It wasn’t bitterly cold yesterday, but we were having people over for our annual Chanukah party, so Steve lit a fire in the fireplace. A glowing hearth is welcoming.

It’s Scooter’s favorite thing.

Scooter stayed there while I put the Pomegranate and Prunes Chicken into the crockpot, finished the brisket begun the day before, made salad dressing and salad, put the Lemony Carrot and Raisin Salad and homemade applesauce into bowls, and baked Challah Rolls.

I cut the brownies and the Cranberry Nut Pie. Around noon I worried that I didn’t have enough food. Steve waits for this moment every year. He’s given up trying to convince me that the menu is complete. I always bake something at the last minute. This time I made Lemon Meringue Kisses, which are pillows of sweetness.

I set the table. Scooter woke up. He looked around. He stayed put.

Finally, there was a knock on the door. A five-year old boy arrived. Scooter loves little boys almost as much as sleeping by the fire. Scooter also loves brisket. It was a perfect day.

(Recipe for the Challah and the Lemon Meringue Kisses will be published in The Farmstead Egg Guide and Cookbook, to be published this April by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)

Chickens can survive in basic housing. A small flock needs only few simple and easy to provide conditions for it to thrive. Sadly, these are not met by many of the prefab coops currently on the market.

SPACE: Provide a minimum of 4 square feet per standard-sized hen. Less than that and there will be pecking and health issues. Don’t believe what the manufacturer says. Ask for dimensions, don’t include the nesting boxes, and do the math yourself.

VENTILATION: Chicken manure is 75% water and high in nitrogen. As it breaks down it gives off ammonia fumes and makes the surrounding air humid. Chickens breathing this in will develop respiratory diseases. It is essential that there is air flow up and out of the coop. In a well-designed coop, fresh air comes in the pop-door and flows up to the roof where it leaves through vents along the eaves or, even better, through a cupola. Chickens poop a lot in their sleep. They should be sleeping up and away from their droppings. They need ROOSTS.

LIGHT: A coop should let in light. Chickens have terrible night vision. If hens are kept in a coop without windows, then even if it’s sunny outside, it will be dark inside. A sliver of light coming in the pop-door is not enough for them and they’ll stay on their roosts. They won’t eat or exercise. This will affect their laying productivity and their health. Too many prefab coops have no windows, or openings that must be shut during inclement weather. Avoid those and get coops with real windows!

Those are the big three. There are other details, like a dry place to hang food and water, nesting box design, and predator control, which I’ll cover in other posts. I’ve started a board on Pinterest where I pin examples of what I think are good coop design. Take a look.

A HenCam reader sent a photo of her coop to me, which is worth sharing with you. She has only .18 acre, but her hens are well-cared for in this design. I like that there’s a people-sized door to access the run. A local carpenter built this for her, and he added touches of whimsy. Take a look at the moon carving on the circle window and the star on the screen door!

Do you have any charming accents on your coop?

Birds molt because they need to replace worn out feathers. This happens once a year. Some hens look fine going into the molt and look exactly the same when it is over. Opal, my big Delaware hen, lost all of her feathers and regrew them, but somehow never had a feather out of place, and except for missing her tall tail, you’d never have known that she was molting. With other hens the molt is far more obvious.

Some hens go into the molt with one look and come out sporting another. Etheldred is a Speckled Sussex. Here she is in the heat this past summer. Her spots are too large and splotchy to be a show bird, but I think that she’s quite attractive.

Here is Etheldred after her first molt. She’s mostly white!. She’s yet to grow her tail back.

The molt has not changed Agatha’s spots. However, she has new feather shafts sticking out of her head. She looks prickly and even crazier than usual.

All through her first year, Jasper didn’t have much of a tail. She was the only hen that the others picked feathers off of. Jasper didn’t seem to mind. No blood was drawn. But her rump was all smooth skin. It didn’t look like feathers could possibly grow back.

But during this molting cycle they did! Jasper’s back end looks lovely. Now, if only she would grow her long tail feathers in.

Meanwhile, the Orpingtons that were broody all summer and laid few eggs are all plump and in new plumage. But, Amber, my hard-working Buff Orpington who consistently laid eggs and cheerfully went on nursing home and school visits looks like this:

She brings true meaning to the expression, beauty is as beauty does.

Last week I flew to Los Angeles to visit my son who is attending college on the West Coast. It was to be a quick trip, but I stayed a few extra days to meet someone that I met on the internet. Now, I know that people get in all sorts of trouble with internet “friendships,” and you’ve got to be cautious. But, I was pretty sure that the person that I’d been communicating with really was a librarian with chickens named Donna. When she heard that I’d be in Los Angeles, she invited me to visit. Seeing Donna’s beautifully kept chickens was tempting.

I had always wanted to feed a carrot to a friendly llama.

I wanted to meet the other Temecula librarians who were all Tillie Lays an Egg and HenCam fans.

Donna said that she’d take me to a winery.

I’m not a big drinker. I still might have said no, but then Donna bribed me offered to take me there on horseback. I couldn’t possibly refuse.

(In the above photo her husband is leading their colt on the winery trail. I’m riding Gus.)

I love the internet.

Who, you might ask, was taking care of the animals back at LIttle Pond Farm? Steve stayed home. Except for the two days that he went on a Boy Scout camping trip. It snowed.

He didn’t have wine. I texted him photos from California to warm him up.

The six hens that you see on the HenCam are old. Very old. Historically, even the utility birds that scratched around the farmyard laid eggs for two seasons and then went into the stewpot. No one breeds for longevity. Looks and productivity for the first two years are what matters. By the age of three many hens die simply because their systems wear out. Others succumb to predators and disease. Tumors and cancer are prevalent. But, some chickens, like Tina, Siouxsie, Betsy, Edwina, Buffy and Twinkydink, keep on ticking. I’ve helped my old girls to beat the odds. The Spa Treatment has revived them. A good diet and a dry, clean environment keeps disease at bay. Still, these girls are ancient, and they are showing it.

At only 3 1/2, the Polish are the comparative youngsters of the group. Decorative hens like Polish, that are not high-producing layers, often have comparatively long lives. Still, these two, Siouxsie and Tina, have never been robustly healthy. They’ve been prone to respiratory diseases and laying issues. Recently, Siouxsie has been gasping and she’s been having trouble getting off of the roost in the morning. I believe that she has an internal issue that is incurable and is letting it run its course. Siouxsie continues to eat and seems oblivious to her ailment. She could keep on like this for quite awhile. I’ll be trimming her top knot back again. It wouldn’t hurt for her to be able to see where she’s going.

Her sister, Tina, is breathing fine, but the bumblefoot is back. It’s not as bad as when it first appeared, and today I’ll soak her foot in epsom salts and see if I can alleviate some of the swelling. But, it doesn’t seem to be bothering her. Here Tina is standing around with Edwina. At 7 1/2, Edwina is a grand old dame. She’s been a sturdy, healthy hen her entire life. A hen like this could live for a few more years.

Twinkydink arrived with Edwina, and she, too, never seems to be troubled by anything. Buffy, however, has had one ailment after another. She’s 6 1/2, which is about the limit for an Orpington that in her day was a good layer. Lately, Buffy has been resting a lot and sitting on her hocks. In this photo you can see how different her stance is than Twinkydink’s.

But then just when I think that Buffy is breathing her last breath, she gets up on her thinking log and looks fine.

I don’t expect all of these hens to live through the winter, but then again, they epitomize the expression, “tough old birds,” and I think they’ll be sticking around for awhile longer.