This past week my oldest son graduated from high school (I am ridiculously proud of what a wonderful person he is, but I promised him that this blog wouldn’t be about him, so that’s all I’ll say!) Next fall, he’ll be going to college in San Francisco. I’ll be flying out to so settle him into his dorm on August 22. As long as I’m in the Bay Area, I thought that this could be an opportunity for me to do a program on the West Coast.  Perhaps there’s a library or school who would like me to do a Tillie Lays an Egg storytime? Or, maybe there’s an urban farming or gardening group that would like me to present my Chicken Keeping Workshop? I’m willing to stay an extra day to do an appearance (or two.)

I do charge a fee for my talks, but if you can get me to the event and back to my hotel (undecided as yet, ideas?) I won’t charge for other expenses. Email me if you’re interested.

Betsy is the sweetest little hen. I take her to preschools and forty children line up to pet her. See? I don’t even have to hold her. She sits in my lap.

But, Betsy has been crazy-broody. Angry, raspy-voiced, flattened in the nesting box broody. It’s been hot. I’ve ignored her. Which was a mistake.

Animals have the uncanny ability to get into trouble when you are running out the door and don’t have time to deal with them. Yesterday, about ten minutes before I had to pick my son up at school, I checked on the flock. It was hot and I wanted to make sure there was enough water. Betsy, in her bad, shove everyone out of her box mood, had stomped on eggs (that other hens laid that day) smashing them. Once broken, she recognized the eggs for what they are, food. By the time I looked in, her white breast was shellacked bright yellow with dried-up yolk. It looked like half of her had been coated with a thick coat of paint. On a humid, very hot day, this could be lethal. I scooped her up and hurried over to the outside faucet. I held her chest under running water, working the baked-on yolk off bit by bit. It certainly brought her elevated broody body temperature down! I now had about three minutes before I had to pick up my son. I tossed Betsy in the broody coop, gave her some fresh water and headed out.

A few hours later, back home, I checked on Betsy. Despite the 90º temperature the air was so humid that she was yet to dry. Thunderstorms threatened. So, instead of making dinner, I brought her inside, got out the hair dryer, and went to work. Her crop was the size of a golf ball. On a tiny bantam, that is way too huge. I could feel sharp bits of egg shell in it. Now I was worried about impaction. So, I mixed some canola oil and yogurt and offered it to her. Betsy is a hen who is usually eager to eat and is used to being fed from my hand. She was too stuffed to even peck. I dipped her beak in the concoction and she swallowed a little.

I finished the blow drying and put Betsy back in the coop just as the storm hit. It was raining buckets. Even running as fast as I could back to the house, I got soaked.

This morning Betsy was put right back in the broody coop. She has water and a small piece of watermelon. She doesn’t have any other food – her crop is getting smaller but it’s still full enough. I know she’s fine. She’s pooping and she’s glaring at me.

I’m hoping it’ll be only two more days before she back to her sweet self. I’m also hoping she’ll forget about the egg eating. When werewolves turn back into people they forget their evil ways, right?

There’s been an early heat wave and I’ve already heard that several hens have died. Your chickens have warm feather coats. They don’t have long tongues like dogs to use to dissipate body heat. Chickens can’t wallow in mud like pigs. Shade helps, but they’re unlikely to cross a sun-burnt yard to get to a cool spot. It’s up to you to manage their environment to keep them healthy; below are ways to help your chickens to beat the heat.

Provide cool water in a shady spot outside. If the coop is stifling hot, they won’t go in to drink, so having a second waterer where they hang out in the shade is essential. If you don’t have shade, create some. We stretch a shade tarp (the link is just for info, not an endorsement) over Candy’s hutch. The chickens take advantage of it too.

If you have an extra plastic waterer, fill it half-way and put in the freezer. When solid, top off with water, screw on the base, and your hens will have cold drinks. Also, reduce or eliminate the amount of scratch grains that you feed your girls. Corn generates heat, which is good in the winter, but not in the summer. Instead of scratch, provide juicy melon rinds for treats.

When the temperature hits the 90s, shade isn’t enough. The chickens will stay cooler if they have loose, damp earth to stretch out in. If your yard is packed dirt, hose a portion in the shade down. Better yet, have a compost area in the shade. It’ll be moist and cool (the compost in my chicken run isn’t “hot”.) Candy appreciates the shady, cool dirt, too.

Keep your yard and coop raked and clean! Chicken manure gives off ammonia fumes and is caustic. You wouldn’t want to breathe that air on a hot day, so don’t make your chickens.

The coop itself can be a deathtrap. Too many new chicken keepers buy small coops that are advertised for urban backyards and “one to three chickens.” They’re basically covered nesting boxes. They have no air space and poor ventilation. They’re not designed for hot climates and for three chickens packed in at night. Here is one chicken in an ark. She’s broody. This is the only use for these coops.

Even big henhouses can have ventilation issues. My HenCam coop didn’t get the louvered eaves that I wanted, so I had a cupola added. Hot air streams up and out. On the worst days of the summer it’s ten degrees cooler in there than it used to be.

Still, without windows providing cross-ventilation, it gets oppressive in the coop, so on the worst of days I turn on a box fan.

Implementing all of my suggestions doesn’t guarantee that you won’t lose a hen to heat stroke, but it will greatly reduce the likelihood of it happening.

An added benefit is that you might find that under the shade tarp with the hens is the nicest place to be. Put a chair out there, have an iced lemonade and have a visit with the hens. After a morning moving compost (I put the final six loads into the asparagus bed, and had two more to spread under my roses!) and then raking and cleaning the chicken yard (I do follow my own advice) I think I’ll go out there right now.

Several years ago I made the mistake of letting Candy into the vegetable garden in the fall. The chickens were scratching around in there, clearing the soil of grubs and cutworms, so I thought that the rabbit would like a hop-around. But, instead of playing, she was just as industrious as the chickens – which was good for her but disastrous for my garden. Candy dug a tunnel under the asparagus, about six inches down and all the way across the six-foot bed. She ate every root.

Asparagus is a perennial vegetable that takes years to mature and establish. A gardener who grows asparagus takes the long and optimistic view. I admit that after Candy decimated my asparagus bed  that I didn’t plant another. Asparagus requires room and it doesn’t like competition. It requires a dedicated spot in the garden. Once Candy ate up the asparagus I decided I’d have a more productive garden growing other vegetables in that raised bed.

But, I’ve been missing homegrown asparagus, and a few weeks ago it dawned on me that I have the perfect place to grow asparagus, a sunny patch of  lawn behind the big barn. I had some raised bed corners leftover from the veg garden construction. Steve bought some lumber and built a 6 X 6 bed. Today I layered it with newspaper to kill the grass.

And then I began filling it.

The compost area in the HenCam chicken run has been due to be emptied. An asparagus garden was the perfect use for this:

Ever since last summer this corner of the run has had garden waste, shavings and manure from barn cleanings, and kitchen scraps tossed in. The chickens do all the work of shredding and turning the material. The wire keeps them from kicking it all into the main part of the run.

It’s gorgeous stuff.

I loaded nine wheelbarrows with the compost and dumped it into the new bed. That was hard work! I’ve got another half-dozen loads before the bed is full, but that will have to wait for another day. Take a look at what it looks like now.

I’ve made a dent in the compost pile, but there’s plenty more.

Asparagus is planted in the spring, but this bed won’t sit idle until next year. I think it’ll be perfect for summer squash. For once the zucchini won’t take over my vegetable garden! I think I’ll have quite the crop. I know how good the compost that my chickens make is. Last year I used some of it in my flower bed. I’ve never used fertilizers there. I don’t have to. Here’s proof.

Not all hens go broody. Hybrids, designed for laying, don’t care a whit for their eggs after they’ve left them in the nesting box. But some hens want to sit. And sit. Even if the eggs aren’t fertile and there’s no chance of chicks, they’ll sit. Even if they don’t lay eggs themselves, they’ll sit on eggs left by other hens. A broody hen will sit for far longer than the twenty-one days that it takes to hatch a viable egg. Twinkydink once sat in a nesting box for the entire summer.

A hen that’s broody will pull out her breast feathers, so that her skin (which, by the way, elevates in temperature when broody) has direct contact with the egg. They’ll flatten out. They’ll be in a VERY BAD MOOD. Once a day they’ll get off the nest, leave a humungous stinky pile of poo, eat, drink, and go back on the nest.

If you want the fun of hatching eggs and raising chicks, a broody hen will do the job. But most of us don’t want that. We want pleasant hens laying eggs, not feathered furies occupying the nesting boxes.

I have two bantam White Leghorn hens. They are the “actresses who play Tillie.” They have a job to do. They cheerfully meet children and let the little hands pet them. They’re very good at this being as how they are sweet, friendly and pretty. But, Coco went broody as soon as the sun started to shine in the spring. Betsy had to handle several preschool visits without a backup. Then Betsy went broody. I have a storytime coming up in two weeks. So, Coco, the slacker, was popped into the broody coop.

A broody coop has a wire floor, off the ground, so that cooler air circulates and brings down the hen’s body temperature. She has food and water but no nest. You can return her to the henhouse to roost at night, but during the day, she needs to be back in the broody coop. It will take three days. She’ll be really ticked off for the first two, and then by the third, she’ll look bored and ready to get out. It did the trick with Coco. She’s back with the flock, showing no interest in the nesting box.

Betsy is still broody. She’s next.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Coco won’t return to her bad habits. In fact, I’d bet a bag of feed that both of these girls will go broody again later in the summer. For now, though, at least Coco is back to work.