Cold Chicken

It had been a mild winter…

Up until now-ish.

A couple of weeks ago there was a big storm, lots of people had been wanting snow, and they got it.

Sort of.

My experience of it was many, too many, hours of shoveling interspersed with falling, hauling, yelling, you get the picture.

The last straw was lying on the ground with a sled load of wood as my neighbor drove carefully around me and kept on going.  This in a place where, if I had not been able to get up would have been less heart breaking and more life threatening.  

Meanwhile, in the chicken house, the girls were unanimous in their request that I make it stop.

Even on the nice warm days of upper 20’s to low 30’s they tentatively stuck a beak out the door, gave me a look and went back in.  Dried worms worked, but not for long.  

Nobody wants any salad greens either.

“What is this trash you are feeding us?  Why do you keep giving us cabbage, we hate cabbage.”

I apologize to them every day, and every day they forgive me and go on, but I don’t think they really believe that none of this is anything I can do anything about.

We are expecting wind chills tonight of possibly -40 and FB has people talking about it as though it were Ragnarok.  There are some gods with whom I would cheerfully dispense, but maybe not whomever is in charge of chickens.

One woman is bringing them in to her house. 

That will not happen here unless the power goes out.

Another says chickens are tough, and since that is Rebecca Rule and her chicken wrangler daughter Adi, I will go with that as my outer limit.  

They have a flat ceramic heater, and heated water, more shavings than reasonable, and treats, so as long as the wind we are promised doesn’t kill the lights, I imagine we will all survive.

“Everything is always working out for me” my sister says, and it seems to work for her.

I will tell the girls before lights out.

Whippersnappers.

 The old girls have been settling in happily chatting, eating bugs and compost, hanging out in the last of the sun, and generally enjoying themselves.

That changed today.

I brought home 5 of 15 hens someone gave me, and the new girls clustered together with their backs to the center, eyeing the Aunties with suspicion.  Pearl had to let one of the upstarts know who the alpha girl is on the property, but otherwise, they have left each other alone.  

The originals complained though. Muttering peppered with vocalizations of outrage and protest.

Cleaning up the coop day, just in time for it to get messier faster with more chickens, I found 6 eggs, and having the impression that the girls had closed down shop, I was surprised, but happy to be able to hand eggs over to people again.  

They will probably knock it off now that there are strangers about, and a clique of girls who all went to summer camp together and have their own stories, don't want to hear anything from the elders, no directions, no tips or criticisms.  

Tomorrow when there are even more chickens added to the flock, I expect more questions about when it will stop.

 We are coming up on, is it 3? years since the virus hit and changed the world; unlike so many who got more creative during that time, I stopped writing.

About a year into the pandemic, I stopped having chickens too, because losing them to one disaster after the other was more than I could handle.

A friend in the next town had a bigger flock, a more secure location, so they went to live there.  I sent 4 over, and 2 weeks ago, 3 came back, the intrepid Pearl, the affectionate Marsha, and the introverted Golda.  They are all non producers now, so I have set them up in an avian retirement home, but unlike human ones, they are about to be joined by a bunch of teenagers, and possibly a rooster.

I am on the fence about the rooster.

Who could compare with Buck, the strangest security guard ever?

A local woman has 15 that she is giving away, because she is moving to Florida for the winter.  It seems as though that happens, and then when the snow birds come back in the summer, they get more chickens.

The girls settled in well, I am hoping they remember me a little from bringing them a big box of green and sometimes fruit throughout the 2 years they lived in Nelson, If they don't remember me, they are at least being polite and appreciative.  

That will change when they get a bunch of whippersnapper hens in their space.

I have missed their gentle conversations, remarks about what they find, secrets they pass around before bed, and their greetings in the morning.  All of these vocalization are different.  They can tell when I am greeting them, and when I tell them my side of things, they don't take it to heart.  

If they share opinions and advice in Avian American, it goes over my head, but sometimes....

Sometimes I get the gist.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

Since I have gotten chickens again, I feel invited to be out in the yard,  As I tear out a couple of years worth of black raspberries, horsetail, grapes, invasive roses, autumn olive and pretty much every other weed that is happy to choke out the things I selected to plant over the years, I think of the saying many hands make light work.  In this case, it is many beaks.  The chickens follow me around cheerfully, carefully examining everything I pull up and call to each other as they find things of interest; grapes, chickweed, fallen apples, peaches that are worthless to anyone but chickens and of course, bugs.
Chickens are carnivores, so getting "grain fed" chicken or chickens who are layers but don't ever get to forage means less healthy chickens.  The eggs my girls donate are the best I have ever known.  The shells are hard.  The inner membrane doesn't break easily.  The yolks are a rich yellow/orange, the whites hold together- the consistency of jellyfish.
It comforts me to have them follow me around, asking questions, offering opinions, gossiping about the cat, and probably me, but never by name, because they don't want to hurt my feelings.  
It is good to come home and have someone happy to see me, as the chickens always are.  If I'm not careful they will go for walks with me, which, considering the predator level around here might not be such a great idea.
When I go across the road to do anything, they look up from flipping leaves and offering opinions on the quality of caterpillar, and run over to where I am, surround me and look up expectantly.  "got any grapes?''
Sometimes, they consent to being picked up and put on my shoulder, where they can fly down to the ground again.  I know they consent because after they land they come back for a second time, like a child being asked to be tossed into the air again. And again....
It is an act of hope to have a garden in times as uncertain and perilous as these.  Ripping out the snarly invasion of plants that like the soil the way it is, I hold a vision of another year.  I expect the world to still be a place where a garden is a possibility, where the woods will be lively enough that I will be hanging old cd's on strings, scrounging materials for a greenhouse and selecting seeds over the winter.  It means I am seeing a life connected to life, honoring death, decay failure; blossoming, fruiting and maybe seeding if I can get seeds that Monsanto has not messed with.  It means I believe my chickens will make it through a winter here and not all get carried off by someone with hungry babies to feed.
The Buddhists say that hope is a trick like regret.
Though they dance together, only one of them can fly.

no men

Failing the presence of a rooster to lead them around the yard pointing out the dead mice, struggling insects and a patch of violets not yet ripped out by the roots the girls stay together, and stick close to the house.
This is the first batch of hens who are interested in spending the entire day either under the house or roosting on frames in the cellar.  They will ascend to their coop, but will not go down the stairs in the morning, so I guess I'd better come up with a more attractive ramp.   They look at me as though I had asked them to balance on a narrow ledge in stilettos, which is a fair assessment.  A set of steps I found at the dump is their ramp, and it is probably a little too much to deal with first thing in the morning.  Unlike hens of days passed, they have avoided the garden, which to be fair has been allowed to get overgrown with every weed in the Northeast except the edible ones, and looks like a place predators might be lying in wait.
My mother was a terrific gardener;  I tend to get rashes and lose interest, but some transit of the great celestial beings caught me in their vortex today and I thought if I can't have a garden this year, I can at least get it set up for the next.  After I had ripped out enough space to attract interest, the hens came and joined me, happily scratching around for snacks, and I remembered that being in the yard with chickens is a joy.
 I love having people around who are glad to see me, and chickens always are. They are easily bribed with grapes and whole wheat bread, and the alpha always runs over and asks to be picked up.  At least, I choose to interpret it that way, she runs over and crouches, seems to like being scratched under the wings, and I'm sorry if she is disappointed by being picked up to sit on my shoulder for a second before flying back to her kind, but it's the best I can do.
At night, I used to do a beak check when I had a big coop, but this one is tiny and even though there is enough room for them to spread out over the 2 perches, they clump together in a tight knot and I have to reach in and count bodies to make sure no independent thinker is sleeping in the hay bales under the house.
The girls sing to each other, it reminds me of middle school when the only good thing was singing and though I haven't learned the verses yet, I can join in on the chorus.

fourth day....

Last night I went out to check on the girls, to make sure they had gone to roost, and they had, but had decided that access to the perches in the wire dog crate were better than clumping together safely in the plastic one.
I decided to chance it, because in the past, it has taken the local street gangs about a week before they noticed that I had chickens in the yard, and they tend to hunt less in the pouring rain.
My irresponsibility worked out, there were still 6 girls this morning, and so I let them out to forage, but they immediately headed for the forsythia and went to sleep in it.
A friend of mine who was a middle school teacher told me once that every class had a completely different group personality, and I am finding it to be true of groups of chickens too.  This bunch of hens is more low key than I expected.  They landed in the yard and have accepted everything without protest and have exhibited a general lack of adventurous spirit.  In the past, I have had fliers, escape artists and explorers, but these are thoughtful, companionable and quiet.  There might be more conversation when I find a rooster.
They are convincing me that they are to be named after authors instead of goddesses.... Jane, Charlotte, Emily, Alice, Maya Margaret and Zadie.

Chickens, part 3

3 nights of new chickens, who are both smarter and more insistent than they looked when riding home in the box.
First night, they slept in a crate on the front porch,
but I had forgotten how messy and smelly chickens can be in a closed room.
Next day I moved them outside, hoping to get them used to where their coop will be when I put it together, added a plastic dog crate to the wire one so that they could have a safe place to sleep and more room to spread out.
Day 3 I let them out to wander the yard a bit, they headed directly for the porch and mooned about in a rhododendron bush in front of it all day.
Today it is raining, and they are under tarps and umbrellas in the makeshit coop, this is going to be the story for about another 10 days.
It hasn't taken long for them to associate me with food.  I am realizing how incompetent having animals that depend on regularity makes me feel.
and as for names, well, they are probably going to be named for goddesses.