Hen Chronicles: We need to do what to their what?

Liz and I have been keeping chickens for more than three years now, so at this point, I can't claim that we learn something new every single day. But there’s still plenty we don’t know. Novel experiences come along with some regularity. Saturday was a case in point.

I noticed one day last week that Snow, a white Plymouth Rock and our oldest hen at about four years of age, had what looked like an unusually long toenail on her right foot. I only caught a glimpse of it while feeding the hens at dawn that day, so I asked Liz to gave it a look when she headed out later to give “the girls” a snack. Her report? Six of Snow’s toenails — three on each foot — were much longer than those on our two Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope.

I was baffled. Was it possible that chickens sometimes need to have their nails clipped? Liz asked a coworker who has much more experience with chickens than we do if she had ever trimmed her chickens’ nails, and the answer was quick, short and unequivocal: “Good lord, no!”

Neither had we.

So it was time to crack open my reference books. It turns out that chickens who walk around a lot normally keep their nails trimmed by scratching in the dirt. But sometimes that doesn’t do the trick, and the nails can grow dangerously long.

Snow, Nellie and Hope spend plenty of time scratching and pecking in their pen, especially at this time of year. In fact, they’re out there from sunrise to sunset, spring through fall, except when they go into the coop to lay, or they crash in the snug space under the elevated coop for a short afternoon siesta. Nellie and Hope provide their own pedicures. But not the trouble-prone Snow, who once managed to slice off part of her comb (that spiky appendage atop a chicken's head) during a panic attack.

“Long toenails can gouge flock mates and human handlers,” the authors of Chicken Health For Dummies write. “They can also get snagged and torn off, which is a painful and bloody event.”

So Liz and I trooped out to the coop Saturday morning with pet nail clippers and a bowl of corn starch, the latter to stanch the bleeding if Liz inadvertently cut into the quick of a toe. Or toes. While I held the decidedly unhappy Snow, Liz carefully lifted each toe in turn and snipped the nail. They were even longer, up close, than they had appeared to be when Snow was walking around in the pen. Much too long to be healthy.

The cllipping went smoothly, although we may go back next week to trim the nails a bit more. There were no mishaps. Within minutes, Snow had rejoined the rest of the flock in the pen for a morning snack of mealworms.

All's well that ends well. Still, we headed out to the coop that morning prepared to deal with bleeding, having done so last year during Snow’s Great Chicken Comb Catastrophe. (Now, that was a bloody mess!) But there was one procedure suggested by Chicken Health For Dummies that I had no intention of trying, even if worse came to worse.

“After you get it to stop bleeding,” the book says of an injured toe, “you can seal the cut end of the toenail with a dab of instant glue.”

Glue? On a hen? Deliberately? Chicken Health For Dummies is a very helpful book written by recognized experts. I’m sure their advice in this case is perfectly sound. But come what may, I just could not see myself glueing Snow back together, like some kid’s busted up model of a B-17 Flying Fortress.