Hen Chronicles: I wish they'd use their watches to tell time

Chickens, like humans, have a foolproof way of knowing what time it it. We consult our watches, clocks or computers. They consult the sun.

This arrangement works out very well during the winter, when the weak, early-morning light tells “the girls” to rise and shine about 7 a.m. or so. By that point in time, we're all on the same page. They're ready to get up, and I'm ready to feed them.

But at this time of year, the sun rises earlier. So our three hens do as well.

At 6 o’clock yesterday morning, my watch told me it was not quite time yet, by human standards, to be trudging out to the coop with a feed bowl, a water bowl and my trusty plastic PRB (Poop Retrieval Bucket). But the sun was up, and I knew Snow, Nellie and Hope would be too.

So off I went.

Sure enough, as I rounded the corner of the garage and the coop came into view, there was Snow, our white Plymouth Rock, jumping at the front window of the coop, demanding to be released into the pen for breakfast. She listed her grievances in a series of impatient squawks. All three hens then moved to the larger side window, to get my attention as I made my final approach from that direction. They pecked at the plexiglass with such feverish determination that you might have thought they’d been locked in the coop for weeks on end, rather than overnight.

And it’s only going to get worse, day by day, Eventually, the hens will be hopping down from their roost at 5 a.m. or so, as the days grow longer and dawn breaks earlier.

I suppose I could attach a small clock to one of the coop’s interior walls. Then the hens, glancing up at it at 6 a.m. (or 5:45, or 5:30, or 5:15) could say to themselves: “Well, it’s still pretty early. Maybe we should give The Food Guy a break and lay low for a bit.”

Yeah, right. Who am I kidding? Snow, Nellie and Hope would just ignore the clock. Not out of spite, mind you, but because they're naturally impish.