Out on the lush lawn, Lucy shook herself indignantly and puffed out like a speckled balloon. She paced back and forth beside her closed door, head down, muttering to herself. She was in quite a state.
Since Lucy wasn’t about to change her tune, I gave up and allowed her back inside. She hobbled straight up the ramp and plunked herself back down on the nest. After a couple days of this same drill, Lucy’s muttering morphed into a chant: “Budup … budup … budup …” This was a word I had never heard before, from Lucy or any of the girls. And once this chanting began, it didn’t stop. “Budup” was Lucy’s mantra, and it continued all day and all night.
I wasn’t worried about her. I knew Lucy hadn’t gone insane. She had gone broody.
12
Budup
Lucy wanted to be a mother.
It was a hormonal thing. Broodiness happens. I was excited to be witnessing something I had read so much about. But I was disappointed that Lucy was expressing such strong commitment to a desire that could not be fulfilled.
We didn’t have a rooster. And since we had no rooster, Lucy’s eggs were not fertile. And Lucy had stopped laying eggs, anyway, because that’s what happens when a hen goes broody. I had absconded with every one of her eggs, day after day, so there weren’t any left for her to sit on, fertile or not. This small detail, however, didn’t make any difference to Lucy. All she wanted to do was brood, eggs or no eggs. She would have sat on golf balls if I had given her some, but imaginary eggs were fine too.
Budup.
I could relate. Years ago I had also desperately wanted to start a family. I brooded. I nested.
Then our girl Sarah came along, and Danny and I were both overcome with parental joy. We still are. Well, sometimes.
Some breeds of chickens are more likely to go broody than others. Throughout history, quite possibly as many as ten thousand years of poultry-keeping history, humans have carefully selected for and against certain characteristics in their chickens. The tendency to go broody is often considered undesirable, especially for farmers who count on their hens’ high egg yields. These farmers appreciate a chicken who steps into the nest box, drops her egg, and walks away without looking back. This makes the eggs easy to collect. It also ensures that the hen will keep on producing.
A hen who is ready to set, or brood, stops producing once she has accumulated a number of eggs—a clutch. The broody hen then stays on the nest for approximately twenty-one days, the amount of time it takes for her chicks to develop and hatch. During this brooding period, she leaves the nest only two or three times a day—to eat, drink, and poop.
Farmers have devised all sorts of strategies to break the spell of a broody hen and get her back into production. Sometimes just locking the hen out of the coop for a day or two is all it takes. Some people swear by the wet-hen method: dunk that broody in a bucket of cold water. For tougher cases of broodiness, some farmers place the hen in a wire-bottomed cage, along with food and water. The cage is suspended on blocks above the floor for three or four days. Air circulating under the hen cools off her belly and encourages her system to resume laying. Another tried-and-true technique: frozen peas. At least with the frozen-pea method, the whole flock can celebrate in the end with a feast of all those thawed peas.
None of these broody-breaking strategies appealed to me. I certainly didn’t want to do anything to make Lucy uncomfortable—she was experiencing enough discomfort already with those bent toes and weak legs. And broodiness isn’t necessarily an awful thing. She wanted to be a mother. Who was I to stop her?
I considered my choices, I thought about Lucy’s challenges, and I made my decision. We would embark on a new adventure, Lucy and I.
I discussed my thoughts with the indoor contingent. Sarah was intrigued with the prospect of adding some new chicks to the flock. Danny was delighted with my promise that they would not be raised in our living room.
I picked up the phone and once again dialed my partner in chicken exploits. Patricia had a rooster in her flock, so the eggs produced by her hens were likely to be fertile. Her rooster was a fancy little guy. Colorful, with white earlobes. Patricia had adopted him and didn’t know anything about his background or what breed he was. This proud little rooster didn’t crow often, but when he did, he puffed up his chest and mustered all his vocal strength to belt out a sweet miniature yodel. He was a friendly fella, too, which certainly is not something you can say about all roosters.
And he was a favorite of Christopher, Patricia’s son.
At Patricia’s invitation, I drove on over the next morning to collect some fresh fertile eggs from her gals. It was a cold day outside but in the henhouse it was warm and cozy. In a bank of nest boxes on the far wall sat two lovely puffed-out hens who paid us absolutely no mind. Patricia reached under a full-figured Rhode Island Red and pulled out two eggs. If the hen noticed, she didn’t show it.
I wrapped the two warm eggs in a couple of tissues and slipped them into my coat pocket. Patricia suggested that I take a few more eggs but I didn’t want to overwhelm Lucy or myself. She assured me that I could always come back for more if these two didn’t hatch. I thanked her and hurried home.
The eggs were still plenty warm when I presented them to Lucy. With a calm matter-of-factness, she lifted herself slightly and then tenderly guided the eggs with her beak to just the right spot underneath her. Then she sat down.
That was it. No “Thank you,” no nothing.
That was okay with me. I latched the door and left her alone to do her thing.
The next day I let Lucy stay on her eggs rather than boot her out onto the lawn with the girls. Hatsy and Lil’White sensed that something was up, and they curiously milled about her coop.
Since Lucy was going to be eating only one or two small meals a day while she brooded, I prepared for her an extra healthy protein-rich concoction. The primary ingredient: a scrambled egg. This did feel a bit odd to me—feeding a chicken egg to a chicken. But it is known among chicken folk that eggs are one of the healthiest foods to give a chicken. After all, that one yolk is packed with all the nutrition it takes to grow an entire chick from scratch. I added a sprinkle of oatmeal and some fruit and greens to the mix and brought it out to Lucy’s coop.
I opened the door and Lucy turned to look at me. She was very solidly planted on that nest, and I was not looking forward to wrestling her out of there again. So I decided to offer her the food and water right where she sat.
Lucy ignored it. She didn’t want breakfast in bed. I placed the bowls of food and water on the ground, rolled up my sleeves, and geared up for a struggle as I reached in to collect her. This time, however, she gave me no resistance. I think she was probably pretty hungry. And maybe after my gift of fertile eggs, she perceived me to be an assistant rather than a tormentor. Out in the rain-soaked yard, I placed Lucy in front of her bowl.
She ate ravenously and then took a long drink of water. She gave her plumage a good shake and looked around, then wandered off to graze for a while. I watched her go and wondered if she would be keeping track of the time. After all, it was a chilly, wet day. How long could a couple of eggs wait, and how cold could they get? Lucy kept on walking.
All along, Hatsy had been watching. I didn’t allow her to share Lucy’s special meal, so she hovered around the little coop until Lucy finished eating and walked away.
This was the moment Hatsy had been waiting for.
As soon as Lucy disappeared around the corner, Hatsy made a beeline for the open door. I was surprised by her speed and stealth and almost reached out to shoo her away, but then I stopped myself. I wanted to see what she would do.
She hurried up the ramp and peeked into the nest box.
She approached with delicate footsteps and uttered a few sweet sounds.
Using her beak, she scooted the eggs around a bit. Then she sat down.
Hatsy tried to cover the eggs with her bony little breast, but no matter how she rearranged them, one egg kept popping out. She spoke
to the eggs. The words she used were pleasant and hushed.
Hatsy was able to enjoy only a few blissful minutes on the nest before Lucy’s behemoth mass came tottering back up the ramp and filled the doorway. Lucy looked down at Hatsy. And Hatsy promptly surrendered the treasures and launched herself toward me through the open door. I ducked away from her beating wings, and she landed on the grass beside me. She turned to watch her friend.
Lucy hobbled on over to the nest. She angled herself into position and then sank gently onto the eggs, resuming that rhythmic chant, “Budup. Budup.”
I closed Lucy’s door.
Hatsy walked away.
13
Team Broody
Nineteen days to go. Nineteen days to watch and study and obsess and plan and hope and worry.
When I wasn’t outside snooping around Lucy’s coop, I was inside snooping around the Internet—reading up on any and all chick-hatching topics. I was surprised at how much there was to learn. Sarah and Danny enjoyed hearing me expound about egg development and such, but rather than join me in my studies, they were satisfied to receive brief updates on Hatsy and Lucy’s activities and to hear the occasional fun fact about broody hens.
One night I cornered Sarah and read to her about candling. She enthusiastically agreed to join me in this experiment. We read that after the seventh day of incubation you’re supposed to be able to see the beginnings of a chick inside the shell by shining a bright light behind it. Of course we couldn’t wait seven days. So on the fifth night, Sarah and I went out and collected our precious eggs from under Lucy and brought them inside. We sat on the basement steps in total darkness fumbling with flashlights and eggs.
When we held the first egg up to the flashlight, it glowed with a uniform golden hue. It was pretty, but there was nothing interesting going on in there. In the other egg, however, we very certainly saw a web of veins.
This egg was fertile! Sarah and I discussed what should be done with the one that was infertile. I thought we should dispose of it, but Sarah felt Lucy might get upset if it mysteriously disappeared. I agreed that there was no harm in letting her continue to sit on both eggs. With a pen I drew an X on the infertile one so we could tell them apart, and then we returned both eggs to Lucy’s coop and tucked them under her wonderful fluff. “Budup. Budup. Budup.” What a nice sound out there in the dark, warm night.
Sixteen days to go.
Lucy continued to sit faithfully on the nest, but all that sitting took a toll on her legs. They got weaker and weaker, and eventually she couldn’t even lift herself to stand. But I was as committed to our broody adventure as Lucy was, and I was there for her when she needed me. I kept a regular schedule that she could depend on: two or three times a day I lifted her off the nest for a leg stretch and a nice meal.
I remembered how my friends Trish and Beth had helped Lucy to stand, and I tried to do the same. It took awhile, but as I held her, hovering just above the ground, she was able to stretch her legs and then put weight on them.
Throughout our broody adventure, I remained wary that one day Lucy might turn on me. I had read so many accounts of the maniacal demeanor of broody hens. Broodies can be downright nasty, hissing and pecking at anyone who invades their space. But Lucy never did go nutty on me. She was polite and trusting and patient, always. She needed me. We were a team.
Auntie Hatsy was proving to be a valuable team member, too. Each time I took Lucy off the nest, Hatsy shot right in and plunked herself gently on top of the eggs … more or less. Lucy seemed perfectly confident with Hatsy’s babysitting skills.
I was pleased with the girls’ tag-team setup because I could tell that Lucy really appreciated her free time on the lawn.
There was really only one unpleasant by-product of our broody adventure. But it was a doozy.
Yes, I had read accounts of this broody poop. But nothing I read could have prepared me for the real thing. It emerged right after Lucy finished her meal, and it was positively the most vile excrement under the sun: bigger than a golf ball, and it absolutely reeked. Regular chicken poop doesn’t smell like roses either, but this broody poop was a collection of half a day’s worth of waste, festering inside the bird until she stepped off the nest.
I kept a long-handled shovel nearby with which to scoop the fetid turd and hustle it to the compost pile, where I buried it deep.
Inside the nest box, Lucy kept everything remarkably pristine and tidy. She didn’t poop in there, and she used her clean beak, rather than her toes, to turn and arrange the eggs just so.
When Lucy was away, her friend Hatsy did some rearranging of her own, but that didn’t seem to bother the lady of the house. Upon Lucy’s return, Hatsy always gave up the eggs without dispute. Lucy stepped in and moved everything back into its proper place and resumed where she had left off.
Sometimes Hatsy had a hard time leaving.
After a while, Hatsy’s love for Lucy’s eggs began to verge on obsession,
and Lucy seemed a bit annoyed by her persistent little friend.
Meanwhile, Lucy graciously tolerated my own annoyingly frequent attention. I spent more and more time with Lucy and the flock. And in the evenings I spent more and more time on the Internet, learning whatever I could about everything chicken.
One night while cruising the chicken-lovin’ websites, I read that an infertile egg left on the nest could actually explode.
I grabbed a flashlight and scurried right out to Lucy’s coop and removed the festering time bomb.
She never missed it.
I read a gripping account of egg production within the hen.
Eggs are formed one after another, conveyor-belt style. It takes about twenty-five to twenty-eight hours to create one complete egg. At the end of the process, the shell is applied, and then a special water-soluble antibacterial coating called bloom is the finishing touch. This coating protects the porous shell and its contents. It’s the reason that freshly laid eggs, laid in a clean nest box, need not be washed. It’s also the reason that fresh unwashed eggs can sit in a bowl on the kitchen table, unrefrigerated, for several days without spoiling. Eggs sold in supermarkets are generally produced on factory farms. The bloom is washed off before they are shipped, so factory eggs do need to be refrigerated from the start.
The egg’s shell is composed mostly of calcium, with a slight bit of protein to bond it all together. A laying hen needs to consume a good quantity of calcium in order to create each of these shells, day in and day out. That’s why it is advised to have a container of calcium available to the hens at all times. Good sources of calcium for hens include their own washed and crushed eggshell, or crushed oyster shell. I found that my girls had little interest in their cup of crushed shell during the day, but in the early evening, just before going to bed, they sought it out and consumed it ravenously.
Since chickens metabolize their food very quickly, my guess is that during the nighttime hours their internal egg factories begin the shell-making process in order to deliver a finished product the next morning. So going to bed with a full load of calcium on board is a necessity.
Although a shell made of calcium provides protection for the chick inside, it is the egg’s exquisite shape, rather than its material, that makes it strong. The curve of an egg’s shell works like an architectural arch or a dome. In structures like these, tremendous weight and pressure are distributed throughout the building material rather than being concentrated in one spot.
Pressure on the curved eggshell works in the same way, so that a monstrous hen like Lucy can place all her weight on the shell without disastrous results.
Of course, if Lucy were to pounce upon it, the egg might not be so lucky. A quick strike in one spot can easily break the egg, like when you whack it on the edge of a frying pan. In the same way, a block of concrete is very strong under steady pressure, but when I deliver my famous karate chop, I can crack it like an egg, no problem.
14
Pip
Inside the shell
of a fertilized egg there is a tiny, virtually invisible zygote, which has the potential to become a chick.
The zygote is attached to that yellow yolk, which will provide all the nutrition for its twenty-one days of growth.
Outside the shell, the mother hen is responsible for warmth and humidity. Her body temperature, normally 102° or 103°F, drops to 100° and she loses the feathers in the center of her breast. This ensures that her body heat is transferred directly to the eggs. Her bare skin also transfers moisture to the egg, in order to maintain proper humidity within the shell.
A hen Lucy’s size can easily manage a clutch of about a dozen eggs. When a hen does have a large clutch, she rearranges the eggs several times a day. The ones on the outside are moved to the inside and the inside eggs are rolled to the outside, to ensure uniform incubation. She also rolls each egg around to keep the baby from sticking to the inside of the shell. Since Lucy had only one egg to fuss over instead of a dozen, I wondered if our one chick was experiencing twelve times the attention.
Once Upon a Flock Page 6