Hen Chronicles: There's mad, and then there's MAD!

We don’t have to engage in anthropomorphism to recognize that animals have emotional lives. That certainly is the case with cats and dogs, and I would argue that it’s true of chickens as well.

Any chicken owner can attest to the fact that these birds joyfully anticipate treats. They know fear and panic, envy and jealousy. They develop attachments to one another and, in some cases, to specific people. I suspect that a hen taking a dust bath on a sunny but not overly hot summer afternoon, or enjoying an October breeze as it ruffles her feathers, has found something approaching serenity.

Then there’s anger.

I went out to the coop the other morning to tack some loose bits of chicken wire in place along the bottom of the pen and beneath the elevated coop. It was 9:30 when I got out there, which is about an hour before I usually bring “the girls” a mealworm snack.

To Snow, Nellie and Hope, 9:30 was close enough to 10:30 for their purposes, so they were appalled that I showed up in their neighborhood without treats in hand. There was much squawking to be heard as I got down to business. The longer I worked, the madder they got.

Finally, Snow, our always demonstrative Plymouth Rock, sauntered from the pen into the coop. I was on my knees, hammering away at a stretch of wire just below a window on the east side of the coop, so when Snow marched over to that window she was only inches from my head. That’s when she started feverishly scratching the floor of the coop, which sent pine shavings flying through the hardware cloth on the window. And right into my face.

I’m not sure Snow was deliberately trying to give me a snout full of bedding, although it's certainly possible. In any case, she was ticked off. Big time. If someone is madder than a wet hen, we know she’s angry. But if a person is madder than a hen who can’t get a snack when she wants one, then watch out. She’s wicked pissed.