What To Do With a Broody Chicken

One Saturday morning not long ago, I awoke feeling uneasy about a commitment I had made to some chickens.

A few months before, I met with the minister of the church I’d been attending for guidance on getting involved in the congregation. I had studied the list of meeting groups and activities many times but couldn’t decide between them.  For an hour or so we talked about where I grew up, my religious background, the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, ice skating, whether onions can caramelize in the 20 minutes that every bleeping recipe in history assumes – the usual spiel.  Then he turns up his hands and says, “Well Scott, I’m not sure what you wanted to talk about today, but I recommend you shake it up a little. Go dancing.”

Though I felt obliged to follow his advice I wasn’t sure how dancing related to church involvement.  And I had to consider the caravan of FEMA trailers, traffic jams, and financial market unrest that follow shortly after I lay down my funk.  Nevertheless, his words hung in my brain like an Edgar Allan Poe short story.  Go Dancing.  Go Dancing.  Shake it up!  Maybe I could do something easier like helping with the church garden.  So I checked with the Wylde Center (formerly the Oakhurst Community Garden Project) hoping they could teach me a few things. 

Although they didn’t have any upcoming gardening courses they did have open spots for “Fairy Home Construction for Adults” and “Chicken First Aid and Health.”  A few neighborhood folks had chickens and I remembered being surprised when I learned this.  I had never pegged them for the chicken-raising sort and began to wonder if, as they say about dogs, hen owners look like their hens.  I felt a tingle of interest and signed up for the class.   

And there I was on the morning of the class, feeling stupid.  After all, I had no chickens nor the desire to purchase any. I had no way to explain my reason for attending.  How are chickens part of a spiritual life?  Surely I would be exposed and punished for intruding on what I assumed was the sacred privacy of poultry nurturing.   

When I arrived at the Wylde Center, a group of women were gathered outside the coop.  “Here for the chickens?” one of them asked.  I told her I was, and another asked if I was Ryan, to which I said no.  “Are you sure?” she repeated.  Was I sure?  As if I didn’t already feel out of place, now I was starting to feel out of name.  And soon out of gender.  The instructor, Jen, arrived and took roll - about 15 women and me.  These were strong women, women that knew what needed doing, and had no problem doing it.    

“Chickens are jungle birds,” Jen began. “They’re tough and made to look like they’re fine even when they aren’t.” You need to handle your hens, she continued, in order to know how each of them feels when healthy – their weight, the feel of their crop (small pouch at the base of the neck that serves as a kind of pre-stomach), the firmness but not protrusion of the breastplate, the brightness of the eyes, comb, and waddle, etc.  In other words, this meant getting pooped on.  And with that she pulled out some hens and passed them around.  I swallowed.  I held one reluctantly, but only after someone wrapped a towel around the hen’s butt.  

Over the next two hours Jen told me everything I currently know about chickens:

• Females are hens.  Males are roosters.  Roosters are bad.  Buy your chicks from reputable sellers because you don’t want a rooster. The quickest way to kill a rooster is to cut its throat when hanging it upside-down through a cone.  Or you can soak rags in ether and put them, with the rooster, in a small trash can with tight-fitting lid.  It’ll take about five minutes.  I swallowed again. Hard.
• The anus is called a vent, not a “hen’s butt.”  Both eggs and poop come out of the vent. 
• Don’t eat a chicken that dies on its own.
• Get to know the habits of each hen and pay attention to the pecking order. Hens lower in the order may get open pecking wounds.  This is trouble because chickens will eat pretty much anything, including another chicken if they see blood.  A dye can disguise pecking wounds.
• Sick hens (not moving or eating, feel different from normal) should be taken out of the coop immediately to prevent disease from spreading.  When well again, place them back in the coop at night.

One woman asked about a hen that stayed in her cage, even when not laying eggs.  The hen was eating but was something else wrong?  Jen said that some hens are “broody.”  They have the instinct to hatch eggs and care for chicks even when they aren’t laying or hatching.  She told the woman to break this cycle by making the hen uncomfortable. Put her in a wire cage that gets her up and away from the hay. She could also shine a bright light on the cage. 

After the class I had one of those moments of clarity, a “coming together,” and I felt a vigor that I hadn’t for months. 

I had been bored, way under-stimulated, and needed to get up and get into in something new.  I could’ve sworn Jen was talking directly to me about the broody chickens.  Get uncomfortable.  Shake it up! That minister is a genius, I thought.  Or maybe it’s just obvious to others and not so much to the one that’s broody. It took a few months to work up to it, but I suppose I needed to do it in my own time and in my own way.  Maybe I’ll go dancing after all. 

If you are feeling a little broody, shake it up by calling the Wylde Center at 404-371-1920 or visit them online at http://oakhurstgarden.org/. And if you know how to caramelize onions in 20 minutes, please let me know.