Yearly Archives: 2012

Empress Candy’s Day

In the winter, Candy is the first animal cared for in the morning. But now that the weather has warmed up, I go outside and feed the fish first.

Candy is peeved. She’s the Empress Rabbit and should be attended to before all others. Candy lets me know her displeasure by ringing her bell and gnawing at her door.

I let her out and she gallops down the ramp,

and then she checks to see if her royal subjects, the hens, have been let out yet,

and then she goes and pees.

It takes a long time to pee.

The rest of the day is spent visiting with the chickens, all the while maintaining the proper royal attitude.

She confers with the goats.

At the end of the day, as night falls, I go out to close up the barns. As I check on the hens, Candy watches me, and when I step into her pen, she runs a big loop around her hutch royal abode, charges up the ramp, and turns and waits for her due. Two banana chips.

All hers. You don’t have to share when you are the Queen.

6th Anniversary

Today is HenBlog’s 6th anniversary. The writing that I do for this blog is the most consistent, longest work project of my life. Writing itself isn’t new to me – I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. One of my clearest childhood memories is of putting down my thoughts and stories in a notebook. Over the years my identity as a writer was confirmed by the publication of five books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. My sense of self-worth was tied into whether an editor and a publisher deemed my words valuable and interesting enough to put into print. I continue to want to get my projects picked up by traditional publishing houses. (I love the collaborative process that takes place with a talented team of people all focused on getting a book out.) But, unlike in the past, my sense of worth as a writer is not limited to that.

A turning point for me happened two years ago, during a lunch with a friend and an editor. We were talking about what I was writing, and how hard it is to get published. We had just finished a course of egg salad and greens, and were eating chocolate soufflé. We were on my screen porch, watching the chickens in the yard. She said, “This is what you do. Do this.” She swept her arm out at the view. I felt like I had been given permission to turn my backyard world into my writing world.

Now I have my books, but I also have you, and this on-going conversation on HenCam about a chicken keeping life. The story continues in my school visits and chicken keeping workshops. It’ll be told in new books and articles. But, mostly, it happens here. Thanks for reading.

Lily celebrated the anniversary by going fishing. It’s raining, thank goodness, and the pond has been rising, enough so that the little goldfish were swimming in the shallows. Lily caught and ate one before I realized why she was prancing and wagging her tail in the yard. She’s taking the rest of the day off.

I wish that I could take the day off and go fishing (although not exactly the sort of fishing that Lily does) but I’ve things to do. Writing projects are in the works.

If you have a favorite story that you’ve read here, do let me know.

Agnes’ Dark Comb

A couple of months ago, Agnes looked poorly. She sunbathed, hunched and fluffed. She didn’t lord it over the other hens. Her comb turned dark and shriveled.

This is a sick bird.

Agnes is a Golden Comet, which is hybrid designed to lay day in and day out for two years. After that, it’s assumed that she’s done. She’s three and she hasn’t laid an egg yet this spring. Neither has her sister, Philomena, who doesn’t look sick, but is also depleted. A real farmer would dispatch them. I’m not a real farmer and so I’ve come up with some treatments to help these old hens.

Agnes looked to be on death’s door last month, but she’s still here thanks to epsom salts. Epsom salt is a combination of magnesium and sulfate. You can find it in the pharmacy, as it’s used by people as a laxative and as a foot soak. For such a simple and inexpensive product, it has many curative functions. The magnesium improves circulatory health, flushes toxins, improves muscle and nerve function, maintains the proper level of calcium in the blood and increases oxygen use. The sulfates help form brain tissues and joint proteins, creates mucin proteins that line the digestive tract, detoxifies contaminants, and improves absorption of nutrients.

Obviously, epsom salts might be jus the thing for a hen worn out by expelling calcium and protein in the form of eggs.

There are two ways to dose the hen. One is by dissolving 1 teaspoon in an ounce of water and, using a syringe, carefully squirting it down her throat. The other is much easier. Fill a small washtub with warm water and stir in a heaping 1/4 cup of epsom salts. Put the chicken in the bath. Let her sit there for 15 minutes. She’ll like it! (I have a YouTube video of how to bathe a chicken here.) If it’s a chilly day, blow dry before putting her back out. If the epsom salt treatment is going to work, it will after two days, a treatment each day (oral and/or bath both times.)

I did both treatments, and it worked for Agnes. She’s still with us. Look at her comb now.

I still don’t expect Agnes to lay another egg, or even last past the summer, but I’ve made her more comfortable. I even saw her lord it over the treats the other day and peck Betsy out of the way. The old girl is feeling better.

A Fantasy Come True

Admit it. We all have fantasies. Mine involve strapping young men. With strong backs. Bent over.

Doing this:

And also doing this:

I am sipping iced coffee and watching the guys edge the lawn, fix the holes left by a horde of partying moles this past winter, and wheeling load after load of mulch into the gardens. Fantasies do come true.

The girls are not going to be allowed out to mess this up. Not until after the garden tour on June 1 and June 2. But not to worry about them. They love guys with wheelbarrows, too. Some of the dirt dug up from the flower bed in the backyard has been dumped into the chicken runs. They have plenty of scratching and grub-eating to do. Chicken fantasies are so easy to fulfill.

Bare Butts, Feather Loss and Feather Picking

It is a joy to see a colorful, glossy-feathered, fluffy-butted hen.

Chicken skin, on the other hand, is not pretty. It’s a sad yellowish or brick color, and bumpy. When irritated it’s a painful-looking red. Chicken keepers become worried and upset and when see it.

There are many reasons why your chicken might look bare, and several of them are of no cause for concern. Once a year, a mature hen molts – all of their feathers fall out and they grow new ones. Some hens go through a dramatic molt during which they turn almost naked over night. Others just look unkempt. For more about molting, see this post.

When a hen goes broody, she’ll pull out her breast feathers so that her skin is in contact with the eggs. If you have a bad-tempered, bare-chested hen sitting in a nesting box, she’s healthy, but broody.

One clue to what is amiss is where the bare spots are. If you have a rooster, you’re likely to see feather loss around the neck and back, due to the rooster pulling out and shredding feathers when he treads the hens. Sometimes the rooster favors one hen, so that her saddle (back) feathers get worn off, while all of the other girls look lovely. If there are open wounds, or her skin is so red that the others peck at her, you’ll have to separate her, or get rid of the rooster.

Sometimes hens develop scraggly bare patches. This is not necessarily due to illness. Every year, a couple of my best layers lose their neck feathers and go bare near their vents. It takes a lot of protein and energy to make feathers, and these hens put their resources into egg laying instead. It is perfectly normal.

But, if your hen has irritated, raw, bald areas, especially near the vent, take a closer look for parasites. Pick up your birds and examine them closely. (To learn how to do this, watch my youtube video.) Feather loss can be due to external parasites, typically lice, or sometimes mites. A louse infestation is first seen near the vent. There will be bare skin, and the feather shafts will look like Q-tips. You might see the lice crawling about.  I’ve written about lice here. Mites are nighttime blood suckers, the size of pins. You’ll see dried blood and rawness near the vent.

Once in awhile, there will be a feather-picking hen in the group. You might never catch her in the act, but she’ll peck away at the other hens’ feathers, until, one day, you notice bare spots and possibly blood. Some feather pecking is due to aggression. In other cases, the culprits are pecking the feathers off to eat them. Usually you’ll see the bald areas near the vent or at the base of the tail. Once a chicken is pecked at, the behavior escalates because all hens will peck at red skin. So, it’s important to catch and stop this behavior quickly after you notice it.

Once hens get into the bad habit of feather picking and eating, it is hard to stop, but possible. The first step is to darken the afflicted hen’s skin, which reduces the cannibalistic behavior. You can dye the skin with blu-kote (similar to gentian violet in the UK.) It dyes the skin purplish-blue, so the hens don’t peck. (Use disposable gloves when doing this, as it will also stain your skin.) Feather eating can occur because the hens need more roughage and more protein in their diet. It can also start because of boredom and crowding. So, make sure that they have access to oyster shell and grit. Reduce empty calorie treats like cracked corn and stale bread, provide greens and interesting things to eat like melons and squash. Also take stock of your housing. Is there enough space and access to feed for everyone?

Sometimes, everything is fine but there is still feather picking. In the case of Jasper, the hen seen in the photo above, she lets the other hens pick her tail feathers off. Jasper is a dominant hen and she could stop this behavior if she wanted to. Blood is never drawn. It’s an odd habit, but I ignore it.

Some hens lose feather near their vent because they have a continual stream for thin diarrhea. This might be vent gleet, which is an intractable yeast infection. I’ve written about it here.

On the other hand, feather loss combined with a swollen bottom that feels like a water balloon can be any number of dire diseases, from cancer to egg impaction. You’ll know if there’s an underlying ailment because the hen will show other symptoms, like an odd, penguin-like walk, tiredness, and a lack of appetite. Without those additional clues, feather loss is rarely a serious problem.

Sometimes, you never know why a hen has raw, red, rough skin. I have a Barred Rock who developed what looked like a rash. For a while the skin was hot to the touch and she walked with stiffness. She lost all of her butt feathers, which never grew back, I bathed her and used povidone and she moved with less discomfort, and the skin thickened but remained red. Two years later she still has a bald bottom, but is otherwise fine. Sometimes feather loss is a mystery.