Chicken Shortage

This spring, hatcheries all across the United States have run out of inventory, and baby chicks are rarer than hens’ teeth. When I heard this news on a rainy afternoon two days ago it brought tears to my eyes. I wasn’t missing the sun, or the company of my fellow humans, or life as it used to be. I was missing my hens.

For years, they were the hub of my backyard ecology. Thanks to them, nothing ever went to waste. “Give it to the hens!” we said about everything from burned toast to apple cores, carrot tops, and curdled milk. And, magnanimously, persistently, the hens turned our refuse into eggs.

But they didn’t just give us eggs. Their nitrogen-rich droppings transformed the spoiled hay that I used for their bedding into the most exquisite of composts, which they turned and chopped and aerated all winter long as they scratched looking for seeds. In the spring, all I had to do was dump the stuff on the garden and (pretty much) watch the veggies grow.

Those hens were my friends. They were Buff Orpingtons--big, cream-colored birds with a placid disposition. They didn’t lay as abundantly as some of the more flighty breeds, but on the other hand they didn’t let Vermont winters get to them. They would rush to greet me when I entered their yard, peering up at me first with one eye and then the other, in that inimitable chicken way. And in the evening, when I went to collect the eggs and close the coop against the fox, the fisher, and the weasel, they would purr sleepily on their roosts. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the handle of the egg basket in my fingers, and hear the cluckings and feather fluffings as the girls settled for the night.

What impelled me, a city child, to keep hens and grow vegetables? I used to think that it had started with the 1974 oil embargo, when the price of everything, from gas to groceries, shot up overnight and it dawned on me that my loved ones and I were at the mercy of world events. I, who had never so much as watered a houseplant, bought a packet of tomato seeds and pushed them one by one into the packed dirt at the side of the house, right under the eaves where, at the first rainstorm, the few seedlings that had sprouted promptly drowned.

I went back to buying tomatoes in the supermarket, oblivious to the fact that the seeds of self-sufficiency had been planted in my head long before, by my mother’s stories.

“During the war [the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39],” she used to tell me, “before your father and I met, he and his family lived in Barcelona and almost died of starvation, because they couldn’t get food in the city. But we, [meaning she and her parents and siblings, who lived in one of those now-rare diversified farms] we  always had food. Even though we were near the front, and there were bombardments and many dangers from retreating soldiers, the chickens kept laying and the rabbits kept having litters. We even had a pig that we slaughtered in the fall. And the garden gave us cabbages and kale in the winter, and melons, eggplants, and tomatoes in the summer. And the trees made olives and almonds, and after a rain we children would go out to hunt for snails….”

This is the lesson I retained: depend on the supermarket for your groceries, and if something really bad happens you’ll go hungry. Grow your own food, and you’ll be o.k. During most of my adult life, therefore, whenever zoning regulations allowed it, I kept chickens.

So I understand where today’s would-be chicken keepers are coming from, but I hope they know what they’re getting into: hens need a coop to shelter in, and a securely-fenced yard in which to sun themselves, and they won’t produce if they’re fed on grass and kitchen waste alone. (Despite my self-sufficiency aspirations, I used to have to supplement my hens’ diet with commercial feed.) What hens don’t need in order to lay eggs is a rooster. In fact, given the male chicken’s libido, if he has fewer than at least fifteen wives to share the burden, he will stress them out with his amorous assaults.

If kept safe and satisfied, a hen will lay eggs for as long as five years, but she will eventually go through menopause. Do these new chick buyers have an exit plan for their aged birds? And when they first bring home those cheeping balls of fluff, do they realize that, absent a mother hen, day-old chicks need a heat lamp to keep them alive and lively? That you have to teach them to drink by dipping their beaks in water? And that they will dive in and promptly drown if that water is more than an inch deep?

If you are one of the lucky souls able to get chickens to cheer you and feed you in this depressing time, I applaud your impulse toward self-sufficiency. I wish you happy birds, overflowing egg baskets, and the illusion of security afforded by the knowledge that, if worst comes to worst, you can always make an omelette. May you and your flock rejoice in each other for years to come. And if you want any advice on poultry, I’ll be glad to oblige.

Some Things I Know About Eggs

Fresh-laid eggs are best. They're fine for scrambling, frying, or baking.  But here's what I always say when I bring a carton of eggs as a hostess gift:  if you're planning to hard-boil them, or whip the whites for a souffle, you need to age them a bit.  Leaving them on the counter overnight should do it.

The color of the shell indicates nothing other than the breed of the bird.  A pure-white shell may come from a happily pastured hen, and a brown or blue or green one from a hen kept in a cage.

If you break open an egg and the yolk is a shockingly bright orange, congratulations!  It means the hen has been out on grass, which has transmitted its gift of carotene to the bird, and now to you.

If you break open an egg and find a slight red spot in the yolk, don't freak.  It is NOT an embryo. It just means that a tiny blood vessel ruptured as the egg traveled down the oviduct.  It will vanish without a trace in cooking.

According to Temple Grandin, laying hens are the most abused of all farm animals http://www.grandin.com/inc/animals.make.us.human.ch7.html.  If you find it in your heart to care about the welfare of chickens, spend an extra few cents and buy eggs from cage-free hens.

Hens are bright, warm-hearted creatures, not mere egg-making machines.   Let us try to see beyond the egg on our plate to the living, questing being that laid it.

Dogged By Dog Guilt

I know I'm not the only one suffering from this, but sometimes it feels that way.  Are there really other people out there who, watching their canine companion snoring peacefully on the rug, wonder whether the dog is sleeping because, a) she is tired or, b) she is in despair at the hopeless monotony of her days?

There is no end to the emotional and mental states that I attribute to my dogs:  frustrated ambition, a sense of unrealized potential, loneliness, boredom, and existential despair.   Don't think I haven't noticed that some of these preoccupations also occupy my mind.  But it's hard to keep from projecting when my dogs are at my feet (Wolfie) or under my elbow (Bisou) practically 24/7.

I feel that I am perpetually disappointing them.  Every time I close my laptop or put on a sweater they catapult to the back door in the mad hope that something magical is about to happen--but alas, it's just me going to fire up the wood stove or spritz the plants.  It's that all-forgiving but never-ending hope in their eyes that does me in.

I'm lucky to be a member of an unofficial dog-guilt support group.  I have dog-loving friends whose dogs by any standard lead enviable lives.  They have good food and soft beds.  They have received the benefits of training.  They enjoy the company of their own species and are hardly ever out of sight of their owners.   And yet when we humans get together, one of our perennial topics of conversation is the guilt that dogs us.  We each assure the other that her dogs couldn't possibly be depressed or sad or bored in any way.  This makes us feel better for as long as it takes to finish a glass of wine.  But the moment we get home and are greeted by our patient dogs ("Not that I hold it against you, but why were you gone so long?"), the guilt returns.

Many years ago, I felt guilty about my first dog, who lived in the back yard--now that was something to feel guilty about.  But all our subsequent dogs have lived in the house, slept in our bedroom, been trained and groomed and walked and cooked for.  And the guilt has, if anything, only gotten worse.

Lately the guilt has expanded to include my fish, my little Betta splendens that I got for aesthetic reasons but who, it turns out, has emotional needs like everybody else in this house.  Every time I go by--he lives in a large flower vase on the kitchen counter--he rushes towards me, waving his tiny fins.  If it weren't for the glass between us, he'd jump onto my shoulder.  He doesn't want food.  He wants to be petted.

So I do.  Every morning, after I let the dogs out, I stand at the counter and stick my index finger in the water and pet the fish.  I try to remember to pet him once or twice while I'm fixing dinner, and again before retiring.  I don't want him to feel ignored--my interactions with him are probably the highlight of his day. 

For some reason, though, I am delightfully free from chicken-related guilt.  I take good care of my hens, but although they come running whenever they see me, they don't have that ever-hopeful-yet-forgiving look in their eyes that the dogs have.  Besides, there are nine of them.  They are their own little tribe.  They depend on me for food and shelter, but not, thank heavens, for mental stimulation or emotional sustenance.  I find them blessedly restful to be around.

Chickens And Bullies

One of my hens was being bullied last week, and I had to take action.  She was showing all the outward signs of hen misery, standing hunched with her feathers fluffed in a corner of the shed.  I kept an eye on her for a couple of days and then realized that the other hens were pecking at her.

Now I want to make it very clear that my hen house is a Peck-Free Zone.  That doesn't mean that there isn't a pecking order, in which the top hen delivers mostly symbolic pecks in the direction of lesser hens who are showing too much interest in a certain worm or apple core.  But because I keep just a few hens in a large space my flock is not prey to the stresses that cause bullying.

Bullying among chickens (and here the delicately nurtured might wish to skip the next couple of sentences) can be a serious problem.  Once a bird gets hurt or appears weak the others will peck at it, plucking off not just feathers but bits of flesh, until it dies, at which point they will eat it.  Chicken bullying is such a horrible thing that every spring when the batches of fluffy, super-adorable baby chicks arrive in the feed store, the thought of the dangers of overcrowding prevents me from swooping up half a dozen of the little darlings and adding them to my flock.

Given the near-idyllic environment that my hens live in, I couldn't figure out what had prompted the abuse until I picked up the victim and saw that she had a partially frostbitten comb (this sometimes happens to chickens in winter) and somehow it had bled a drop or two, and the scent of blood had turned her sisters into ravening wolves.

I fenced off a corner of the shed and put her in it, along with food, some warm water laced with apple cider vinegar, and a heat lamp.  I had to prop a piece of cardboard against the fence because her bloodthirsty sisters were reaching in to peck her, and she was too stunned to move away.  But the warmth and the isolation and the vinegar all did their work, and in less than 48 hours she was healed and eager to rejoin the flock, who welcomed her back with open arms (hens have short memories).

There is no question that without intervention my bullied hen would have slowly succumbed to the attacks.  Likewise, it is a good thing that parents and schools have become aware of the effects of bullying on its victims, and are paying attention and taking action where necessary.  But sometimes I wonder if the definition of bullying has become so broad that it covers unpleasant but essentially harmless, sporadic interactions among children.  I worry that if well-intentioned parents overreact their actions may result in making the child feel even more vulnerable and helpless.

When I was in second grade, I had to wear an eye patch for a year to combat "lazy eye."  This ultimately saved my eyesight, but its short-term side effects were unfortunate.  One of the most popular girls in my class, a red-headed tomboy with a talent for making trouble, announced in the playground that the patch meant I had a contagious disease, and people should stay away from me. 

To say that I found this upsetting is to put it mildly.  I wept and wailed and railed at my parents and said that I never ever wanted to set foot in that school again.  Today, many people would classify this episode as bullying and would feel justified in speaking to the teacher or principal about it.  My parents, on the other hand, while they commiserated  and assured me that my nemesis was wrong in what she had done, did not interfere.  They must have figured that an occasional lesson in the school of hard knocks would not damage me, would in fact help me to acquire a thicker skin and enlarge my knowledge of human nature.

As it happened, the episode had a happy ending.  The errant girl mentioned what she had done to her father, who happened to be a doctor and who instructed her to apologize to me and to tell the other girls that my condition was not contagious. Shortly afterwards the redhead and I became friends.

I don't mean to minimize the damage that can be caused by prolonged, serious bullying.  In these cases, intervention is the responsible, the only thing to do.  But I do worry that sometimes we overprotect children--from germs, from falls, from unfair grades and unpleasant people.  But the world, unfortunately, is full of germs, falls, unfairness and unpleasantness.  And reasonable amounts of exposure to these evils is a kind of vaccination of which I would not want my own child to be  deprived.

My Gay Hens

Before I plunge into a narrative of what I saw today, I should set the scene.  My current flock consists of, in descending order of age:

A.  Three Buff Orpingtons, fat and yellow and indistinguishable from each other.  Poor layers all, two of them have been broody since the beginning of summer.

B.  Two Rhode Island Reds and one Barred Rock, all in their second year, and laying well.

C.  A gaggle of eight pre-pubertal pullets of various breeds who keep to themselves and have a wonderful time.

Another fact worth remembering, and one that I have documented in these pages, is that one of my hens has, in the past, occasionally been heard to crow.  This has always happened early in the morning, before I serve them breakfast, so I've never been able to figure out who was doing the crowing.  But somebody was definitely sounding rooster-like.

This evening I was outside reading Elisabeth Bailey's The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating when I looked up and saw two hens...mating.  I have had roosters before, so I know whereof I speak.  What I saw was not the half-hearted, playful reciprocal mounting of cows or bitches in heat.  What I saw looked earnest and businesslike.

The usual scenario runs like this:  the rooster struts a bit and does a little sideways dance with one wing pointed downwards, then looks around and mounts the nearest hen, grabbing her neck feathers with his beak, "treading" her back with his feet and doing his best to stay balanced.  Then there is a shuddering and a fluffing of feathers and he jumps off and the hen fluffs her feathers and they both go about their separate business.

What I saw today did not include any strutting or dancing (but then, I was deep into my book, so I may have missed it), but one of the Orpingtons got on top of one of the Rhode Islands, and the neck grabbing, the treading and the shuddering and the fluffing of feathers happened exactly as it used to when there was a patriarch in the flock.

I have not looked up "gay hens" on Google, because I'm afraid of the sites it might lead me to, so I've no idea how unusual this behavior might be.  I'm just a clueless country dweller reporting the extraordinary stuff that goes on right under my nose.

Crowing Hen Mystery Continues

I mentioned a while back that I thought one of my six hens was crowing, but I wasn't sure. With roosters, there is never a question of whether or not they are crowing. Roosters crow at the drop of a hat, and not just at sunrise. And they crow especially whenever anybody goes near the hen yard, so you can easily see who is doing it. He stands as tall as possible,flaps his wings, fluffs up his tail, stretches his neck way up and back, opens his beak and lets fly. If you stand next to a crowing rooster, your ears will actually hurt.

For a couple of months this summer the hens were living out in the field, inside their portable fence, so I couldn't hear whether there was crowing in the morning, but now that they are back in the chicken shed, I can hear every word. And one of those words is a perfectly clear, if subdued, cock-a-doodle-doo. I hear it between six and seven a.m., as I'm getting ready to go to the chicken house to serve breakfast. But I only hear it once or twice, and the crowing never happens when I'm with the flock.

So I cannot figure out which of my hens is doing this. I'm sure it's one of the three Buff Orpingtons, because I remember hearing the sound before we got the three new hens. But which one is it? I have scanned them for signs of masculinization--the floppy comb, the spurs on the legs, and the long tail feathers which are the poultry equivalent of a mustache. But the three B.O.s continue to look as matronly as ever, with their short legs, rounded figures, and girly little combs. Nor--though it's hard for me to tell, since they are as alike as three peas in a pod--is one of the three more dominant than the others.

Of course it may be that the crowing hen is not crowing to assert dominance. It may be that she's just crowing to communicate information: "sun's up, let's go lay an egg!" Or it may be that the crow is her way of calling for breakfast, and that she continues to do it because it works, every time.

Hens In Summer

About this time every year I let a few zucchini grow to a hefty size. Some of these I cut up and freeze to make into zucchini bread later, when the gardening frenzy is over, for my winter breakfasts. Others I slice in half lengthwise and serve to the hens.

I did that today, and they all came running. The three Buff Orpingtons, the crones of the flock, who've had zucchini before, dove in right away. The young hens--two New Hampshire Reds and one Barred Rock--didn't quite know what to make of the thick green slabs, and every time they approached one of the B.O.s chased them away. I guess there's a food hierarchy in the flock, but it doesn't seem to apply to sleeping arrangements--at night they all snuggle up together on their roost, in no particular order.

I noticed that the B.O.s, who looked like shiny pale golden balls in early summer, are starting to look a bit scruffy. This is their second summer, and they are probably ready to go into a molt. That means they'll go around losing their feathers, looking pathetic and not laying eggs for a while.

The young trio, on the other hand, after a summer gorging on grass and bugs, are reaching their prime. Chickens really can be things of beauty. The two R.I.R.s are a rich chestnut all over, with a couple of iridescent blue feathers in their tails. And the Barred Rock, with her black and white horizontal stripes and her bright red comb makes me think of the typical apache outfit--a striped black and white sweater and a bright red bandanna around the neck. All the chicken needs to complete the look is a Gauloise hanging from her beak. All three are bright-eyed and, yes, bushy tailed, and laying little brown hard-shelled eggs. They will be in full production by the time the B.O.s start molting, which bodes well for our winter omelettes.

How many times have I mentioned winter in this post? The year has turned, and as you drive on the roads around here you can see people getting serious about their wood piles. July isn't even over yet, but the tips of the top branches of the maple in our side yard are already starting to redden. The roadsides are lined with Queen Anne's Lace, the tall gray-green spears of mullein, cobalt blue wild asters and goldenrod. The worst of the heat seems to be over.

I try to spend every possible minute of these last long days outside, storing up sunlight for the coming winter.