I had heard a few times before. It’s a chicken’s way of saying “I really have to get back into the coop RIGHT NOW because I have some serious business to attend to RIGHT AWAY!”

Sure enough, Nellie, the Red in question, was standing on the ramp that leads up from the pen to the coop. She was staring at the closed door as if trying to will it to open. On the other side of that door, in a corner of the coop, is the nest box where the hens lay their eggs.

I quickly opened the door and watched as Nellie ran inside. Going around to the back of the coop, I opened the lid that covers the nest box. There was Nellie, in the nest box, getting into position to do what hens do. Minutes later, I retrieved a fresh egg.

Letting Nellie back into the coop right away wasn’t so much a courtesy as a smart move on my part. A couple of times over the years, I’ve completely forgotten to reopen the coop after cleaning it, only to realize my mistake hours later. Racing back out to undo the damage, I found fresh eggs on the ground under the elevated coop, or smack dab in the middle of the pen. Both spots are hard to access, and using a long-handled tool to try to roll an uncooked egg to a spot where I can grab it usually results in a broken egg. If you haven't tried it yourself, you can trust me on that one.

So I was more than happy to give in to Nellie’s noisy appeal if it meant I could avoid scrounging around for hidden or unreachable eggs in the pale light of a November morning when the mercury hovered at 32 degrees. It's probably a good idea to save the egg hunts for Easter.