Just in time for this month’s Hen Herald, Henny is finally off the nest.  She spent five weeks trying to hatch eggs and has finally moved on to other pursuits.  Normally, eggs are brooded for about three weeks and the chicks hatch around 21 days.  For Henny, whose eggs kept disappearing and no chicks appeared, the ordeal lasted longer than Denise expected.

Every evening after work, Denise removed Henny and the eggs from the next box and locked Henny out of the coop for a few hours, so that Henny could get something to eat and exercise.  Denise was hoping this would break Henny’s brood cycle earlier than 21 days.  Turns out, Henny is very dedicated to brooding and would most likely make an excellent mother.  At around the time chicks would have hatched, had she been sitting on fertilized eggs, Henny started treating Penny and Sky as her brood.  One of our avid readers (will call her Jenny), an ex-chicken keeper, wrote to the editor about the last issue and the sounds chickens make, and declared that a whole new set of vocalizations are produced by a mother hen with chicks.  Sure enough, Henny demonstrated this using Penny and Sky as her brood.  Denise watched several times as Henny would find a tasty morsel of food, play with it a little, then make a chirping noise, which spurred Penny and Sky to come running.  Then as all three hens formed a circle and with heads low and eyes on the food, Henny would play with the food again to demo that it was edible and then Sky or Penny would snatch it up.  Henny would also let Sky and Penny ate first whenever Denise or Andrea brought out food for the three of them.  Neither of these behaviors made Denise very happy, because Henny was losing a lot of weight and really needed to eat – and should NOT be feeding Penny and Sky.

Denise and Henny also had several arguments over removing her from the nest.  Denise always wore gloves to protect her hands if Henny decided to bite (remember she is defending her nest), and so Henny would not associate Denise’s bare hands with a negative situation.  In the evenings and on weekends when Denise removed Henny from the nest, Henny rarely did anything other than fluff and growl.  When placed on the ground outside the coop Hen would stay in a crouched position for several minutes, then suddenly jump up and race into the yard, yelling “I am free, freeeeeee . . . “.  Henny would spend about an hour in the yard and then would seem to suddenly remember that she should be on the nest and would race be back to the coop.  Finding it closed, she would pace back and forth clucking loudly, trying to find a way in.  After about four weeks of this routine, Denise tried a different tactic.  She kept the coop open, and every time Henny returned to the nest Denise would remove her again.  Henny did not like this state of affairs and escalated her bites with each additional removal from the nest.  Denise was reminded of her chicken’s dinosaur-like ancestry as Henny would grab the glove and twist and yank at it trying to cause damage.  These constant removals would put Henny in such a fowl mood (pardon the pun) that if the cats or dog came near her she would chase after them.  Denise also started blocking Henny from the nest box at night. Then less than a week later, the brooding stopped and Henny has not returned to the nest since.

Currently egg production is very low.  Of interest, is that Henny laid few eggs of her own during her brood period and mostly brooded the eggs Penny and Sky managed to lay while Henny was on the nest.  It also looks like Penny is starting a molt, and therefore seems to have stopped laying.  So only Sky is producing consistently right now, and Denise and Andrea hope that soon Henny will start again.  They are also crossing their fingers that neither Sky nor Penny will start brooding.

Most people consider chickens rather stupid, but this reporter would have to disagree.  A lot of what looks like stupidity is the cautious nature of chickens.  Let’s face facts, chicken is delicious and most meat-eating animals know it.  Chickens did not survive as a species, as delicious as they are, for as long as they have (they have been around longer then humans), without taking good care of themselves.  One of the rules of chickens is be suspicious of everything.  Even if it looks like food, if it is presented in a different environment, it is suspect.  Denise has a story to illustrate this behavior.

“One of my chicken’s favorite foods is cheese, so whenever I have cheese that is going off, I shred it and feed it to my chickens. Because a lot of the fruits and vegetables (and cheese) I feed my chickens are moist I feed the chickens on plates, so the food does not pick up a lot of dirt from the ground.  Okay these are not plates out of my cupboards, but are old chipped plates that were destined for the garbage.  So the chickens know that yummy food comes on round objects of any color, including white.  And they certainly know what shredded cheese looks like.  One day I just wanted to take some cheese to the girls and sit with them while they enjoyed the treat.  Instead of putting the cheese on the plates I took it out on the rectangle white cutting board.  I hand-fed most of the cheese to the hens and the little scraps left on the cutting board I presented to the hens, board and all.  That’s the first mistake I made.  The girls acted as if I had presented a large predatory snake to them.  All three immediately back up to a safe distance with eyes wide and began the clucking sound of “predator alert”.  They could see the cheese on the board, but didn’t trust the presentation so started straining their necks and cocking their heads side-to-side to get a better look.  I waited several minutes like this holding out the board and hens checking it out, hoping that they would soon recognize the food and eat from the board.  Mistake number two I made: I became impatient and decided I was not going to hold the board and was going to shake the cheese off of it for the girls to eat on the ground.  The split second the board made a movement, all three hens went straight up in the air, screaming, flapping, and I don’t know how, but when they touched down to earth again they were facing the opposite direction and were off and running across the yard.  It was as though the snake had struck at them.  Fortunately chickens are curious and love to eat, so they soon returned, although wary.  I hid the board and showed them the cheese that had fallen to the ground and they cleaned it up.”

This reporter would call that pretty smart behavior; it kept those chickens alive to eat again.