hen pics

Edna on the hunt
This Americauna might be named Brangelina--seems an appropriate use for that name

over exposed eggs

as opposed to over easy

nest boxes

The birds like the plastic tub box in the hutch for laying their eggs. They do not like the cardboard box beside it. They kicked all the wood chips out of the cardboard box but always leave some in the other.

Edna (formerly Edsel) is the star athlete. When I hold out a jumbo mealworm, she darts in, jumps up and grabs it while the other chickens are still eyeing it, trying to figure out what to do. Even when I'm trying to offer the worm to someone else or holding it low so that Punkster and DartMouth can see it from under their top-knots, she grabs it first. Yeah, she's my favorite, even though she doesn't lay green eggs. I like her style.

Besides, I only want to spend so much time grasping a large mealworm between thumb and forefinger, watching it writhe around with its short legs waving.

Finally peace on the home front

Locking Punkster and DartMouth in the hutch for a couple of days and nights did the trick. They stopped picking on the others. Trimming off the sharp tips of their beaks might have had something to do with it, also. The method is to wrap the chicken in a towel and clip off the tip, up to but not including the vein. This blunted the sharp ends just enough to lessen any damage they could do. Maybe it took them down a peg but I can’t verify that. When a chicken is debeaked in the bloody and traumatic (to me) conventional way, just about half the upper beak comes off. The chicken can eat but not peck at others.

Now all six are co-existing in the usual way, with only the “get outta my way” or “hey, that bug’s mine” sort of pecking. The little ones still won’t go into the coop at night. Every evening this week I’ve had to pry them off the perch in the hutch and put them in the coop. There’s now a second perch in the coop but it’s not as high as the first due to the slanted top.

Genius inspiration struck today. I took the perch out of the hutch and put in a nest box made from a plastic tub. I cut down part of one side so that the hen could step in and not have to hop to the top rim and then down. I wasn’t quite genius enough, however. I cut the side too low. DartMouth immediately jumped in and proceeded to remodel the place, scratching all the wood chips onto the wire floor of the hutch where most fell through to the ground.

I think I have to do everything about three times to get it close to right.

musical roosts

the complexities of roosting door, rooster, wings
the complexities of roosting

When it's time to shut the coop door, does one just say, "Night, night, birds" and shut the door as usual? Noooo, one must first pluck a Modern off the top of the hutch and put her inside. Then one must fetch two Americaunas from inside the hutch. It is not easy to reach both arms through a small door, grab a large hen, pry her feet from the perch, and haul her out the door, preferably without breaking a wing or cutting one's hand on the wire of the door opening. And then do it again.

When grabbing a hen, it's best to hold her wings against her body; otherwise she'll flap madly and you'll have a hard time restraining her. But when trying to do that while reaching arm's length into the hutch, the simple grab isn't always effective.

Here's a tip: when you put the hen on the ground, which you need to do to get a better grip on her, run your hand with a little bit of pressure down her back. She'll flatten her back and stand still, not because she loves your gentle touch but because you have just imitated a rooster about to mount her. Works way better than hypnotism.

Eating and egging

I finally put a light in the chicken coop several days ago. I hadn't wanted to but I'm hearing about everyone else's hens laying except mine. Also, the chicken soup threat didn't work.

There's nothing inside the coop to hang the light from or grip with the attached tongs but I managed to balance it on a corner wingnut where it sort of stays up. It had the desired effect: Punkster laid an egg today. DartMouth has yet to cooperate. Or it may have been the other way around.

Matilda the snake, who hasn't eaten in months, seemed a little less restless today, so I thawed out a mouse and offered it to her. Holding it by the tail--you're supposed to use tongs but it'll be two years before I find mine--I wriggled the mouse, then laid it down on the dinner plate, a paper towel. Matilda came up to it and looked interested, flicking out her tongue and then circling around the way she sometimes does before striking. She positioned her mouth in front of the mouse's nose, got close...then whipped her head away like a kid going, "YUK!" Maybe it's the wrong flavor?

I have no idea how I'm supposed to know when she's ready to eat. It’s not as if she’ll give me a dirty look or make hungry-sounding slithers or sit there with her mouth open. At least she won’t scream or bark at me. I get enough of that from the others.

Deadbeats

At the beginning of February, the Punkster laid six eggs over twelve days. The Poles usually lay every other day, not every day like the breeds cultivated for good laying. Every other day suits my small household but none does not. Despite oyster shell, jumbo meal worms, treats from the kitchen, and the usual chicken kibble, she is taking a vacation from egg-laying and DartMouth hasn't even started. The new girls are still too young, so I'm not worried about them.

Today I threw around some scratch feed to keep them busy and explained the problem. Then I leaned close to the chicken wire and warned them in a low voice, "Chicken soup."

Empty threat but they won't know.

the night after the crawling under the house incident

A few minutes ago, the Amazons were swearing at full volume, then yelling, “Quiet! Stop it!” equally loudly. The cockatiels were whistling, dogs barking. And one banty chicken was going wraaaak—ha-ha-ha.

All except the dogs and myself are in the mud room. Years ago I swore I’d never keep a chicken in the house. But extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary solutions. It’s risky putting an outdoor chicken in a room with parrots but they have no contact, not even from my touching one cage then another without washing my hands. That’s the best I can do right now. And Edsel is really, really cute with her big eyes. I’ve been picking her up so many times to move her from place to place that she’s getting used to being handled.

The circumstances are actually very ordinary. The Polish hens are picking intensely and viciously on Edsel because she is so tiny. They do the ordinary “get outta my way and off my perch” pecking at placid Muffin but she is large enough to sort things out.

Later in the evening I’ll try again to put Edsel in the coop and see if they can stand it. But I think I need two banty Moderns, because Edsel needs back-up.

Going to earth

Thinking all problems temporarily solved, I discovered that Keeper had crawled under the part of the house beneath the mud room and was making desperate clattering and scraping sounds. This projection is bordered on one side by wood lattice screwed into the siding, on the other by a wood wall and entry stairs, and on the side where she crawled in by two very heavy, large, long wooden planters. Filled with dirt and plants, of course. I heaved one away from the house near the corner where Keeper had crawled in, and peered underneath.

Airedales are terriers; terriers are earth dogs. They are at their absolute happiest when digging after small animals. Even a 60-lb Airedale can crawl through a very small space, just as a mouse can crawl through a space the size of a nickel. Or is it a dime?

I called to Keeper and she came over to me, putting one foot on the brick wall on which the planter had rested. That was as far as she got. Her head bumped the overhead rafters.
There was nothing for it but to heave both planters off the brick wall and lie down full length to see if I could fit some of myself through the opening but it wasn’t even large enough for my head.

Sign of intelligence: having no desire to get stuck under the house, I stopped there. Instead I got a full view of the amazing junk a previous owner had left there: long planks of wood, empty soda cans, a thin metal strip, bits of asphalt roofing, a nearly full gallon jug of concrete bonding adhesive. I pulled out what I could reach while Keeper tugged and ripped at a plastic tube of drain pipe firmly stuck in concrete. (Drain pipe is rippled like an accordion and about six inches in diameter.) Occasionally she left the pipe and scrabbled through the other bits of debris. I saw a spot of blood on one hind leg and worried that she’d get hurt on something sharp and nasty in there.

So I took a look at the front side and discovered I could remove the lattice with a Phillips screwdriver. (BTW, the house is yellow but used to be blue. There are nice little blue lines where the lattice used to be.)

Now it is time to congratulate me. I don’t like crawling among bugs, I don’t like getting cobwebs in my hair, I don’t like crawling full-length on damp dirt and heaven knows what other crap. And I’m a middle-aged writer who shouldn’t have to be doing these things.

I did these things. I pulled myself in, grabbed Keeper’s collar, and forced her to come out. When we got inside, I tore off my yucky clothes, shook the scary things from my hair, and dragged Keeper upstairs to be washed in my shower. No treats for her! I just threw her in and hosed her down.

Results of a day of chicken-chasing, pen-building, and spelunking with the dog: two scraped shins, cracked fingers, a cut on my forehead. Not so bad.

Transformation of the Chicken Slum

The chicken slum is now an art installation after Monday night’s work. Think Watts Towers built by a disorganized poet. It is constructed of a variety of found materials. All I need now are some colorful tiles to spiff it up.

After getting Edsel home Monday morning, I shut her and Muffin back in the hutch and wasn’t even late for work, thanks to a fast sprint across the Park ‘N Ride lot just in time to catch the bus. I spent most of Monday afternoon until past dark shoring up the pen, cutting and nailing up scraps of fencing, using a beaded ribbon belt to weave together the two ceiling pieces where she had flown through a gap. To close the gap above the door, I put up the piece of nylon netting that was used in the back of my car to hold grocery bags. On another side, I nailed up a large sheet of plastic that had covered a new mattress. And so on to block every opening that had existed above flight height for the Poles but not for a banty Modern.

You never know what will come in handy. As a friend in college used to say and the late spouse used to do: never throw anything away. Sadly, I’ve had to throw away too much when moving during the past few years. Other things, such as my reciprocating saw and a 6-ft stepladder, mysteriously disappeared. I try, with limited success, not to think about it.

Thinking all problems temporarily solved, I discovered that Keeper had crawled under the part of the house beneath the mud room and was making desperate clattering and scraping sounds. (to be continued)