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: 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 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: 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: To eat or not to eat, that is the question

I’ve noticed several times over the years that our hens sometimes act in ways that can only mean one thing: They obviously have not read any of the reference books that purport to explain how chickens behave.

The latest case in point involves their appetite, or lack thereof. The experts say chickens need more feed in the winter because they require extra calories to keep themselves warm. At first, this proved to be the case with our little flock. But this winter, the hens have been eating less — not more — than they do during the warmer months.

I am inclined to worry about “the girls,” and this flouting of the rules has given me cause for concern. But on the plus side, Snow, Nellie and Hope do not appear to be underweight. They are behaving normally in all other respects. And they’ve certainly been eating enough of their feed to sustain themselves.

The irony is that, as the days grow longer and temperatures climb higher than they should be in February, our hens suddenly have developed heartier appetites than they had as recently as two weeks ago, when it was colder. For example, I had to give them extra feed yesterday afternoon because they had gobbled up the rations that had proved to be excessive in January.

So just as the hens reduced their consumption earlier this season, when they should have been eating more, now they are hungrier, even as unseasonably warm weather would suggest that they should be eating less.

I think the lesson, in these situations, is to view the experts as people who know a lot, but not everything. Like other animals, chickens are individuals. Perhaps their eating habits change as they age, and the reference books fail to take that into account. Or maybe some chickens, like some people, are plain old contrarians.

Hen Chronicles: A slipup and suddenly . . . supersized snacks!

We didn’t know quite what to expect following the Monstrous Mealworm Mess, but in the end, it proved to be more comical than catastrophic.

Any poultry owner will tell you that mealworms, which can be bought in bags of various sizes at Tractor Supply Co. and other outlets, are the No. 1 snack on Planet Chicken. Our three hens always recognize the bright red mealworm bag when I saunter out to the pen to give “the girls” their late-morning snack. They hop and strut and squawk excitedly until I toss these goodies into the pen, at which point the treats disappear almost as quickly as you can say “yum.”

We normally give Snow, Nellie and Hope three or four handfuls of mealworm each morning, which probably amounts to less than a cup. But things didn’t play out that way on Sunday, when Liz was on treats duty. Somehow, the mealworm bag fell over while it was atop the pen, and a flood of treats poured in through the chicken wire.

The chickens thought they had died and gone to hen heaven. They raced around the pen in disbelief, wolfing down mealworms as fast as their little beaks could grab them.

We didn’t know what would happen if the hens pigged out on such a supersized helping of mealworms, so Liz quickly tried to retrieve the treats. But we don’t have a walk-in pen, and it’s hard to remove anything quickly by reaching down into the pen through the opening on top. Liz did her best to keep the hens away from the largest pile of mealworms while she attempted to scoop them off the ground, and I helped out once I learned what had happened.

It was a losing proposition. We probably snagged far less than half of the surplus. The hens took care of the rest.

So what were the consequences?

After the hens gorged themselves on mealworms, their appetites fell off for the rest of the day. Much like a kid who ate far too much ice cream.

That night, “the girls” left some unusually large deposits in the coop. And I don’t mean bank deposits.

And the following day?

When Liz carried the mealworm bag out to the pen late Monday morning, Snow, Nellie and Hope became so excited that they let loose with the loudest, most raucous, most exuberant racket she has ever heard in more than four years of keeping chickens.

“It took me half a second” to figure out what was going on, Liz said later. “I realized they were looking at the bag, and hoping there was going to be a repeat performance.”

Alas, it was not to be. To quote the immortal Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: “You can’t always get what you want.” But without too much trying, “the girls” always get what they need.

Hen Chronicles: Guess who got the year's first strawberries

I picked the first four strawberries of the season yesterday from a patch that's located only a few feet from our chicken coop and pen. Well aware of what I was doing, the berry-loving hens gathered at the front of the pen and squawked most pitifully, as if they had not had a snack in months, perhaps years. So instead of eating the strawberries, or carrying them back to the house, I did what any well-trained servant should do. I gave the strawberries to "the girls." Perhaps it's time to take a hard look at my priorities.

Hen Chronicles: And to think it was all because of the rain

One of the most predictable things about chickens is that you don’t have to coax them into going to bed. Every day, without fail, our three hens abandon their pen at dusk and troop up the ramp to their coop, where they hop up onto their roost for the night.

Well, almost every day. On Sunday, the rules did not apply.

As twilight settled in, Snow, Nellie and Hope were still in the pen. Fifteen minutes later, they remained outside. Another 15 minutes passed, and “the girls” had yet to retire to the coop.

I didn’t want to wait any longer to lock them in for the night, so I headed out to try to figure out what was going on. First, I checked inside the coop. Was it wet as a result of that day’s rain? Had a mouse or some other stray critter found its way in? No on both counts. The coop was dry, and empty.

Then I turned my attention to the hens, which I should have done initially. The answer immediately revealed itself.

It had been raining, off and on, for several hours, so the bricks that surround the coop and the pen, forming a mini patio of sorts, were soaked. Not surprisingly, the slick brickwork on the east side of the pen sported several slugs.

I learned years ago that chickens view slugs as a delicacy, the finest kind of delectable morsel. All three hens had gathered along the east side of the pen, side by side, where they were trying to figure out how to snag a particularly large slug that sat just beyond their beaks, outside the chicken wire. When I flicked the slug into the bushes, the hens did an about-face and headed straight for the coop.

If there’s one thing that can keep chickens up past their bedtime, it’s the prospect of one last snack. Not unlike humans. Lesson learned.

Hen Chronicles: Serving it up the way they like it

The staple of our chickens’ diet is pellet feed designed for laying hens. They get lots of snacks too — mealworm, lettuce, yogurt, plus dandelion greens and grass clippings and backyard raspberries during the summer — but pellets are the main course.

Believe it or not, Snow, Nellie and Hope have preferences when it comes to how their pellets are served. Their least favorite arrangement involves the feed bowl. All three hens will eat from their bowl if they have to, but "the girls" aren’t big fans. They even knock it over with some regularity, presumably to dump the pellets onto the ground.

Which brings us to the second of their three options. Chickens love to scratch and peck in search of bugs and other edibles, and that applies to pellets as well. Given their druthers, they’d rather eat off the ground than from a bowl. That’s why I scatter some of their pellets first thing in the morning. But that option, while preferable to dipping their beaks into a container, is not the best one.

Their favorite? Being hand-fed. If I grab a bunch of pellets and lower my open palm into the pen, all three hens race over and peck feverishly at my hand, gobbling up the contents in no time flat. I can do this over and over again and they will not tire of it.

Are they attracted to the softness of my palm? Does my hand carry a scent that they find appealing? Is it the novelty that intrigues them? There is another possibility, and it may be the most likely. Perhaps they enjoy being fed by hand simply because they like human contact.

Hen Chronicles: Who's really calling the shots around here?

The beauties from our backyard that are pictured below ripened last week, before overnight temperatures plummeted to the 20s. I picked almost all of these raspberries Saturday and Sunday, but instead of savoring them myself, as one last rite of a summer that already feels like a time long gone, I gave them to our three hens.

Snow, Nellie and Hope gobbled them down with the gusto they always display whenever berries come their way. But the fact that they, not I, got this late-season snack raises an obvious question that I've asked myself time and time again in recent years: Who's really in charge here? Me? Or the chickens? I'm afraid to spend too long contemplating this, for fear of the answer.

Hen Chronicles: Snow keeps her eyes on the prize

When I started digging compost into one of our garden beds the other day, “the girls” took notice. They know from past experience that each shovelful of dirt is likely to include a worm or two, some of which probably will get tossed their way.

Sure enough, worms did materialize, and I threw a few onto the top of the hens’ pen, where they promptly fell in on their own or were pulled down by Snow, Nellie and Hope. Eventually, Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, retreated into the coop to lay their eggs. But our Plymouth Rock, Snow, who usually lays every other day, was on her day off. She stayed put in the pen, in case more worms rained down from the sky.

Snow paced back and forth at the front of the pen, watching my every move to make sure she would be ready if another worm got launched in her direction. A few more did take flight, and Snow quickly gobbled them down. The last one landed on her back, and although I thought she'd have to shake it off, she managed to turn her head with owl-like agility to grab the worm.

That’s when I called it quits, because I didn’t want to overdo it. (Cleaning up chicken poop is one thing, but chicken diarrhea is quite another.)

Eventually, Snow realized that the party was over, even if my work in the garden was not. Had they still been in the pen, Nellie and Hope might have chosen to sit down at that point, and watch quietly as I went about my business a few feet away.

But not Snow, she of the voracious appetite.

Once Snow figured out that the worm buffet was closed for the day, she did just what I expected her to do. She turned tail and raced straight to the feed bowl, to see what additional goodies were to be found there.

Hen Chronicles: The legacy of Jiminy Cricket lives on

I saved a tiny, six-legged life the other day, but our hens would have been happier if I had done otherwise.

When I retrieved the chickens' feed and water bowls from the garage at dawn Saturday and headed out to the coop armed with a jug of water and three cups of feed, there was a cricket hanging on to the outside of the water bowl.

Now chickens, I'm told, love crickets, and not as pets. Although I've never put this to the test, I don't doubt that hens enjoy munching on these critters. My guess is that, from a chicken's point of view, the combination of chasing a cricket, catching it, and then scarfing it down while eluding your jealous poultry pals makes for a very rewarding culinary experience indeed.

So I could have allowed "my" cricket to tag along on the edge of the water bowl until it suddenly found itself in the pen, surrounded by three famished hens who would have brought its life to a quick and dastardly end. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I flicked the cricket onto the grass before I reached the coop. 

I'm not sure why I spared the bug's life, because I routinely give the hens worms that turn up in the garden. Do we somehow identify with crickets more readily, because we enjoy the sound of their chirping? (I can hear them outside our living room as I write this.) Or do we subconsciously associate crickets with Walt Disney's memorable creation, decked out in top hat, umbrella, spats and a jaunty vest? Perhaps I was just feeling kindly yesterday morning, channeling my inner Francis of Assisi, and did not relish the thought of watching the hens play the role of ravenous lions in their version of the Colosseum. 

Whatever the cause, there's no guarantee I'll be equally merciful next time, unless the insect takes a page from Jiminy Cricket's playbook by donning a tiny suit of clothes, complete with white gloves. Throwing such a creature to the hens would be like relegating Pinocchio to the woodpile.

Hen Chronicles: The breakfast of (feathered) champions

Our hens had a three-course breakfast this morning, which was a big deal because that's two more courses than usual. In addition to their daily ration of feed, I gave them the last of our raspberries, straight from the patch that abuts the north fence. This was followed by several slugs, which had congregated on the fence because of the weekend's heavy rainfall.

If I had thrown in a few dandelion greens (which Snow, Nellie and Hope will get later today) we would have covered what "the girls" view as their four basic food groups: a commercial feed designed for laying hens, plus fruit, greens . . . and a little something disgusting for good measure.

Hen Chronicles: Don't touch that egg! Please!

As soon as I opened the coop door at dawn this morning, I knew something was amiss.

I’ve probably mentioned before in this space that when I release “the girls” from their coop every morning, they make a mad dash down the ramp and into the pen, even smooshing themselves together as all three of them struggle to get through the narrow opening at the same time.

Today was different. When I opened the door, no one raced out. No one even moved. Instead, the right side of one of our Rhode Island Reds blocked the opening. The hen was upright, but she wasn’t moving, at least not from what I could see. The other two hens were not visible, and there was no telltale clucking from any of them, as there normally is first thing in the morning.

I quickly realized what was going on. The hens were silent and stationary because they had found something to eat in the coop. And the only thing they could have found to eat in the coop was a broken egg.

It’s been years since any of our hens deliberately broke a freshly laid egg to eat it, and quite a while since any of them laid a soft-shelled egg that broke on its own. This time around, the latter seemed to be the case. After I shooed the girls out into the pen so I could clean the coop, I saw that the egg shell, or what was left of it, was rubbery.

Chickens need calcium to form firm shells, and although they normally get enough of it from their feed, sometimes they develop a calcium deficiency. One solution is to give them crushed oyster shells, which they will eat as needed. Sure enough, as soon as I placed a small bowl of oyster shells in the coop this morning — something I had not done for quite some time — one of the Rhode Island Reds began pecking at it.

With any luck, that will solve the soft-shell problem. But now another problem looms. Saturday’s adventure probably reminded the girls that they love the taste of eggs, as all chickens do. So will they start breaking them deliberately, to get at the goodies within?

For the longest time, I kept two wooden eggs in the nest box, where the hens lay their eggs. The theory behind this is that if a hungry pen pecks a wooden egg, thinking it’s the real deal, the feel of beak hitting wood will be unpleasant enough to persuade her to leave all eggs — real or wooden — untouched in the future.

But my old wooden eggs disappeared from the coop years ago. The hens probably rolled them out into the pen and inadvertently buried them in the dirt while scratching for bugs. So I headed out to a craft store this morning and bought two new ones. Here’s hoping that dissuades Snow, Nellie and Hope from fixing their own breakfast tomorrow.

Hen Chronicles: There's plenty of joy in Mudville

Thanks to all of the rain that fell over the weekend here in central Maine, there were slugs aplenty this morning along the post-and-rail fence that marks the back end of our lot. All I had to do was walk along the fence and scoop the slimy critters into my hand before heading over to the pen, where I dropped them in to provide an early-morning snack for Snow, Hope and Nellie.

The chickens haven't munched on slugs for a long time, so they were positively gleeful. This unexpected bounty triggered a flurry of frenetic activity in the pen as each hen tried to gobble down all of the slugs before the competition could zero in. With all due respect to the mighty Casey, there was much joy in Mudville this day. Except for the slugs, of course. They struck out.

Hen Chronicles: Sharing our bounty with "the girls"

A few weeks back, when lush strawberries began to burst forth in our garden, I brought the first juicy pickings to our chickens, who gobbled them down with predictable enthusiasm.

Last week, as raspberries ripened along the wood-chip-lined path that meanders from our garage back through the yard to the chicken coop, the earliest of the fruit went to “the girls”  yet again.

And when the leafy goodness of chard and lettuce filled our raised beds, the pattern continued. Snow, Nellie and Hope got a taste of those treats before we did.

So it goes as the harvesting cycles of summer march through our little corner of the world. Pampering poultry soothes the soul.

Hen Chronicles: Suiting up for the big game

When I began picking strawberries from a patch in our garden the other day, the hens were watching my every move.

Three strawberries. Three chickens. It seemed like a match made in hen heaven. So, berries in hand, I wandered over to the pen as “the girls” bounced around excitedly, anticipating a treat.

Hoping to prevent our voracious Plymouth Rock, Snow, from grabbing all of the goodies, I dropped the strawberries into the pen at three separate corners. I figured that would make it easier for each hen to get one strawberry, with a minimum of squabbling.

Yeah, right.

Snow and Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, zeroed in on the same strawberry at precisely the same moment. While they took turns stealing it from each other and running around with berry in beak, Hope, the other Rhode Island Red, munched on a second berry that she had all to herself.

Amid all the scuffling, Snow and Nellie nibbled away at “their” strawberry in fits and starts until, eventually, there was nothing left. That’s when all three hens discovered the one remaining berry, which they quickly disposed of with much possessive squawking, angry flapping and feverish pecking, but no injuries. (Except to the strawberry, of course.)

This no-holds-barred game of chicken soccer wasn’t the most efficient way for three hens to tackle three strawberries. But for the lone human spectator, it was far more entertaining that the alternative I had in mind at the outset.

Hen Chronicles: Voraciousness, thy name is chicken

Once upon a time, back when I was even more naive than I am now, I thought there couldn’t possibly be a domesticated animal with a more voracious appetite than a dog.

Then we got chickens.

Our three hens go through a remarkable amount of food in the course of a day, yet they’re always clamoring for more.

Take last Sunday, for example.

When I released “the girls” from their coop at dawn, I gave them three cups of chicken feed, which is their daily ration of a cup apiece.

A few hours later, my wife Liz showed up with their late-morning serving of mealworms, plus some dandelion greens (a favorite snack). Then Liz stumbled upon a few worms while working in the garden, so the hens got yet another treat.

That afternoon, I gave Snow, Nellie and Hope more dandelion greens. Liz delivered a mid-afternoon snack of lettuce and elbow macaroni. (Yes, chickens love pasta!) I followed up with more feed, because those three cups that I served up first thing in the morning were long gone by 4 p.m.

An hour later, I brought kitchen scraps out to the compost bins, which are adjacent to the coop and pen. The hens greeted my arrival in their neighborhood with their telltale “we’re starving out here” antics, which involve much hopping, squawking, running and bouncing, supplemented by some vigorous flapping of wings. Despite all they had eaten that day, this was yet another desperate plea for still more food.

Alas, the kitchen was closed by then, which probably was for the best. One more morsel and I might have had a very messy cleanup on my hands. An exploding chicken probably scatters feathers all over the place.

Hen Chronicles: The worm-toss queen has been dethroned

There's always a risk of anthropomorphizing the behavior of animals, by interpreting their antics in human terms.

Maybe that's what I did in this case, but I don't think so.

I was mucking around in our compost bins the other day, shoveling out compost for the garlic bed, which we'll be planting at the end of the month. Both bins are located next to our chicken coop. (Yup -- that's where the chicken poop ends up.) In the course of my digging, I found a fat worm. I knew it would make a great snack for one of "the girls."

I tossed the worm toward the pen, where it landed on top of the chicken wire that covers the frame. Snow, our eagle-eyed Plymouth Rock, jumped up, grabbed the dangling end of the worm in her beak, and pulled it down into the pen.

This was par for the course. Snow always is the first to spot an incoming worm, lunging for it with lightning speed. Usually in these situatios, she manages to wolf down her treat before Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, figure out what's going on. When it comes to the worm toss, Snow is the undisputed champ.

Or was.

Nellie brought her A game to the pen that day. She stole the worm from Snow, triggering a scrimmage that involved much flapping of wings. It continued until Nellie -- I wouldn't belive it if I hadn't seen it -- swallowed Snow's worm!

After the prize disappeared down Nellie's gullet, Snow's eyes grew larger than I've ever seen them. She looked around in amazement. Then she began squawking. A lot. And loudly. This wasn't mere clucking, but a throaty cry of outrage and desperation. It was, I'm convinced, her way of asking the obvious question: "What the hell just happened here?"

Nellie, the new champ

Hen Chronicles: Tempting our chickens' taste buds

You never know unless you try.

We already have a long list of snacks that have passed the chicken taste test — yogurt, spaghetti, bread, oatmeal, strawberries, raspberries, kale, lettuce, sprouts, dandelion greens, etc. — but on Monday, I decided to try expanding the menu.

After doing a bit of research to make sure my experiments would be safe, I pulled a few basil leaves from the garden, tore them into smaller pieces, and gave them to “the girls.” Later that day, at my suggestion, Liz hand-fed banana bits to the hens.

The results were mixed.

The basil was not a big hit. Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, nibbled away at it, but without showing any real enthusiasm. Snow our Plymouth Rock, took one bite, lifted her beak in seeming disgust and stormed over to the water bowl, as if to wash a bad taste from her mouth.

But the banana was another story. All three chickens could not get enough, fast enough. So we’ve added it to our mental list of fave foods.

As it happens, there’s an added advantage to giving chickens a banana snack: it’s very entertaining to watch them tackle the fruit.

A banana, being a banana, is mushy. A chicken, being a chicken, picks up her food with her beak. The end result is that only part of the banana actually works its way into the hen. She ends up wearing the rest of it, in the form of a gooey coating slathered across her beak.

A wit on an online chicken forum has described this comical effect as a case of "banana lips." Which is all the more amusing because chickens, being chickens, have no lips.