nesters, not roosters

When the hens turn in for the night, they gravitate to the highest roosts.  We learned this by error, not trial. As new chicks would grow into hens, it would dawn on us that we were low on roosting real estate, so we’d add another crossbar. Since the roost sits on a slope, the new roosts were higher off the ground, and in no time at all, the alpha hens had taken possession of them. Though we had not anticipated this, it had a certain logic and we accepted it as the way of nature.

Last spring, we brought home to black bantam chicks.  One grew into a very unbantam-like giant which often lays double-yoked eggs.  She struggles to get her heavy body over the roost’s threshold in the morning, so hopping up onto the roost in the evening is out of the question. She spends the night in a little hollow on the ground, where’s she’s safe as long as we remember to latch the roost door every night.

The other black chick grew into a sweet little hen with only one good foot. Recently, she, too, has started spending the night on the ground in a little hollow. The other hens probably won’t let her stay up with them, since she’s by herself, or she may not be able to get around on the roost very well.

Like Mary, she likes to linger in her bed in the morning, and so, like Mary, she receives room service. Mary takes hot tea, and she has to be on a pretty tight schedule before she’ll decamp without it. The little hen didn’t fill out a room service card, but she seems to appreciate the handful of scratch I scatter near her when the flock is busy elsewhere.

So my understanding of chickens, and my own life, progress in unexpected directions. Hens now roost on the ground, and my life as husband & father takes on increasingly unforeseen roles, first husbandry & now bellhop.

On the other hand, though I did not see this coming, neither did I foresee the rewards of long-marriage, or kindness to chickens.

Coo, coo, ca choo.

the manner of chickens

It’s been a good summer.  Having built our endurance with several hikes already, on Saturday four of us made it clear across Jefferson Park before circling back off the trail through sub-alpine terrain, before rejoining the trail for the return trip to the car. This comes at a price, of course, 13 miles, and each successive mile extracts a higher toll.

My companions were naturally curious about why I had chosen a destination so far from the trailhead, and whether I had long been disposed toward fanaticism.  The answer to the first question is easy, because it is there, and I want to see it, and to the latter, yes, but usually with games involving cards.

True, it makes for a long day, but it’s still a simpler proposition that backpacking in for the night, & hiking out the next day.  Do you trade away aching feet, or a night of sleeping in your own bed; a home-cooked dinner or a pot on a camp stove?  This, and an abiding faith in the doctrine of fitness, pushing the envelope, testing your limits, working through pain.

None of which is manner of chickens. Chickens rise early to cherry-pick the scratch, forage about the berm while the day is still cool, and then settle under a shady bough to wait out the heat of the day. Have I learned nothing after a decade of chicken husbandry? Chickens would hike in & chill out, then rise early to hike out in time to chill again.

Maybe their message is making inroads. On Sunday, I puttered about the yard before taking a late lunch, then took a long nap, and woke up feeling refreshed. Chickens are not long-lived themselves, but the human who heeds them might well add the span of a chicken’s lifetime to his own.

Coo, coo, ca choo.

the right bird

As clouds literally gather in the gulf, the Republicans assemble in Florida, and the country’s future once again hangs in the balance.  As the candidates and their families are presented to the nation, I find myself reflecting on how the chicken is poorly suited for modern politics. 

Imagine cameras zooming in as a rooster of magnificent plumage ascends to the podium, but instead of spewing platitudes, the talking head casts nervously about, as if cats lurked behind the bunting. Checking the stage for earwigs on national TV does not boost the confidence of one’s constituency, and they come to doubt your ability to rescue them following a hurricane.

The chicken is not the only bird unsuited for mass media. The hawk perched on a powerline evokes wiretaps, the wide-eyed owl blinking “who, me?” makes us wonder if there’s cold cash stashed in the office freezer. We know the nuthatch flitting from branch to branch can’t spell tomato, and the bushtit, by virtue of it’s name alone, brings to mind the Monkey Business and fact-finding trips to Argentina.

On the other hand, the hummingbirds who convene annually at our feeder, would do well in Congress, as they quarrel continuously, and despite the ruckus, manage to sneak in & siphon off a little syrup for themselves from time to time.  A turkey will never head a presidential ticket, but by virtue of it’s name, and native roots, could make an admirable vice-president.

Benjamin Franklin denigrated the character of the bald eagle, but it’s nomination for the national bird was visionary.  How can we not be impressed by its furrowed brow and intense gaze?  It’s tongue may not be golden, but it’s beak certainly is.  Instead of dropping into the convention by parachute, it soars in through an open window, circles above the frenzied delegates & lights on the dais before the microphones.  Our hearts catch in our throats as it stares into the camera.  We love this bird!  Reporters may notice the stench of dead fish, but we’re in no mood for their ungrateful grumbling.

Coo, coo, ca choo!

morning, noon & night

The hens are friends who crowd around the door of the roost to greet me at the first sound of my footsteps each morning.  They are genial neighbors who rise from their porches in welcome when I drop by for a visit in the middle of the day.

But in the evening, when I saunter benevolently down to latch the roost door, ensuring their safe passage through the night, they cast about with nervous glances, as if expecting that I will ask to see their green cards.

Lousy ingrates!  Can they not know that I am literally saving their lives, as I did the night before, and all the nights before that?

Apparently not tonight, and probably not tomorrow night either.  I latch the door and cheerfully bid them good evening, then latch the gate & stroll reflectively back to the house.

We yearn for that which we cannot obtain.  Tomorrow evening, the fading light will catch my eye, turning my thoughts to chickens, and I will, once again, saunter hopefully down the gravel path.

Coo, coo, ca choo.

a menacing stargazer

The spotlight of the late-rising crescent moon blinked through the trees.  Perseus soared high overhead, vaulting the earth as he has since the beginning of imagination.

Against the staid background of constellations, meteors flashed soundlessly.  Most vanished within the first heartbeat, but some few rained stardust from long white wakes.

Silent as the celestial shower, the hens listened apprehensively to the approach of heavy footsteps on the pavement next to the roost, the creaking protests of an old chaise lounge, a muffled rustle as a blanket was shaken out.  A long silence, then more rustling, creaking & heavy footfall, now receding in the direction of the dark house.

The reassuring silence slowly regrouped. Under the roost, moonlight flecked the ground as a breeze moved through the maples.  A hen rustled her feathers, and they waited together for the night to end.

Coo, coo, ca choo.

what better to do?

The decorous succession of clear, but well-tempered days seduced my weathered skepticism so I was caught off-guard when the sun came a-blazing this weekend.

Rather than frying an egg on the driveway, Mary departed for Dallas (Oregon) and returned in high spirits, charmed by the rural town and packing almost a dozen fertile eggs, which she nestled them under our broody buff orpington (ie big hen with golden feathers, who sits all day in her nesting box, for the uninitiated).

All went swimmingly until the next afternoon, when, with the thermometer nearing 100, our designated mother-to-be bolted the stifling coop for the first time in weeks.  A tense development, to be sure, since the eggs need her body heat to incubate.  Fortunately, she returned to the eggs instead of roosting up,  so, with no other option, we decided it was just the heat & that the eggs would be ok.

a portrait of the brooder as a young hen

A repeat occurrence the next afternoon made us more confident in our diagnoses.  Baking in the sun, the air in the coop felt like it might soft-boil the eggs - we united behind our hen in sympathy.

In a couple weeks, if the eggs haven’t hatched, we’ll check one to see how it tastes with toast.  Stay tuned...

Coo, coo, ca choo.

winnowing

The hens start each day with scratch.  Then they bustle over to the bank of yard clippings topped with kitchen compost to take account of our recent deposits, and to make withdrawals of any bite-sized visitors unlucky enough to have dropped by during business hours.


All this gets the day off to a swell start, but for real sustenance, they turn to the pellets filling the little bin in the coop.  The bin is a simple, but clever contraption that automatically refills the trough in its base by means of gravity & friction. Unbelievably, it functions perfectly without a timer or any LED’s.


Lately, I’ve noticed fine dust collecting in the trough, as if something has changed in the production or transporting of the pellets.  I didn’t like the idea of the hens feeding from a dust bin.


I remembered from grade school the description of settlers winnowing grain, separating wheat from the chaff by tossing baskets of grain into the air so the wind would carry away the chaff.  Wind power, why not?


I filled a bucket with pellets, climbed on a low stump, and poured slowly into a second bucket on the ground.  It might have worked better in Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweeping down the Plains) but a little plume of dust trailed off downwind from the cascading pellets.  A qualified success, new entertainment for the hens, and thanks to our rural setting, no witnesses.


I’ve tested a number of variations since then.  I’ve learned to check for an actual breeze before starting, and to hold off if the stump is slick from rain.  It’s been a while since I’ve positioned the lower bucket upwind from the stump.  The persistent, still unresolved problem is how to remove the pellets from the second bucket, which has to be more wide-mouthed than the first to catch all the pellets.


All good lessons, even if a coarse strainer turned out to be a better solution.  Another simple device, gravity-fed, and battery-free.


Coo, coo, ca choo.