By: Brenda Wilkerson
One of my evening chores is to make sure all hens are in before the auto door closes. I have nine hens, five older ones and just four young pullets.
Tonight as I was counting, I came up with only eight! I quickly discovered that Speckles was missing. Not like her because she is not generally the last one in, as my two black pullets like to use every bit of daylight before roosting.
But tonight, I was so surprised and began thinking the worst.
I looked in all the usual places they could hide in the covered run. Using my phone light, I checked the pampas bush but no Speckles.
I came inside to get a brighter light and to tell Marti that I was going hunting.
Each possible place was empty. I headed back to the barn thinking she might be inside with the sheep. I have found an occasional egg close to the inside hay bunk.
No egg and no Speckles. Then it hit me. I have found eggs underneath the outside hay feeder. I shined my heavy-duty light underneath that bunk and behold, I saw the body of the speckled little hen. She wasn’t moving but then I saw her red comb move just a tad.
I immediately felt relief. I found the lost chicken. She didn’t think she was lost. She was proudly transitioning from a laying hen to a sitting hen. I found twelve eggs in a very warm and dry nest, close to the sheep’s feet as they stood not 10″ from her, munching on their hay allotment. They had no idea that my fav little hen was trying to become a momma, using their feeder to shelter and protect her new sit-down project.
I lifted her up and tried to explain very carefully that she could sit on those eggs for five months or five years, but nothing was going to happen. By the time we arrived to her roost in the hen house, we had covered the biological reasons why those non-fertile eggs would never hatch. No rooster, no baby chicks.
She is so gentle. When I eased her onto the roost, she shook her feathers and assumed her sitting position right beside her black sibling. As I watched her settle in, I got to thinking that since she was in last night’s count, she had only been sitting for a few hours today.
The daily egg count has been down to four or five instead of the seven or eight for a few days. Other hens have been contributing to the growing egg count.
Another chapter in the FEATHERS ‘N’ BERRIES book I might write when I retire someday.
~Brenda Wilkerson
