Rhode Island Reds and Dominiques

Georgie Moss Lewis and my sisters Betty and Barbara.

The first thing I do every morning is go down to the kitchen and look out the window for my chickens.  There should be three black hens, three red ones, three grey striped ones, and Roy.  The Black Sex-Linked hens came to me by accident.  My usual breeds are Rhode Island Reds and Dominiques.  I like them because they are the breeds my grandmother raised. 


My grandparents have been gone for more than 40 years now, but when I was a child they had a farm in Tennessee.  Their white frame house stood on a piece of high ground with cotton fields in front and pasture behind.  It had a fireplace in the living room and a hand pump just outside the back door.  It had a concrete front porch, a single bedroom, and a kitchen with cold running water.  When my sisters and I were infants, our parents used to bath us in the sink.  When we grew too big for that, they heated water on the stove to fill a tin basin on the floor.  I can remember sitting in that tub surrounded by family going about their business.  My baths were public and drafty, but to their credit, they were better than running to the outhouse in rain.

The house was surrounded by cotton fields.

The chicken house stood behind the house, near the storage shed and the milking barn.  Other than the space for these buildings and their yards, and for the garden and pasture, my grandparents planted every foot of their land in cotton.  Growing crops occupied their lives; it bound them to the soil and the seasons.  My grandparents' farm was not like mine.  It did not have tractors or pet sitters.  It did not have  hay delivered.  My grandparents did not name their chickens or give their roosters away. 

In the year when my father was dying of lung cancer, we talked about his upbringing.  "We didn't have nothing," he said.  "We never had nothing."  But as I remember it, my grandparents had quite a bit.  For one thing, they were healthy and, I couldn't help noticing even as a seven-year-old, inordinately handsome.  For another, they liked each other.  They smiled a lot and their eyes crinkled, and they had four doting sons who visited often and sent money when they couldn't.

My father Jim Lewis and his father Noel.

But good looks and good cheer don't necessarily put food on the table and the money must not have gone far.  In a climate that ranges from 10 inches of snow to 100+ degrees, my grandparents never lived in a house with insulation, they never had an indoor toilet or a telephone, never owned a car or a home.  Until they moved to my father's farm, they had been tenent farmers.  Their last house, in Mississippi, had only a deep well on the back porch -- that's right, the kind you dip water out of with a bucket, and the porch was built right over it -- and when it went dry, my grandfather hauled water on foot from the neighborhood store, a mile up the road, on the highway.  That was in 1966, and he was almost 80 years old.

It's no wonder their lifestyle has passed away.  And no wonder chickens are not always welcome these days, reminders as they are of such times.  I'm glad for the comforts I have and for the ease my animals share.  But I am also glad for the people and places I loved as a child and grateful for the memories.  And for my Rhode Island Reds and Dominiques who keep them alive.

The Automatic Chicken Door -- How To

My automatic chicken door has been up and running for four months now, and so far, knock on wood, it has been as faithful as a postman.  It is built of scrap wood and Lucite and runs on the little Add-A-Motor D20 Chicken Coop Motor from Smarthome.com.  In case you are contemplating a new door for your chicks, here's how I built it.

I used:

(2) 2x4 boards, 36 inches long
(2) 2x4 boards, 12 inches long
(1) sheet of PGLA .220 Lucite (a competitor of Plexiglas), 12"x18"
(1) strip of aluminum slatwall insert, 3' long
(1) screw hook, to attach the string to the door
(1) handful of nails
(1) Add-A-Motor D20 Chicken Coop Motor
(1) lamp timer

All that cost about $120, which was more than I wanted to spend, but after letting my birds in and out every day for 12 years, I decided it was worth the money.  Of the total, about $20 went for construction materials, and the rest paid for the motor.  In the time since I bought them, the materials have gone up in price and the motor has come down, but the bottom line is about the same.  

 Some doors are at ground level. Mine is elevated, with a ramp for access, and my chickens love it. I put rungs on the ramp at chicken footstep intervals, about 3 inches apart. The rungs are closer together than I expected them to be; I just kept adding until my birds stopped sliding.
 

My door was complicated by being framed inside an existing screen door. Your door, started from scratch, would be simpler to install. In either case, the design consists of three parts: the framed doorway, the sliding door itself, and the motor.

The doorway is 12" wide and 18" high, just big enough for my Rhode Island Red rooster Roy to get through if he ducks his head a little. You can check the best fit for your birds by putting ruler marks on a post or wall of your coop or leaning a yardstick against it and measuring your birds as they walk by. 


Roy stands 24" from comb to claw.  You can see the black mark on the post behind him.

A string attaches the motor to the Plexiglas.

The door is a Lucite panel that runs up and down in aluminum tracks.  Lucite, Plexiglas, Masonite, and tin (not wood) are ideal materials because they are strong, lightweight, and waterproof and will slide without sticking.  Up-and-down doors are more common than models that open from side to side and smaller doors are preferable to larger ones.  Four pounds seems to be all a little motor can lift, and doors with shorter sides have less opportunity to bind against the frame. 

The motor sits inside the coop and above the door frame.  It works like a fishing reel, spinning first one way and then the other to raise and lower the door on a string.  The lamp timer controls the schedule.

Aluminum slatwall inserts hold the Lucite in place and guide it up and down.  They are tacked to the insides of the door frame and they look like this:



           

Aluminum Slatwall Inserts guide the Plexiglas.


I used scrap wood to frame my doorway and bought the rest of my materials from Lowe’s Home Improvement Store.  Lowe's sells the Lucite in 18” X 24” sheets and the aluminum slatwall inserts in 6’ strips.  I had the store cut both in half for me, so what I took home was two 18” X12” panels of Lucite and two 3' strips of slatwall.  If I had bought the wood there, I suppose they would have cut that, too.  My timer is just a standard $4 lamp timer, also from Lowe's.



All I had to do when I got home was (using an existing entry into the chicken house):

1. Nail the aluminum slatwall to a wide edge of the longer 2x4s.  The nail will go right through the metal; just be sure it is flush and straight and that you don't bend the metal; 
2. Nail one side board into place;
3. Insert a Plexiglas panel into the track and the other side board, slide it up and down to make sure the fit is secure but not binding, and nail the second side board into place.  Then, with the Plexiglas inserted, nail the bottom sill into place to hold it.  And finally, nail the top board in place.  It was very, very easy.

The closed door sits in a groove for added security.

I am particularly pleased with the bottom sill of the doorway.  I grooved it to deter raccoons from poking their little claws underneath the closed door and trying to lift it.

I used the remaining half of my Lucite sheet to cover the top of the opening in my door. I tacked it tightly against the tracks as a permanent cover, but that was necessary only because I started with an opening that was twice as tall as I wanted in the first place. If you are starting from scratch, cut an opening exactly the size you need and be done with it.  Share the extra Lucite with a friend.

Although the framing went well, the motor is a different story.  I started with a motor that was too complicated for me and wasted quite a bit of time before I finally gave up on it and found a simpler one that I could install, adjust, and maintain by myself.

The first motor was the DIY model described on Chris and Keri's Blog.  I liked it because it was inexpensive and hand-made and clever, but in retrospect, Oh My God, What was I thinking?!  Chris and Keri's motor is a mass of electrical wiring and limit switches and a jerry-rigged screwdriver with a soldered circuit board that I don't even begin to understand.  Look at Chris and Keri's material list carefully.  If you don't recognize the parts or know what they're for or how they work, possibly this motor is not the best choice for you either, Grasshopper.

                            Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
                            Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
                            Master Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
                            Caine: No.
                            Master Po: Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?
                            Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
                            Master Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?
                                                                              Pilot episode of Kung Fu (1972)

My friend Keith built Chris and Keri's motor for me; all I had to do was make it work.  But I had immediate problems with the limit switches, which I never got the hang of, and after I had fiddled with the screwdriver for a while, it stopped working, too.  The underlying problem was that I could not hear the grasshopper of the assembly which was at my feet.  Although Chris and Keri's design is a boon to those with better ears, my destiny lay with a factory-built model and a warranty.

Add-a-Motor Chicken Coop Motor Model D20

 I got on the internet and bought the Add-a-Motor Chicken Coop Motor Model D20.  On the negative side, it's made in China, it cost me almost $100 (although another company sells it cheaper now), and it’s not the hand-made gift my friend Keith made for me.   On the positive, it arrived in 2 days, it’s small and manageable (it looks like a big white thermostat, with all the parts inside where I don't even have to see them), it has a warranty, and its optional accessories include attachments for battery and solar backup. What’s more, it came with simple, thorough, idiot-proof instructions that make me feel not actually competent, but still very warm and fuzzy indeed.

It took me the better part of a day to wire and install an electrical receptacle in the chicken house and it took all of the following morning for me to digest the instructions and install the motor, scrounge up a timer, set it, plug it in, and test it.  But that night at 8:30 sharp, a gentle whir announced the door was closing, and the next morning my birds were outside and on the job before I was.  The machine is a Godsend.

What We Did on Vacation

All I could think about when I got home from vacation was how glad I was to be here. But in fairness, all I could talk about before we went was how much I wanted to get away.

And it’s no wonder because we had a spectacular summer vacation. We spent two weeks in Spain with our friends Susan and Bill, riding around on high speed trains, touring every museum and historic site we could cram in, sleeping in cheap hotels, eating in neighborhood cafes and bars, searching out local beers, wine, and sherry, staring agape at street musicians, mimes, and dancers, and practicing -- always practicing, practicing, practicing -- our Spanish.

All of us had lists of things we wanted to see. I wanted to see everything Velasquez and Bosch painted and anything I could find about Ferdinand and Isabel, "The Catholic Monarchs" who brought the Inquisition to Spain and gave travel money to Columbus. I also wanted to see as many images of the Virgin Mary as I could. I don't know why, it’s just a tiny obsession.  Mary protects our lives, you know, and there's one for every occasion – a Mary for sailors, a Mary for drivers, one for farmers, another for singers, for dancers, for students, for the sad, the happy, for new mothers, old mothers -- and every Mary is different and recognizable, if you know what you’re looking for.  For some reason, I find their sheer volume, variety, beauty, and occasional uniqueness fascinating.  My personal favorites on this trip were the Virgin of Electricity and the Virgin of Good Winds, whose job it was to keep New World sailors out of the doldrums. The Virgin of Good Winds still hangs right where she did when Columbus and his crew used to kneel before her before putting in for Hispaniola in the 15th century.  The Spaniards must have the richest array of Virgins in the world.

Fred wanted to see the architecture of Gaudi in Barcelona and the art of Goya and El Greco. Susan wanted to see the town of Segovia and sites recommended by Rick Steves. She brought along one of his guidebooks and was pretty much following his suggestions. Bill wanted to see natural areas and the countryside. Oops, sorry, Bill. Maybe next time.

Fred and Bill are old surfing buddies. Susan is a Type-A Personality, just like me. It was swell to have a playmate.

Susan spoke a little high school Spanish; I remembered some from college. She brought a pile of guidebooks and a new pair of walking shoes. I brought a pile of new Lycra clothes and a spreadsheet of museums and historic sites. We quibbled over who had the smaller suitcase. The guys were just happy to be alive. Surfer dudes.

We saw six cities in 14 days.  That means we moved almost every other day, which is too often, and we were tired a lot of the time. I can barely remember what we did.  But there was so much to see and we wanted it all.

Fred and I started off at the Raleigh-Durham airport. We arrived there at around 8:30 Tuesday morning and, except for a quick lunch in New York, spent 18 hours in airports and subways.  With a 6-hour time change, we finally emerged into the sunlight at Madrid's Puerta del Sol at 8:30 the following morning.  Here is our first glimpse of Spain, coming up from the Metro Sol.

Exit of the Metro Sol in Madrid

Madrid has a top-notch subway system, but for some reason, the corridors from the streets to the platforms tend to be very long and steep. There are often escalators up, but it's almost always stairs to the bottom. Our bags have little wheels but they don't work on stairs.

Waiting for me on the street as I took my first photo of Spain, protecting our luggage from bag thieves and gypsy pickpockets, was my beloved Fred. Fred was wearing a little money belt under his shirt and I carried an armor-plated purse/camera bag. It looked ordinary but it was made of Cordura and lined with wire to reinforce it against slashers. We feared mostly for our passports, now that 9/11 has made paperwork snafus such a trial.

Yep, that's all the luggage. My bag was definitely smaller than Susan's, but I was cheating. Fred carried my extra shoes.

We had been hearing pickpocket/bag slasher/luggage thief stories for months. A friend who works with Fred had $500 taken out of his pocket before he even got out of the Madrid airport. His wife, a Canadian citizen, lost her green card and had to pay $250 for a replacement before the airline would bring her home. Another friend lost his laptop in Quito, Ecuador, this past summer. It was lying on the chair beside him in a cafe when a man in a business suit stopped by the table to ask if anyone had lost a key. After they had inspected the key and finished their meal, they realized the laptop was gone. Kids tried to pick Fred's pocket in Italy a few years ago. They were befuddled by the zippers on all the pockets of his amazing zip-off-the-bottoms-to-make-shorts pants, but it was interesting to watch them try. The tour books and even our hotel clerks warned about pickpockets. So, I am ashamed to say, we were a little nervous and we were cautious.

I carried a Citysafe 100.

We spent our first three days in Madrid. Of the 10 items on my list, I saw three: the Escorial, the Prado, and the Spanish National Archive. Bill and Susan saw the Royal Palace before Fred and I arrived. The three of them went to the Thyssen Museum while I was in the Archive, and we all saw the Escorial and the Prado together. On our first evening in town, we wandered around our neighborhood, the Puerta del Sol.

Although we didn't know it when we booked our hostal there, the Puerta del Sol is considered the heart of Madrid and the geographic center of Spain. Its landmark is the 18th century Casa de Correos, the old post office whose tower clock once kept Spain's official time.  A stone in the pavement nearby marks kilometer zero, the starting point from which Spain's six national roads  measure their distances.  In the old days, people were burned at the stake in this plaza. Today, they use it for rallies and protests and for hanging out. Things were quiet while we were visiting. We saw Mexican Mariachi bands and flocks of young women out for a night on the town. To applaud the song "La Cucaracha," they rolled over on their backs and wriggled their arms and legs like upended cockroaches. Women rule.

The next morning we boarded a public bus for El Escorial, which is the mausoleum that Phillip II built for his father Charles V.  I call it a mausoleum, but El Escorial is more a small town or maybe just a very large building, depending on your point of view.  And in a way, it is a window to the Spanish soul.  The thing to remember about El Escorial is that it was built by the Spanish king when Spain owned an armada of ships and all the silver and gold of the New World.  In other words, it is the answer to the question, if you had all the power and money in the world, what would you build?  And the thing to notice is that although it is enormous and beautiful, it is mostly plain -- a homage to God, stability, and culture.  It contains a palace, a monastery, a school, a large library of rare books, the Pantheon of the Spanish Monarchs, Phillip's collection of 570 reliquaries, and lots and lots of art.




El Escorial houses an Augustinian monastery.

Built in the 16th century, El Escorial is a perfect model of Italian Renaissance style.  It is constructed of big granite blocks that are punctuated at lower levels by uniform rows of small, plain windows and decorated higher up with towers, domes, and tall, round arches. Grand as it is, the scale is comfortable; it projects serenity.



El Escorial, courtyard facade.  Big but comfy -- like your patio but five stories high and made of granite.


We toured the grounds and palace and saw the pantheons (there are actually two), which was worth the trip, but at Escorial, we also got our first taste of Spanish unavailability. The chapel was closed because Escorial’s resident monks were celebrating mass, and of the art we had come to see -- the Goya tapestry cartoons, the Velasquez, the Bosch -- not a single piece was on exhibit. I was a little disheartened, but, as it turned out, dealing with disappointment was good practice for the next two weeks.

 

Much of what we wanted to see in Spain had been withdrawn from exhibition.  Paintings were out for restoration or on loan to other museums.  Buildings were closed for renovation or repairs. And even functioning museums keep odd hours: a morning here, an afternoon there, often closed for siesta, sometimes open evenings -- different every day.  It's all in the guidebooks, of course, so I knew the situation before we went; but because I hadn't made a handy little cheat sheet for museum hours, we had to mine the fine print on the go and that was tough. Sundays and Mondays were the worst.  Many places are open for only a few hours on Sunday and almost nothing is open on Monday, which makes scheduling a two-week visit nitty work and time consuming.  And it was complicated by the fact that we had a hard time getting started in the morning.  Regardless of our intentions or efforts, we rarely finished breakfast -- strong coffee, incredible hot cocoa that cools to pudding (!), espresso, churros, pastries, rolls, American style (eggs and a roll) -- before 11 a.m., and that was a kicker, too.

As it turned out, the rich, solemn Royal Pantheon, directly beneath the altar of the Augustinian abbey chapel, was El Escorial's most interesting site. This small, almost circular vault is where the Spanish Hapsburg and Bourbon monarchs are buried. To the left of the altar are the identical black marble sarcophagi of the monarchs; to the right lie their mothers. When the parents of Spain's current king Juan Carlos are interred, all 26 niches will have been filled.

The Royal Pantheon



Other, non-ruling, members of the royal families lie in the larger and simpler Pantheon of the Infantes, which fills a long corridor and a series of side nodes. There are forty-two Hapsburg and Bourbon queens and offspring in tombs like these.

A side room in the Pantheon of the Infantes

At an intersection in the corridors, we found this odd polygonal mausoleum, which holds the remains of royal infants. About 30 of its 60 niches are occupied. 

We counted nine offspring of Phillip IV in this mausoleum.

Of all I saw at El Escorial, what captured my imagination most was the story of Charles V.  Charles was a grandson of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabele.  Born in 1500, he was crowned King of Spain at 16 and elected Holy Roman Emperor when he was 19 years old.  He took the throne three years after Martin Luther had posted his 95 Theses on the door of All Saints Chapel. In 1521, he presided over the Diet of Worms, where the line was drawn in the sand between Luther and Catholicism.

Drawing support from New World riches and comfort from a little gold altar and twin icons of the Virgin Mary that he carried with him from battlefield to battlefield, Charles fought the Reformation for 35 years.  But by 1555, he was old, tired, and plagued with gout, and finally willing to accept that the world wanted to change.  He signed the Augsburg Treaty, which allowed German princes to follow Luther, if they chose, and effectively ended the Catholic millennium in Europe. His signature must have ripped his heart out of his chest. He divided his realm between his heirs and retired to the Monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste in Extremadura, where, two years later, he died. His sarcophagus is in the Royal Pantheon at El Escorial, top left of the altar.  Titian painted this portrait to commemorate Charles's victory at the battle of Mühlberg, which prepared the way for the Treaty of Augsburg.

  

The Emperor Charles V on Horseback, in Muehlberg 1548

Toward the end of the day, we took a breather before heading uphill to a cafe and then back to Madrid.



This is where we first observed that people who spend a lot of time together begin to resemble each other.


We spent our second day in Spain at the Prado. On my list were Velasquez's Las Meninas, Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, and Goya's paintings, but there were so many others that I found it hard to focus. I was content to look at whatever I saw; there really were no fallow moments. The Prado displays almost a full floor of Gothic altar paintings, mostly images of Mary. I spent an entire afternoon wandering through them.



The Prado was more modern than I expected, and bigger.

The Prado's greatest treasure is Velasquez's painting, Las Meninas. Las Meninas never travels, so if you want to see it, you have to go to Madrid.



Las Meninas


The little girl in the yellow dress is the Infanta Margarita, the favorite daughter of King Phillip IV and heir to the Spanish throne. In her 5-year-old face, you can see someone who knows in her heart that it really is all about her. She is surrounded by las meninas (her ladies in waiting), two dwarves, her portraitist (that's Velasquez on the left), the clergy, the court comptroller in the doorway, and reflected in the mirror at the back, her doting parents.



Five years later, Margarita would be displaced in the line of succession by a new brother, Charles II, who was Spain's unfortunately inbred, inept, and infertile last Hapsburg king.  She remained daddy's favorite, however, and ultimately made a happy marriage with her maternal uncle and paternal cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.  She was 15, he was 26. She called him Uncle, he called her Gretl.  She bore four children and then, like many inbred Hapsburgs in cold, wet castles before her, she collapsed on the threshhold of adulthood. She died in childbirth at 21.

Poor ADHD me. I was so overstimulated. I hardly slowed down for this Goya classic surrounded by so many others. I was having such a good time.

May 3, 1808.
Napolean's army invaded Spain in 1808, subduing the resistance with firing squads and remaining for five years, until Britain's Lord Nelson threw them out.

But I saw this one. The very heart and soul of medieval Catholicism, every day is Judgment Day in The Garden of Earthly Delights.  Devils pull sinners through sinkholes to hell.  Angels sort the saved from the self-indulgent slackers who refuse God's will; but Catholicism is a merciless religion, and it looks as if most people will not make the cut.

People had frightful images of hell in the Middle Ages, apparently based on scary things in the real world, and this painting drives those images home. Birdmen, lizard men, strange surreal animals capturing, torturing, feeding on woefully weak humans.  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.  Be warned, sinner! Your day will come.

Alas, however, it was the Church's day that approached.  By the time Bosch finished this painting around 1506, Martin Luther was coming of age in Germany.  Hardly a decade later, the writ would be on the wall.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Susan said she wants to go back to Spain is to spend more time at the Prado. Me, too.  Its collection of European art is remarkable.  It keeps consistent hours: 9 am till 8 pm, Tuesday through Saturday; closed on Monday.  Its materials are printed in English as well as Spanish, and its staff is bilingual and patient. The cafeteria serves fresh vegetarian fare, including crisp salads to order. It was an oasis in the desert.



No hams hang overhead in the Prado's cafeteria.

  

The Prado even monograms its apples.

 

On our last day in Madrid, I went to the National Archive to see the reports Cortez sent from Mexico to Charles V. I wanted to touch the originals. I don't know why, I just did. I wanted to feel something Cortez felt... something that, if Cortez were here now, he might recognize – something real and substantive.



I did not see the originals; I am not even sure the Madrid Archive has them. My Spanish is so bad that I couldn't read the copies I got or confirm with the staff that they are the ones I wanted. But, I know they have something to do with Cortez -- they have his name on them -- and, much to my delight, I learned that the Archive's records are digitized and on-line. I also learned that Spain has a second archive in Seville, the General Archive of the Indies, which is responsible for documents regarding Spain's oversees holdings during its period of empire. So I decided gratefully to take printed copies of everything that popped up in Madrid and leave the originals for another trip.

We had arrived in Madrid on Wednesday morning, October 6. We left on the 6 pm AVE (fast train -- 180 miles per hour) on Friday, October 8. We arrived in Barcelona at 8:30 that evening.




You can't see it very well, but that's a double rainbow.

 





Bill and Susan loved the trains.

   






Home Again

We are fresh back from vacation.  After two weeks in Spain, we are home again and, for the first time, asking ourselves a question I thought I was incapable of uttering: are we getting too old for this?

It's not that we didn't enjoy our vacation, because we did.  We had wanted forever to see Spain.  We had two whole weeks there with friends we enjoy.  We spent months planning the trip and made a good long list of interests to indulge and places to see.  We booked ahead for hotels and trains so our waiting time and hopeless last-minute groping were held to almost zero.  We ate in little cafes and bars and I sampled as many pastry shops as I could manage.   (Any place ever occupied by the French, even for just a few years, is guaranteed to have pastries worth trying.)   We saw as much of what we wanted to see as erratic Spanish scheduling allowed.  We walked and walked and walked, which I love.  And yet....  we are so glad to be home.

We drove up our driveway on a sunny afternoon.  After a long, hot, almost droughty summer, it had been raining and our pastures were green.  Even in late October, we still had tomatoes and peppers in the garden.  Our chickens were out there digging up the beds; dirt was flying.  The donkeys and horse kicked up a ruckus when they saw us. The fat cat followed me to the barn to get his ears scratched.  There was a pile of mail, a ton of laundry.  The food not eaten by the housesitter had to be cleaned out of the fridge.  The place was filthy.  But the dishes in the dishwasher were clean and so were the sheets on our bed.  The laptop I missed so much in Spain was working.  I called my mom.  I dug potatoes and sweet potatoes from the garden and roasted them for supper with peppers and olive oil, Spanish style.  The next afternoon, the vet came out for fall shots and declared everybody ready for winter.  And we began to settle in.

Over the weekend we gave thanks for small pleasures.  We walked our property, inspecting, touching, metaphorically sniffing at stumps and peeing on posts, while our roots sank ever deeper into our southern soil. 

Tell me again why we go away?  Sometimes I can't remember.

Setting Hen

Our chickens seem to set any time they accumulate enough eggs to make it worth their while.  Sometimes a pet sitter forgets to gather the eggs while we are on vacation; sometimes, for some reason, the hens decide to lay under a building somewhere, and it takes us a while to find them.  But whenever the eggs have a chance to mound up in a nest, eventually a hen will settle in on them.
 

Arabella had two nests.

Our favorite hen Arabella decided last June to set under our front porch. By the time we found her, she had two big nests there, each with two dozen or so eggs, and she had settled in on the back one. The wall to her back and lattice around the porch perimeter made her look secure, but any motivated predator could have taken her, given the 21 days she would be confined.  So we decided Arabella had to be moved. 

Moving a setting hen can be disruptive.  Our bird Toodie collected over 40 eggs before we found her under the garden shed and moved her into the coop.  She refused the new nest and a few weeks later, although she was only two years old, she died.  Make of it what you will, but I move my hens reluctantly now.

Arabella refused the new nest, too.  I had just finished framing a new double-wide brood nest on the floor beneath our the laying boxes, and we put her and her eggs inside.  She got off, then back on, then off, then on, and finally off for good.  The eggs cooled, of course, but we left them in the nest.  And, sure enough, a few days later another hen, Number Two, climbed on. 

It didn't matter that the eggs were no longer viable because the rest of the flock would help her rebuild the clutch.  When a hen sets, the others climb right in with her to lay their eggs.  She rocks a little to the side and the eggs roll down under her.  Raising babies becomes a group effort.  When they hatch, the setting hen raises them all as her own.  So, you see, birds of a feather do flock together.

Little Number Two wanted those babies.  She sat on that nest for 30 days, nine more than normal. She had started with about 20 eggs; the old ones rotted and cracked over time, new ones were added, and I am pretty sure the black snake ate more than his share.  She got up only for food and water and to stretch her legs in the chicken yard.  Sometimes other hens stood watch while she was away, but they never got into the nest.  By the time she gave up and walked away, there were only four eggs left, and none was viable. 

As always, we just stayed out of the way.  Number Two made it clear that we were not welcome, and we try not interfere unless there's danger.  So we got no babies this time, but the brood nest is ready now and we are hopeful for spring.