Liz has long claimed that I worry too much about our hens. I know she’s right, but in my defense, I was the one who saw one of them up and die without warning back in 2012. And I had to bring another hen to the vet last year to be euthanized. Such things take their toll. “The girls” are our pets, after all.
Last week, I got riled up yet again. But this time, as is usually true when I fret over goings-on in the coop, there was a happy ending.
Snow, Nellie and Hope sleep on an elevated wooden roost in the coop. Always. That’s what chickens do. They troop into the coop at dusk, hop or fly up to the roost, settle themselves down side by side, and stay put until dawn. (Chickens are very sound sleepers.)
On Friday night, things played out differently.
All three hens were in the coop when I set out that night to lock them up. But Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, heard me coming and apparently got it into her head that it was still just light enough outside to see if I had any treats. So she came back out into the pen. That’s where I left her, disappointed, until she finally went back into the coop a few minutes later.
Heading out to the coop a second time after Nellie was back inside, I latched the door and peeked into the nest box, to make one last check for eggs. There was Nellie; in the nest box. The hens rarely lay eggs before going to bed, but I figured that’s what she was doing, so I left her there and walked back to the house. When I came out again later to check on her, she was still in the nest box. And she had not laid an egg.
She spent the night there. And that’s what got me worried.
I can only remember two other times in more than three years when a hen has slept in the nest box. In one case, it marked one of the first signs of a fatal disease that eventually took the life of one of our chickens.
So my fears were not entirely groundless. But they were premature.
Saturday night, and every night since then, Nellie has slept on the roost, with Snow and Hope. So why the Friday-night aberration? As with so many things involving chickens, there are several possible explanations, and no conclusive answer.
Researching this phenomenon online, I found chicken owners who say this sometimes happens with young chickens who are new to a coop (not applicable to Nellie) or chickens who’ve been in a fight and want to avoid a recurrence (unlikely in this case). The most plausible explanation is that chickens, who have excellent eyesight during the day, see very poorly in the dark. So, if they have trouble spotting and reaching the roost at night, they may crash in a nearby nest box instead. No hopping. No flying. No bumping into other chickens.
That makes sense. When Nellie came back outside Friday night for her snack hunt, she stayed in the pen for a few minutes. By the time she went back into the coop, it was quite dark, both outside and in. She may have turned the nearby nest box into a bed because it was easier than trying to roost in the dark. Since then, I've delayed the nighttime lockdown until it's way too dark for any hen with the munchies to bolt out of the coop in search of bedtime goodies. Problem solved.
Sometimes, chickens behave oddly simply because they’re, well, chickens. Come to think of, sometimes humans behave oddly too, because they're human.
No comments:
Post a Comment