Chucks

Other than Racecar, my other girls are obviously the feathered ladies. My Hussies, I call them, and I explain it in a very old blog post. I have one of the Original Hussies, from when I moved to Rainier in 2015. I raised new babies a few years later that I called the Lil’ Hussies. They all died from neighborhood predators. I received three new hens, who arrived at our home when their parents had to move. One was killed by a predator. Then in 2022, I raised four new babies, and one of those was carried off by a predator. (Hens are hard to keep alive)

The names of the hens I brought with me to Tigard, in order of how long I have had them, are:

• Jamie (one of my black friends wanted a hen named after him, so I picked my blackest girl and named her Jamie)
• Maya (pretty coppery orangey red hen with puffy feathered cheeks)
• Two (short for Two of Three, a nod to Star Trek’s Seven of Nine, for you nerds out there)
• Mathilda the Hun (named because she was a bully and a very bold hen from about age 4 weeks)
• Chick Nhat Hahn (named because she was Mathilda’s polar opposite: very chill)
• Yang (her counterpart, Yin, was eaten by a hawk)

Many U.S. cities allow citizens to keep hens, with some rules usually along the lines of no roosters allowed and a limited number of hens. Structures must be several feet from your neighbor’s property line. Cities also promote best practices that have to do with keeping smells and pest animals under control. We checked the rules and decided that we could be in compliance.

For their new pen, we chose what had formerly been a dog run on the side of the house. It’s a mostly empty space covered in wood chips. To protect against predators that we assumed would be in the city too, we bought a large cage to keep the birds inside. In a short time, we realized that cage was simply not big enough, and we began planning for how to let the girls out.

We rigged up a sloppy fence good enough to discourage hens from fleeing, and let them run around in a larger space. They soon demolished what had been part of a former vegetable garden.

I don’t have photos to show all the stages from August to now, and mainly have current photos. The fence you see above was the result of a dog attack! One of our neighbors has three big hound dogs, and they dug under his fence and got into our back yard, then easily crashed through our little sloppy fence for the hens. Luckily we were home that day and heard the hullabaloo of dogs barking and hens squawking. Pedro hollered at me to go out the front door and rescue hens while he went in from the back door and began kicking dogs off them.

In the photo above where I mentioned the netting, you can see the gate to the front yard. I opened the gate and let the hens escape through there to get away from the dogs. In the meantime, Pedro ran around hollering and landing his boot where he could, till finally the dogs decided that chewing on our hens was not worth it, and took off back toward their yard. He chased them back through the hole into their own yard again, then found some paving bricks to plug the hole with.

At that point, I finally turned around to see what the hens were up to in the front yard. They were not IN the front yard! I spotted them 50 yards away, fleeing in a panic down the sidewalk. We live on a very busy street near an intersection. The chickens were running in a single file row, squawking and flapping their wings as they ran directly for the intersection. What a sight it must have been for people driving past! I began hollering for Pedro who came to join me and we sprinted past the hens before they could cross the street, and began attempting to herd them back to the house. Out of nowhere, a neighbor lady who had been out for a walk took up a position to my right. The three of us managed to get the terrified hens going the other direction and back toward the house. I ran ahead and opened the gate to the back yard, and got them back to safety, as long as the dogs stayed where they belonged.

Back in the pen, we found that two hens had been attacked. Maya was scared and stunned and bleeding, but seemed ok. Maybe she just had some feathers torn out, which caused some bleeding on one wing. But Mathilda was motionless. She was alive, but barely. When I approached, she panicked and tried to drag herself away from me with one wing. She was paralyzed on one side. She was bleeding on her leg. I had seen this before with neighbor dogs. When they chew a hen they typically damage her on the inside. I knew it was only a matter of time before my favourite hen died.

We were furious and went to the neighbors house but he wasn’t home. Soon though, we spotted him in his own back yard. We were still very new here, and had never met each other. Our introduction to him was, “Hi. Your dogs dug under the fence and killed one of our hens.” “Which dog?” he asked. “All three.” “All three? Where did they go?” We pointed and showed him; through the yard here, to the other side of the house, under a second fence “A second fence?!” he said. Yes, and then injured one hen and killed another. “Great way to meet for the first time,” he said. To his credit, he felt terrible. He said his brother raised fancy hens as a hobby, and he would replace our hen. And he did. The very next day he showed up with THREE hens and a bottle of wine, and apologized again.

We kept buying more tarpaulins. At first it was to shield them from the sun, and then they were needed to keep out the relentless Oregon rain. Everything was soaking wet and leaking. Turns out the tiny wooden hen house was not waterproof.

The new hen story was not over though. Our neighbors brother was good enough to give us three pullets, which are young hens. After about six weeks they had matured. One matured into a rooster! We waited to make sure. Our hen named Two will often crow, even though she is definitely a girl. I guess hens will do that, usually to establish dominance. But the new hen got louder and taller, and began developing the long gorgeous tail feathers and we knew he had to go. Luckily, the brother was able to take him back.

Unluckily, our neighbor insisted on replacing the rooster with yet another hen. So many hens.

Mathilda stayed motionless for about three days after her attack, then slowly began dragging herself around with her good leg. It was hard to watch. I carried water and food to her. We both expected her to die any day. I’ve seen it before, and once a hen of mine that had been chewed on by a neighbor dog lasted two full weeks before succumbing to internal injuries. Mathilda is too stubborn to give up though. She was timid, and scared, and not herself, but she kept going. Two months later she only had a slight limp. Today she is absolutely fine. Yay!

That brings our total to NINE hens. So many hens. It’s the most I’ve ever had. Here are the new names:

• Cyndi Lauper (more about her in a minute)
• Chief Josephine (She’s got a mohawk like Chief Joseph)
• Serena (like Williams, only this one can’t play tennis. She’s named for her beauty and her calm nature)

The unexpected rooster was not the only problem we had with the fancy new hens. We also have another problem child: Cyndi Lauper. Let’s see if you can guess how she got her name.

Cyndi has an irresistible top knot of feathers that the other hens want to peck so badly, and do, when they get close enough. Cyndi is tiny and funny looking and a clear outsider. That may be why she refused to sleep with the other hens, and chooses instead to fly up to the top of the cage, just beneath the primary bedroom windows.

In November, I had the lights on at night while wrapping Christmas gifts in the primary bedroom. For the first time, Cyndi was lit up in front of the windows in profile. That may be the cause of what happened, but we don’t really know. I had walked out of the room and was in the hallway, and I heard a POP! like air bursting out of a sealed Tupperware container. Pedro and I ran into the room and this is what we saw:

We have no idea what happened. Maybe she was attacked by a predator who spotted her against the window. If so, she survived unscathed. Maybe she lost her balance, as evidenced by the muddy smears on all the glass, and somehow pinged the glass with her own beak and shattered it? The weather was not particularly cold, so we have ruled out cracks due to temperature change.

We had already wished she wasn’t up there because from the top of the cage, the neighbor yard is a very short and easy flight. We didn’t want her to get curious like Mathilda had, and fly over there. But now, in case of predators, we didn’t want her up there anymore. That started a whole new project.

We bought a new, waterproof chicken house online that was big enough to hold nine hens. I also ordered a new solar powered photosensitive automatic chicken door like I had in Rainier. Then we had to build it. Pedro wanted it off the ground, and built a strong wooden floor to attach the lightweight resin shed to. I sealed every hole we put into it, and then sprayed the entire inside with sealant. This will help in the future for cleaning up chicken poop. We installed two curtain rods inside. I ordered and built new chicken boxes for laying eggs.

Next we had to teach Cyndi how to go to sleep with the other hens. It’s been about a month of nightly capture sessions. We go out after dark because Cyndi is a highly excitable little roadrunner chicken, and at night we have a chance of capturing her. I hold the fruit picker and Pedro holds the leaf rake, and I erect a ladder next to the cage, then get the fruit pole up under her and lift until she steps up onto it. Then I pull the bird slowly toward me till I can grab her. She shrieks and squawks like she’s being tortured until I can drop the fruit picker pole and wrap my arms around her to settle her, then climb down the ladder and open the hen house and put her on a curtain rod and say goodnight to everyone. Then we pack up the ladder and the tools until the next night. It’s truly ridiculous.

But it seems to be working. About half the time now, Cyndi Lauper will go inside the chicken house with the other girls.

There’s one more problem, which was inevitable: rats. It’s part of the reason why we bought the new automatic chicken door. Now we keep their food inside the chicken house, and the door closes tight at night, keeping the girls (except for Cyndi) and their food safe. It has made a huge difference in the rate at which their food disappears, thank goodness. I thought that would discourage the rats, but apparently not. This thing, which we think is a rat, but it’s a little different from what I’ve seen before, is totally comfortable coming out in the daylight.

I know some of my readers hate to hear about it, but this pest will have to be killed. Before we know it we will have 70 Norwegian rats, if we don’t do something fast.

It’s so funny how this saga keeps going and changing. I really think things have settled down now. It’s going to look better in the summer. I doubt all the herbs will grow back, but hopefully something grows and makes it less grey and bleak in there. I don’t think hens care if it’s pretty, but I do.