No Eggs Yet

 

by Meredith Chilson

I’m frustrated, irritated, discouraged, and a bit concerned. I have 18 laying hens. No, I have 18 hens. ONE of them is laying. The others, the Buff Orpingtons and Rhodies – the ones that have faithfully given me enough eggs for my family, and the neighbors, and the neighbors’ families — those girls began to molt about two months ago, and haven’t yet begun to lay again. I don’t think they’re interested in that job any more. The nest boxes – all but one — haven’t even had a visitor. The straw that makes such nice, sweet-smelling nests hasn’t been inspected or disturbed.

The only hen that’s giving me eggs is my little black Silkie, Le-A (that’s pronounced luh-DASH-uh — the naming process for this girl is a story for another time). Le-A is a special chicken. I bought her as a day-old chick, along with five others, from a lady who lives farther out in the country than I do. Le-A and Missy, an angry spotted hen, are the only two left; the others had medical (cross bills and weak knees) and mental (more anger issues) problems and ended up … well, where well-fed problem chickens end up around here — in a “cooler climate.”

Le-A is a friendly little hen. She talks a LOT. If I’m cleaning the floor of the coop, she’s perched on a water jug near my ear clucking about something. Chicken gossip? I’m not sure. Many evenings when I’m headed in to shut the coop door, I can hear her “buhk, buhk, buhk” as I come near the coop. She hums and purrs and compliments me on every treat I bring to the coop, too.

She’s near the bottom of the pecking order. She’s much smaller than the rest of the hens, and one of the last to come to the flock, so she must wait when I toss grain or greens out to them. Sometimes she’ll dart in to grab something, and then run to hide behind me until she’s swallowed it.

Perhaps because she has to take what’s left over, or maybe just because she’s a chicken, Le-A isn’t careful about what she eats. One day this past summer, I noticed that her crop was extremely engorged. She had trouble getting onto the roost at night, and was obviously uncomfortable. To be honest, I thought she was going to explode. I read chicken advice books, checked the Internet, and talked to my local farmer to see what to do. I had traced the cause to a pile of hay that had gotten mixed in with the straw bedding. A chicken’s crop often cannot handle long grasses — they wad up and sort of ferment rather than digest. My resources suggested a few things: massage, surgery, and my farmer’s advice: “She’ll either get over it or she won’t.”

For three days — several times each day — I massaged Le-A’s crop. She loved the attention, but it didn’t seem to do much good. (According to the books, I had to be very careful while massaging her so that she wouldn’t vomit and aspirate.) I couldn’t even imagine how to tackle the surgery suggestion: “Carefully open the chicken’s crop, remove the impacted fibers, open out the crop and rinse it with salt water, stitch back together.” How in the world would I be able to get a chicken to hold still while I did something like that? I was much more certain that it would cause ME to vomit and possibly aspirate. So I continued to massage (gently) and wait.

One evening I noticed that Le-A was sitting on the roost again. The next morning, she ran out of the coop with barely a “good morning.” Her crop was soft and much smaller. My farmer friend was right, as usual.

Le-A still loves a nice rub-down. And, as I mentioned before, Le-A is the only hen in my flock that’s laying eggs. They’re not very big (my neighbor calls them “sparrow eggs”), but they’re keeping me from having to do something that I haven’t had to do in three years: buy eggs.

What do you think? Should I try giving the other girls a massage and see if that convinces them to produce?