People often have a hard time adjusting to seasonal time changes, particularly as winter winds down, when we lose an hour, but also at this time of the year, when darkness suddenly falls long before supper is on the table.
Not so with chickens. Their movements are dictated by the rising and setting of the sun, which they accept without protest, no matter how early the day begins or how soon it draws to a close.
Our three hens had been going to bed about 5 p.m. of late, but thanks to the return of Eastern Standard Time last weekend, that has changed. Darkness began to descend on our backyard at 4 p.m. on Sunday, a full hour earlier than the previous day. Sure enough, Snow, Nellie and Hope trooped into their coop with the gloaming and dutifully hopped up to their roost, where they settled in for the night.
It was much the same story this morning. Last week’s 7 a.m. wake-up time was a thing of the past. When I showed up at 6 a.m. to release and feed “the girls,” they were bouncing around at the window on the east side of the coop, eager to get out into the pen, and breakfast.
Time is marked by the rising and setting of the sun, and nowhere more than in the ingrained, instinctive, immutable comings and goings of chickens.
Not so with chickens. Their movements are dictated by the rising and setting of the sun, which they accept without protest, no matter how early the day begins or how soon it draws to a close.
Our three hens had been going to bed about 5 p.m. of late, but thanks to the return of Eastern Standard Time last weekend, that has changed. Darkness began to descend on our backyard at 4 p.m. on Sunday, a full hour earlier than the previous day. Sure enough, Snow, Nellie and Hope trooped into their coop with the gloaming and dutifully hopped up to their roost, where they settled in for the night.
It was much the same story this morning. Last week’s 7 a.m. wake-up time was a thing of the past. When I showed up at 6 a.m. to release and feed “the girls,” they were bouncing around at the window on the east side of the coop, eager to get out into the pen, and breakfast.
Time is marked by the rising and setting of the sun, and nowhere more than in the ingrained, instinctive, immutable comings and goings of chickens.
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