A Chicken Tale
Once upon a time, there was a young
pullet who wanted to be a woodland chicken. Somehow she ended up in the
Ogden Nature Center, where she lurked under the shrubbery and danced along the
trails and became a terrible distraction to the visiting school children.
The teaching naturalists wanted her out of their lives forever.
Besides, they were worried that she would become dinner for the fox family
that also lived there. So I agreed that if we could catch her, I would
give her a good home.
At the time of her capture, the woodland chicken was a pullet: she had not
yet begun to lay eggs. Her appearance was immature; her comb had not
yet developed, the feathering on her neck was thin, and her tail was not
filled out.
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The tail, however, was big enough to convince one of the naturalists that the bird was a rooster, and she named "him" Eli. I promised to keep the name, modified to Ellie, but within days, the Woodland Chicken had become just plain Chickie. From the start, she has been feisty and determined, and not at all shy about expressing her opinions, of which she seems to have many.
Once we got her home we penned her in the dog run that a previous homeowner had built. This required some modification to chicken-proof the enclosure. Because we had discovered that Chickie is a highly skilled flyer, the modifications including putting a chicken wire roof over the new run. We put up a tree limb for a roost, and installed Chickie in her new home. She hated it. She wanted to be a woodland chicken. But she quickly discovered that food and fresh water appeared at regular intervals, which wasn't so bad after all. Things were even better as fresh bugs and weeds from the garden appeared in her run.
We had kept an old dog crate in the run as additional shelter, and after a few weeks Chickie began laying eggs in it. But cold weather was coming on, and we decided that the dog crate really didn't provide enough shelter from freezing rain and snow, so we started a new round of improvements. The run was adjacent to an old shed. So we created a new chicken pen inside the shed, securely enclosed on top, and installed a new set of roost poles. Then we moved Chickie, in her dog crate, into the new pen and cut a small chicken doorway through to the outside run. She continued to grumble about her thwarted goal of being a woodland chicken, but she never used her outdoor roost again. Other improvements followed: a night light, in case she was late coming to her roost, and an electric water bowl to keep her water liquid in cold weather.
With the cold weather Chickie's egg production stopped, and she began her moult. All chickens moult, generally in the fall, and egg laying stops. I have the idea that for most chickens, the feather loss is gradual and the chicken continues to look pretty much covered throughout. But as in most things, Chickie takes moulting to an extreme. Her feathers fall out suddenly, and she looks terribly naked.
That first winter poor Chickie looked dreadfully unhappy, naked and wretched in the cold, drafty shed. But as the days lengthened and warmer temperatures returned and Chickie's new feathers came in smooth and glossy, she began to lay again in her old dog crate.
About this time we needed the dog crate for something else, and we decided to build Chickie a real, professional nest box for her business of egg laying. The completed unit was lovely, but when we took the old dog crate away, Chickie stopped laying. Or so we thought. After several weeks, she also began to disappear each day. We searched the indoor pen and the outdoor run, and couldn't find Chickie. We did find what appeared to be a weak spot in her fence and decided that she was actually leaving the run and returning. So while she was inside we patched the hole securely. She still disappeared. So we searched again. This time as we looked around the new nest boxes we heard an angry squawk from underneath. There was Chickie, wedged into the back corner in the dark. She was not coming out. Suddenly, all became clear. The eggs I thought she was not laying were actually in that dark little nest under the nest boxes. Chickie had gone broody.
The chicken books gave advice on how to prevent the hen from going broody, that is, accumulating a nest full of eggs with the intention of incubating them. One book suggested that if the hen evaded one's efforts and accumulated an nest of eggs, one might just as well let her sit on them. Chicken eggs hatch after 21 days of incubation, and once the hen had sat that long with no results, the book claimed, she would give up of her own accord. But six weeks later, Chickie was still determined she would hatch those infertile eggs. Finally one day we were able to spot her on a brief visit out to the run and quickly block the doorway. Now we could dismantle her nest and remodel again, this time enclosing the legs of the nest boxes to block access to her hidden spot. It turned out that there were fifteen eggs in her nest, all very light weight from dehydration. Chickie was very irate about our treachery for a day or two, but the joys of catching bugs and sand bathing in her run soon made up for her disappointment. In a few weeks she started laying again, this time in her nest boxes.
In midsummer, Chickie became the founding member of an all-girl band. One of our neighbors raised two more pullets from chicks for me. The new girls are Buff Orpington chickens, a large breed well known for their brown eggs, fluffy plumage, and their pleasant dispositions. In keeping with the girl band theme, I named them Maxine and Betty. Chickie, on the other hand, lays off-white eggs, has a very smooth tight plumage, and can best be described as irascible.
Chickie and Maxine
The new girls came to live with Chickie when they got to be about her size. Chickie immediately asserted her total and exclusive rights to the entire chicken pen, so we had to temporarily fence off one end of the run for the girls.
