How to trick a chicken, part two

The chickens have a red lightbulb in their house that comes on at dusk--4:30 p.m.--and goes off again at 9:30 p.m. During those hours, lurid scarlet light spills from every window and splashes out across the snow. The chicken house looks like The Chicken House...OF HORROR!

The light tricks the hens into laying eggs during fall and winter's shorter days (...OF HORROR!). I kind of remember from a behavioral endocrinology seminar I took many, many years ago that the light actually penetrates through birds' thin little birdie skulls and does its tricking directly on some surface area of the brain. Meaning a bird's actual brain has some kind of light receptors. Could this be true??

Options:
1. Go look it up.
2. Forget about it.
3. Design an experiment on egg production using a control group of birds and a group of birds that has to wear a thick bonnet (...OF HORROR!). (also: Design a thick bonnet, of horror, for birds.)

I think I will ultimately choose option one. I will look it up in my old college textbook...OF ENDOCRINOLOGY!

How to make a* egg

Once people come to think of it, they have a ton of questions about how chickens make eggs. Can hens make eggs if there is no rooster? Do they make like five eggs a day, or one per week?
these five eggs: did they all pop out from the same hen in one exhausting day?

The usual answer to the how-many-eggs question is something indigestible like: 2 hens will lay 3 eggs in 2 days. Something that, when you try to reduce it, leaves you with half a hen or half an egg.

It takes a hen about a day or day and a half to produce and lay an egg. That's the rule of thumb. The actual rate varies, depending on stuff like breed (some breeds were created to just become big and fat and have little energy to spare for eggs) and--ESPECIALLY--time of year.

"Time of year?", you say?

Yes! Eggs are naturally a seasonal food, like oysters and Mallomars. Hens are set up to lay eggs most strongly in the spring and summer. As the days get shorter through the fall, their laying drops off precipitously. These days we can trick a chicken--I'll tell you how next time--so that these days everyone just eats eggs year-round, and we all think it's as natural as pie.

Mmmmm, pie.

OK, I have to go eat some pie, so I'll just tell you quickly: if there are no roosters around, hens lay unfertilized eggs. These are the kind of eggs you get at the grocery store. Hens who lay grocery store eggs have probably never seen a rooster in their entire lives.


*I know, I know: AN egg. But this is how the chickens say it.

How to trick a chicken

Today on How Do Chickens Work?: How (and why) to trick a chicken.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to trick a chicken, I recommend getting specially-produced fake eggs. I ordered some a few days ago, and today they came. Yesss. Step one of my tricky plan: complete.

This afternoon I used the eggs to seed some nest boxes that I would LOVE for the chickens to use, but that the chickens are not currently using. Some chickens are instead putting their eggs in crazy places, like on the ledge, or under the chicken house, or in the stone wall on the other side of the fence: all places where I cannot reach.

But here's what happens when the hens see a collection of wooden eggs in the nest boxes: "Oh," they think. "What a great place for a nest! Some wooden hen has accumulated a lot of eggs here already; this spot must be very safe. I think I'll put one in, too." And then they start laying their eggs in the nest boxes. Which is far more convenient for me, and saves Amy, with her healthy knees, from having to climb over the fence and back with eggs all the time.

And, hold onto your hat... ready to get your word-nerd socks blown off? These fake eggs are NEST EGGS. Then the hens will add to them. That's where "nest egg" comes from!

I have high hopes for these fake eggs. I used to try and trick the chickens with golf balls, but the chickens were not totally fooled. Instead of "Wow, what a perfect nesting site!", they seemed to think "Wow, these people are really bad at golf! This seems like a dangerous place to lay eggs."

How do chickens work?

Answer: A chicken is a food tube. Everyone knows that: 1. Food goes into the chicken. 2. Food comes out of the chicken. 3. The chicken itself is also food. It seems almost magic! Some of this Green Technology money should probably be spent studying chickens.



Yet, this answer is also puzzling. Are chickens the solution to the problem of a Perpetual Motion machine, which has tantalized scientists and thinkers for centuries? Also, how exactly do chickens make these eggs--do they need roosters? How can you tell which eggs are going to hatch into chicks, and which eggs are for eating? Are brown eggs healthier than white eggs? Do the chickens have personalities? Why are there different types of chickens? And those chickens that lay green eggs: am I making them up?

With the exception of the first and last ones, these are the most common questions people ask me when, after a lifetime on the planet, they suddenly begin to consider chickens. (The last question they just wonder privately, giving me a suspicious look.) As a public service and for my own amusement, I will answer these questions. AND I will deliver additional information so surprising you would never had thought to ask. Here's a taste: Chicken babies? They love to stand on their moms.
They love it!

Snow good?

Or, as chickens think: 's no good.

About 5 inches of sleet and snow came down overnight, and when the chickens woke up this morning they couldn't believe how much the world sucked. We've all had mornings like that, so it stirred in me a rush of fellow-feeling. Poor horrified chickens. I tell you from experience: it will get better. It's ok. Maybe next time don't drink so much. ...wait, what was I talking about?



On normal mornings, these chickens have flown into my head in their rush to get outside. This morning, they were all, "shut the door!"


These dudes: "I said shut it!"

This little white roosty boy was the only one walking around in the snow. He is one of the three patience-testing Stupid Babies ("stupid babies!!"), so I suppose this is in character.
"Ugh, how did I get out here? Why is the world cold, and wet, and sticking to my feet? Where are my Stupid Baby friends? Ugh. This is awful. Ugh."

IT FINALLY HAPPENED!

Green egg! Green egg! Green egg!



Ever since this year's crop of young 'uns started producing their first eggs, I have been waiting on tenterhooks--TENTERHOOKS!--for the Ameraucanas' first pastel eggs. I have been checking, like, five times a day. Finally, today, hooray!! One of the Ameraucana hens has become a woman! (er, a hen woman...who makes eggs...)


Green egg!!

But what happens when you find an egg with a crack in it?

Dog heaven.

Molson has a 7-step procedure he follows to the letter when he is offered an egg:

1. Take egg!
2. Find perfect place to lie down with egg.
3. Gingerly allow egg to roll from mouth. (Not too far!!!)
4. Using front teeth only: gently, gently, gently crack egg.
5. Now, quickly! Lap the goodness from inside.
6. Shell = gross. Leave the shell for some other sucker to clean up.


7. Point belly to the sky. Bask.

Ahhhh.

How come Amy is magic and my hero.

The other evening I decided to move the not-spring-chickies up to be with the grownup chickens. Their mother had notified me that it was time: she was sick of them, she explained, and was ready for them to be big chickens on their own.

So at dusk, I grabbed the Mama and one baby, and moved them into the garden. Then I came back for a few more babies. Then a couple more. Soon I had moved all apparent babies. But as I counted the babies with the mama, I kept coming up with "six." Correct number of babies? Seven. "Hmmm," I thought. "We have minus-one babies."

Wherever this singular baby was, I thought, it would be very upset. Chicken babies do not like to be alone in the great big world. But I couldn't find the missing baby anywhere, and I couldn't even hear any agitated peeping. Eventually, I took a closer look at a weird shadow in the baby enclosure. It turned out to be not a weird shadow, but a creepy surprise: the missing baby. It was still, and quiet, and kind of smashed into the corner closest to the garden.

I got the total heebie-jeebies. I remembered my now-prophetic-seeming dream in which a little chicken had been killed by a kitten. Had a kitten gotten into the baby chicken pen? That didn't make any sense. I paced around the gravel outside the baby pen in tight, agitated circles. I did NOT want to crawl in the baby pen and get the sad, creepy little body of the dead little chicken. On the other hand, someone had to do it.

So I decided to see if Amy was awake from her nap.

"Amy!" I said in relief when I found her barely awake and in the kitchen. "Something happened at the chickens." I made a couple more circles and gave a garbled explanation of events. She grabbed some gloves and came outside right away.

That was really nice of her. But HERE is why she is magic and my hero: she crawled in to get the chicken baby, and she got it, and it was not dead. It wasn't even really hurt. It had just gotten its head stuck. That's right: I conscripted her to deal with a dead chicken on my behalf, and not only did she do it without raising a single objection, she crawled out of the pen and held out to me a living chicken. So: magic, and my hero.

Here the little chickens are, enjoying the big-chicken life on a tall, grownup-sized perch. Little baby Stuckface is on the extreme right, this time with her head stuck outside the photo frame. (Will she ever learn?) I banded her so I could keep an eye on her, and she is doing great.

Too many roos on the coop floor

This blog is maybe 95% chickens, and 5% Flight of the Conchords. I don't know why; it just happens.

Even after a few sessions of rooster-eliminating, we still have waay too many roosters. Although not all of them are mature, about 33% of our chickens are roosters. Optimal percentage? Around 8%. It's going to be a surprising day for roosters sometime soon.

In the meantime, here is a Flight of the Conchords song that pertains. Caution: The title is "Too Many D-cks on the Dance Floor," and the expurgated word is not "ducks." It is extremely applicable. Sing it with me:
"Too much time on too many hands / Not enough ladies, too many mans..."

Our two main enemies are kittens and hawks. Hawks and kittens.

The other night I dreamed that the friendly little chickies had been killed...by kittens. I don't know why by kittens. In the dream, I held the broken body of my favorite little chickie, which was very sad and also creepy, the way dead things smaller than a breadbox are when you hold them. And then I woke up.

Understandably, I was a little anxious when I let the chickies out after the sun rose later on that morning. But everyone was fine, cheeping and peeping as per usual. I had a talk with them as they came out: "Listen, kids. Kittens look cute, but they are fluffy, bloodthirsty killers. If you see one you should tell your mom." They were all, "Whatever, lady. I hope you brought delicious apple cores." And I was all, "OK, I did."

That evening, for a special treat, I let the mom and chickies out of their super-safe baby area. They were thrilled about all the new forage. I stayed with them so I could hustle them back in in case of hawks. But good fortune smiled on the chicken family, and they were threatened by neither of their natural predators. No hawks or kittens menaced the quiet gloaming.

Molting: It ain't for sissies

Here's a surprise fact about chicken keeping: when chickens get old enough (let's say...two), one day you look at them and they do not look so good. They seem disheveled. "I hope that chicken is okay," you say to yourself. And then a couple days later they look like this:
Auggh!! And this isn't even the worst of it. A few days after this picture was taken, this hen was down to a number of feathers that was extremely close to zero. (let's say...two)

At that point, the chicken looks horrible. Just...horrible. I don't know why she hangs on to those last two feathers, either. They don't keep her warm, they don't help her fly, and they certainly don't do much for her dignity. But they're all she has. Maybe I do understand--she's all cold and cranky and naked, and she looks ridiculous, and she just wants those two feathers. Okay.

Eventually things get better. Here is that hen now, a few weeks later. Her new feathers are small but shiny and they cover her naked skin.
"Phewf, glad that's over!" We all are.

Spring Chicken

Here is one of those healthy Spring Chickens. This guy was one of the first to hatch, in late May, so he is about 5 months old. He has his dad's comb, the "rose comb" typical of Wyandottes, which is much more resistant to frostbite than a big single comb. Otherwise he looks a lot like his mama, a Brahma. Look how tall he his--his shoulder comes halfway up the neck of the chicken standing next to him! He is also broad--broader than he looks in this photo. But Brahmas are "slow to mature," so he may be 6 months old or more when he attains his full size. (By contrast, industrial meat production birds reach 'slaughtering size' between 6 and 8 weeks (WEEKS!) of age. Such rapid growth is quite injurious to the chickens in question...see below for our 6 week old chicks, who are healthy and happy but not too substantial yet. A couple mouthfuls, tops.)

A lot of this guy's height comes from his giant legs. Click on the photo to get a better look at those honkers. He looks almost like he's got stilts when he stands erect. I call him "Legs." He's big and handsome, and I feel affectionate towards his Brahma half. I feel hopeful that he will display all the watchful and generous qualities of a good roo, without being a jerk. I'd love to keep him in the flock. We will know pretty soon, as he is quickly becoming a man. He just got his crow last week. His crow was awful at first--it sounded like a chicken being deflated--but it is getting better with practice. C'mon Legs! Be a good rooster!

Chicken Talk IV: No Spring Chicken

Here's another question of chicken talk: what does it mean to be "no spring chicken?" Well, chicks hatched in the spring are healthier and more vigorous than those hatched in the summer or early fall. Spring hatchlings have months to feast on the ample forage, and to feather out and grow healthy and strong before the weather turns cold.

Our last batch of chicks are no spring chickens: they hatched the second week in September. Six weeks later, at the end of October, they are still kind of little dudes. Their wings and breasts and backs are fully feathered, and they even have teeny tailios, but they are still sporting their baby-chicken neckfuzz.




Their mama is still taking good care of them, snuggling them in a nest at night instead of roosting on a perch. Soon she will wash her hands (wings) of motherhood though, and start roosting on her own. With November breathing down their fuzzy little necks, I hope these little guys and their teeny feathers are big enough to take it.

How far out are you, man?

Meet the David Bowie Rooster.


He is an Ameraucana. The other three Ameraucana roosters look just like David Bowie Rooster, except they have large, full tails. They have the same kind of hair-band look going on with their rockin' white neck feathers, so I call them the Aerosmith roosters. David Bowie Rooster has no tail, because the Aerosmith roosters peck it off him. All four of them are kind of jerks.

"Why have you named a chicken after David Bowie?" you may be wondering in horrified fascination. Three reasons. Firstly, I think of the human David Bowie as having big hair and then dwindling down to a tiny little ass, like this roo. Plus, this roo is not as a huge of a jerk; he's more quiet and watchful, as human David Bowie may or may not be. But mainly, I like the Flight of the Conchords song "Bowie's in Space", so a fake version of human David Bowie is often on my mind, being sung about under my breath.

Bowie's in... space...

PS: don't get too attached to David Bowie Rooster. For the sake of the hens, there is going to be some serious Ameraucana-rooster-thinning soon.

Do the hustle!

Here is Uh-Oh Chicken, dancing her little heart out (PLEASE excuse my chicken-training outfit):

Look at her go! She's dancing so fast she's blurry! OK, so you and I know that she is just turning in a circle to the right. But I'm telling her she's dancing.

Though it's as exciting as ever (...) to practice clicker training on a chicken, we haven't done it in a while. Training took a hiatus while I went out to California last week. Then, when I got home again, I did something so distressing to my back that I couldn't bend over to pick up a chicken for a couple days. But now I'm better, and yesterday I went out to see what Uh-Oh Chicken remembered. We reviewed the entire shaping process, and I leveled off my criteria at 'turning halfway around.' But with a few more sessions she'll be turning and turning in the widening gyre. (...or is that falcons?)

Good news everyone!*

It turns out I AM smart enough to train a chicken. {Sighs of relief...} In today's sessions the chicken was reliably making almost quarter turns to the right.


The obliging trainee is my favorite chicken, a Light Brahma called Uh-Oh Chicken. She is ideal for training because (1) she is easy to catch and handle, and (2) she loves food. LOVES it. She is the fattest chicken--look! Both of these are breed characteristics, actually: Brahmas are the Labrador Retriever of chickens.

Uh-Oh Chicken works very happily for orzo-sized pieces of apple core. If the pieces are bigger than that it takes her too long to eat them--she must shake them and dash them against the ground and subdue them before sending them down the hatch. I have all the pieces on a little plate, and when Uh-Oh gets clicked, I hold out the plate for her to peck a piece off of. I see from You Tube that people at Chicken Camp have their food reward in a cup, which would probably cut down on the occasional free apple piece flying off the side of the plate. "Buh...wha???" says Uh-Oh Chicken in a Professor Farnsworth voice. "That's not good news at all!!"

*{Professor Farnsworth voice...why is this not on YouTube except in an irritating 30-second montage?}

Clicker with clucker

There is a camp ("Chicken Camp") famous among dog trainers, where participants hone their dog training skills by training chickens. Not dogs. Obviously the participants will need to go BACK to dogs, after camp, because that's where the money is. But if the market shifts one day, these people will be able to train chickens too.

Actually, clicker training chickens is (somewhat) popular because it is a good way to practice the mechanics involved in clicker training anything. As a dog trainer with a flock of chickens, I always thought in kind of a vague way that I would clicker train one someday.

Well, someday started yesterday...and it was an inauspicious beginning. For starters, I frightened my chicken with the target I constructed for her to peck. Also, I planned to shape the behavior of pecking, starting with just looking at the target--but unfortunately I realized on the spot that I couldn't tell when she was looking at the thing. Her eyes are on the sides of her head. I did some hasty reconsidering and decided to train "turn in a circle to the right" instead. So we started on that.

An extremely cursory review of YouTube videos shows me a quick way out of the target problem--namely, make a target that looks like something the chicken would peck at naturally, and then capture the peck instead of shaping it. Ahhhh, I see.

They say "clicker is quicker," but clicker is even MORE quicker when "trainer is brainer." We'll just have to see if I am smart enough to train a chicken.

Joke for a Southern accent

{Note: Joke involves meringue, and must be told while wearing a ring, using a Southern accent, in the presence of lemon meringue pie. Ready? Go:}
Q: How is this pie like mah hand?
A: It's got meringue on it! {display your ring.}


Today's goal was "meringue." I have never made meringue before, but apparently it's mostly just egg whites (which I possess in abundance), and sugar (which is delicious). It requires some fancy accoutrements, though: it is supposed to be piped from a piping bag, plus it is supposed to be baked on parchment paper. Both of which items are so exotically domestic that meringues seem to come straight from a filmstrip about a 1950's housewife. (The phrase "stiff peaks" is also involved with meringues, which phrase reminds me of bras of that era.)

Lost in my own little cinematic time warp, I preheated the oven and set out my ingredients. But suddenly my oven went nuts. "BEEEEP," it went, in an unfamiliar way. "BEEEEP...BEEEEP...BEEEEP" I turned around to find out what it wanted. "-F4-" said its digital display. I started pushing buttons at random.
When I hit the "Oven Cancel" button, the beeping subsided and the digital display reverted to clock mode. "Hmmm," I thought. Experimentally, I hit the "Bake" button again, and the beeping and F4'ing started all over again. I hastily canceled the oven once more.

We have cracked the code to ovenspeak: "-F4-" means "NO MERINGUES FOR YOU!"

Chicken Talk III: Whut??

Yesterday, while buying chicken feed, I was suckered in by a checkout line magazine called "Chickens." I was particularly attracted to the cover story: Twelve Common Ailments and How to Prevent Them. "Ooooh," I thought, for I am a nerd who must know more about chicken ailments.

I thought a magazine would be a more trustworthy source than the Internet. (Sorry, Internet.) But. I don't know about the cover story's veracity, but let's just say it is now open for debate. Because flipping through the rest of the magazine, I read the following dubious advice in an article about chicken chores:

"Making friends with your flock is easy, fun and serves a practical purpose as well: You'll find it easier to observe your chickens, to lure them into the coop at night and to catch them if they don't regard you as a predator."

Lure them into the coop at night?? This is so puzzling to me that I can't stop thinking about it. Chickens proverbially come home to roost. There exists a time-worn adage to that exact effect. The adage exists because once a chicken sleeps somewhere--like its coop--once or twice, you'll have a hell of a time trying to get it to sleep anywhere else. It's automatic.

So it makes me wonder: Is this article's author going out every night to lure her five chickens into their little coop? And does she ever notice that if she turns up late, they are already inside? And if so, is she pleased that she has trained them?

Chicken Talk II: Fowl Language

Today on Chicken Talk we will examine the adage "Don't count your chickens before they hatch": a fairly straightforward piece of advice that would not seem to require chicken experience. Some eggs might not hatch. You might get, like, nine actual chickens from ten eggs. Got it.

Well. NOW I got it even more. I submit, for your perusal, our hens' wildly varying hatch rates this spring and summer:
1. 0/5 = 0% (Mama Orpo)
2. 4/5 = 80% (Wyandotte hen)
3. 8/10= 80% (Orpington hen)
4. 1/16= 6% (Mama Orpo again)
5. 2/6 = 33% (Barred Rock hen)
6. 4/6 = 66% (Brahma hen)

The main story up there is Mama Orpo, who comes in with 0% in slot #1 and again with 6% in slot #4. Mama Orpo is clearly an ill-fated mother. (note: despite the title, that sentence is as close as we'll be getting to foul language.) Her story has it all: highs and lows, hopes and disappointments, a heroine who overcomes a fatal flaw, a frenemy...and ultimately even a happy ending. That's right: her story, in the next post, will be a Very Special Episode.