Backyard Chickens

Maybe you’re wondering why you haven’t heard about our hens for awhile? Well, they peck and scratch, lay eggs, file into their house at night … it’s not the makings of breaking journalism.

But these girls will be in for a big surprise soon. They’re going to get a chicken run of their very own! That means they won’t be able to devour my vegetable garden like they did last year, and it will also save our porch from their profuse droppings. (Seriously, chickens poop a lot, which is great for heating up the compost pile, but not so great for enjoying a nice meal out on the patio.)

I’m not sure the hens are as thrilled about the news as I am.

But they’ll still have plenty of room to roam in their run, and we plan to let them out occasionally to explore the yard.

If you’ve been following along with the Hen Diaries from the beginning, you may remember that I knew nothing about rearing chickens when we brought those four little peeping fluff-balls home from the feed store. That wasn’t entirely an accident. I can get a tad carried away with researching things, so I decided that the only way to make room in my life for chickens was to not spend hours combing through the Backyard Chickens Message Board or reading tomes on chicken-keeping. Instead I’d just jump into the experience, ask my chicken-keeping neighbors for help, and refer to said Message Board and books as needed. And that’s worked out just fine.

But recently I was glancing through The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan and came to the part about chicken-keeping. Her explanation of “Lazy Layers” caught my eye. Madigan says you can tell if you have a lazy layer, because she probably has a smaller comb and wattle, and of course, doesn’t lay as many eggs as your other hens.

Hmmm, that sounds a lot like Gertrude…

What does Madigan suggest you do with these low egg producers? “You can improve your flock’s overall laying average by culling and slaughtering the lazy layers,” she writes.

Oh my. Well, I suppose if my neighbor can turn his yard into a duck sanctuary, we can keep one slightly lower- producing hen around. Besides if we ship any of the hens off to the chicken farm, it might be Charlotte. She’s started pecking our legs, just when we least suspect it.

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six & Seven, Eight, Nine, & Ten, Eleven – Nineteen, Our First Egg!, and Twenty – Twenty-nine.

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It’s the first week of October and something is up with Emily. The hens usually wander around the yard together, pecking and scratching, but Emily is hanging out by herself. And she spends a lot of time sitting on the back step, staring into the sliding-glass patio door, crooning. When we’re outside, she follows us everywhere, running around our legs. It almost seems like she wants to be petted.

On a Thursday morning, I’m out in the backyard stacking firewood, and I see Emily slip behind the concrete planter in front of the shed. She starts making a lot of noise.

When I go over to investigate, Emily runs out, and I see it … a perfect brown egg resting in the ivy. Our first egg! I want to call everyone I know to share the news.

We crack the egg open the next day, and can’t believe how large and yellow the yolk is. We compare it to the organic free-range ones from the health food store. Emily’s wins – no contest. Two days later she lays in the nesting box in the coop, and starts laying one each morning.

…

Chicken-keeping is uneventful for most of the rest of the month. Then the last week of October, we go to a friend’s birthday party and get home around 10:00 p.m.  We forgot to close the chickens’ gate before we left, so my husband grabs the flashlight and trudges outside. It seems like he’s out there for a long time.

“How many chickens did we have today?” he asks, as he slides the door closed behind him.

I laugh, but I can tell from the look on his face that something’s wrong.

“Virginia’s missing,” he says.

I haven’t been in the backyard since I let the hens out in the morning. But I’m sure I looked out and saw all of them around lunchtime. I grab the flashlight and race out to the coop. Sure enough, only three chickens are perched on the roosting bar. I drop to my knees and search underneath the coop. She’s not there.

I circle the yard, swinging the beam of the flashlight across wet leaves, rose bushes, soggy grass, the tangle of tomato plants. No Virginia.

I return to the coop. Still just three chickens.

I repeat the same exercise at least four times.

Hens are predictable creatures. They march into their coops every night when the sun sets. That’s what they do. Something has to be wrong. A raccoon attack is the first thing that comes to mind, but Virginia’s too large for a raccoon to carry out of the yard without leaving at least some feathers behind. Maybe it was a hawk? Or did she get under or over the fence?

Finally we make ourselves go to bed, but I wake up several times during the night. At 3:00, I shake my husband. “Did you look under the bench?”

“Yes,” he assures me.

I’m outside a few minutes before the sun is up, circling the yard again. When it’s light, I stand on a planter and survey my neighbor’s wooded lot, hoping to see a black and white hen wandering amongst the trees.

At 10:00 a.m., I’m out searching the yard yet again, but I’m starting to give up hope.

Then I hear a chicken clucking by the garden, and I realize there is one place we didn’t look. Our yard waste bin – a large plastic garbage can provided to us for curbside recycling – is over there, overflowing with weeds and branches. I race over and pull the debris from it.

There’s Virginia standing in a foot of dirty water, staring up at me. I heave the bin over on its side and she runs out. Her under-feathers are soaked and dirty, but otherwise, she looks fine. Within minutes, she’s scratching and pecking at the ground as though nothing happened.

The next morning Virginia lays an egg in the nesting box. We’re assuming that may be what she was doing in the bin. Her eggs are beautiful – a little smaller and lighter brown than Emily’s.

We’re getting 14 eggs a week now, and they’re a delicious treat. But it’s also nice to have all of our girls wandering around the yard together again.

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six & Seven, Eight, Nine, & Ten, Eleven – Nineteen, and Our First Egg!.

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If you’ve been following the Hen Diaries, you’ve watched our four sweet little chicks turn into garden-devouring hens. Well, today was a big day for our little flock. Emily laid our first egg!

I’ll tell you all the details in the next installment of the Hen Diaries, but for now, look how much these girls have changed.

Here they are in May.

 

August…

September…

And today. Look at those combs!

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six & Seven, Eight, Nine, & Ten, and Eleven – Nineteen.

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Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, is a backyard chicken enthusiast. Her article about her poultry-keeping passion, “The It Bird”, appears in this week’s New Yorker.  “Chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomic, and emotional matters of the moment,” Orlean writes, “plus, in the past few years, they have undergone an image rehabilitation so astonishing that it should be studied by marketing consultants.” Orlean credits Martha Stewart, who featured pictures of her rare-breed chickens in her 1982 book Entertaining and subsequently in her magazine, for helping to take chicken keeping from a “lowly profession” to the it-thing that’s made Orlean “the object of more pure envy than I have ever experienced in my life.”

You can check out an abstract of Susan Orlean’s article here. (You have to pay to see the entire article on The New Yorker‘s website. But inquire with your local library. They may subscribe to a database that allows you to read magazine articles online for free with a library card.)

National Public Radio’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook also featured backyard chickens today. Susan Orlean was a guest, as was Elaine Belanger , editor of Backyard Poultry. You can listen to the show here.

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