Hen Chronicles: Ah, the things we do for "the girls"

Liz and I headed to the garage at daybreak today for various supplies, and then out to the coop at the back end of our lot.

I make this trip every morning at dawn, to release “the girls” into the pen, feed and water them, and remove the night’s deposits from the coop. But Liz joined me this morning because we had an added task to perform, a two-person job that requires someone to hold a hen and someone else to do the work.

Hope, one of our Rhode Island Reds, needed to have her nails clipped.

Our three hens generally do a good job of trimming their nails as they scratch and peck for goodies, but every once in a while, things get out of control. In Hope’s case, she had one nail, in particular, that had grown so long it was curling down and under, like a bent finger. This didn’t impede her mobility, but I worried that she might break the nail one morning while hopping down from the roost, which would, presumably, be painful — or worse. Hope has been molting, and it’s unwise to pick up a chicken while delicate new feathers are emerging, so even though we noticed the overgrown nail some time ago, we ended up waiting until this morning to tackle the toes.

Thanks to the design of our small coop and pen, which are not walk-in sized, it’s not all that easy to retrieve our hens. Even if we try to entice them to come out into the yard, they often refuse to do so. And Hope is the worst of the lot in that department because she’s especially shy and reticent.

The easiest way to remove the hens is to lock them in the coop. While one of us lifts the hinged roof and holds it up, the other person reaches in and grabs the targeted hen. Hope almost always is the last hen to get up in the morning, which is why we launched our mission at dawn. When I opened the coop door, Snow and Nellie dutifully trooped out into the pen. I then latched the door to keep Hope in the coop, and pulled the roof open. That allowed Liz to lift a squawking, flapping, highly insulted Hope from the roost.

Liz does the actual trimming, so once she had Hope in hand, we moved away from the coop and I took Hope from her. Grabbing her trusty pet nail clippers (yes, the hens have their own set stored in the garage), Liz worked her magic in no time at all. We had corn starch on hand to stanch any bleeding, but Liz is very careful, and no blood was shed. Within a couple of minutes, Hope had joined the agitated Snow and Nellie in the pen, and all three hens settled in for breakfast.

Teamwork. In chicken keeping, as in life, it often makes more sense than the alternative.