Hen Chronicles: Saying goodbye

It’s been quite an adventure, full of joy and mishap, wonder and heartache, contentment and aggravation.

And now it’s over.

After we joined the ranks of backyard chicken keepers back in April 2012, our tiny flock shrunk and grew and shrunk again, eventually leaving us with Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds.

Hope, who had been ill for some time, died overnight Friday or Saturday. I found her in the coop at dawn Saturday, when I went out to feed "the girls." Nellie, who always talked up a storm when she saw or heard me approach with breakfast, sat silently beside Hope’s body. For reasons which I don't need to go into, we eventually decided in the difficult hours following Hope’s death that we could not keep or save Nellie, who was euthanized later that day.

The coop is empty.

My wife Liz and I learned a lot about chickens during this chapter in our lives, but we always strove to learn more about this underappreciated species. It was an educational journey that continued until the end. We loved our hens and cherished their company, even when one or another of them slashed her comb in a freak accident that splattered blood all over the place, or became egg bound, or suffered a prolapsed oviduct (don't ask!), or grew a rooster-like leg spur that had to be filed down weekly, or needed to have a beak trimmed or a toenail clipped or a fanny washed.

We enjoyed their antics. We took pleasure in their chatter. We marveled at their beauty and intelligence, the uniqueness of their personalities, the complexity of their relationships, the mysteries of their physiology, and their ability to do something as simply magical as laying an egg.

And over the years, we grieved their loss.

Snow and Nala and Stella, our original threesome, have been gone for some time. And now Nellie and Hope, who joined us as pullets in May 2013 when they arrived together in a cardboard box via USPS, are gone as well. As Thanksgiving draws near, we are very grateful to have shared all of their lives.

Hen Chronicles: The joy of scratch

Chickens are talkative critters. Not only do they talk a lot, but they have many different things to say. In recent decades, researchers have documented more than two dozen distinct chicken vocalizations. Anyone who owns chickens is familiar with their various warning sounds, their contented clucking, and the ear-splitting squawks announcing that someone in their midst has just laid an egg.

Our two Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope, aren’t quite as talkative as they once were. For one thing, they’re getting up there, so “the girls” are slowing down in various ways. If they’re still with us come January, they’ll be seven years old by then, which is a far bigger deal for a hen than it would be for a dog or a cat.

No one familiar with chickens would, upon meeting Nellie and Hope, mistake them for the proverbial spring chickens.

Still, Nellie remains more talkative than Hope, and there’s one sound, in particular, that Nellie only makes in one situation. The girls love scratch, which is a mixture of grains that are yummy but apparently not very nutritious. Processing scratch can increase a chicken’s body heat, so some experts recommend forgoing scratch in the summer, when it’s important to protect chickens from overheating.

For these reasons, I only give our hens scratch in small amounts and in cold weather, to help them warm up. So I mixed in some scratch with their regular feed first thing this morning, as I did yesterday as well. The hens must be able to smell scratch from a distance, because on both days Nellie emitted staccato, high-pitched chirps even before I unlatched the coop door to release the girls into the pen.

Nellie always “speaks” this way for scratch, but never for any other reason. Which makes me wonder what else, after all these years, I haven’t heard her say because she didn’t have just the right reason to say it.

Hen Chronicles: Enjoying their companionship, while it lasts

Keeping chickens brings its share of aggravation and heartache, perhaps even more if it involves a small flock whose members you treat as pets.

Since my wife Liz and I first acquired hens back in 2012, we have lost two chickens to disease and a third to problems stemming from age. That last death was especially difficult because it involved Snow, a boisterous Plymouth Rock who oozed personality. When I brought her to the vet to be euthanized two years ago, I held her in my arms as Snow — once so bossy and exuberant — quietly slipped away.

We have only two hens now: Nellie and Hope, Rhode Island Reds who hatched in January 2013. They, too, have seen their share of problems lately.

Hope has had a growth in her chest for several months. A veterinarian who examined her in May suspected it might be a tumor that is likely to claim her life before this coming winter is done and gone. And now we’re combating an infestation of mites that probably were introduced to ”the girls” by wild birds or other critters making their rounds in the backyard, where our coop and pen are located. We seem to be winning that battle, though.

Maybe it’s because of such problems, not despite them, that I enjoy dealing with the hens as much as I do. Nellie and Hope still love life. They’re still up to the challenge. By the time I get out to the coop at dawn, they’re at the large window on the east side, anxiously waiting for me to release them into the pen.

Both hens eagerly dig into their breakfast. Later in the day, they dance in anticipation when they see me approaching with mealworms or dandelion greens or kale or berries. Nellie has been laying eggs regularly again this year, which is somewhat unusual for a hen her age.

Whether by choice or infirmity,”the girls” don’t hop up to the roost to sleep anymore, but snuggle together in a nest box that’s really only big enough for one hen, yet somehow accommodates two. The lives of animals, like the lives of humans, are fragile, troubled and transitory. So we savor their presence, while we can.

Hen Chronicles: Hot town, summer in the city . . . .

We don’t tend to get dangerously hot summer weather here in northern New England. Ninety degrees is “wicked hot” by our standards; when the temperature rises higher than that, we really take notice.

So when temps here in central Maine hit 95 degrees one day last weekend, with a heat index of 101, I got nervous. Not about myself, but about “the girls,” Nellie and Hope, our six-year-old Rhode Island Reds. Six isn’t exactly elderly for hens, but our duo aren’t spring chickens anymore either.

I learned years ago that keeping chickens cool in the summer can be more difficult than keeping them warm in the winter. Within reasonable limits, they do a pretty good job of coping with the cold, what with all those feathers, but they have a tougher time dealing with the heat.

Thanks to some tall vegetation east of the hens' pen, it remained shaded until late morning on July 20, the day in question. At that point, I raised an old patio umbrella over the pen, to shield it from the midday sun. As the day wore on and the temperature soared ever higher, Nellie seemed to be fine, but Hope began to show signs of discomfort, and possible distress. She panted, as overheated chickens do, and hid under the raised coop. Eventually, she all but stopped moving around, for extended periods of time. I wouldn’t say she was listless, but it was quite clear she was having a very bad day.

My wife Liz and I considered moving the hens into a small backup coop that we keep in the somewhat cooler garage as a sort of intensive care unit when a hen is sick or injured and needs to be isolated. But we decided that relocation might just exacerbate Hope’s problems, by creating more anxiety.

Instead, I tried various cooling tricks, such as hosing down the pen several times, and misting the hens with a spray bottle. I placed ice in their water bowl, covered portions of the pen with plywood, emptied a large bag of ice cubes in the pen, and gave the hens chunks of watermelon (which they like), to help keep them hydrated.

As 6 p.m. rolled around, Hope remained stationary and visibly uncomfortable, and we again considered moving the hens into the garage. But suddenly, almost as if someone had flipped a switch, Hope bounced back. Her behavior returned to normal and the crisis, if that’s what it was, passed. The weather has been more seasonable since then, and she has not shown renewed signs of stress from the heat.

But what of the future? As climate change worsens and our weather becomes ever more extreme and erratic, the human race won’t be the only affected species. We'd have to be blind not to realize that the denizens of the animal kingdom, including our pets and livestock, will suffer as well.

Hen Chronicles: Coping with challenges

During our seven years of keeping chickens, I’ve found it to be a rewarding and entertaining hobby, thanks to the beauty, intelligence and quirks of our feathered pets. (Plus the fresh eggs, of course.) But life becomes a bit more complicated when things go wrong.

More than a month ago, one of our two Rhode Island Reds — Hope — developed a deformity. Her chest expanded, becoming more pronounced than normal. I took her to a veterinarian who not only treats chickens but has some of her own.

As is often the case when chickens take ill, there was no simple, obvious explanation for Hope’s condition. The vet speculated that Hope might have an obstruction because of something she ate, or she might have a tumor, which could be either benign or cancerous. We returned home with instructions to change Hope’s diet for several weeks, to see if that made any difference. But the long-term prognosis was not encouraging. Hope and Nellie are both more than six years old, which the vet described as the upper end of middle age. She stated matter of factly that, even if Hope survives her current dilemma, she probably won’t make it through another winter.

So, for the past month we’ve been keeping a close eye on Hope. The obstruction or growth or whatever it is hasn’t shrunk, but neither has it grown any larger. Perhaps more importantly, Hope still has a good quality of life. She has a voracious appetite and gets around perfectly well. She is alert and bright-eyed and interested in her surroundings.

I suppose Hope could die tomorrow. Or she may deteriorate so badly that she has to be euthanized. Yet I feel relief, even a momentary burst of joy, when I go out to the coop at dawn and watch her flap her wings as she heads down the ramp from the coop to the pen. Instead of obsessing over what the future may bring, I’m grateful for the sight that greeted me this morning: a ravenous Hope taking a quick break from her breakfast to lift her head and stare at me for a moment, her beak slathered with mash.

Hen Chronicles: Putting the break back in breakfast?

Our two hens decided this morning that it was time to kick things up a notch as far as their breakfast offerings were concerned. Apparently, their diet of pellets and the occasional snack just wasn't cutting it.

So they ate an egg.

When I opened the coop door at dawn to let Nellie and Hope out into the pen, yolk coated their beaks as they busily pecked away at the bedding on the coop’s floor, to find every last yummy bit.

From time to time over the years, our hens have broken an egg on purpose, but that probably wasn’t the case this time around. Nestled in the bedding were the remains of a very soft, thin, rubbery shell. So the egg may well have broken as soon as it was laid, providing a culinary temptation that was too strong for our Rhode Island Reds to resist.

A rubbery shell may stem from a calcium deficiency, but I’ve been giving the hens crushed oyster shells as a dietary supplement, to prevent that. Nellie has been laying normal eggs regularly. As recently as yesterday, in fact. But Hope rarely, if ever, lays nowadays. Perhaps Hope is getting back into the game and is still tuning up the mechanism?

The hens aren’t talking, at least not to me. Maybe it’s time for a coop cam.

Hen Chronicles: Looking into a hen's eye, and what I saw there

Our small chicken coop stands on four wooden legs which elevate the coop a foot or so off the ground. The area beneath the coop is accessible to our two Rhode Island Red hens, Nellie and Hope, who like to hang out there to escape the sun on hot summer days. That under-the-coop opening is framed with chicken wire, to prevent us from having to ask why the chicken crossed the road.

A few days ago, I found myself on my knees right outside the coop as I patched up breaks in the wiring that runs along that opening. At the time, Nellie was in the coop, going about the business of laying an egg. But Hope, who seems to have retired from the laying game, was under the coop, paying close attention to what I was doing. Hope stood no more than a foot from my face, because I was working so low to the ground. She didn't "speak" or fidget or peck about in search of edible bugs, but stood perfectly still, staring at me. Hope and I were eye to eye, separated only by chicken wire.

Hope didn’t take her eye off me for quite some time, and I was reminded of something I’ve noticed many times over the years while in close proximity to a chicken. Although I had no idea what Hope was thinking during this intense and focused exercise in surveillance, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was looking into the eye of a sentient being, a sometimes baffling but obviously intelligent creature.

In The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (1928), Henry Beston wrote: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals . . . . For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” 

Hen Chronicles: Another chicken-keeping first under our belts

Keeping chickens encourages self-reliance, at least to a degree. My wife Liz and I have learned how to deal with various problems since we got started in 2012, including bloody accidents. But we reached another milestone today when Hope, one of our two Rhode Island Reds, needed to have her beak trimmed.

One of the many things about which I was blissfully ignorant when we first acquired hens is that, sometimes, part of a chicken’s beak will start growing, and continue to do so until it gets so long that it threatens the bird’s ability to peck and eat. Some time ago, the upper portion of Hope’s beak began to get longer. At first, it struck me as a harmless oddity. But over time, it got longer and longer, eventually reaching a point at which it began to curve downward.  A bit of research revealed that this is not all that unusual. Intervention was recommended, while Hope was still able to eat normally.

We could have tried trimming the beak with a nail file, but Hope’s condition seemed to call for something more. Digging out the clippers that we occasionally use to trim the hens’ nails, Liz and I headed out to the coop first thing this morning to set things right. I’d watched an online video of what looked like a stressed and agitated chicken getting a beak trim, so I feared the worst. But we couldn’t see making a 17-mile drive to the vet’s office for what the experts describe as a simple procedure. The key is not to cut far enough into the beak to cause injury, pain and bleeding.

I removed Hope from the coop and held her securely. Liz took hold of Hope’s head to keep it stable, raised the clippers to Hope’s beak, took aim, and snipped the tip. Much to my surprise, Hope did not flinch or squirm or squawk or show any distress. In fact, she didn't even close her eyes. She sat quietly in my arms before and during the procedure. As soon as I put her back in the coop, she ran out into the pen and dug into her breakfast.

Liz and I both came away with the impression that Hope seemed to appreciate the trim, as if she somehow understood it was being done for her benefit. But that can’t be true. Comprehension and gratitude from a hen? Impossible! After all, as dismissive people like to say about poultry, “they’re only chickens.”

Hen Chronicles: Fun with chickens (he said facetiously)

I’ve learned a few things in the course of keeping chickens for seven years. But it wasn’t until this morning that I discovered it’s a bad idea to feed your hens when you have a loose bandage on your hand.

Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, eat outside, in a low rectangular pen that’s covered with chicken wire. The only way for a human to conveniently reach into the pen is through a hinged lid that runs across the top, at the north end. But there it was, at the inaccessible south end: a Band-Aid, just inside the chicken wire. I assume it slipped off my finger while I was placing food and water bowls in the north end of the pen and one of the mischievous beasties, having decided it was inedible, carried it over to the south end. For the hell of it.

Of course, the Band-Aid was just far enough from the wire to be unreachable, even with needle nose pliers. So I instructed “the girls” to leave the bandage where it was (like that would do any good), trudged back to the garage, and retrieved a thin garden stake. The Band-Aid was still in place when I got back, so I stuck the stake through the wire. After a few failed attempts, I managed to slowly drag the bandage right up to the enclosure, where I was able to reach in with two fingers and tease it out.

The two witnesses to this delicate maneuver probably found it entertaining. Or so I assume. Although Nellie and Hope paid close attention to my antics, they wore their best poker faces.

Hen Chronicles: The ultimate sign that spring has sprung

It isn’t really a miracle, of course. But when you finally spot a fresh egg in the coop for the first time in six months, it certainly feels like one.

Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, hatched in January 2013, which makes them over six years old. At least one expert whose work I’ve consulted says hens generally stop laying, on a regular basis anyway, at about six years of age, although they may continue to produce eggs sporadically after that.

So we would have been disappointed, but not surprised, if Nellie and Hope had called it quits in the laying department. In fact, there’s some reason to believe Hope hasn’t laid since last spring. The final egg of 2018 — presumably, Nellie’s — made its appearance in September, with nary a sighting since then.

Until this morning.

It’s usually an exaggeration when people say something startled them so much they did a double take, but I did just that when I lifted my “poop bucket” into the coop at dawn, so I could clean things up. I’ve grown so accustomed to finding nothing but waste among the pine shavings on the coop floor that I came within an inch or two of depositing the bucket right on top of . . . an egg!

I'm not getting my hopes up too much. It probably will be a slow year for eggs, what with the age of our two hens. But as today's little "miracle" made clear, at least one of "the girls" hasn’t given up just yet.

Hen Chronicles: Creature discomforts

Our dogs —  Aquinnah, a chocolate lab, and Martha, a pit bull mix — have no direct contact with our chickens, but the two species are well aware of one another. The coop is located at the back end of our relatively large city lot, and in the winter, when it’s often impractical to take the dogs for longer walks, they sometimes make a circuit in the yard that takes them behind the coop.

The fascinating aspect of this, at least to me, is how the animals involved react differently to such close encounters of the critter kind.

At 85-pounds, Aquinnah (aka, Quinn) probably looks quite intimidating to our two Rhode Island Reds, Nellie and Hope. And it doesn’t help matters that Quinn, who is leashed, always tries to lunge toward the hens whenever he gets within a few feet of their housing. Invariably, the hens react to these attempted incursions by running up the ramp that leads from the pen to the coop, often with a flapping of wings to give them a bit more propulsion.

It’s another story entirely when Martha makes her rounds. For one thing, she only weights about 40 pounds, maybe less. More importantly, she shows no aggression toward the hens, and only the slightest interest in them. Not surprisingly, then, Nellie and Hope are equally indifferent to her presence in their neighborhood, and go about their business without any of the Chicken Little antics they display when Quinn’s around.

I’ve seen plenty of photos of dogs guarding free-range chickens in what appears to be a perfectly peaceful arrangement. I suppose Martha could have been trained to perform such a role, if our hens were allowed to run free in the partially fenced yard. Quinn, on the other hand, probably would have been stripped of his badge on his first day of work after jumping in to try for a quick snack, policing responsibilities be damned.

Hen Chronicles: Baby it's cold outside (chicken edition)

My wife Liz and I are coming up on seven years of chicken keeping, all of them here in central Maine, yet I still fret over how “the girls” will fare when the temperature drops to zero, or lower.

I know, from experience and from my reading, that chickens, like other species of birds, are adapted to coping with winter weather. If they are well-feathered and well-fed, and if they have a dry coop that shelters them from the wind and the snow, they should do just fine. In fact, experts say it’s more difficult to protect chickens from the worst summer heat than from winter’s chill.

Still, we think of our chickens as pets. No responsible pet owner would leave a cat or a dog outside in single-digit temps. Of course, birds are different, and technically, the hens aren't outside. Yet I find myself making periodic adjustments to the coop as I try to give Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, a bit of an edge.

We don’t have a large walk-in coop attached to the house or garage, but rather a small, freestanding coop that’s only big enough for four chickens. (We have two right now.) The coop is not heated, because of the fire risk and the theory that heating a coop makes it difficult for chickens to adjust to outdoor temperatures during the day.

The interior of the coop isn’t insulated, but I compensate for that by stacking large bags of leaves against the exterior. I add extra bedding to the coop when it’s especially cold, to better insulate the floor, which is elevated about a foot off the ground. And I cover the metal roof with saddle blankets.

The thing that frustrates me the most is that chickens need ventilation, even at night. Otherwise, they run the risk of developing frostbite and respiratory problems if moisture builds up inside from their breathing and bodily functions. So I almost always leave a sliding window at least partially open overnight, ignoring my natural instinct to make the coop airtight on the coldest nights.

The last thing I saw when I locked the girls in last night, as the temperature outside continued its slide to an eventual low of four degrees, was the two hens snuggled up, wing to wing on the roost, sharing their body heat as they settled in. They always look comfortable and content in that setting (open window notwithstanding). Which reassures me — somewhat — that I’ve done right by them.