Hen Chronicles: Now I lay me down to sleep . . .

I sometimes wonder what rhyme or reason dictates how our three hens configure themselves at bedtime.

Except on those rare occasions when Nellie decides to spend the night in the nest box, Snow, Nellie and Hope share a perch that runs along a north/south axis in the coop, just below the peak of the roof. They snuggle on this roost side by side, and usually wing to wing.

Sometimes, one or two of the hens will bed down on the roost facing west, but for the most part, all three chickens face east. And nine times out of 10, the lineup finds Snow in the middle, with Nellie and Hope on either side of her.

As her name suggests, Snow is an all-white Plymouth Rock. She's our senior hen, at an estimated four years of age, and the one we've had the longest. She’s also at the top of the pecking order. Nellie and Hope are three-year-old Rhode Island Reds, so both share the rust-red coloring of that breed. Liz and I can differentiate between Nellie and Hope because we see them every day, but to a stranger, they probably would appear to be interchangeable.

It’s hard to believe that the predictable and recurring sleeping arrangements, with Snow flanked by the Reds, are random; there's so little variation from one night to the next. Instead, we have consistency. Perhaps the Reds, recognizing Snow’s seniority, like to sleep next to her, and Snow finds herself in the middle because that’s the only way both Nellie and Hope can be adjacent to her. Or maybe there’s some other explanation that defies human understanding.

Whatever the cause, the placement makes for an attractive tableau. Thanks to the contrast in coloring, I think of the display as Snow and her court. The large and strikingly white queen of the roost has a lady-in-waiting on either side of her.

Hen Chronicles: Trying to fathom the chicken mind

If you try to view the world from the perspective of chickens, much of what they do makes perfect sense. They become exuberant when someone approaches them with treats, for example, and fearful when they spot a bird of prey overhead. If I walk out to the coop when it starts to rain, they run out into the pen because they know I'm about to cover it with a tarp.

But sometimes their actions seem inexplicable, at least to a mere human such as myself.

I’ve mentioned here before that Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, broke with tradition for three nights running last week when she tried to sleep in the nest box, rather than on the roost with the other hens. When I finally blocked access to the nest box last Saturday, Nellie moved back to the roost. Since then, she has freely chosen the roost every night, even though the nest box has been unobstructed since my initial decision to close it off for one night.

So a few questions arise. Why did Nellie move to the nest box in the first place? She wasn’t unable to reach the roost because of an injury. There’s no sign she was trying to avoid Snow or Hope because of a fight. And even though chickens have very poor nighttime vision, it’s hard to believe she couldn’t spot the roost in the darkened coop three nights in a row. Did she decide the nest box was more cozy than the roost? Or that she owns the nest box because she's the only hen who's laying these days? Maybe. But if so, why is she no longer sleeping there?

Perhaps the answers are to be found in yet another question. Is it possible that chickens are just as fickle as, well, humans?

Hen Chronicles: Nellie is playing by the rules once again

I mentioned in this space yesterday that Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, balked at sleeping on the roost with Snow and Hope for three consecutive nights last week, from Wednesday through Friday. Instead, she camped out by herself in the nest box, and stayed there until Liz lifted her up to the roost.

Last night, her stint as a rebel without a cause finally came to an end, thanks to a bit of meddling on my part.

There probably wasn’t an especially compelling reason to persuade Nellie to get up on the roost with the other hens, but I didn’t want to encourage her wayward ways. For one thing, chickens poop a lot during the night, and it’s enough work cleaning out the main part of the coop every morning without adding the nest box to the routine. 

More to the point, I had started to wonder if Nellie had suffered an injury that prevented her from hopping up to the roost at night. That didn’t seem to be the case based on her behavior during daylight hours, which has been normal, but the possibility continued to nag at me.

So on Saturday afternoon, I placed two sticks of firewood in the nest box, effectively making it inaccessible. Our coop has two other nest boxes, but “the girls” never use them, so my hope was that if Nellie couldn’t get into her new slumber zone, she’d make for the roost. Unless, of course, she was hurt.

Sure enough, when I checked on the hens while locking them in for the night, the traditional lineup was back in place. Snow, Hope and Nellie were on their perch, side by side and wing to wing. The new normal was out. Once again, the old normal ruled the roost.

Hen Chronicles: Putting Rhode Island Red Nellie to bed

Nellie pulled another of her bedtime stunts earlier this week by trying to settle down in the nest box for the night instead of hopping up onto the roost with her coop mates, Snow and Hope.

Normally, all three hens sleep side by side on the roost, but Nellie has gone solo before. Other chicken owners report in online forums that their hens have done the same thing as well, for no obvious reason. (At least no reason that is obvious to humans.) Initially, my theory was that Nellie stayed outside until it was too dark to find her way up to the roost, but she's headed for the nest box three nights in a row now, so there must be some other explanation. Perhaps the nest box, with its soft bed of pine shavings, is just more comfortable.

Whatever the cause of Nellie’s nocturnal detours, Liz and I decided to place her where she belonged that first night -- or at least where we thought she belonged. Lifting Nellie from the nest box while I held a flashlight, Liz carried her to the roost. Nellie did not cooperate; she kept her feet tucked up under her body. Eventually, though, she dropped her toes into position, took hold of the perch and called it a night.

“I guess she just didn’t want to lower her landing gear,” Liz said as we headed back to the house.

Hen Chronicles: The temptation of jumping to conclusions

Liz has long claimed that I worry too much about our hens. I know she’s right, but in my defense, I was the one who saw one of them up and die without warning back in 2012. And I had to bring another hen to the vet last year to be euthanized. Such things take their toll. “The girls” are our pets, after all.

Last week, I got riled up yet again. But this time, as is usually true when I fret over goings-on in the coop, there was a happy ending.

Snow, Nellie and Hope sleep on an elevated wooden roost in the coop. Always. That’s what chickens do. They troop into the coop at dusk, hop or fly up to the roost, settle themselves down side by side, and stay put until dawn. (Chickens are very sound sleepers.)

On Friday night, things played out differently.

All three hens were in the coop when I set out that night to lock them up. But Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, heard me coming and apparently got it into her head that it was still just light enough outside to see if I had any treats. So she came back out into the pen. That’s where I left her, disappointed, until she finally went back into the coop a few minutes later.

Heading out to the coop a second time after Nellie was back inside, I latched the door and peeked into the nest box, to make one last check for eggs. There was Nellie; in the nest box. The hens rarely lay eggs before going to bed, but I figured that’s what she was doing, so I left her there and walked back to the house. When I came out again later to check on her, she was still in the nest box. And she had not laid an egg.

She spent the night there. And that’s what got me worried.

I can only remember two other times in more than three years when a hen has slept in the nest box. In one case, it marked one of the first signs of a fatal disease that eventually took the life of one of our chickens.

So my fears were not entirely groundless. But they were premature.

Saturday night, and every night since then, Nellie has slept on the roost, with Snow and Hope. So why the Friday-night aberration? As with so many things involving chickens, there are several possible explanations, and no conclusive answer.

Researching this phenomenon online, I found chicken owners who say this sometimes happens with young chickens who are new to a coop (not applicable to Nellie) or chickens who’ve been in a fight and want to avoid a recurrence (unlikely in this case). The most plausible explanation is that chickens, who have excellent eyesight during the day, see very poorly in the dark. So, if they have trouble spotting and reaching the roost at night, they may crash in a nearby nest box instead. No hopping. No flying. No bumping into other chickens.

That makes sense. When Nellie came back outside Friday night for her snack hunt, she stayed in the pen for a few minutes. By the time she went back into the coop, it was quite dark, both outside and in. She may have turned the nearby nest box into a bed because it was easier than trying to roost in the dark. Since then, I've delayed the nighttime lockdown until it's way too dark for any hen with the munchies to bolt out of the coop in search of bedtime goodies. Problem solved.

Sometimes, chickens behave oddly simply because they’re, well, chickens. Come to think of, sometimes humans behave oddly too, because they're human.