Paint-and-Chick

We’ve currently got eight hens and a rooster.

As mentioned in a previous post or two, we are not huge fans of roosters for a few pretty specific reasons. One is that they’re noisy. They randomly crow and yell and shriek and generally make useless noises throughout the day. Two is that they don’t produce eggs. So to own a rooster is to willingly house and feed a freeloader so that he can have access to unlimited sexual partners. This is REALLY nice of you, but not necessarily mutually beneficial. And three–and probably the most compelling reason of them all to steer clear of roosters–is that they are all sexual predators.

What I mean by this is exactly what you think I mean by this.

The cacophonous rooster simply makes his colorfully gorgeous way around the farm, coming and going as he pleases, occasionally buggering a hen, and then going about his business (which is, specifically, buggering more hens).

The ONLY good thing about roosters is that, given all the right circumstances, they alone have the power to “impregnate” a hen. But again, you have to want more chickens.

Hens can go broody (i.e., sit on eggs, waiting for them to hatch) whether a rooster is on the scene or not. This means that broody hens on farms without roosters are simply sitting on unfertilized eggs waiting for them to produce adorable little chicken popcorns.

Spoiler alert: They never will.

So if you’ve got hens and at least one rooster, chances are at some point that rooster is gonna knock up no fewer than one of the ladies.

Of the eight hens, three are black Australorps. These are prolific egg layers, but that’s not what’s really important at the moment. What’s important is that they’re all black, and they all lay brown eggs. This means that the ONE broody Australorp and the eggs she’s decided to sit on, all need to be marked in some way to distinguish them from the rest of Gen Pop.

Enter: Posca paint markers.

These babies are bright and provide great coverage. The colors really pop and you get great contrast.

You’re wondering what paint markers and broody chickens have to do with one another, aren’t you? You’re not? You already know what I did? Fine. Whatever. I’m telling you anyway.

I picked bright pink since that was the most unnaturally-hued, highest-contrast color I could find (other than the pastel green, but I didn’t want to waste that one… that’s a good one) and I drew all over the back of her head. For the record, she HATED this.

But now we’ll know whether it’s her who is sitting on the eggs or a different black hen who might not be broody. This is important because if a hen is sitting on eggs, she has to do so from start to finish, meaning 21 days until the chicks hatch. So if a different hen has come in and taken over that spot, it may require some wrangling on our part to correct the situation. Typically, these things resolve themselves–we don’t interfere unless we (I; Dave is fine) absolutely can’t bear not to.

In much the same way as marking our lady friend, we have to mark the eggs themselves so we don’t risk taking the ones that are busy turning into chicks.

I should have brought a darker paint pen along because her eggs are a little too dark for pink to have good visibility, but that’s what I had, so that’s what I used.

I made dramatic squiggles so that if the eggs get dirty or buried, we can still identify them reasonanbly quickly.

And by “reasonably quickly,” I mean that speed is, in fact, key in this operation. I’ve yet to meet a hen who DIDN’T mind being disturbed when she was laying an egg or sitting on a clutch of them. It happens most frequently when I’ve gone in to collect and some straggler is only just getting around to laying hers. As soon as I reach my hand in to take the eggs from under her, broody or not, she’ll start pecking at me with everything she’s got.

Fortunately, chickens are stupid, and this one was no exception. All it takes to out-maneuver a chicken is… well, pretty much anything. You honestly just need whatever thing is closest to hand (today it was the feed bowl) to use as a blocker between the hen’s beak and your exposed body parts. Since they truly are thunderously dumb, the slightest distraction works wonderfully.

So after taking all the eggs out from under her and squiggling them for clarity, I shoved them back underneath her. This made her AS mad as when I was taking the eggs, so I don’t think she so much cared about the eggs as she cared about being left the fuck alone.

And if I had any questions at all about how she feels about me and my personal brand of shenanigans well, I think her side-eye glare told me everything I need to know.