Yesterday was the first of my twice-yearly cleanings of the coop (not to be confused with daily poop disposal). Among other things, this involves removing all of the old bedding and washing the coop floor with a vinegar-and-water solution.
As you might imagine, this takes a while, forcing our three hens to wait outside in the pen. The cleaning itself eats up about 30 minutes, followed by about 60 minutes of drying time before I can add fresh bedding and hold a grand reopening ceremony for “the girls.”
The only real problem with all this — aside from the fact that the hens don’t like change, even if it’s only temporary — is that Snow, Nellie and Hope lay their eggs in the coop, where the nest boxes are located. And there were no eggs to be found when I began my cleanup operation at 10:30 a.m., which meant the hens were off to a late start in that department.
Nellie and Hope each "donated" an egg on Friday, so they probably lacked any sense of urgency yesterday morning. But Snow had not done her bit since Thursday, so she was due to pay the piper, as it were. But the coop was now off-limits.
While I cleaned the coop, Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, were alert but quiet outside. Not so Snow, a Plymouth Rock. She chattered throughout the exercise and reached FSV (Full Squawking Volume) as I began hauling my buckets, brushes and rags back to the garage.
But cry as she might, I couldn’t let Snow back into the coop because it was wet and bare. I went back to the house while it dried out, but Snow did not relent. When I peered out at one point to check on the hens, Snow was standing at the very top of the ramp, staring at the closed door in front of her and tossing her head from side to side, as if uttering some incantation that could be translated as “Open Sesame.”
Ninety minutes after the ordeal began, with the coop floor covered in fresh pine shavings, I finally opened the door at noon. Snow and Nellie raced into the coop side by side, followed by Hope. “The Reds,” as we call Nellie and Hope, wandered in and out of the coop over the next few minutes, but Snow parked herself in one of the nest boxes and didn’t budge.
When Liz brought the hens their mid-afternoon snack at 2:30, there was only one egg in the row of three nest boxes. It was Snow’s. (We know because her eggs are consistently larger than the others.) So despite her top-of-the-pecking-order status as a noisy, bossy, demanding hen, Snow had resisted the temptation to lay her egg in some dark or inaccessible spot while she was stuck outside. She did the right thing by waiting until she could get into a nest box. Like the good girl she is at heart.
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