By KAREN MADORIN
From the first time I visited a relative who owned hens and gathered eggs, I wanted to live in the country and raise chickens. That dream came true when I fell in love with a man who also liked rural living and fresh eggs. My mother-in-law gifted us a flock of leghorns, and poof--I was a chicken lady!
Over decades, we’ve raised Easter eggers, Plymouth Rocks, Buff Orpingtons, and now ISO browns, learning that white-eared chickens lay white eggs, red-eared hens brown, and funny-eared ones pink, blue, and green. Years raising chickens has provided info nuggets about this creature scientists identify as the closest living relative to a T Rex.
Chicken keepers aka tenders know their birds are smart. It’s time others learned too. As a kid, I marveled at a hen at Knott’s Berry Farm playing tunes on a tiny piano. While I never had the patience to teach our girls this trick, they know their daily snack schedule and line up at 8 a.m. for fresh veggies and again at noon for mealy worms. If delivery runs late, they tattle to the neighborhood. They even know when I hunt grasshoppers and wait impatiently to gobble crunchy treats.
I always suspected my chickens had their own language. Research confirms this. They make at least 30 different sounds and combine those for scores of purposes. Though we no longer have broody hens, I loved listening to mommas talking to eggs incubating beneath them and later to their fluffball chicks. Once those peeps matured enough mom could take them on a walkabout, I’d hear her instructing them about where to forage and what to eat. While studying chickens, I learned hens teach their young to drink. Now, I have to figure out what chicken noise means “Salud.”
Not only can chickens talk to one another and their developing chicks, they have better vision than humans. They see more clearly, in more colors, and according to one source, each eye has its own job—the right sees food and near objects while the left focuses on distances and danger. No wonder I can’t sneak up on the wily boogers. Another site stated that they see ultra violet light as well, which aids them in determining chick and egg health. That might explain how hens know to roll bad eggs out of nests. Why waste energy on a defective egg? Several sites state that chickens recognize at least 100 faces. For sure, our girls know who’s who at our house.
They confirmed this recently when the hubs left town on a long hunting trip. They laid their normal number of eggs on day 1 and 2. Production then dwindled from 4 to 3 to 2 and finally to 1 before he returned. Once he delivered their morning greens, we gathered the normal 4 eggs a day. Although I delivered treats on schedule, they missed seeing him!
After spending decades with chickens, I’ve decided a T-Rex for a pet might be okay. If they act anything like their miniature descendants, they’d make us laugh every day. However, those eggs would be doozers. Not sure I own a big enough skillet. As for cleaning the pen—yech!