Japanese Beetles

I remember with total clarity my first sight of a Japanese beetle in my first garden, back in Maryland a thousand years ago.  "Come look at this beautiful insect!" I shouted to my daughters, and we all stared at what, with its iridescent copper wings and emerald head and thorax, looked like a scarab out of a pharao's tomb.

Of course, I have since learned to hate Japanese beetles.  I have trapped, drowned, squished and cursed whole generations of them.  When we left sub-tropical Maryland for Vermont, one of the many blessings of the move appeared to be the relative absence of Japanese beetles.

There were always a few hanging around the roses in mid-summer, and the top leaves of the Harry Lauder Walking Stick (you can take a look at this weird-looking shrub:  http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/gardens-gardening/your-garden/plant-finder/plant-details/kc/c360/corylus-avellana-contorta.aspx) always got that lacy look that tells you the beetles have been at their orgies.  But as a semi-buddhist gardener, I believe in leaving bugs alone unless they are actually killing my plants.

This hellishly hot, wet summer, however, the beetles have arrived en masse.   They have reduced the leaves of the Harry Lauder and of the ornamental plum tree to brown filigree.  I don't eat either the bush or the tree, so I wasn't too concerned.  But when I saw that the top branches of the apple trees were turning brown, and the blueberries I picked had chunks chewed out of them, I got mad.

I went out in the early morning with a pail of soapy water and started shaking beetles out of the trees.  But they were up at the very top of the branches to catch the early sun,and this meant that when I shook the branches most of the beetles fell on me instead of into the bucket.  This caused an involuntary jumping reaction on my part, which dropped even more beetles on the ground.

I got even madder.  I had set out meaning to drown every single beetle in the garden, and I was not even coming close to my goal.  But because being in the garden often calms me down, I eventually decided that catching some beetles was better than catching none, that perfection is the enemy of action, that it is impossible to control Nature, etc.

I persevered, and when I had a goodish mass of drowned beetles in the bucket I went to the hen yard, called the hens, and poured the contents of the bucket on the ground.  To a hen, a Japanese beetle is as a truffle is to you and me.  Here are the girls, gorging on my harvest of iridescent scarabs:

My time was well spent.  In fifteen minutes I managed to decimate a garden pest and give my hens a nutritious delicacy.  My eventual recompense will be a clutch of protein-rich eggs with bright orange yolks free of the slightest trace of iridescence.

If there is a more rewarding job than hunting Japanese beetles, I don't know what it is.

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.

December 6, 2008 "Hens in Winter"

I think I might be running an industrial egg farm. It hasn't been going on for long, but who knows when it will end?

Here are the circumstances that led to my conversion from cuddly and compassionate, quasi-organic chicken keeper to steely-eyed factory-egg producer. A couple of weeks ago, my nine hens stopped laying. They had plenty of good excuses:

The weather turned extra-cold extra-early.

These are the darkest, cloudiest, shortest days of the year, and chickens need daylight to lay. (Right, I don't feel like doing much on cloudy days either.)

They are not as young as they used to be. (Neither am I.)

Some of them are molting. This is a natural process whereby birds lose their feathers and replace them with new ones. A molting hen does not lay. (Having experienced a number of “molts” in my own life, I can empathize.)

Chilly Chicken

My empathy notwithstanding, I needed eggs, and I wasn't getting any. Meanwhile, the chickens were consuming extra-large rations of expensive laying pellets along with smashed apples, old pumpkins and other tidbits.

There is a magic bullet for getting hens to lay in winter: turning on the lights in the henhouse. Battery hens are kept under lights round the clock, year round. And as a result of this unnatural regime, by their second year they are spent, and slaughtered. I had read plenty of lyrical exhortations to let hens follow the rhythms of nature, wax and wane with the seasons, and so on. If there is one who is fervent about following the rhythms of nature, it's me. Let the hens sleep the winter away, I used to think, let me not interfere with the hibernation that the season imposes, to a greater or lesser degree, on all of us.

On the other hand, I don't keep my chickens as pets, not quite. I have chickens because I want my own source of protein, and manure for the garden. Their affectionate nature and quirky personality notwithstanding, it makes no sense to feed nine hens and a rooster all winter if we're not getting eggs. I had tried all the low-key methods I knew to keep them comfortable. I closed their door at sundown. I employed the “deep litter” bedding method, which means that rather than cleaning out the coop periodically, I keep adding hay and wood shavings. This covers up the droppings and keeps the smells away. Most importantly, as the stuff begins to compost, it generates a certain amount of heat. I also plugged in a heated waterer so they would have access to liquid (as opposed to a chunk of ice) around the clock.

But that was not enough to keep them laying. So I capitulated and decided to go the industrial farming way. I installed an energy-saving bulb and turned it on for a couple of hours in the evening, confident that it would return my hens to reasonable laying rates.

To my surprise, it didn't. I was still having eggless days. One frozen evening, after turning on the lights I stuck around to watch the chickens. There was water in the water bowl, plenty of laying mash in the feeder, freshly smashed apples all over the floor. What more could they want? And then it hit me—these chickens were cold. They stood about with their shoulders hunched and one leg hidden in their feathers. They pecked around half-heartedly at the food, but soon returned to their hunched positions, like wind-blown pedestrians waiting for a bus.

Now what is the nicest thing someone who loves you can do when you're chilled to the bone? Offer you something hot to drink, that's what! Hot cocoa, hot chicken soup (forsooth!), hot coffee, hot tea with milk or a little brandy....

I ran inside and heated a quart of water in the microwave. I shook a bunch of powdered milk into a bowl, added some long-forgotten Farina for good measure, and when the water was good and hot mixed it all together and took it out to the coop. I poured the steaming mixture into one of the chickens' rubber dishes, threw in some laying mash, and presented it.

They clustered round like filings around a magnet. The boss hen tried it first, shook her beak, dipped it again and drank deeply. Her friends followed suit, and so did the rooster Charlemagne. By lights-out the bowl was empty.

Next morning, there were two lovely brown eggs in the nest.

And that's how I've been getting my two eggs a day every since. Ag-center types will say that it's the extra protein that does the trick, or the extra warmth. Perhaps. But I think that my hens realize that they've been listened to and understood, and they are rewarding me in the only way they know.

Animals, and plants too, have a way of responding to kind intentions. If you have experienced this (or the opposite!) I'd like to hear from you.