Prologue: Which Bathroom is He Supposed to Use?

Prologue: Which bathroom is he supposed to use?

Things were going very well. Each minor crisis was met with a renewed vigor, the flock spent another summer without incident, Lagertha was becoming almost as large as the fully grown birds, and Coq Au Vin and had settled into a workable routine with each other. We avoided each other for the most part with a distanced mutual respect and once every two weeks or so he decided that life would not be complete unless I delivered to him a good booting. You could tell in the days leading up to it because he would posture in front of me and this will be difficult to describe. When chickens forage around, they are bent over, searching the ground for morsels, and pick up this or that tasty bug, treat, cracked corn, or whatever. They look intense, but serene. Coq Au rarely forages, but when he does, he also looks intent and serene. As I’ve described before, he usually doesn’t eat what he finds, but calls a girl over and gives the treat to her. Sometimes it is only out of a sense of his inner altruism, sometimes he launches into his weird stiff-legged mating dance. But on the occasions where he is posturing for a fight, he bends down with the same intensity but with an underlying seething hated that causes his movements to almost tremble. He’ll pick up something useless like a piece of straw and put it back down with equal muscular tension. As he does this he grumbles under his breath: “I’m gonna pick up THIS piece of straw … and now I’m gonna put it over HERE! Then I’m gonna pick up THIS piece and put it over THERE! THAT’LL show YOU who’s the *REAL* boss of THIS yard!” … and on and on. That’s how I know a flurry of talons and feathers is only a day or so away and a good booting is in order. On those days he pleads with me. “Please, sir … oh please. My life can not be complete on this day unless I’ve had a sound kicking!” and I am forced to oblige.

Thus, life went on in this way but the nature of the flock was about to be drastically changed, and for a long time to come.

While watching the flock foraging the yard one fine autumn day, I took special interest in how lil Lagertha had grown.

“She’s magnificent,” I thought. “Just look how much greener the beetle-sheen is on her black feathers than the older girls! Her legs and tail feathers are becoming stunningly long too, and … ah crap.”

Disheartened, I turned houseward to ignore the issue I had discovered with the deep, deep wish that I was wrong and that it would just simply go away if I closed my eyes hard enough. My respite was short, though.

The following day, herself and I were out in the yard to make the decisions on early fall activities. What plants needed to be pulled, what summer junk needed to be tossed or put away, etc. The flock was once again out foraging and basking in the early autumn sun. My wife outwardly began the same conversation to me that I had with myself only a day before. I had said nothing to her, she was musing the same way I had been.

“Look at how beautiful Lagertha’s tail is and how tall she’s getting!”

“That’s because ‘she’s’ a rooster, my love.”

“Ah crap!” my lovely bride said in complete echo to the tone that played in my head yesterday.

With our mutual discovery of the same problem, I could no longer keep myself in denial. She had just seen the same thing I had seen and confirmed all of my suspicions and fears.

We made no decisions that day except to change her name from “Lagertha” to “Floki” (a tricky, enigmatic character from the same Vikings program that she and I were enjoying from which we had chosen the name “Lagertha”.

Little did I realize at that time just what an epic struggle was about to befall our household. This was the harbinger akin to the mythic tales of old that belie a story of Arthurian proportions.

Of Rolaids and KY Jelly.

Of Rolaids and KY Jelly

Everyone needs help sometimes. Even a strong leader can fall ill to some ailment large or small and be brought low for a time. A little help, a little recuperation, and a renewed attitude on life can do wonders.

One day, I walked out to the run to see the flock and tend to their needs. By and large, chickens are a lot hardier than they look and if properly fed and housed, they pretty much take care of themselves. Never the less, issues do arise from time to time and keeping a careful eye helps prevent minor issues from becoming major catastrophes.

Chickens have their own social structure and their own laws for dealing with issues. To the casual outside observer, trouble is usually responded to by hens fleeing for cover in all directions. While this is at least partially true, their social structure also gives the flock order and each hen plays a part. But if a hen is sick or injured, they will keep a distance from the others. Chickens, on their own, have no doctors. A sick or injured hen can put the whole flock at risk so they can have a natural tendency to pick on an injured hen, or chase away an ill hen. A sick or injured hen will also seek her own company away from the flock for these same reasons.

For reasons that weren’t immediately apparent, the alpha female, Hermione (also the smallest hen, oddly enough) was standing fairly still away from the rest of the flock. She is also Coq Au’s favorite girl so it was quite odd that neither he nor the rest of the girls were paying her any mind at all. Nor was she seeking their company. She is usually in the thick of things laying down the law to the other girls and strutting pridefully around, but today she seemed somewhat sullen. She was standing kind of funny too.

I opened the run to let the girls out into the yard and she was reluctant to come out, but she did. I threw down some treats and the girls clamored over each other to get them, but she didn’t come near. I threw some in her direction and noted that she took a passing interest and did eat some. If she’s not off her food, then it can’t be too bad, but I watched.

Hens have a very distinctive shape to their bodies. Especially good layers, and Hermione was one of the best. She lays large eggs for a girl of her slight frame, but her shape was all off. The way she stood, the way she walked, it was almost penguin-like. By now, I had read and reread enough of the common chicken ailments to know that she was probably ‘egg bound’.

'Egg bound' is where an egg is stuck in the hen’s laying tract and can be anywhere from uncomfortable to downright painful for her. And … as per usual … if not handled properly … can be fatal. An egg bound hen can’t walk right, stand right, sleep right, or eat right and her laying tract can continue to become backed up. I spent the next half an hour trying to catch her without injuring her or attracting too much attention from an angry rooster and thus becoming injured myself! She was not at her best and disinclined to bunch up with the rest of the girls so a little gentle patience won the day and I caught her. She was terrified when I out the blanket over her, but that calmed her quite a bit. I brought her into the house, washed my hands, gently held her on her back in the bath tub and gently, very gently, probed her cloaca. Sure enough, there was an egg in there and for whatever the reason, she was having trouble laying it.

I released her back outside and went off to consult the mystic chicken gurus of the interwebs whose dread knowledge is the answer to all questions great and small and reviewed the possible outcomes. The best outcome was that she would pass the egg herself in a few hours to a day, but there were great cautions against just letting it go. The worst case was that she would continue to be bound up and die. There was NO WAY I was going to allow that to happen to our little devil-may-care punk rock girl! The middle ground would be to puncture the egg and thus let it break. While this would reduce the size and allow it to pass, extracting the shells would need to be done with practically surgical precision or they may injure the soft internal tissue of the hen and thus put her at great risk. This being my first go around with an egg bound hen, I was NOT going to go that route!

I decided that she would have to pass the egg herself, but that there were things to do to help her and I was willing to do them! I ran out to the store for some Rolaids and KY lubricant. I also called my wife and let her know what was going on so that she didn’t question why there was a chicken in the house. Oh crap … I let her go outside and would have to catch her again.

After a second half an hour with a more wary hen, I had her under the towel again. She was scared again, but calm. I brought her back into the bathroom and filled the sink with warm water. The experts explained that one of the causes could be stress and soothing the bird in a warm bath would help her tension relax. Who knew that chickens got stressed? Who knew they like warm baths? Well, no one explained this to Hermione because she had no interest in sitting down in the warm water. She stubbornly stood in the sink without letting her bottom come NEAR the water.

While this battle of wills played out in slow motion, I took a couple of Rolaids and broke them into small pieces. You see, one of the causes for being egg bound could be lack of calcium, and anyway, the extra calcium carbonate would stimulate the egg laying process. What the geniuses of the web failed to mention was how to get a stubborn hen to TAKE the pieces of Rolaids. So there I was. A confused hen standing in a sink full of warm water staring blankly at me while I offered her some antacids. You can’t make this stuff up.

Added stress be damned, a grasped her and got a few pieces into her beak. She was going to get better whether she wanted to or not and the union rep was not around for her to lodge a formal complaint! Next came the ‘fun’ part.

As per the best advice of the knowledgeable experts, I held poor little Hermione on her back again in the bathtub while I gently (and I do mean gently) probed her cloaca with a finger full of KY. Man, the egg was so near the surface and it was indeed large. Her vent did look red and swollen from the effort of trying to lay this monster that I felt like the KY would, in fact, do some good, but if anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be in my bathroom with a finger lodged a knuckle or two deep into the underside of a live hen, I’d have said that would have been a very unlikely scenario. But … here we were, Hermione and I, at the moment of a trust bond in our familial relationship.

After I felt like that spread as much personal lubricant around the affected area as I could and had gotten as many pieces of Rolaids into her as she was willing to take, I set her down on a soft pillow in a blanket with a warm towel over her so she could relax and de-stress. An hour later I repeated my failed attempt to give her a soothing soak and out her back to rest. An hour after that, herself came home.

“Where’s the poor baby!”

I gently shushed her and took her into the bathroom for a peek. After she was sure our little leader of the flock was resting comfortably, I explained what I had done so far and that soaking for fifteen minutes each hour was recommended, but that I was having trouble with that. With soak time approaching, my wife helped me. She held Hermione by the body, while I folded her legs in a bit and we got her to make contact with the water. We had to hold her in place with a hand on her back, as she remained perpetually unconvinced that a soak was a good thing. We were going to repeat the process through the evening until she laid her egg, hopefully by morning, but her time away from the flock was cut short.

At some point, as evening approached, even though the lights in the bathroom were off to keep her calm and allow her to rest, she decided it was her new mission in life to kill the strange hen she encountered in the mirror. That hen didn’t look like anyone she knew and it didn’t smell like … well … it didn’t smell like anyone at all! So, she or her, one of them had to go!

With this new ruckus, we knew her time at the spa had come to an end. We were a little fearful of returning her to the flock, she was still egg bound, and now having been away from the flock for hours, the others might treat her with suspicion and pick on her. Fortunately, it was getting dark and the hens were looking to go to bed, so once they were in the coop, we placed her gently in one of the nesting boxes and hoped for the best.

I’ll never know if it was the calcium carbonate, the KY, the soak, or just time, but next day she passed the egg. With crisis narrowly averted, the flock returned to normal and Hermione resumed her place as the top girl, although Coq Au let her rest for a few days before resuming his particular brand of attention to her. At least he had that much class.

Childhood Can Be Heartbreaking.

Childhood Can Be Heartbreaking

When I was small and my parents had decided to get chickens, they had fixed up an old outbuilding on the property, obtained the needed supplies, and the neighbors kindly had given them some fertile eggs. We incubated them in the house with a small incubator and witnessed the hatch before our eyes. I am so grateful for my parents for growing up how I did and getting to see the things that a lot of kids miss these days.

The following spring, one of those hens hatched her own babies and to this day it is one of my mother’s fondest memories watching them emerge from the coop for the first time … little yellow fluff balls … their mother gently calling them outside and patiently teaching them how to scratch around and all. I saw these things when I was young. I delighted in collecting the fresh eggs. I watched where I stepped when barefoot in the yard. I witnessed my father dispatch predators in the coop. But there are sometimes little things that you don’t pick up on as a child that you understand later. I’m not sure if it was my parents, the times, or my own moral compass, but I find myself instilled with a strong sense for nature in all its forms. You don’t change nature, you understand it … and … when it is YOUR flock and YOUR patch of nature that you are responsible for, you manage it. You gently help shape it, but it is a light touch where less is more.

Two days after Lagertha hatched (one chick out of fourteen eggs … my light ‘touch’ needed to be just a little more involved) she emerged from the coop under mama’s watchful eye. I had read accounts of roosters and/or dominant hens picking on new babies so I watched with careful eye as often as I could. Mama stayed close by, always clucking with a gentle cluck. Some of the other girls were annoyed by the new member that would one day have full voting rights with the union and they sometimes tried to assert themselves over the baby. Mama was always there, but what about Coq Au?

Turned out, whenever lil Lagertha ran afoul of one of the hens and Mama was a pace or two too far away, she would dash under Coq Au’s legs and he would stand watch while the offender would then skulk away! For all of his faults, he’s a good chicken daddy as well.

So, chickens maintain their own politics and it was only a light touch they needed in this matter. They’re never going to act like people, in order to manage things, I have to think more like a chicken. If a hen picks on another hen, it is just politics so long as no blood is being spilled and no one is injuring on another.

But … I have a human heart. The great and powerful Oz once counseled the Tin Man that hearts will never be practical until they become unbreakable. Each night, the flock would hop up on their roosts as normal while mama and baby would bed down together in the nest. Touching to see, and a reaffirming of life. As each week passed, Lagertha grew larger and grew more and more feathers. Then, one fateful night it happened. I went out to the coop one evening and heard the most mournful cry I could ever hear emanating from within. I peeked through the window and saw that mama had had enough of child rearing. Little Lagertha was quite big enough and she wasn’t going to ‘baby’ the young chick anymore. Mama had climbed up onto the roost with the flock and Lagertha, still too little, but fully feathered, was left crying in the nest. I fought every one of my instincts to keep myself from pulling mama down, or attempting to put Lagertha up, or to keep from bringing the crying hen into the house for the night for special treats and a warm pillow. Lagertha had to learn to ‘chicken’ and that sometimes is hard. This particular situation was made harder in my mind by that fact that had more eggs hatched, Lagertha would’ve at least had siblings to share her misery and to turn to for warmth and comfort. But the poor baby was on its own to face the politics of the flock. A singular member of her generation.

She cried at night for a few days … less and less. Mama and baby were still inseparable during the day and Lagertha’s Aunt Hortense, who normally likes to be by herself, palled around a bit too.

Eventually, Lagertha grew big enough to squeeze in onto the roost with the big girls, but it was a hard few days to watch.

For me, the experience is like how you feel when you witness a small child whose balloon has gotten away from them. Maybe they cry, maybe they laugh, but for them the world quickly moves on. I always feel more devastated for the child witnessing the balloon escape than the child does themself!

Chicken Network Saves The Day.

Chicken Network Saves the Day

In my last post I mentioned that herself and I have ‘kept tabs’ on some friends and acquaintances who also keep chickens … or were seriously thinking about it … for the purposes of gifting spare hens, trading stock, and getting practical advice from direct sources, rather than relying on the gurus of the interwebs. Our own little ‘chicken network’ so to speak. Little did we know we’d be using it so soon and for reasons completely unrelated to our own birds!

There are times when I feel that my wife and I over think and over analyze before taking on a project, and honestly, chickens are pretty easy to raise. So much so that they are considered a ‘gateway’ livestock amongst the homesteader types. Well … it turns out there are reasons I am glad we over think these things!

When we had purchased our first chicks, and by that time had researched every aspect we could ad nauseam, I was surprised to discover that we had to sign a form stating that they were not pets and we were required to take a minimum of a half a dozen. You can read about it in an earlier blog post. There are reasons that various towns do this! It is the height of foolishness to buy a cute baby chick as an Easter gift for a child! It is also a bad idea to attempt to keep chickens in the house, they are messy, loud, and destructive (even more so than our two cats and our pig). By requiring a purchase of a half a dozen or more and signing a form it helps reduce impulse buys. Also, there are several classifications of chicks a person can buy at the feed store in the spring. Most notably, sexed and unsexed. Also, laying hens or meat birds. You should really know what you are doing and make decisions about what kind of chickens you are going to buy before stepping in. I know it is hard to resist the peeping little fluff balls under the heat lamp, but you must not buy on impulse! Now, we have a fully functional coop and run and know what we’re doing, so if my wife came home with a couple of chicks, I would be mildly upset over the impulse, but we are equipped to deal with them.

My wife has an acquaintance in the Jersey City/Bayonne area of NJ. For those of you not familiar with this area it is a very urban section of NJ right across the river from NYC. Sure, it is houses and duplexes, but all with tiny, tiny yards if they have yards at all, close neighbors, and all the appropriate city ordinances. My wife’s friend is an animal lover with a huge heart who basically lives on her own in such a house. Although not in daily contact with my wife, she would keep up with the posts on Facebook.

My wife got a call from her one day out of the blue. She was upset and the city was going to fine her if she didn’t get rid of her chickens.

WHAT CHICKENS???

My wife called me at work and told me that her friend had eight chickens that needed a home and what could we do about it? I lovingly told her that it would have to be a discussion for when I got home. Once I arrived home I plied her with the detailed questions of what happened, what was the back story, what were her expectations, and every aspect I could consider to get ahold of the situation.

Turns out … it was something like this. Her friend had apparently wandered into a feed store in late spring. Most of the baby chicks they had were sold and only a few left … now getting onto a week old, the feed store would have to put them down. She had scooped up the eight unsexed chickens of various breeds, purchased a heat lamp and feed, and took them home. She had intended to put a small coop in her tiny, tiny yard and keep the chickens. Now, about five weeks later, she still had no coop, the chickens were four roosters and four hens, some bantam, some full size. One rooster had turned feisty so she locked him in the bathroom, and the neighbors had complained to the city so she was ordered to remove the illegal livestock. That … is the situation that befell us.

Well, upon hearing the initial story, I was reluctant to take a non-heritage bird into our flock, but figured a hen or two extra would be no matter and we’d adopt out the rest via the chicken network. But with four roosters??? If we took a hen or two for ourselves, we’d be making bad chicken math even worse. So, we made the calls, posted the pictures that her friend had sent us (beautiful birds!) and tried to convince anyone to take eight birds including FOUR ROOSTERS.

 

Nearly all of our contacts said no. They either had too many roosters, thank you very much, or lived in a town that allowed them to have chickens but no to roosters.

But then we reached out to Bruce.

I briefly described Bruce in my last post, but let me go just a little farther. As I had said, he is a tall, burly man that comes from old farming folk. Within his large, somewhat gruff appearance dwells the heart of a man truly at one with nature. He’s an animal lover, but also with the old school farm sensibilities that allow him to deal with animals on their level, rather than anthropomorphizing them into ‘little furry people’. When my wife and I had been around to visit him a season before we discussed with him the possibility that he may want to start his own flock and that we’d be glad to help. And so, when we called on him over this issue we discovered that his old beloved dog, who was of great age, had passed on and it grieved him sore. He was happy to have this new project full of life and agreed to take the birds.

We coordinated the exchange where my wife’s friend would come by with the adolescent flock and Bruce would pick them up. Once my wife’s friend saw the gentle soul of the tall man before her she knew her babies would be in good hands.

Chicken network came through, TWO friends were helped along the way, and eight young chickens had a hope of a good life on the farm. My wife and I were most pleased.

Epilogue: Bruce is also a bit of a photographer and we’ve had a chance to see the chickens grow along the way. Being from farm stock, he has his own chicken network and was able to trade one rooster for two hens that helped balance his own chicken math. We’ll check in with Bruce again a little farther down the road!