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: Her head may be small, but it's not empty

After we set up our chicken coop three years ago, I quickly came to realize that hens have personalities. That belief has only been reinforced with the passage of time. Recently, though, I’ve discovered that their behavior can be more complex, and less predictable, than I had thought.

Which brings us to the case of Hope.

Hope is one of our two Rhode Island Reds. She shares her life with Nellie, another Red, and Snow, a Plymouth Rock.

The smallest of our three hens, Hope is at the bottom of the pecking order. She’s almost always the last hen to get up in the morning; she lets Snow and Nellie hop down from the roost and march out into the pen before she does. Hope refuses to be lured out into the yard for treats. Too timid. Whenever I hear the high-pitched trilling noise chickens make to express fear or alarm, I know it’s Hope.

So you’d expect Hope to be meek and mild-mannered in all things, and that’s almost true. But not quite. She has been known to play against type.

Once — and only once — I made the mistake of trying to move Hope while she was in the nest box, which is where “the girls” lay their eggs. She turned her head with lightning speed and gave me such a strong, swift, vicious peck on the hand that I had a nasty bruise for days.

Round 2 came last week. When I lifted the lid on the nest box one morning, I found Nellie and Hope smooshed together inside the tight space, which covers about one square foot of the coop’s real estate. That wasn’t surprising, because all of the hens insist on using that box, even though there are two others. So sometimes they team up. What did startle me is that Hope reacted to my appearance by screeching like a demented hawk on steroids. When I closed the lid, the noise stopped. When I opened it again, Hope resumed her high-volume protest, as if she were channeling a murder of crows.

I left her to her mission.

Now, you might say I shouldn’t have been surprised by Hope’s shrieks. A hen should be expected to try to protect her eggs, or to complain if anyone intervenes while she’s in the process of laying. But consider this.

Snow and Nellie, both far more assertive than Hope in all other things, never behave this way. No pecking. No screaming. I can pet them in the nest box, even nudge them aside without incident. Other hens we have had never behaved like this either. In fact, even Hope doesn't normally squawk in anger if I open the nest box while she's inside. But for whatever reason, when I appeared on the scene this time, it triggered an unprecedented tantrum.

It turns out that Hope — little, mousy, nervous Hope — can morph into a T. rex when she has a mind to.

That bird’s brain may be small, but there’s plenty going on inside.

Hen Chronicles: Smart birds pulling dumb stunts

I’ve learned at least two things about chickens since they took up residence in our yard back in April 2012. They’re smarter than people usually give them credit for, but they sometimes do a pretty good job of hiding their intelligence.

No doubt about it, chickens have a lot going on in their little noggins. Our hens are very social creatures. They constantly talk to one another (and to us), using a wide range of vocalizations. They know with great precision when it’s snack time, and how to stage end runs to gain better access to treats. They are curious about the world around them, enjoy being near people, and become visibly upset when separated from one another. They have the good sense to stay out of the rain, and they avoid walking in the snow whenever possible.

It’s claimed that chickens recognize people, and can differentiate among human faces. I don’t doubt it.

“Leading animal behavior scientists from around the globe know that chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals whose cognitive abilities are in some cases more advanced than those of cats, dogs, and even some primates,” according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “Chickens comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and understand that objects still exist even after they are hidden from view. In this respect, they are more cognitively advanced than small human children.”

As Christine Nicol of the Division of Animal Health and Husbandry at the University of Bristol in Great Britain put it last year, studies of chickens over the last two decades have revealed their “finely-honed sensory capacities, their ability to think, draw inferences, apply logic and plan ahead.”

So how to explain the following?

On a warm and sunny day recently, all three of our hens remained holed up in the coop for most of the day, only coming out into the pen to eat. But the following day, which was cold, raw and wet, they hung out in the pen for hours on end, despite a near-constant drizzle. Granted, the pen was covered by a tarp most of that time, but the coop would have been much cozier. 

And then there’s this. At dawn on Dec. 8, it was seven degrees outside here in Augusta, Maine. After the hens had their breakfast in the pen, Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, simply stood around, motionless, instead of retreating into the coop. As for Snow, our all-white Plymouth Rock, she decided to sit down on the frozen ground, where she remained for more than five minutes. (From a distance, Snow looked like a mound of, well, snow.) At first, I thought she was sick, but no. For whatever reason, that’s just where she wanted to be.

As I tried to sort out why supposedly intelligent creatures engage in such antics, it occurred to me that maybe chickens aren’t as smart as their keepers assume. Then a more likely explanation came to mind.

We've all seen teenagers outside in the winter months wearing nothing more than a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Or sandals! So even intelligent life forms do stupid stuff. At least my hens wear down coats when they venture out at this time of year.

Hen Chronicles: Animal intelligence in action

Chickens are maligned for their supposed stupidity, hence the derogatory term “dumb clucks.” But any chicken owner will tell you that’s a bad rap. Our feathered friends may not be the brightest members of the animal kingdom, but they’re a lot smarter than their reputation would suggest.

As Kimberly Willis and Rob Ludlow point out in Raising Chickens for Dummies, chickens "are pretty intelligent. They can learn to count and understand the concept of zero. They can be trained to do tricks and recognize colors. They can figure out how to get out of almost any pen you put them in, sooner or later." Chickens can plan future actions and anticipate reactions to something they're about to do, the authors note. "And chickens learn by observing and copying other chickens."

Over the past year or so, I’ve seen such claims of intelligence borne out by our own tiny flock of hens, which began with three “girls” and is now down to two. Two newcomers will soon join the current duo.

This week was a case in point. We had unseasonably warm weather here in Augusta, Maine, a few days ago, with temperatures jumping into the mid to upper 70s. On Tuesday, the first day of this mini heat wave, the girls rarely ventured out to their open-air pen, opting instead to avoid the sun by holing up in, or under, their elevated coop.

The following day, which was just as sunny and even hotter, I placed an old patio umbrella right outside the 4x6 foot pen, to shade it. Sure enough, the hens pecked and poked and strutted their stuff in the pen almost all day long, only venturing into the coop to lay their eggs. They even spent a long spell lying in the shade of the umbrella.

Considering how many clueless people go through their lives overdressed in the summer and underdressed in the winter, my “dumb clucks” are more in tune with Mother Nature than many a mere human.
  

Hen Chronicles: They're smarter than you might think

Conventional wisdom has it that chickens, to put it politely, are not the smartest birds in the flock. Some owners claim, for example, that their chickens don’t even have enough sense to get in out of the rain. This has never been an issue for our three hens, who dash into or under their coop at the mere sight of a raindrop.

From time to time since we got Snow, Stella and Nala more than four months ago, I’ve seen other signs that Gallus domesticus may be smarter than its reputation would suggest. Take what happened Sunday afternoon, for example, when I decided to give the roost in their coop a quick scrub with a wet brush and a dry rag.

The best way to get at the roost in our small henhouse is to lift the hinged roof and prop it open. I can then reach into the coop and do whatever needs to be done, whether it’s scooping out poop, adding shavings for bedding or - in this case - cleaning the elevated wooden roost that stretches across the coop from front to back.

It’s important during these chores to keep the ever-curious hens out of the coop. Although they can’t fly very far or very well, they could certainly “fly the coop” through the open roof, if given half a chance.

To prevent that from happening on Sunday, I tossed a handful of dandelion greens and grass clippings into the wire pen that is attached to the coop. Once the hens were preoccupied with munching outside, I closed the small door leading from the pen into the coop, to keep them out of the coop during my ministrations.

I didn’t give the girls another thought until I lowered the coop’s roof after I finished cleaning the roost. Walking around to the front of the coop so I could reopen the coop door, I noticed that all three hens had stopped chowing down on their clippings, which is highly unusual because greens of any kind are among their favorite foods.

Instead, the hens were standing in front of the coop, staring at the closed door and clucking animatedly in what sounded to me like expressions of concern. They knew something was amiss because the door was closed when it normally is open. As soon as I reopened the door, the girls turned away from the coop and resumed eating. Order had been restored, so they were happy.

That doesn’t make them Mensa material. But it does suggest that chickens are more aware of changes in their surroundings than the average TV-addicted, iPhone-addled human being is.