Hen Chronicles: How snow-phobic hens cope with white stuff

Maybe we didn’t raise them properly.

Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, are almost five years old. They’re full-grown. They’ve survived several winters, including sub-zero temperatures. Hope even has a spur on the back of her left leg, something that is much more common in roosters than hens.

So these two shouldn’t be terrified of the snow. But they are.

I’ve seen photos online of free-range chickens braving snow-covered yards. often in single file as they venture forth. But our hens are not free-range. We live in an urban area, and only part of our yard is fenced, so roaming chickens would soon become dead chickens.

In addition to their coop, which is elevated (providing open space for them underneath), Nellie and Hope also have an attached, wire-covered pen. That's where I place their food and water bowls, and where they spend most of their daylight hours unless the weather fails to cooperate. It's not a walk-in pen, so there's no easy way to remove snow from it. As a result, I always keep an eagle eye on the forecast, so I can cover the pen with a tarp (or tarps, if need be) when snow is in the offing.

Last night’s forecast said nothing about snow, so I left the pen uncovered overnight. When I went out to release and feed the hens at dawn, I found a dusting of snow in the pen. Yes, it was only a dusting, but I knew from past experience how “the girls” would react. Short version: not well.

Even though I brushed off the ramp leading from the coop to the pen, Nellie and Hope refused to come out. I postponed my morning ritual of cleaning the coop, went back to the house, and had breakfast. Thirty minutes later, the hens remained in the coop, which I was now determined to clean, hens or no hens.

Our coop has a hinged roof, which I prop open with a long stick for the daily poop scooping. So there was a theoretical risk that “the girls” might fly out if I cleaned the coop while they were still inside. (Yes, chickens can fly. No, not very well.) I figured the sight of snow would keep the hens grounded.

Sure enough, when I lifted the roof and leaned into the coop to scoop poop, Nellie and Hope watched me as I talked to them. But they showed no interest in either flying out into the yard or walking out into their pen. My chores complete, I lowered the roof and resisted the temptation to move the food and water bowls from the pen to the coop.

But here’s something else I’ve learned from experience. If Nellie and Hope are still holed up by mid-morning, I’ll cave in. Guaranteed. 

Hen Chronicles: Rest in peace, Snowy (11.19.17)

Our Plymouth Rock hen, Snow, had to be euthanized last Sunday. She was old, for a chicken, and her health went from bad to worse over a span of two weeks or so. By Nov. 18, she had stopped eating. Even her beloved snacks, such as mealworm and plain yogurt, held no appeal. That pattern continued the following day, combined with several other signs that her quality of life was gone.

Snow (aka, Snowy) was a cherished pet. She was our oldest hen, the one we had for the longest period of time, the last survivor from our 2012 start-up flock, the chicken with the biggest, boldest, most flamboyant personality. She had suffered several mishaps and medical emergencies over the years, but we had always managed to nurse her back to health.

Until age created an insurmountable obstacle.

There was no way I could have personally ended Snow's life. Yet Liz and I cannot stand to see animals suffer, so we knew that we should act quickly. Nov. 19 being a Sunday, the only available veterinary clinic was an emergency animal hospital 30 miles away. So we placed Snow atop a soft towel in a cat carrier, and I hit the road.

The wait for a veterinary technician wasn't long, but what happened after Snow received her injection seemed interminable.

The only other time I had seen a hen euthanized was at another clinic. The injection took effect almost instantaneously in that case, but the emergency clinic uses a different, and slower, method. I agreed to hold Snow as she “went to sleep,” as the tech put it. So there I sat, alone with Snow in the examining room, waiting for the end. I cradled Snow in my arms for more than 20 minutes, watching her fade ever so slowly. She was wrapped in a fluffy purple blanket provided by the staff. I stroked her neck the entire time, kissed her head, and told her that I loved her and that her ordeal would soon be over. Her eyes remained open until shortly before she passed away. She made no sound. She did not fidget.

Although I didn’t expect Snow’s passing would take as long as it did, knowing that in advance would not have changed anything. I would not have left her alone to die with strangers. Holding her and trying to comfort her (she always liked being held and was responsive to the human voice) was extraordinarily difficult, under the circumstances. But I know with absolute certainty that it was the right thing to do. When a staffer finally verified that Snow was gone, she must have seen that I was distraught because she hugged me and said I had done well.

You don’t have to be Jane Goodall working with chimpanzees to appreciate that animals are individuals, with cognitive abilities, personalities, quirks and emotions. Yes, Snowy was a chicken, but I would never say she was “just a chicken.” The pejorative term “birdbrain,” assuming as it does that birds as a class of animals are rather stupid, is foolish and inaccurate.

Snow was a force of nature, full of life and intelligence and exuberance. She always laid unusually large eggs (which sometimes caused physical problems for her), rarely stopped talking while she was awake, and sat at the top of the flock's pecking order for most of her time with us. Yet she didn't pick on newcomers, or harass other hens when they were molting. She had joie de vivre, pure and simple, and a certain dignity.

Caring for Snow all these years was a joy; being with her to the end, a responsibility. I have no adequate words to describe the void she has left behind, or the gratitude we feel for having shared her life.

Snow (aka, Snowy) in her prime.

Hen Chronicles: No, it's not time to say goodbye just yet

I thought she was a goner.

When I headed out to the veterinarian’s office with Snow, our Plymouth Rock, late yesterday afternoon, I feared her number was up. Snow is at least six years old, possibly older, and although she just completed a molt that left her with a whole new set of sparkling white feathers, her behavior has been off for more than a week.

Snow has been eating, and she still comes running at snack time, but otherwise, she isn’t moving around very much. In fact, she spends much of her day in a hunched pose, with her tail down and her head and neck tucked into her body.

She gets in and out of the coop. But unlike Nellie and Hope, Snow can’t hop up onto the roost at night anymore. Instead, she parks herself in one of the nest boxes on the floor of the coop, waiting quietly until Liz and I head out there in the early evening and place her on the roost. She eagerly grabs hold of it with both feet and a brief flapping of wings.

So Liz and I were apprehensive yesterday when we tucked Snow into a cat carrier for the 25-minute trip to the vet’s. It was dark by the I time I headed down the driveway. Snow was quiet and still during the drive, possibly having fallen asleep.

The other folks waiting their turn at the clinic had a more standard array of pets: a beautiful, all-black pit bull, a yellow lab, a tiny dog of some breed I could not identify. The people who walked in after I had arrived peered into the cat carrier, as pet owners often do in such places.

“A chicken?” one dog owner asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “Do you have chickens?”

“I do,” she said, a bemused note in her voice. “But I’ve never seen one in the waiting room before.”

I rarely take any of our chickens to the vet; yesterday’s visit marked only the third such trip (and the second for Snow) in five years. It’s difficult to even find a vet who treats chickens, so I always assumed that seeking professional help for our hens made me something of an odd duck, so to speak. But chickens are popular pets these days, and the receptionist said Snow was the second chicken to visit yesterday. It turns out the clinic, which is located in a rural area in central Maine and cares for both large and small animals, typically sees two or three chickens every week.

I held my breath when the veterinarian entered the examining room, but the news turned out to be surprisingly good. Snow’s temperature and heart rate were normal, her lungs were clear, her plumage was magnificent, her feet healthy. Her crop was full, confirming that she had eaten her fill. She’s lost some muscle mass, the vet said, and she may have a touch of arthritis. Bottom line? She’s old. I had been under the impression that chickens typically live about 10 years, but the vet, an experienced hand and a chicken owner himself, said seven to eight years is the norm.

“So you don’t think she should be euthanized."

"Oh no,” he said.

Once we were back home, Liz and I repeated what has become the new normal. I lifted the hinged roof of the coop and Liz held Snow over the roost until the old girl dropped her landing gear and wrapped her dinosaur-like toes around the horizontal post. She settled in for the night. Between Nellie and Hope. Where she belongs.

Nellie, Hope and Snow in June 2014.

Hen Chronicles: It’s not pretty, but it could be a lot worse

Our three hens were not amused when I went out to feed them shortly after 7 a.m. They were not alone.

Last night’s storm brought heavy rain and strong winds that gusted to 50 miles per hour or more here in central Maine. Schools are closed in many communities. The storm snapped a neighbor's tall but skinny tree and sent it crashing into our yard. Part of our driveway is now blocked too, by a second casualty: long, thick branches from a maple tree. The storm isn’t over as I write this at 8 a.m. In fact, the winds may get stronger today. But while many Mainers have lost power, we have not (so far), for which we are grateful.

As for the chickens, they were agitated but dry when I opened the coop door this morning. The pen that abuts our small coop is covered with tarps — top, sides and front — for the duration of the storm, so it too remains dry, although I had to adjust two of the tarps where they had come loose overnight.

Not surprisingly, Snow, Nellie and Hope showed no interest in venturing out into the pen, at least initially. After a night of howling winds, coupled with the sound of rain pelting the metal roof above their heads, they had a case of the jitters. Perhaps, too, “the girls” had a bit of trouble deciding if morning had broken, what with the gray dawn and the gloomy pen, which remains dark and uninviting because of its covering of tarps.

Still, their food and water bowls are out in the pen, dry and waiting. So the hens will venture forth eventually, if they haven’t already, once hunger, thirst and curiosity get the better of them.

Hen Chronicles: They really know what they like to eat

Experts claim that chickens have no taste buds, as opposed to humans, who supposedly have, on average, 10,000 of them.

I’m no expert on taste buds, avian or human, but if the implication is that chickens have no preferences among various types of foods, our three hens never got the memo.

My wife Liz and I know, from several years of experience, that hens like their regular feed well enough, especially first thing in the morning. But they positively love a range of treats, including berries (blue, straw and rasp), as well as plain yogurt.

And scratch.

Scratch is a mix of corn and grains that is used as a snack. Digesting it generates body heat, so it should only be fed when it’s cold outside, to avoid overheating chickens.

I give our hens scratch during the winter months because the heat produced during digestion helps to warm them up. As a rule, I wait until the temperature drops below 30 degrees. But rules are made to be broken, and that’s what I did this morning, when the deck thermometer read 35 degrees as I headed out to the coop at dawn.

One of our three hens is coming off her molt. The other two have just started this annual ritual of dropping feathers to make way for new ones. Those two now have bald spots here and there, where new feathers are beginning to emerge, which may explain why they had no desire to leave the relative warmth of the coop early this morning and head out into the pen for breakfast.

That’s where the scratch came in.

Shaking a small cup of the stuff at the open coop door had the desired effect. Nellie and Hope immediately made a high-pitched sound that indicates excitement. They hopped down from the roost and raced out the door. When I scattered scratch in the pen, they joined Snow, our third hen, in running around to make sure they got their share.

Soon enough, scratch will become a regular seasonal snack rather than a rare October treat. So will oatmeal, another wintertime favorite. Snow, Nellie and Hope may lack taste buds, but somehow “the girls” still know which items top the menu.

Hen Chronicles: A hard molt is fast, but it sure ain't pretty

I really hate the molt. I know it’s an annual ritual for chickens, allowing them to shed their old, dirty, worn out feathers and make way for new ones. But it isn’t pleasant to watch. And it can't be much fun to experience either.

Snow, our Plymouth Rock, began a soft molt in mid July, and it isn’t done yet. In a soft molt, a chicken loses feathers slowly over a long period of time. It can take up to four months, in fact. So although Snow is now in her third month of dropping feathers and producing new ones, she hasn’t developed any bald spots.

Hope, on the other hand, began a hard molt about a week ago. A hard molt doesn’t take as long, because the feathers fall fast and furious. Hope is a Rhode Island Red, so every day, I find dozens of dark red feathers in the coop and dozens more out in the pen. Any movement on her part sends feathers flying. The skin on her neck is now exposed, although it bristles with pin feathers. These are new feathers that initially resemble fat pins because they poke through the skin all rolled up. The poor thing looks like a well-used pincushion.

It’s hard to say, from observation, how much this process bothers a hen. In my experience, molting hens continue to go about their business, although they stop laying and may suffer some loss of appetite. They shy away from being touched, either by humans or other chickens, which is perfectly understandable.

It’s obviously not a process to be envied. Yes, the end result is impressive because the chicken gradually dons a new set of fresh, spiffy duds. But you and I can change clothes in a matter of minutes. If we had to disassemble our pants in order to remove them, and then stitch together a new pair as we pulled them on, would we even bother?

Hen Chronicles: Ignoring the hen who cried "wolf"

Hope, a four-year-old Rhode Island Red, has always been the most timid hen in our flock. Snow and Nellie take it in stride when I run my hand over their backs as they emerge from the coop each morning, but Hope reacts to this gesture by backing into the coop.

So what happened shortly after “the girls” ran out into the pen at dawn today came as no surprise. While Snow and Nellie gathered round the feed bowl to wolf down as much food as possible as quickly as possible, Hope stood several feet away, peering at the sky. Suddenly, a blue jay swooped down and over the pen, only 10 feet or so above Hope’s head.

The jay immediately flew off to points unknown. But Hope reacted to this turn of events with what I assume is an alarm call: a single long, high-pitched, shrill note that I’ve heard before, but not very often. And the reaction from Snow and Nellie? They continued munching away without so much as a momentary break in the action, even though they obviously heard Hope’s warning.

It was as if the two of them said to themselves: “There she goes again, screaming that the sky is falling.”

Hen Chronicles: I'm calling it "moltus interruptus"

If I’ve learned anything since we began keeping hens more than five years ago, it’s that there are few hard and fast rules that apply to all chickens in all situations.

Take the molt, when chickens replace old feathers with new ones. Mature birds molt once a year, according to the experts, normally in late summer or autumn. That being said, we once had a chicken skip a year. Another current member of our tiny flock — Hope, a Rhode Island Red — once began molting in February, which isn’t the best time of year to lose your feathers. But she did, and lived to cluck the tale. Usually, the hens molt at different times, but last year, they all molted in unison.

There also are different types of molts. In the case of a so-called hard molt, a chicken loses all of its feathers pretty much simultaneously, so the hen looks like hell for a while but the whole thing is over fairly quickly. In a soft molt, the process is gradual, so it takes a long time but the bird doesn’t look like, well, a plucked chicken.

Only one of our three hens — Snow, a Plymouth Rock —  is molting right now. She’s obviously having a soft molt, because the process started about two months ago and continued, unabated, for weeks, with white feathers flying all over the place but no visible patches of bare skin. Then the molt stopped as suddenly as it began.

A couple of weeks passed without the sight of additional feathers littering coop and pen. So I figured Snow was done molting for the year. I was wrong, thanks to a brand new phenomenon (for us anyway) that I have dubbed moltus interruptus.

A few days ago, following that two-week hiatus, Snow started tossing feathers left and right all over again. Near as I can tell, most of her body is now newly refeathered as a result of the first round of molting. But her tail is getting smaller and scruffier by the day in this second round.

So why was there an unprecedented break in Snow's molt? I have no idea.

Scientists have determined that the chicken is the closest living relative of the T. rex. (Skeptical? Look it up.) I wonder if that fearsome creature had more predictable habits than its diminutive modern-day cousin.

Hen Chronicles: Fast and furious, death comes for a cricket

I know chickens have excellent daytime eyesight — better than humans, according to the experts —  but it’s easy to take it for granted if you grow accustomed to dealing with these birds on a daily basis.

At least until a suicidal cricket hops into the pen.

That’s just what happened shortly after dawn this morning when Snow, Nellie and Hope were out in the pen, pecking away at their feed. The hens spotted the cricket even before it made its fateful decision, while it was stationary right outside the pen, just beyond their reach. All three hens immediately zeroed in on the bug, desperately trying to get at it through the chicken wire, but without success.

I thought that was the end of that, but instead of hopping away from the pen, the cricket hopped into it. What followed was an impressive demonstration (but fatal for the cricket) of eye-beak coordination. The hens fell upon the cricket instantly, and in unison. Once that happened, the little six-legged critter was a dead cricket hopping. Briefly. Very briefly. The only consolation, from the cricket’s point of view, is that death came quickly. And from the hens' perspective? Let's just say nothing went to waste.

Hen Chronicles: A hen's stupendous spur spurs us to act

Hope's spur

There are many things I never knew about chickens until we acquired hens of our own. The existence of spurs was one of them.

A chicken’s spur is aptly named. It’s a pointed growth that usually extends at a right angle from the back of the leg, sometimes with a slight bend upward. They’re more common in roosters than in hens, but hens can develop them as well.

“Most hens have little rudimentary knobs instead of spurs, although some have real spurs that can grow quite long,” Gail Damerow writes in The Chicken Encyclopedia. Quite long indeed.

The photo above shows the left leg of Hope, a Rhode Island Red and one of our three hens. The horizontal projection at the lower right is her back toe. The growth above that is a spur which, as you can see, curves up and forward. The photo is a bit misleading because the tip of the spur is not as close to the leg as it appears to be here, and the tip actually seems to be a bit to the right of the leg. Still, the spur is long, and we fear it could eventually damage or even puncture the leg, because of this basic fact about spurs: they keep growing.

We don’t have roosters, and Hope is the only hen we’ve owned who has developed a spur, so we have no prior experience with them. As the spur continued to develop, we decided it was time to intervene. But what to do? Remove it? Trim it? We’ve had to cut our hens’ toenails several times over the years, but this seemed more . . . daunting. A spur is large. It's thick. And it's full of blood. Caution is called for.

There aren’t very many veterinarians in Maine who treat chickens. I found one 20 miles away who agreed to take a look at Hope, possibly with the goal of removing the spur, but she admitted by e-mail that she doesn’t have a lot of experience working with chickens.

As we weighed the possibility of hitting the interstate with Hope on board, a bit of online research revealed that it’s possible to file a spur, at least enough to blunt the tip. So yesterday, we decided to give that a go. While I held Hope, Liz began scraping away with a newly purchased six-inch Stanley file. Hope squawked, but from aggravation, not pain. Liz didn’t get down to the quick, so there was no bleeding. And the tip of the spur is now a bit more blunt than it was before. "It's hard, very hard," Liz said of the spur, "more like a horn than a nail."

We’ll follow up with more filing in the days ahead, and we haven’t ruled out taking Hope to the vet if necessary. But we’re hoping this may shorten and flatten the spur enough to get the job done without a stressful and unpleasant road trip whose outcome would be uncertain. All of which leaves me wondering what surprises "the girls" will spring on us next.

Hen Chronicles: A difference between chickens and other pets

Chickens are unlike other, more typical pets in many ways. They have feathers and beaks and wattles and combs. They live in their own house, not ours. They have their own unique anatomy, physiology, quirks and traits.

And then there’s a far more troublesome difference. Chickens are tasty, which makes them attractive to all sorts of critters who have only one thing in mind: a nighttime snack.

I hesitate to write this for fear of jinxing myself, but in the five years that we’ve kept chickens, we have not lost any to predators. Still, I’m not foolish enough to believe that means there’s no cause for concern. I know people who've suffered such attacks.

We live in a densely populated neighborhood in a relatively small Maine city. I’ve never seen that most dastardly of chicken predators —a fox — since we bought our house 29 years ago. I’d like to believe our neighborhood is too built up to attract them, but that’s probably wishful thinking.

In any case, we have had our share of skunks and raccoons over the years. I once spotted a skunk right outside the pen at dawn, peering inside. I waited until the morning brightened and the skunk disappeared for the day, before releasing our three hens from the coop. Last week, I saw yet another predator, not only for the first time in our yard but for the first time in my life: a possum. When I went out to lock “the girls” in their coop one night, it was sitting about eight feet away, eyeing me quietly.

I’m not a churchgoing person, but every morning, when “the girls” race down the ramp into the pen, I thank the powers that be for watching over them. There are no guarantees in life, though, whether you're a human or a chicken. We take precautions, and hope for the best.

Hen Chronicles: Finding a bit of tranquility in troubled times

We live in troubled times. Sickening creatures roam the halls of the White House, led by an ignorant man-child who has access to the launch codes. Congress is a confederacy of dunces. Gloomy pundits prognosticate about the fate of our republic. In The Washington Post today, columnist Kathleen Parker asks: “Who can save us from ourselves?”

But at 5:40 this morning, routine mollified me. Heading out to the garage, I filled the chickens’ feed and water bowls, donned a disposable glove, grabbed the poop bucket, and headed out to the back of our lot. As I have done every day at dawn since April 2012.

“The girls” were still “in bed” on their roost in the coop when I got there, but they heard my arrival. One by one, they hopped down to the floor and gathered at the door, clucking quietly as they waited for me to release them into the pen. After I cleaned out the coop, I watched Snow, Nellie and Hope peck away at their food. Despite the language barrier, we exchanged pleasantries before I returned to the house.

Routine is a blessing. Caring for the hens is therapeutic, clearing the mind of dark thoughts, at least for a few minutes. Three animated bundles of feathers provide a daily dose of tranquility in this, our frightening era.

Hen Chronicles: The hills are alive with the sound of . . music?

Unlike roosters, hens don’t usually make a racket. They tend to go about their business fairly quietly, clucking gently unless something frightens them enough to send them into sky-is-falling mode.

There is one predictable exception to this pattern of good behavior, however. When a hen lays an egg, there is a good chance that she or her confederates will launch into a prolonged rendition of what Liz and I call the egg song. At these times, the “singer” (or singers) honks loudly like a deranged goose, but with a chicken accent. It’s an abrasive, even unpleasant sound that might make the listener wonder why anyone would think keeping chickens is a good idea.

This happened one day last week, but with one significant twist. When the egg song shattered the morning calm and continued for several minutes, I went out to the coop thinking I would find two of our three hens in the pen and the third one in the nest box, either laying an egg or recovering from the experience.

Instead, all three hens were outside and, surprisingly, there was no egg to be found. So although the egg song is most commonly associated with laying, that obviously isn’t always the case. For some unknown reason, the hills were alive with the sound of "music" that morning, and although the cause remains a mystery, I’m quite sure it had nothing to do with raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens.

Hen Chronicles: A few tasty treats on a steamy July afternoon

Chickens don’t especially like hot, sunny weather, and our trio is no exception. Snow, Nellie and Hope tend to hide in the shade under the raised coop when the mercury tops 80 degrees, even though their outdoor run is shaded by an old patio umbrella. But, gluttonous little beasties that they are, they will emerge for treats, no matter how tropical the weather.

That was the case at 2:30 this afternoon, when “the girls” ran out from under the coop with alacrity as I approached, eager to see what was to be had. First, I placed some plain organic yogurt in their feed bowl, which they gobbled down with such speed that they splashed it all over their beaks and faces.

The next course consisted of freshly picked lettuce and kale from our gardens, followed, finally, by a few of our own strawberries and raspberries. The latter had them zigzagging around the pen at top speed, trying to grab as many berries as possible before the competition could "steal" them.

Our hens cannot free range on our city lot, which is not fully fenced in. Even if it were, they would quickly decimate the lawn and the gardens if allowed to scratch and peck at will, sampling whatever goodies caught their fancy. So they may not have what a chicken would view as the perfect life. But it ain't bad.

Hen Chronicles: Keeping up with changes in the lingo

Releasing our hens from their coop first thing in the morning is my job, as is putting them to bed at night. My wife Liz gives them snacks during the day when she’s home, but the early-morning routine has been my responsibility ever since we started keeping chickens back in 2012.

Of course, Liz always wants a progress report when I return to the house after I feed Snow, Nellie and Hope at dawn. For years, she greeted me with the same question as soon as I entered the kitchen, day after day after day.

“How are the girls?”

Lately, though, for no obvious reason, she’s come up with a new way of posing the same query.

“How are things in Henlandia?”

Henlandia? Yesterday, I requested some clarification. What does the name Henlandia suggest? It sounds so grandiose. Does it imply that the henhouse is a state unto itself, à la Pennsylvania? Or a country whose name pays homage to Finland and Albania? Or perhaps even a continent? (Antarctica?) Liz gave me the condescending look I have come to recognize as an indication that I have asked a foolish question, or made an idiotic statement.

"Henlandia," she said with great patience, as if explaining the obvious to an addled soul, "is a village."

For some reason, the notion that “the girls” live in their own ostentatiously named hamlet strikes both of us as quite comical. Obviously, we’re easily amused.

Hen Chronicles: Yes, chickens can fly . . . of a fashion

While visiting a small farm in southern Maine years ago, I saw a chicken fly into a tree. It landed on a branch that was at least eight feet off the ground, possibly higher.

We didn’t have hens back then, so I knew little about them. I simply assumed, based on what I observed that day, that free-range chickens often perch in trees when they want a change of perspective. Now, after five years of keeping chickens, observing their habits and researching them, I’ve come to a different conclusion.

Yes, chickens can fly. But they aren’t very good at it. In fact, flight is such a relatively minor part of a chicken’s life that two of the three reference books I consulted while writing this make no mention of it. Gail Damerow’s excellent The Chicken Encyclopedia does, but the entry is understandably brief. In defining what a wing is, Damerow writes that it's a "feathered appendage corresponding to a human arm, a pair of which enables a chicken to fly short distances but is more commonly used for balance during such activities as running or jumping down from a roost."

In other words, a chicken’s wings keep it from falling down more often than they help it to fly up.

I got to thinking about this one morning recently when two of our three hens — Rhode Island Reds Nellie and Hope — flapped their wings quite vigorously while in their pen, shortly after I released them from the coop. The hens were not trying to fly; they know the pen is covered. But this is something “the girls” do quite often first thing in the morning, apparently in much the same way that some people stretch while getting up from bed.
 
Observing such “wing flaps,” as I call them, shows why flight is not a chicken’s strong suit. Chickens are relatively large birds, but they have short wings in proportion to their size. For example, an adult Rhode Island Red typically weighs a lot more than a red-tailed hawk, but the hawk has an average wing span of four feet. And the chicken? Two feet or less, according to one online source. On those rare occasions when our hens try to make a break for it, they zigzag through the yard like windup toys, running frantically while making no attempt to take flight.

Chickens are beautiful creatures. They're intelligent. Remarkable, even. But aerodynamic? Let's just say it's a good thing they don't have to fly south before winter sets in.

Hen Chronicles: Another screwup could cost me my job!

When I got out to the coop this morning to let “the girls” out and feed them, our hens were aggrieved. They were squawking and bouncing and pecking at the big window on the east side of the coop, obviously appalled by my incompetence.

Checking my watch after I placed the food and water bowls in the pen, I saw that it was 5:37, so the source of their consternation was apparent. I had arrived on the scene a full five minutes later than usual. Maybe even six minutes. Worst-case scenario: seven minutes behind schedule.

The way Snow, Nellie and Hope see it, I should be on hand as soon as they wake up. Or, better yet, while they’re just on the verge of rousing themselves with the rising sun. That way, breakfast will await them as soon as they hop down from the roost. No pesky delays. No huffing and puffing over the indignity of it all.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find a sign tacked to the coop later today. Help wanted. Inquire within. If there’s one thing the hens will not tolerate, it’s this kind of ineptitude from the staff.

Hen Chronicles: Laying is Job One, even during coop cleanup

I dread giving the chicken coop a thorough cleaning, which I do twice a year, but not because it’s a dusty, wet, messy job. I clean four cats' litter boxes and scoop poop from the coop every morning, so I'm no stranger to messy jobs.

The thing is, I just hate having to lock our three hens outside while I remove all of the bedding from the coop, scrape off any fossilized deposits, scrub the floor and spray the interior walls with a water-and-vinegar solution, wipe the floor with rags to remove any excess liquid, and then wait for everything to dry out before adding fresh bedding and reopening the coop. But like it or not, yesterday was the day. The whole shebang took a good 90 minutes or more from start to finish.

Snow, Nellie and Hope did not approve of this ritual. They never do, partly because they aren't big fans of change. And if they're ready to lay while the coop is temporarily closed to all traffic, they can’t get to their nest boxes, which are in the coop. That means they have to “hold it,” which I believe they can do for a short while, or drop their cargo outside, in the pen or under the raised coop.

Either way, once the coop has been reopened, I have to stage a one-man egg hunt outside, to find out if any of the hens was desperate enough to embrace a change in venue while the nest boxes were off-limits. I came up empty-handed during yesterday’s search, which was a good thing. In the past, the hens have been known to lay in inaccessible spots when denied access to their boxes, forcing me to jury-rig a retrieval gizmo that lets me reach and role a wayward egg without breaking it.

Trust me. That's easier said than done. We're not talking hard-boiled eggs here.

Hen Chronicles: In the end, hunger trumps all, including fear

I used a weed whacker near the henhouse yesterday afternoon, which sent our three hens scurrying out of the pen to hide in their "safe zone" under the elevated coop. Soon, though, they realized that this cleanup operation was propelling countless bits of cut grass and other vegetation through the chicken wire and into the pen.

That discovery obviously called for an immediate reevaluation. On Planet Chicken, there's no fear too great to risk passing up a tasty snack.

Snow, Nellie and Hope quickly emerged from beneath the coop. Suddenly oblivious to the sound of the weed whacker, they began munching merrily until they had gobbled up all of the green stuff. Priorities have to be set in life. As far as "the girls" are concerned, voracious appetites always top the list.

Hen Chronicles: The nasty weather makes way for spring

After two days of raw, windy, rainy weather that bore no resemblance to spring as it should be, today dawned calm and sunny here in central Maine, with the promise of similar gifts in the days ahead.

Our hens took notice.

Snow, Nellie and Hope raced out of the coop at dawn with an extra spring in their step, and quickly dug into their breakfast while I cleaned the coop. Later, as I went about the business of folding and removing the large tarp that has covered their pen since Saturday night, "the girls" all gathered at the front of the pen and watched attentively as daylight flooded in.

Nellie then returned to the coop and planted herself in the nest box, presumably to go about the business of laying an egg. Hope staged a triumphal walk around the pen. And Snow, the oldest of the hens, sat herself down and quietly gazed off to the east, as the sun embraced her world.

The experts say that chickens, like other birds, have better eyesight than we do, that they can even see colors which are beyond our imagining. That must have made for an especially glorious sunrise.