We humans of Kopp’s Crops have a serious case of Cabin Fever
with a side of Spring Fever. But we
think the chickens are feeling it even more acutely. After a winter of being cooped up (pun
intended) inside, they’re feeling a little peckish. As in, they’re pecking at each other. A couple of the hens who fall to the bottom
of the proverbial pecking order (yes, a phrase that did indeed originate in the
chicken universe) are sporting some feather-free bald spots above their tails. Hopefully as the weather warms up and they
get outside more to stretch their wings, their appetites for each others’
tailfeathers will wane. If not, some
chicken coats may be in order.
Seriously. You can actually buy
peck-proof coats for chickens!
The pecking really took off a couple of weeks ago, when the
weather dropped into the sub-zero, egg-freezing zone. Our hens stayed comfortable with their thick
winter feathers and the collective chicken body heat, but the eggs they laid in
the colder corners of the coop didn’t fare so well. Of the five or six eggs laid each day by our
eight hens, we were lucky to retrieve one before they froze and split their
shells. Then all the sudden, those
frozen eggs started sporting mysterious, jagged holes. The hens were pecking at their own eggs, as
if they were in some twisted poultry version of the Donner party.
Fearing the ongoing loss of future omelets, we took a
two-pronged approach to exterminate the egg-pecking. First, we dug out the plastic eggs from the
girls’ Easter baskets to use as decoys.
Go ahead, ladies, let’s see you try to peck through that tough
plastic! Then we filled all the
pre-pecked real eggs with yellow mustard, which chickens apparently detest. Yes, dear hens, it may just look like egg
yolk, but trust us – it’s kryptonite to you! It took about five days, but they finally
tired of the pecking prevention measures and started leaving the eggs intact,
just in time for the winter warm-up that allowed us to once again enjoy fresh
(unfrozen) eggs!
