Beautiful Beasts

Winters can be difficult on our animals. Mrs. Chubbers, our head ewe, is getting older. She walks with a slight but persistent limp and has become long in the tooth, making it harder for her to chew. In the darker months I run my hand over her white back, and when I add weight into it I feel a bony angle to her hips. Our vet Sarah suggested we give her a bit of a help in the cold weather by feeding her a gruel of shredded beet root pulp and alfalfa cubes soaked in water during the day.

Evening feedings tend to be ritualistic in nature; same time, same place. We noticed that approaching the barn with her gruel, boots crunching, the wooden handle on the door would begin to bob up and down indicating that Mrs. Chubs, after a couple false starts, had hoisted herself into the barn proper and was ready for dinner. One evening in the house, I went into our bedroom and took a minute to glance out the window that faces the barn. I leave the window treatment up until we go to bed so that I can get on tip toes and see what’s happening in the paddock. I looked out, stepped back, then looked again. It seemed that I was looking at sheep and sheep were looking back at me from outside their fence. I quickly realized that Muir was standing on the front steps waiting for me to come out to do evening chores, not noticing that his flock was loose, or both he and the sheep would have been on the move. As casually as possible I opened the door letting Muir in and Bronte out simultaneously: this wasn’t a job for a young dog. I dragged on my barn coat, pulled on boots and we ran out to see what was happening.

It was well past five and it seemed that if the food wasn’t coming to Mrs. Chubbers, she was coming to the food. Apparently her persistence and power in pushing her chin down on the wood handle of the door resulted in the latch lifting. Sensing a bit of release, she must have pushed against the door to open it and stepped out, surprising even herself. Quickly her flock followed although once outside they were not quite sure what to do, so basically stood there, vocalizing for dinner. Bronte and I were able to persuade them back inside their paddock where dinner was promptly served. As she slurped up hard-earned gruel, Mrs. Chubs lifted her head from the bowl and looked at me,never stopping chewing, with a green ring around her mouth and a very self satisfied smile on her face.

Apparently there was learning on both sides of the barn door that evening.

I’ve been surprised by how much I enjoy chickens. Each of them seem to have a unique personality. You have your irritated hens, always ready with a swift rebuke for any passerby, your happy ladies, who are content to strut about the yard contentedly chatting to themselves and the curious youngsters who follow me into the Youth Hostel as I clean it each morning. Sticking their heads through their entrance door to see what I am up to, they then flap onto the roost for a peck and pat while I change the shavings, their eyes darting quickly up and down as they tilt their heads to the side studying my every move. They love my rings and buttons and as my hands shovel manure off the roosts they quickly strike at me. If I correct them they tuck their wattles down contritely.

I noticed my last Bard Rock from our original flock, her butt feathers matted with what looked like a combination of egg-laying stuff and poop. I scooped her up under my arm, took her into the house and ran warm water over her bum, carefully untangling and releasing the matting. I thoroughly dried her off while Muir sat, tail wagging, watching, tucked her back in against my coat and went back outside. I thought all was well until I noticed that she was spending more time isolated in the corner and refusing to take blueberries, a favorite, in the evening.

Each night I would have to lift her up onto the roost. She would seem glad to be with her hen party, but didn’t engage in the chatter, preferring, it seemed, to sit rather dumpily in the corner. Each day I would take her back down and Paul and I would report to each other during the rest of the day on how far she was able to wander. Each day she decreased her mileage. One evening I went out to tuck everyone in and noticed she was missing. I dashed into the barn thinking she had made it over there but wasn’t able to make it back, no sign. I went to the back coop to see if perhaps she was partying with the Buffs but she wasn’t there either. On my way back to the front house I looked down near the door and noticed her pushed up against the house wall in a small puddle of cold water. I lifted her and leaned her into my warm coat. Her body felt rather stiff and at first I thought maybe she had died there, but then she turned her head slowly to look at me. I warmed her up and bit and then placed her in the heated coop in her favorite spot. I noticed that she listed a little to the left and when I let go of her, eyes immediately closed tight.

In bed that night I told Paul that I didn’t think she was going to survive. I talked about perhaps bringing her into the house near the wood stove and other human solutions to an animal problem. We decided to let nature rule and each morning for a week we would, hand on the door handle of the coop, brace ourselves for finding her dead.

Each day she slowly declined until I went in one afternoon to check on her and she would not open her eyes, her head drooping as if the effort to keep it up was just too much. I could feel the shiny black and white spotted feathers of her back quietly lifting and falling as I sat petting her. Hens walked in and watched, looking back and forth between the Bard and me, perhaps looking for some explanation. I lifted her one last time into one of the nesting boxes, hoping to keep her warm and from falling off the roost.

There was no bracing the following morning, I knew what we would find and we did. She was in the same position that I left her but her head was lolling out over the edge of the box, eyes still shut, feathered back still. There was an odd quiet in the house, none of the morning arguments or chatter. Several hens were standing and then walking over to where she was, looking intently and then stepping back. There was one lone egg in the nesting box that I took out and dropped into the breast pocket of my coat.

It is easier for humans to think that animals have little cognitive ability, including familial recognition. It allows us to create inadequate shelter based on the idea that animals don’t mind the wind or cold, to separate mothers from babies because somehow they don’t care if they are separated, even though we hear the repeated bleating for each other, and to ignore the idea that they create bonds within their flocks.

For us though, the main definition of good husbandry is accepting responsibility of care for the animals we ask something of.

We gather eggs in the morning and again late afternoon. We have a flock of over twenty hens now and, even in the winter, coming out of molting- we get about a dozen eggs each day. The evening that we lost the hen, Paul came in and asked me how many eggs I had got that morning and I replied just the one. He held out two very empty hands indicating that not another egg had been laid that day.

Perhaps a coincidence, but I don’t think so.