Chicken attack!

Cleaning the chicken coop is a necessary task.  We configured our coop with roosting bars that are easily removable and a side door for easy access to make the task easier.  I suppose that if the chickens were enjoying a little time outside the run, say, wandering the yard for worms on this damp, foggy day, it would be an easy task.  But cleaning out a coop with chickens in the run is a lot like folding laundry with a toddler.  They all want to get in the coop just as you are trying to clean it out, and they insist on standing on those removable perches just when you want to pull them out.  They walk through the, um, stuff you are trying to clean out as if to say “here, let me make a bigger mess for you!”

It’s damp.  I want this done quickly, and before the fog progresses to a drizzle and then an all-out rain as predicted for later today.  I open the side door and immediately discover “an egg of indeterminate age”.  The egg is down low between the roosting bars, so it is not visible from the nesting boxes.  Since on any normal day, we only open the nesting boxes to gather eggs and ignore the rest of the coop (give the girls some privacy!), it is impossible to know how long “egg of indeterminate age” has been sitting there.  Although, in all honesty, it was a pretty clean egg, so it was probably laid today.  However, over the months we have enjoyed these birds, we have occasionally found eggs in the leaves near the run fence, in the dust bath hollows they have made for themselves along the garage foundation walls and in other random and exposed places.  For the sake of not eating spoiled eggs, we have a blanket policy to not eat “eggs of indeterminate age”.

So as to not lose my momentum (and risk getting rained on), rather than deal with the egg on the spot, I stick it up on top of the coop roof (which is wavy in a way that perfectly holds an egg and prevents it from rolling off).  My usual egg-gathering spot, my front sweatshirt pocket, would be a very bad idea as leaning into the coop to scoop is likely to result in a very yolky pocket.

And so I clean the coop, lifting roosting bars and dumping the chickens off that decided to roost on them only when I attempted to remove them.  I scoot chickens out of the areas I am presently trying to clean as they insist on gathering in the one spot I am trying to scoop out.  I am down to the last corner of the coop when I hear the sound of a walnut rolling down the coop roof and feelit hit my back and roll off as I reach the furthest corner of the coop, most of my torso inside the coop as if I am being eaten by a hen house.

Ah, yes, Henrietta has jumped up on the roof of the coop (again!) and pushed that “egg of indeterminate age” right off the roof and onto my back.

Ungrateful hens.  Clean your own coop next time!

Until the next homestead catastrophe,
Web Mistress