Moon over Martinborough

I’m still not quite used to the chicken routine. There were no farm-fresh eggs in my life growing up in suburban Detroit. I never had chickens on the back porch overlooking the alley in my Chicago apartment.

He ra mokopuna - fine winter day

So last Saturday it was already 10.30 am by the time I remembered to feed the chickens. It’s like I had a temporary brain blip, and for a moment I forgot I was living on a farm in New Zealand.

It was not going to be a normal morning, at least not as far as the chickens were concerned. And it was only going to get weirder as the morning progressed.

In the refrigerator there was a special treat for the chooks, and when I went to get it Rick said, “You’re so late. By they time you get out there, they’ll be dead.”

I laughed and took out the small plastic container. “Don’t be horrible.”

Bright winter day

I put on my gum boots (or rubber boots, or wellies, call them what you will – in New Zealand they are gum boots), and I walked across the back yard carrying the plastic container and the red chicken bucket with the chicken feed.

Although it has been cold as of late, that day the weather was gorgeous. Winter in the lower North Island of New Zealand is sort of like one long, wet autumn with a few days of spring thrown in. The warm days in mid-winter are amazing, and they always take me by surprise. They’re unlike anything I’ve known before.

There’s actually a special phrase for these days in Maori – ‘he ra mokopuna.’ The word ‘mokopuna’ means ‘grandchild.’ I’ve heard these warm, mid-winter days are referred to as grandchildren because they’re so precious.

I felt the sun on my face and headed out the side gate, into the paddock, and toward the chickens.

At the chicken run

Henrietta began running frantically back and forth as I approached. She’s the largest of our chickens, one of the two Light Sussex, and she always makes a fuss when she sees me coming with the red bucket. She’s a total glutton and just can’t wait for the food. Her especially loud clucks that day reprimanded me for being late.

The metal latch on the gate to the run was cool in my hand as I opened the door and stepped inside.

When I leaned down, Henrietta came right over. Standing quietly nearby was Henry, our geriatric rooster, along with his young harem ladies, Ethel and Natasha. Suddenly I realized there were only four chickens. One of them was missing.

It was one of the grey Aracaunas, little Francoise. Where was she? I called out to her. She didn’t come.

Chicken-ocracy

Many city folk don’t know that flocks of chickens live in an established hierarchy. This is where the phrase ‘pecking order’ comes from. The rooster is the dominant one, or the village bully depending on how you look at it.

As for hens, my poultry book tells me “The larger a hen’s comb is – i.e. the more ‘masculine’ she is – the more she will be feared by others.” So it’s a bit like a lesbian biker bar.

Francoise behind Henrietta and Ethel

Our poor little Francoise has always been the lowest on the totem pole. She’s got a small body and a dainty little comb on top of her feather-tufted Aracauna head. She never goes near the other chickens while they’re eating (except for her sister, Natasha), or she gets severely pecked.

I called out again. “Here chook-chook-chook!” But Francoise was still nowhere to be seen.

She had to be in the chook house. She’d come out as soon as the feeding started. At least that’s what I hoped.

I opened the small plastic container that held their special treat.

Meat-eating chickens

The luncheon ham we buy has a beautiful line of fat around the edges. I always trim this off and save it in the fridge until the weekend. The chickens love ham fat as they would a juicy worm, and when the ham fat comes out, the chook house goes mad.

Henrietta stepped even closer. She’s the only one courageous enough, or perhaps greedy enough, to eat directly from my hand. Henry saw she was getting ham fat and wobbled over. He’s a cantankerous, disagreeable old man. He waited for Henrietta to take the fat from my hand, then he promptly stole it from her mouth.

I started tossing bits out to the other birds, so Henry wouldn’t get it all. Feathers fluttered and chickens were running everywhere, racing toward the ham fat that was falling from the sky.

But all this commotion still didn’t manage to bring little Francoise out of the chook house.

Never, in the eight months since we started caring for these chickens, has one of them not come out of the chook house at feeding time – especially when there’s Saturday morning ham fat involved.

I have heard tales of small, sickly chickens being pecked to death. Was Francoise okay? Had the recent cold gotten the best of her? Or maybe it was my fault. Had my late feeding time sent her into something like a diabetic chicken coma?

Hunt for the missing chook

I tossed down the rest of the ham fat and the chicken feed and immediately stepped out of the run, heading over to the door to the chook house. I opened it and looked in. The brightness of the sun made it darker inside by comparison, and I squinted.

The perch where Francoise has always slept was empty.

I stuck my head further in the doorway and looked around at the hay-covered ground. She was nowhere. I looked back out into the chicken run. No, she definitely wasn’t there.

Then I opened the lid to the nesting box, and there she was. But she wasn’t moving.

Was she dead?

Leaning down more closely, I saw that she was actually breathing in short, sharp breaths. It looked like she was in pain. I’d never seen one of our chickens like that before.

No eggs until spring

What made me want chickens in the first place was that I wanted blue eggs. It was this bizarre obsession that drove me to order Francoise and her sister Natasha from an Aracauna breeder online. Aracaunas lay blue eggs, or so I’d read.

Yet after months and months of caring for our birds – not to mention the work moving and recladding the chicken house or building the run – we still we had no eggs at all from any of our hens. Not a one. I didn’t understand.

So I did what anyone would do who had a question about chickens. I went to our neighbour, Aussie Bronwyn.

We were standing in Bronwyn’s backyard, her multitude of chickens running around her. She and her husband John are almost entirely self sufficient. Theirs is the only home I’ve ever been to where I’ve had an amazing high tea with homemade scones and cream, and then went out back to meet the cow the cream came from. (Her name is Petal.)

“Why don’t we have any eggs?” I asked Aussie Bronwyn.

“Your chickens are still relatively young,” she said. “And it’s cold now. You might not get any eggs until spring.”

She knows these things. She’s lived on farms most of her life. I quietly resigned myself to an eggless winter.

But now, as I looked down at Francoise, I figured there were only two possible explanations for the odd behavior. Either Francoise was seriously sick and dying, or she was laying an egg.

I decided to give the poor little girl her privacy and check back in a half an hour. Either there would be an egg, or Francoise would be dead.

Back to the chook house

When I returned later, I made Rick come with me just in case. I didn’t really know what to do with a dead chicken. But as we walked up to the chook house, I saw little Francoise out in the middle of the run, pecking hungrily at the ground.

I lifted the lid to the nesting box.

There, in front of my eyes, was the most precious egg I have ever seen.

“An egg!” I yelled. It was like a tiny miracle, and I was thrilled. But there was something wrong. It wasn’t blue. It was green!

I didn’t care. After all it was a miracle, and it was beautiful just the same. It was the most amazing shade of pale, chalky green.

I was so proud of little Francoise. She might be the smallest of our chooks, but she is the first to give us an egg. “Thank you, Francoise,” I said.

Warm egg

Our first egg (It's greener than it looks here.)

Rick reached down and touched the egg. “Eeew!” he said. “It’s warm! It came out of her body.” He pointed accusingly at Francoise.

“Duh,” I said. “Did you think eggs came from a box in the grocery store?”

Rick didn’t answer. He just scrunched up his nose and stepped back. Somehow the reality of being faced with a warm, farm-fresh egg was too much for him. He’s eaten eggs his entire life, loves meat and dairy more than most people. But suddenly he was acting like a newly-converted vegetarian who’d just seen the slaughter house.

“I’m not eating that,” he said, and then made loud retching sounds.

I laughed. “You’re crazy.”

“You eat it,” he said. “Not me.”

And that was it for Rick. Since that day Francoise has given us three more eggs, about one every other day. Rick has not touched a single one.

–

Read the next post: Olives for pickling

Or read other posts about chickens.