Hen Chronicles: It's a good thing they aren't bookish

I'm pretty sure our three hens can’t read, which is just as well. I wouldn’t want them winging through my reference books, absorbing dangerous ideas about how chickens are supposed to behave.

More on that in a minute. First, some background.

Snow, our Plymouth Rock, is about five years old now, maybe older. She was a full-grown layer when we bought her from a couple in York County, Maine, back in April 2012. Although we didn’t ask about her age at that time, our best guess is that she was born in 2011, perhaps earlier.

Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, hatched in January 2013, a few months before we bought them as pullets from a hatchery in the Midwest. (They arrived together, by mail!) So they are now more than three years old.

I mention this because all of the experts say hens lay fewer eggs as they get older. Yet our gals seem to be ignoring the rules.

“Most hens lay best during their first year, although a really good layer should do well for two years or even three,” Gail Damerow explains in her excellent book, The Chicken Encyclopedia. Owners should expect “a gradual reduction due to age.”

Robert and Hannah Litt write in A Chicken in Every Yard that the first two years are a hen’s peak laying years. “After that, production will taper off by about 20 percent a year, until by the sixth year . . . any eggs at all will be a bonus.”

Snow did stop laying during the winter months after her first two winters with us. And Nellie and Hope only laid during their first winter as adults, in 2013-14. Yet despite their age, none of them show any sign of slowing down the rest of the year.

Since “the girls” resumed laying in early March after a three-month break, for example, Snow has been turning out her unusually large eggs every other day. That’s the same rate at which she produced them last year. Nellie and Hope are on a similar schedule, although they sometimes do even better than Snow, by laying two days in a row.

Perhaps this will be Snow’s last high-volume year. Maybe Nellie and Hope will slow down a bit soon. If so, I’ll have no grounds to complain. Still, there’s no point in rushing the inevitable. That’s why I’m keeping literacy volunteers, and my reference library, away from the coop.