Hen Chronicles: Special greetings, but only once a year

I’m reasonably sure that chickens do not celebrate Christmas, either in the religious sense or in terms of rampant consumerism. (After all, they have no cash and no credit cards.) But our small corner of the world was so hushed when I went out to feed our two Rhode Island Reds at dawn, so tranquil and serene, that the long walk along the winding path from the garage to the coop at the back of our lot seemed almost magical.

Day in and day out, in the warmth of July and the snows of February, I always say good morning to "the girls" when they emerge from the coop first thing in the morning. But today, when each of the hens headed down the ramp and into the pen, I wished Nellie, and then Hope, a Merry Christmas. Somehow, it seemed fitting, even while talking to the humblest among us.

Hen Chronicles: Yes, even chickens are sentient creatures

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines sentient as responsive to or conscious of sense impressions; aware; finely sensitive in perception or feeling.

The first definition — recognizing information provided by the senses — obviously applies to chickens as well as to other species, including our own. So too the second definition. Chickens have excellent eyesight, for example, and they respond to the voices of people they know.

But does that third definition fit? Are chickens “finely sensitive in perception or feeling”?

Last week, Nellie, one of our two Rhode Island Red hens, was under the weather. She was lethargic on Monday and her appetite was off. The same was true the next day, and her behavior was sufficiently worrisome that I called a veterinarian to have Nellie checked out.

As it happened, the vet, whom we had consulted about our chickens in the past, could not see Nellie until Friday, so I made arrangements to bring her in then. By Wednesday, though, Nellie had improved, and she continued to do so on Thursday. I canceled the appointment, and am glad to report that, as of this morning, Nellie is behaving normally.

So what does all this have to do with the sentience of chickens? Here’s the thing. While she was unwell, Nellie spent quite a bit of time sitting around, in the coop or outside, in the pen. She moved from time to time, only to plant herself in a different spot. And through it all, whenever I went out to check on the patient, Hope, the other Rhode Island Red, was right by her side. Wherever Nellie chose to sit, Hope stayed with her, sentinel-like, always standing as close to the seated Nellie as she could get. Hope clearly saw that Nellie was behaving abnormally, and that fact concerned her.

So although I don’t claim to know if chickens are “finely sensitive,” clearly they are “sensitive in perception or feeling” to some degree and in some fashion. More so, I dare say, than many humans.

Hen Chronicles: Treating chickens like pets, even in winter

I suspect that people who keep chickens as, you know, livestock, may not go through quite as many cold-weather gyrations as those of us who treat them as pets.

It was 7 degrees outside with a wind chill of 13 below when I headed out to release our two hens from their coop and feed them at 7 o’clock this morning. I knew from the outset that I’d be out there for a while.

Even though I strongly suspected that Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, would refuse to emerge from the coop, I placed the food and water bowls in the pen. For one thing, there was a dusting of snow in the pen, thanks to a squall that materialized late yesterday afternoon, before I could cover the pen with a tarp. Throw in the stiff breeze that blew first thing this morning and it made for a perfect storm of chicken recalcitrance, because Nellie and Hope hate both the snow and the wind.

Noetheless, I unlatched the coop door, on the off chance that “the girls” might surprise me and venture forth. Hope remained on the roost, but Nellie peeked out. She caught the wind on her face, saw the snow in the pen, and quickly retreated inside.

So I got to work, adjusting the tarp that I had placed on the pen last night and adding additional tarps to the sides of the pen, as buffers against the wind. The hens weren't buying it, though, and remained in the coop. I retrieved their food and water bowls from the pen and placed them in the coop, despite the risk that one of them could knock over the water bowl and make a mess.

There's work yet to be done after I warm up a bit. I'll sweep aside some of the snow in the pen, to try to entice the hens outside. If Nellie and Hope are kind enough to vacate the premises for a while, I'll then remove their overnight "deposits" from the coop.

The chicken mind is not the easiest thing to comprehend, so I have no idea if “the girls” appreciate my efforts. Whether they do or not, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I try to do my best by them. After all, they are pets, not livestock.

Hen Chronicles: For our chickens, the makeover continues

Julie Gauthier and Rob Ludlow report in their book, Chicken Health For Dummies, that a chicken has between 7,500 and 9,000 feathers. I’ll take their word for it, but lately, it seems like a gross understatement.

Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, began molting two months ago, and they’re still going at it. Countless discarded feathers materialize in the pen every day, and more turn up in the coop every night. The process has waxed and waned since it began in early September, but this annual ritual doesn't come to a complete stop until it’s over. New feathers emerge to replace the old ones in a spotty, unsightly, time-consuming exercise.

Judging by the largely refeathered state of “the girls,” I’d guess their molts will continue for at least another month. Gauthier and Ludlow note that a molt can last anywhere from six weeks to six months, “depending on the bird.” We’ve never seen a six-month molt, but three months or more is not at all uncommon.

The hens seemed put out when their old feathers began to drop. Their appetites took a hit, and they made their rounds gingerly, as if they were, well, walking on eggshells. But they recovered within a couple of weeks, and are now eating well and behaving normally.

We still aren’t handling them, though, because they dislike being picked up while molting. In fact, it can be dangerous to do so. The emerging “pin feathers” poke through the skin encased in temporary shafts that contain blood. Break a pin feather or two before the new feathers open and significant bleeding can result.

In the end, it will have been worth the wait. Nellie and Hope will look fresh and renewed, with a slight alteration in the coloring and patterns of their feathers. Their makeover will leave them better-equipped to cope with the falling temperatures, albeit not as quickly and easily as ordering a new winter coat from L.L. Bean would have done.

Hen Chronicles: And so, the annual feather toss begins

I found five rust-red feathers in the coop this morning, after our two Rhode Island Red hens, Nellie and Hope, sauntered out into the pen for breakfast.

Chickens lose the occasional feather throughout the year, so today's discovery is no big deal, in and of itself. But with autumn right around the corner, this was no isolated incident. One of the hens has begun her annual molt, which involves discarding old feathers to make room for a new set of duds.

Eyeballing the hens this morning, both of them still appeared to be fully feathered, but that means nothing. The loss of a few feathers would not be immediately apparent on a chicken. More telling was the fact that Nellie now has one feather on her back that’s askew. It points upward instead of resting flat, which probably means it will fall out soon.

So Nellie is molting. With any luck, Hope won’t be far behind, although the timing of such things can be unpredictable. The main question now is whether Nellie will have a soft molt, which would drag on slowly over a period of months, or a hard molt, in which all of the feathers would fall out almost simultaneously and be replaced in short order.

Nellie recently stopped laying, which may have happened because the days are growing shorter or because she felt a molt coming on. None of the hens we’ve owned over the last six years has laid any eggs while molting. Overall, though, the hens seem to take molting in stride, with little change in their behavior.

Just don’t touch them while the process is underway. As old feathers drop like leaves in an October breeze and countless new “pin feathers” poke through the skin, physical contact with anyone is the farthest thing from a chicken’s mind. Hands off is the guiding principle, for reasons that, at least to the molting chicken, seem perfectly obvious.

Hen Chronicles: Filing a complaint with the front office

Our two hens and I have what is normally an unchanging early-morning routine. I head out to the coop at dawn, place food and water in the adjacent pen, unlatch the coop door, and greet “the girls” as they scamper down into the pen for breakfast. While they eat, I clean the coop.

Yesterday morning, I had to break with tradition in order to drive my wife Liz from our home in Augusta, Maine, to Portland, so she could catch a train. The schedule required that we leave the house well before sunrise. And because of the distance involved — 60 miles each way — I knew I wouldn’t get back home until long after the rising sun told Nellie and Hope it was time to get up and head outside. They become positively apoplectic if I show up even a few minutes late to release them, bouncing around in the locked coop like deranged inmates. I couldn't leave them in that state for more than an hour while I drove back home.

So I compromised. Before Liz and I left the house at 5 a.m. or so, when it was still quite dark out, I placed food and water in the pen. I then unlatched the coop door, taking pains not to create a ruckus because the hens were still roosting and asleep. I knew that, once I returned home more than two hours laters, Nellie and Hope would be out and about, and possibly none the wiser.

I was half right. Pulling into the driveway about 7:15, I could see that the hens were in the pen, as expected. But when I went out back to greet them and depoop the coop, both hens were somewhat agitated. They weren't clucking but cackling, as chickens do when they're displeased. The most likely explanation was that they knew their day had not begun as it normally does and they were letting me know they resented the change in their routine.

Sorry, girls. The management sincerely apologizes for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope you enjoy the rest of your stay. 

Hen Chronicles: Feeding chickens at the break of dawn is fun?

Every morning since April 2012, except when I've been out of town, I’ve headed out at dawn to feed and water our chickens. During those six-plus years, our tiny flock has fluctuated in size from four hens to, currently, two.

The last of our three original hens died last year. At the moment, we’re left with Nellie and Hope, Rhode Island Reds that hatched in January 2013. Four months later, we bought them from a hatchery in the midwest, which shipped them out to us — together — via USPS.

Tending to “the girls” first thing in the morning is easier, say, in May than in February. But I like doing it even on the coldest, snowiest Maine mornings. There are several aspects of this routine that I find satisfying, including its predictable regularity, which is immune to whatever fresh hell fills the headlines every day.

I enjoy seeing the hens bounce around impatiently at their coop’s east-side window if they’re already up when I arrive on the scene. If I show up early, I hear them jump down from the roost to the coop floor, where they land with a heavy, reassuring thud.

I enjoy unlatching the coop door and wishing “the girls” a good morning as they emerge from the coop and head down the ramp into the pen. Nellie almost always comes out first, followed, eventually, by sleepyhead Hope. I rub my hand along each hen’s soft, feathered back as she emerges. Nellie likes this just fine; Hope, not so much.

I enjoy watching the hens dig into their feed, usually with ravenous fervor, as soon as they get down to the pen. I especially like seeing Nellie and Hope, who get along very well, chowing down side by side at their bowl when they aren’t pecking at the handful of pellets that I’ve scattered on the ground.

I enjoy the chickens’ varied vocalizations. (Ornithologists have identified more than two dozen distinct chicken calls.) There's the plaintive sound they make when they think I’m taking too long to release them from the coop, the happy cluck-cluck once they’re outside, and the high-pitched chirping with which they great an unexpected treat. The hens utter an apprehensive warning when they spot a bird of prey high overhead, or a neighborhood cat that has wandered too close for their liking.

And I enjoy squatting down to watch “the girls” for a few minutes (even in winter), studying their mannerisms and the patterned beauty of their wing feathers. That’s when I remind myself that although chickens lack the aerial gymnastics of a hummingbird, or the nobility of an eagle, or the predatory skills of a hawk, or the melodious song of a wren, they are lovely, intelligent, individualistic creatures in their own right, not some “lowly” species in the constellation of birds.

Every day at dawn, I get to hang out with the closest living relative of the T. rex. How cool is that?

Hen Chronicles: A special bond between two hens?

When my wife wife Liz and I spot either of our two hens in the position “modeled” at left (by a chicken I found on Google), we joke that the hen in question is in “tea cozy mode,” because the posture conjures up images of a teapot cover.

Our Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope, frequently sit like this in their pen and sometimes in the coop, especially on pleasant days that are sunny but not especially hot or humid. It seems to be a relaxed pose, suggesting that the hen is calm and content.

But until this morning, I don’t think I’d ever seen our “girls’ in precisely the same configuration that greeted me when I went outside to do some yard work. Nellie and Hope were both “doing a tea cozy” at the same time, which is not unusual. What caught my eye is that I saw them in profile, sitting face-to-face, completely immobile with their beaks a mere inch or so apart.

I didn’t bother running into the house to grab my camera because I knew “the girls,” who believe humans exist for the sole purpose of feeding them, would jump up expecting a snack as soon as I got close enough to get a shot of them. You’ll have to take my word for it that they looked for all the world like something off the front of a greeting card designed to celebrate friendship.

Whether chickens are capable of love is anybody’s guess. But they certainly can be affectionate, as our duo made clear today. These two routinely sleep wing to wing, even in the warmest weather. Here's a possible explanation. At one time, Nellie and Hope were part of a flock of four hens, but a death in 2015, and another last year, has left them alone with one another. Perhaps that has created a special bond between them.

Hen Chronicles: Surviving a brutal heat wave

The experts say it’s more important to keep chickens cool during the summer than warm during the winter, because they can cope with the cold far better than with the heat.

I’ve found this to be true over the years. Feathers are a great asset in the winter, but quite the opposite during a heat wave. "The girls" obviously are more content when the thermometer drops to 5 degrees than when it spikes to 95. 

So this has not been a great week for our two Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope. For days on end, the temperature hovered in the 70-degree range at dawn, and topped 90 within hours, even reaching 97 degrees on one especially brutal day.

The hens survived the ordeal, but not comfortably. They panted, as chickens do when they’re warm. They ate less than usual. They did not move around a lot, spending much of their time in the shade under the elevated coop.

I did what I could to help them, by covering portions of the pen with plywood to block the sun, and by adding ice cubes to their drinking water. I even placed frozen bottles of water in our small coop before the hens went to bed, to help cool it down a bit.

By last night, everything had changed. It was breezy and cool at dusk, which is chicken bed time, and for the first time in close to a week "the girls" appeared to be happy on their roost. Today dawned at 54 degrees, with a projected high in the 70s, and the hens raced out into their pen this morning. Chickens can’t smile, of course, but if they could, they would.

Hen Chronicles: Is there a chicken doctor in the house?

The popularity of backyard chickens is said to be on the rise, and if the proliferation of books, specialized magazines, online poultry resources and newspaper stories is any measure, that would seem to be true.

Yet one thing I’ve learned in six years of keeping chickens is that it’s difficult to find veterinarians who are willing to care for these birds, even in a state like Maine, where my wife Liz and I live with our tiny flock of two Rhode Island Reds.

I was reminded of this recently when Nellie and Hope, our hens, required care that was beyond our homegrown expertise. Fortunately, we have access to a diverse rural veterinary practice that treats both large and small animals, including chickens.

We’re very grateful for this facility, but there is a downside. It’s 18 miles from home. That’s nowhere near as convenient as the much shorter trips we make when our cats and dogs need professional help. Yet there are no vets closer to home who work with chickens.

So what accounts for this dearth of poultry-friendly vets?

For one thing, chickens are nowhere near as popular among pet lovers as other animals are. Precise figures are hard to come by, but the Los Angeles Times reported last year that fewer than 2 percent of American households raise chickens. That number is expected to rise, but chickens won’t jump to the top of the pecking order anytime soon. About 44% of all American households have a dog, and 35% have a cat, according to the American Pet Products Association. 

And although I can’t prove it, I suspect that a significant number of chicken owners never seek veterinary care for their birds. (This is what I think of as "hey, they're only chickens" syndrome.) So if the demand for such care is not all that high, simple economics would dictate that the supply will be limited. As a veterinary technician told us during our recent visit, the chicken is one critter that would-be vet techs don’t have to bone up on during their training.

“This is a learning experience for me,” the tech said as we waited for the veterinarian. On average, she said, this particular animal hospital sees only one chicken per week. So as much as it may ruffle the feathers of some poultry fans, when it comes to veterinary priorities, the furry set still has the upper paw. And no amount of clucking is going to change that.

Hen Chronicles: The tale of a hen who may think she’s a rooster

I didn’t give it too much thought when Hope, one of our two Rhode Island Red hens, suddenly stopped laying two years ago, when she was barely more than three years old.

She did seem a bit young to be calling it quits — Nellie, our other Rhode Island Red, still produces eggs several times a week, even though she and Hope are the same age, But chickens are individuals, after all, and Hope was behaving normally in every other respect. So at the time, I chalked up the seemingly premature arrival of “henopause” to some isolated physiological quirk.

Except that that wasn’t the end of the story. Hope had begun a metamorphosis, and although it wasn't nearly as dramatic as Gregor Samsa’s, it was noteworthy in its own right.

As I said, the first sign of this was Hope’s “decision” to get out of the laying game. Then, a relatively short time later, her comb — the spiky red appendage atop a chicken’s head — began to grow, both in size and in the brightness of its coloring. Finally, Hope developed a spur on the back of her left leg.

She was looking more and more like a rooster.

Hope remains a bit smaller than Nellie, and she hasn’t belted out any cock-a-doodle-doos. (Yet!) But the large comb seemed out of place for a hen. And the spur, in particular, is something that is more commonly found in roosters than in hens.

I thought I was reading too much into all of this, until yesterday. That’s when we took Hope to a veterinarian because the spur had grown very long and it curved back toward the leg. We had been filing the tip of the spur every week to prevent it from reaching the leg, but when Hope molts later this year to replace her old feathers with new ones — a months’ long process — it will be impractical and potentially harmful to pick her up for this weekly ritual. While we waited for Hope's new feathers to fill in, the spur would continue to grow, unchecked. A radical intervention was called for, sooner rather than later.

The vet, who has chickens of her own and has been practicing veterinary medicine for decades, marveled at the spur, the size and eye-popping color of Hope’s comb, and the fact that she stopped laying at a relatively young age. As she prepared to cut back the spur to a nubbin (yes, there was blood, and cauterization), the vet offered a decidedly contemporary assessment of Hope’s transformation: “She’s a transgender chicken!”

Hen Chronicles: There certainly was a lot of blood

Normally, putting the hens to bed for the night is a tranquil, pleasant routine. By the time I get out to the coop, Nellie and Hope are up on the roost, so all I have to do is lock them in, to protect them from predators.

Normally. 

The scene that greeted me last night was anything but normal. Nellie was standing on the coop floor, sounding upset. Her left foot was bleeding. The roost was streaked with blood. Good-sized patches of the coop's  bedding were "painted" a bright red. Racing back to the house, I filled Liz in. Once we got to the coop, we removed Nellie so Liz could examine her while I held her.

At first, it seemed as though Nellie had at least two open wounds, but on closer examination, it became clear that she had broken one toenail. What was left of the nail was bleeding profusely, but once Liz identified the source she applied cornstarch, which acts as a coagulant.

Initially, the cornstarch seemed to have no effect. It took a lot of patience, a lot of time and a lot of cornstarch to stanch the bleeding, but it finally slowed, and eventually stopped. We thought of isolating Nellie in a separate enclosure overnight, but chickens are social animals and we only have the two Rhode Island Red hens right now. Each would be agitated if separated from the other. So I removed and replaced the bloody pine shavings and washed the blood from the roost. We carefully placed Nellie on the roost beside Hope. We were not at all sure what we would find in the morning. Would the wound reopen? Would Nellie lose even more blood than she had already? I tried not to imagine the worst-case scenario.

The hens were not up and waiting at the window when I went out to feed them at dawn. That was very unusual. But when I placed food and water in the pen, I heard one hen, and then the other one, jump down from the roost to the floor.

As always, Nellie was the first to emerge from the coop when I opened the door. She wasn’t bleeding, although she had bled a bit during the night, leaving a sizable red spot in the bedding beneath the perch. She walked slowly at first, and her comb was paler than normal. But she did not limp, and she began eating fairly quickly. She even laid a larger-than-normal egg later in the morning. It seemed the crisis had passed.

Readers who do not own chickens as pets may shake their heads and mumble. “Geez, it’s only a chicken, for crying out loud.” But when a pet is hurt or sick, does the species really matter? If a child’s guinea pig and an adult’s champion Springer Spaniel are wounded, is the child any less fretful than the adult, simply because her pet is such a "humble" creature? 

Hen Chronicles: Breaking the rules

It’s easy, when thinking about chicken behavior, to assume that the rules of the game are hard-and-fast, and therefore equally applicable to one and all. Easy, but wrong, because each hen, like each person, is an individual.

I was reminded of this fact while mulling the egg-laying behavior of our two hens, Nellie and Hope. More about them in a minute.

The consensus among experts seems to be that hens, once they start laying at about six months of age or so, are most productive during their first years of life. After that, their productivity drops, and often stops entirely.

“A healthy, well-cared-for hen should lay well (nearly daily when she's not molting, broody, too hot or not getting enough hours of daylight) for about two to three years,” according to the Fresh Eggs Daily web site, “and then her production will start to taper off.”

True enough, but egg laying may offer the ultimate proof that individual differences are an important fact of life on Planet Chicken.

Nellie and Hope are Rhode Island Reds. Both were hatched in January 2013. Both were shipped to us at the same time from the same hatchery. They arrived as pullets, by mail, in May 2013, sharing a ventilated box.

So you might think these two chickens would be poster hens for consistency in the laying department, but you’d be wrong. Sure enough, both began laying in the summer of 2013, and continued to do so on a predictable basis until the summer of 2016.

That’s when Hope, for no obvious reason other than, possibly, age, simply stopped laying. The number of eggs she has produced in the two years since then could be counted on one hand, yet she appears to be perfectly healthy in all respects.

Nellie, on the other hand, remains a good layer, even though she is now more than five years old. At this time of year, with its greater exposure to daylight, she produces an impressive number of eggs every month. In fact, she rarely goes more than a day without laying, and often lays two or three days in a row, sometimes even four days at a stretch.

So both “girls” have defied convention. Hope might have been expected to continue laying through this point in her life, albeit at a slower pace than before. Instead, she has shut things down. And Nellie, at her age, might have been expected to lay fewer eggs than she did initially. Instead, her production line is humming along at a good clip.
 

When it comes to rules, chickens know one thing as well as we humans do: they're meant to be broken.

Hen Chronicles: Wasn't that a mighty storm?

If there’s one thing chickens do not like, in addition to loud, sudden noises, it’s strong winds.

The wind was kicking up such a racket during the night that it woke me up at 3:30 this morning. By the time I went out to release “the girls” from their coop at 5:45 it was still blowing up a storm, so I figured Nellie and Hope would be none too happy.

After I placed their feed and water bowls in the pen, I unlatched the coop door, anticipating protests. Nellie, one of our two Rhode Island Reds, surprised me by cooperating. She headed down the ramp and made a beeline for the food bowl.

But Hope was another matter.

Approaching the open door ever so slowly, she tentatively stuck her head out. Tilting it to one side, she eyed the sky with a wary look before retreating back into the coop. She emerged moments later, only to make a quick about-face and head back inside while I was still removing last night's “deposits” from the pine shavings that blanket the coop floor.

Finally, she went back out yet again, and parked herself next to Nellie in front of the food bowl. Hunger had trumped anxiety. At least for a few minutes.

Hen Chronicles: The early bird gets . . . impatient!

It’s a good thing I’m an early riser. It may still be a bit nippy first thing in the morning, but spring has arrived, and our hens know it.

Gone are the days when the sun — and the chickens —  rose at 7, or 6:45, or 6:30. Even before I reached the coop at 6:15 this morning, I could hear Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, bouncing around inside, desperate to get out into the pen, and breakfast.

By the time “the girls” spotted my approach, they were pecking at the east-side window of the henhouse in a frantic bid for freedom.

And it isn’t just the earlier start to the day that marks the change of seasons. Egg production is up, thanks to more hours of daylight. By the 19th of this month, we already had collected more eggs in April than during the entire month of March.

The hens are getting up earlier, working harder and staying up later than they have in months. They are livelier and more active than they have been for some time; comfortable, content. And, much to their delight, they’re getting more snacks too.

There were no afternoon treats to be had during the winter, because the chickens went to bed so early. Now, it’s mealworms late in the morning and lettuce (or other greens) in the afternoon. Sometimes the lettuce even comes with a side order of plain yogurt, a favorite that drives the hens into a feeding frenzy.
 
At this time of year, life is good on Planet Chicken, even if dawn breaks a bit earlier every day.

Hen Chronicles: Spring has sprung on Planet Chicken

Chickens, like humans, are creature of habit. But unlike humans, they are especially inflexible about their bedtime. When dusk begins to settle over our yard, Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, abandon their pen and troop up the ramp and into the coop for the night.

Except, occasionally, when spring fever sets in. For chickens, like humans, respond with bursts of enthusiasm to this time of rebirth and renewal.

During the winter months, Nellie and Hope routinely went to bed a bit early, as if giving up on the day. Now, though, they seem determined to savor every last minute of daylight. So they postpone their nocturnal routine until it finally gets dark enough for instinct to demand that they head inside.

As it began to grow dark one night last week, I could see, looking out from the house, that the pen was empty, supposedly meaning that “the girls” had retired for the night. Heading out to the coop, I prepared to close and latch the door, as I always do at dusk.

But a sudden movement stopped me in my tracks.

Looking every bit like a cartoon character that had sprung to life, Nellie suddenly appeared in the doorway, raced down the ramp at warp speed, and began feverishly pecking away at stray feed pellets on the ground. It reminded me of a child (or maybe an adult, but I won’t name any names) sneaking one last cookie before heading off to bed.

Moments later, Nellie realized it really was too late to be outside, and returned to the coop. My wife, Liz, then had to lift Nellie up to the roost, because it was too dark for her to get up there by herself. Nellie settled in happily next to Hope, and called it a night.

We associate springtime with songbirds, but they aren’t the only winged creatures who appreciate this particular change of seasons.

Hen Chronicles: "Get chickens," they said, "it will be fun!"

“Get some chickens,” owners always say. “They’re easy to take care of,” they insist. “It will be fun!”

We did get some chickens, back in 2012. Three hens. And we’ve had hens ever since; the original trio, then only two chickens, followed later by four, then three, and now two again. Sure enough, they have been easy to care for. Except when they aren’t. And, yes, it has been fun. Except when it isn’t.

Liz and I love Nellie and Hope, who are Rhode Island Reds. Hatched in January 2013, "the girls" arrived together, by mail, in May of that year, having been shipped to Augusta, Maine, by a hatchery in Iowa.

Usually, from day to day and week to week, Nellie and Hope pose no major challenges. But minor problems do present themselves, and with some regularity.

Let’s start with Saturday night. At dusk, when I went out to lock the hens in their coop for the night, Hope was perched on the roost, as expected. But Nellie, who should have been up there as well, was bouncing around on the floor of the coop, desperately trying to get to the roost but unable to do so.

This has happened before. Our theory is that, for whatever reason, Nellie sometimes waits too long to head for the roost, and by then, it's too dark to make the jump. (Chickens are eagle-eyed in the light but they have lousy nighttime vision.) Anyway, we knew the drill. I lifted the coop’s hinged roof and Liz held Nellie over the roost while she lowered her "landing gear."

At dawn on Sunday, Liz and I removed Hope from the coop for her weekly trim, in 10-degree weather. Hope has a spur jutting from the back of her left leg, like you’d find on a rooster but less frequently on a hen. The long spur curves back toward the leg and is constantly growing in length, so we trim the tip of it with a file every Sunday, to keep it blunt and under control. While I held Hope, who is quite calm during this procedure, Liz took aim at the spur with a nail file.

That job done, a surprise presented itself. “The girls” holed themselves up in the coop, instead of racing out to the pen for their breakfast, as they normally do first thing in the morning. Nellie was parked in the nest box (where she eventually laid an egg). And Hope, who never emerges first from the coop, decided to stay put inside until Nellie led the way out into the pen. Once the hens finally "left the building," I was able to clean the now-empty coop.

That’s when I discovered the blood. Bright red drops were scattered over the pine bedding on the coop’s floor. There wasn't a lot of blood, but blood is blood. Obviously, something was wrong.

Who was injured? Where? And why? At first, we figured Liz might have nicked Hope’s leg while filing the spur, but when I held Hope so Liz could examine her, what she saw initially made no sense at all. Hope was, in fact, the injured hen, but Liz found blood on her right foot. The spur is on the other leg.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out Hope had broken a toenail on her right foot. Hence the blood. The bleeding seemed to have stopped by then, but Liz liberally applied cornstarch, a clotting agent, just to play it safe.

“Get some chickens,” owners always say. “They’re easy to take care of,” they insist. “It will be fun!”

Hen Chronicles: Is it a "witch egg," or just a seasonal glitch?

Last year, our little flock’s winter break came to an end on March 11. That's when one of our hens laid the first egg of 2017.

This year, the return to work began a day earlier. Nellie, one of our two Rhode Island Reds, took to the nest box yesterday morning and left behind the offering that’s pictured below.

Size wise, it isn’t very impressive, coming in at no more than two inches in length, and perhaps a bit shorter than that. In fact, it may be the smallest egg we’ve seen in almost six years of keeping chickens. But it’s a clean, unblemished, hard-shelled egg.

More importantly, it’s a harbinger of better days to come as spring draws near.

We’ve encountered this sort of thing before when the hens resume laying after a hiatus of several months. It may take a little while for their "equipment" to ramp back up. But we haven’t cracked the egg yet, so only time will tell if it’s just a tiny egg or something else -- what’s sometimes called a fairy egg, which is a small egg with no yolk. Fairy eggs are typically laid by pullets (young hens) that are new to the game, or by older hens that are slowing down. Nellie and Hope turned five in January, so they are neither young nor ancient.

“Fairy eggs occur when the hen's body begins to form an egg before a yolk is released from her oviduct,” according to fresheggsdaily.com. “Therefore, only the white (albumen) is encased inside the shell.” That’s the scientific explanation, but folks had different ideas in the Middle Ages. Back then, yolk-less eggs were known as witch eggs (because they were thought to be satanic) or cock eggs (because they were thought to have been laid by roosters).

As a species, we may not be as advanced as we'd like to believe, but in some ways, at least, we are more enlightened than our ancestors.

A witch egg? Or just plain tiny?

Hen Chronicles: The pecking order remains on display

When you have only two chickens, as we do now, the pecking order isn’t very complicated. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

Our Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope, are the same age, the same size and two slightly different shades of the same color. They arrived at our house as pullets on the same day in 2013, in the same shipment from the same hatchery.

But despite such similarities, hens being hens, someone has to be “in charge,” at least ostensibly. That someone is Nellie, although Hope's rebelliousness kicks in from time to time.

A case in point. For some reason, Nellie decided recently that she doesn’t like to eat from my hand anymore. She’ll wolf down whatever Liz holds out for her, but she snubs me. Hope, though, enjoys pecking at any palm full of pellets, regardless of who happens to be at the other end.

So there I was one day this week, leaning low over the pen to let the hens (or hen) reach my open hand. Predictably, Nellie stood by and watched while Hope chowed down on the pellets I was holding. After a couple minutes of this, Nellie reached into my palm, grabbed one pellet and swallowed it. She then quickly turned aside and gave Hope a sudden (but harmless) peck of disapproval.

Nellie’s authoritarian message seemed clear: I’m the boss, and if I don’t want something, you shouldn’t either.  But that probably won't deter Hope the next time around.

Hen Chronicles: Well-equipped to cope with winter's worst

Even after six years of keeping chickens, there's one thing that never ceases to amaze me.

It was barely a hair above zero outside when I got up at 4:45 this morning. Decked out in their fleece-lined coats, the dogs were very efficient about "doing their biz," thanks to the cold weather. When 7 o'clock rolled around it was time for me to head out again, this time to release the hens from their coop and feed them.

I couldn't possibly have donned more vests, coats, scarves, etc., without completely immobilizing myself. Yet when I finally lugged the feed and water bowls out to “the girls,” Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, showed no signs of discomfort. Nellie peered through the small window above the coop door, waiting for me to let her out into the pen. Hope emerged moments later, and both hens dug into their breakfast with apparent indifference to this latest wintry indignity.

Chickens certainly are not immune from the cold. Nellie and Hope sometimes retreat into the coop during the day, to escape an icy wind, or to enjoy the sunlight pouring in through the east-side window. And they huddle together on the roost at night, wing to wing, sharing their body heat to keep one another warm.

Still, their ability to withstand whatever winter throws their way is remarkable. It was only a few weeks ago that they coped amazingly well with overnight temps of 15 below. They did so even with a partially open coop window that provided the ventilation they need while cooped up, to avoid the frostbite and respiratory problems that can be caused by excessive moisture in the coop.

My feeding and coop-cleaning duties completed, I hightailed it back to the house. Because whatever advantages we humans may have over chickens, a thick, head-to-tail covering of feathers is not one of them.