DAT's Big Chicken Adventure

[DAT]

I had a big chicken adventure last night - one of them was in the egg box, making odd noises. I thought maybe she was egg-bound, so I looked it up in my chicken book and read what to do. I swallowed hard, grabbed the bottle of mineral oil from the medicine chest, and headed out to the coop to severely violate the dignity of the hen in question.

After a lot of ineffectual poking around and squawking and struggling, I remembered I trick I learned when I worked for a couple of weeks on a sheep farm - if you get them off of their feet, they give up. So I grabbed the hen by the legs and flipped her over on my lap. I found the vent (yeesh!), but didn't see anything that looked wrong (except that the vent remined me of those horrible things from "Aliens"). Also, I couldn't feel anything egglike in her abdomen.

So I put her back in the next box and headed back to the house, hoping that things would work themselves out. This morning there was a fresh egg there, and everyone was hopping around and looking fine.

It occured to me this morning that I have no idea what a hen looks or sounds like when she's laying normally; maybe I just walked in at an inopportune time. Good experience though; I need to learn more about chicken biology, and this was the most biological event around here in a long time.

 

[riderbecky]

Poor hen! Just innocently trying to lay an egg only to be molested by her owner!

 

[basicliving]

Well, I betcha she'll be popping those eggs out as quickly as possible from now on! She's probably going to tell all the girls "Don't dilly dally in that nest box. You won't BELIEVE what he'll do to you!"