Red Hens and Wooden Eggs

We had chickens once before, until a persistent weasel and an interstate move together conspired to eliminate that first flock.  Starting another flock has been on the projects list ever since, and this spring Dan managed to borrow all the equipment necessary for starting chicks.  This led to the building of a sturdy little coop so all would be ready for the moment the as-yet unpurchased chicks grew large enough to need it.  The coop led our neighbor to help us acquire six yearling New Hampshire Red hens that had reached the end of their lives as research subjects at the local university's poultry program.

Dan's not-quite-finished coop.  Photo: D. K. Rosenberg.

Why wait five months for your chicks to mature just in time to stop laying as winter sets in?  We thought these hens would likely be solidly at the peak of their egg production, and the idea of rescue appealed to us as well.  New Hampshire Reds are known to be hardy birds with a proclivity for brooding.  This is handy if you have a rooster and a desire to keep your flock growing with some new broods of chicks occasionally.  A few days later six refugee hens came home in an assortment of cat and dog transport crates to begin new lives on our little farm.

The university raises chickens according to industry standards.  This means each hen had spent her days in a small cage just big enough for her to turn around in, with a sloped wire floor.  When an egg is laid, it rolls down into a collection chute.  It is possible that these hens never get to inspect an egg up close.  They also don't get to give their wings a good stretch, scratch and peck on the ground, perch, or engage in a lot of other typical chicken behaviors.  We wondered how they would adapt to a barnyard.

We kept the hens confined to the coop for several days to adjust to their new life as real, live chickens rather than industrial egg production machines. Our coop is small but it was still much more space than they'd had for most of their lives, and included a window with a view of the sheep pasture, branches to perch on, nest boxes, and a layer of shavings to scratch in.  It must have been a staggering change.

A whole new world... Photo: D. K. Rosenberg

Instinct, that knowledge we hold without thought or learning, is a powerful force.  A hen kept her entire life in an indoor facility under artificial lighting in a small cage still knows what to do when she's presented with a patch of dirt and grass.  The first day we opened the door, the chickens learned to navigate the ladder to the ground, and soon all were pecking, scratching, clucking, and interacting as if they had never been anywhere else.  Except for one crucial detail: they did not recognize their own eggs.

A challenge in backyard chicken husbandry is to prevent your chickens from ever learning what good food eggs can be.  If the shell cracks and a hen takes an exploratory peck, she'll enthusiastically eat the whole thing, shell and all.  Once she sees an egg in this light, there seems to be no going back.  We quickly discovered that our six hens had no idea what to do with eggs, laying them carelessly around the coop and outside in the mud.  Very soon after that, despite our constant checks to remove the eggs as quickly as possible after they were laid, at least one chicken took an exploratory whack.  We haven't gotten an egg since.

I tried to break the habit or at least prevent all the hens from learning it by stocking the coop with some wooden eggs I acquired from a craft store selling Easter supplies.  Unfortunately, the reward of hitting a real egg seemed too great to discourage a hen who simply came up with a jarring thud when she explored the possibilities of one of the wooden ones.  Dan watched one hen attack a decoy egg so savagely that she pushed it halfway around the coop.  Motherhood was clearly not in her future, nor in any other hen's future if the infanticidal chicken remained part of the flock.

Wooden eggs.  Photo: D. K. Rosenberg

Of all the instincts that constrictive captivity had broken, it was the one most critical to the long-term survival of the species: thou shalt not eat thine own children.  The drive to reproduce is so strong that many animals risk their lives to mate or defend their young, or push themselves to the point of starvation to provide for them.  It is sobering to think that we have managed to subvert the basic wiring of being a chicken to the point it cannot recognize its egg as its own.

This isn't the worst we've done.  Meat chickens are bred to grow so quickly that their legs sometimes become unable to bear their weight.  The feeding of corn to beef cattle during the final stage before slaughter is a carefully managed balance between initial weight gain on this highly unsuitable diet, and weight loss once the acidity of the rumen caused by the corn begins to dissolve the rumen lining.  Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, are notorious for the conditions in which individual pigs and other animals are kept, not to mention the significant issues of air and water pollution from the staggering amount of waste you get when you keep tens of thousands of animals in a very small space.

What do we owe the livestock we rely on for meat, milk, and eggs?

The backyard food movement is certainly driven at least in part by peoples' desire to take more control over how their food is produced.  This is a good thing in a culture that has become increasingly alienated from the life forces that sustain our own, even if the motivation is only rarely the welfare of the soil, plants, and animals.  In an increasingly crowded world, however, not everyone will have the luxury of space, good soil, and clean water plentiful enough to raise food of any sort.  We're still going to need large, efficient farms at some scale.

All the same, awareness will at least keep us honest in our obligations to the animals that feed us, to keep them fed, sheltered, and provide them with the opportunity to express the most basic essence of what they are: living beings.  At what price to our own humanity do we want cheap bacon?

Five hens still scratch and peck underneath the new coop, ignoring the sheep who come by every evening to take a look at them.  They may yet complete the transition into a hardy little productive flock for us; we'll give them more time to settle in to their new world.  Whether they provide us with eggs or meat, we'll be grateful for the gifts of their lives, sustaining ours.

Photo: D. K. Rosenberg

The Balance of Voles

The barn owls will be nesting very soon.  They've already started the process of dating, the males bringing Valentine's gifts of dead voles to their prospective mates and spending the daylight hours together tucked safely away in a dark corner somewhere.  If the female likes the gifts and the company, she'll soon begin laying her white eggs, counting on the male to provide all the food for her and then the entire family for weeks to come.  Hundreds of voles will be consumed in the process.

Some years ago, I provided some dark corners in the form of nest boxes to see if barn owls might help the local farmers with the ebb and flow of wild voles, which can cause thousands of dollars per farm in crop damage in a peak year.  I put out eighty boxes spread between two counties, in strings of three to five boxes per fence row.  The study finished several years ago, the funding gone, the results inconclusive, but the boxes are still standing.  To help out both the owls and the farmers who gave me access to their lands, I go out each December and maintain the boxes.

Barn owl nest box.  Photo: J. A. Gervais

Farming must be the most difficult form of legalized gambling, where those who farm have to work very hard, in often physically demanding and dangerous conditions, in hopes of producing a crop that can then be sold at a profit.  Almost nothing in this process seems to be in the farmer's control beyond the calculated decision of what to plant.  More so than any other livelihood directly linked to natural resources, farming is a long-term gamble, a balance of good weather and not too many pests, then favorable market conditions.

Barn owls rely on small rodents for their living.  The females will lay up to thirteen eggs, although the average clutch is closer to five eggs.  They hedge their bets by incubating during laying, so the eggs hatch over several days and the young owlets range in size.  The biggest owlets eat first.  In a pinch, they'll eat their younger siblings if the parents do not bring enough voles.  In the best of years, the adults will raise a second brood.

The farmers I work with like wildlife, and do what they can to accommodate the owls while they also pursue a precarious living.  Far more than most professions, farming reminds us that nature is ultimately in control, and we all rely on good weather, healthy soil, and clean water far more than most of us remember.  For a farmer, it is each year's bottom line, the balance between inputs and outputs tipping precariously on the edge of the appetites of voles.  Unfortunately, the appetites of owls are not great enough to swing the balance on the bad years, but they help.  Barn owls nesting in a barn make a mess but are usually tolerated.  Barn owls in a nest box are universally welcomed.

Cleaning out a nest box.  Photo: J. A. Gervais

The necessary maintenance of a barn owl box requires cleaning out the detritus of the past year, occasionally making repairs to the flap, or reinforcing the connection point between box and post.  Although natural cavities may fill with nesting material and prey remains over the years without much problem, the weight of all that material in a box that leaks a bit is much too great to be allowed to build up over time.  Armed with a gardening hand rake and a face shield, I open the flap, reach inside, and haul out all manner of rubbish into the dim December light.  It is a messy act of renewal.

My assistants are frequently showered with starling nests, great wads of sticks and straw that nearly fill the generous cavity.  It is usually raining, so the rain gear we wear serves a dual purpose.  Other unknown inhabitants bring bits of lichen and moss, or a few strands of grass.  Kestrels leave almost no traces of their nests, and a box used as a roost by barn owls may give no hint of its sometime occupants.  In a year with abundant voles, sometimes a vole carcass or two comes cascading out of the box, often with little else; we put those back, as they were put there by someone as a hedge against hard times.  Sometimes deer mice take up residence, bringing a light fluffy mass of shredded bark and leaves inside.  Others are empty except for a the abandoned comb of the paper wasp.  A barn owl nest, however, is an entirely different story.

Inside a barn owl nest box.  Last year's abandoned egg sits on the remains

 of hundreds of voles.  Photo: D. K. Rosenberg.

For those, I whack away with my hand rake at the thick, compacted mat of fur and bones and nameless dried goo, cemented in layers if the box is in the lee of some trees, a wet sodden mass if the rain can get inside.  Sometimes we find the remains of a young owl that did not survive the nestling period, or an unhatched egg now dessicated and filthy.  There is some satisfaction to getting all that mess out of the living quarters, leaving things ready for another year's accumulation.  Farmers, meanwhile, maintain tractors and other equipment, and soon they too will be getting down to the business of the year in the fields.

It is hard to leave a warm house on a cold, wet December morning before dawn to spend the day plodding along the fence lines in the rain carrying a ladder for miles.  There are compensations.  Sometimes we're given beautiful views of light and cloud, the song of a flock of swans, the calls of killdeer or snipe, and occasionally, the silent explosion of a white and fawn barn owl, as it exits the box just as I raise the flap.  There's time for the owl to get over the fright before the decision of where to lay must be made.  There is still time to plan out the new year, room for hoping for a good harvest and the right balance between voles and owls and people, all counting on the green grass in the fields.