Hen Chronicles: Spring cleaning, chicken coop edition

Spring cleaning looms at this time of year, but as far as our chicken coop is concerned, the deed is done.

The sun shone brightly and the temperature hovered in the low 60s late Sunday morning, so I decided to tackle the biannual task of sprucing things up in the hens’ abode. With “the girls” locked outside in their pen, I removed all of the bedding from the coop, scrubbed the floor and roost with a water and vinegar solution and sprayed the mixture on the walls and ceiling.

After that, I sprayed the entire coop with a non-toxic product that's supposed to protect the hens from fleas, ticks and mites. I wiped down the floor with clean rags to speed up the drying process, and cleaned my gear. Once everything had dried out somewhat, I deposited a thick layer of fresh pine shavings in the coop.

The hens should have felt no urgency to get back into the coop because they normally stay outside during the day at this time of year, unless they’re laying. Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, laid their eggs early Sunday morning, before I closed off the coop for cleaning, so their indoor work was done for the day. And Snow, our Plymouth Rock, was not scheduled to lay one of her gargantuan eggs Sunday. She normally lays every other day, and had done so on Saturday.

So the girls had no good reason to enter the coop while I was cleaning. But because they couldn’t get in, they hated being left out. They stood in the pen staring at the closed coop door, presumably wishing it to open and asking themselves what the hell I was doing in there.

When I finally wrapped things up, the chickens did what they always do after these spring and fall cleanups. Snow, Hope and Nellie immediately trooped into the coop, looked around, scratched at the new pine shavings and clucked in an animated fashion, like relocated kids surveying their new home for the first time. Minutes later, they trooped back out into the pen, seemingly pleased with what they had found inside.

I promised to pass along their compliments to the landlord.