Silence of the Chickens

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked if we ever had cannibalism problems with our chickens. My darling chickens? Certainly not. I told her I had heard that chickens will go after another chicken if it's wounded, but I'd never seen our chickens do that. I should have knocked on her wood kitchen table - send a little anti-cannibalism ju-ju at my little feathered friends.

In the winter I normally just check on the chickens and gather their eggs during the nighttime feeding (of the horses). The morning after the cannibalism conversation, however, there were alarming noises coming from the hen house. Happy chickens sound like a roomful of women gabbing. (In fact, there is a large group of women that jog together past my house every day, and they sound like very happy chickens.) My chickens weren't happy. I would love to do an impression for you - I'm sure it would be terribly amusing. They sounded like a cross between someone learning to play the violin, demons scratching their way out of Hell, and, well, chickens. It was horrible.

I opened the door to see our brilliant White Leghorn rooster, Foghorn, doing a strangely slow strut around the coop. The bottom ridge of his comb was bleeding profusely and the blood had pooled up on the back of his neck and then run all down his back. All but one of the hens were following close behind him pecking at the blood if they got within range. The matriarch hen was perched up high in front of the laying boxes. I say perched but really she was bent forward with her head down as if she were a raptor ready to descend upon it's prey. She was making the loudest of the ungodly squawking shrieks I had heard from outside. I think I interrupted her attack when I came in. I tried to wash the blood off Foghorn which just made the chickens cackle all the more - they started drinking the bloody water as it ran down his feathers. The red heat lamp made the whole scene even creepier. It was like watching a chicken-horror flick. Needless to say I removed Foghorn from the coop. I put him safely at the top of the hay in the barn, even brought him little dishes of grain and water - which, as it turns out was more ridiculous than it seemed because he immediately flew down and booked it back over to the coop and paced outside while the hens continued to wail inside. "They want to eat you", I said. He didn't care. Chickens are stupid. (What a revelation, huh.)

Why do I continue to keep them, you ask.

This is why:

Beautiful fresh organic eggs. Aren't they pretty? The yolks are a deep, rich yellow - store bought eggs pale in comparison (literally). AND the custard these eggs make is nothing short of heavenly.

This time of year there is another reason to have chickens too.

A super fuzzy, adorable reason. Nothing heralds the coming of Spring like the cheep-cheep-cheeping of baby chicks.