It’s been several months since four chickens joined our household around Easter. They have settled in wonderfully, providing delicious eggs but most importantly a source of comfort and entertainment. While their lives have been mostly uneventful, we had something of an incident last month. Our chickens live in a run and during the day we let them roam free around the garden – we consider the risk of escape or danger to be a hundred times worth it as they are happier in a larger space. Every morning my husband or I will let them out into the garden, and then around dusk we call them in – this is very effective, as “home time” coincides with dinner time!
Shortly after my husband went to call them in one rainy afternoon a few weeks ago, he burst back into the kitchen, wide-eyed, dripping wet and gasping: “there are two missing!” This is our nightmare as chicken parents, as they are a target for foxes. We had been dreading going out and finding not all of them there. Thinking back to days of lost children in supermarkets, we knew we had to keep calm and come up with a plan – avoiding if possible, a call to 999.
We grabbed our torches as it was getting dark and raced outside desperately calling “Chicken! Chick- chick- chicken!” – our neighbours are now accustomed to this less-than original summons for dinner every afternoon. We rattled the food tin and desperately scanned the garden. Suddenly, there was a feeble cluck from my left. I shined the torch, and there, on the other side of the very high fence, were our missing hens, looking forlorn and bedraggled. We raced out of our front gate around to where they were – they had clearly taken a shorter route by flying over the fence. I wondered if there had been a reason for them achieving this feat for the first time, perhaps with a burst of adrenalin, without which they weren’t able to fly back over. We don’t clip their wings to give them a chance of escaping predators – is that what they had done?
It quickly became apparent that it was, as while one hen quietly allowed herself to be picked up and thrown unceremoniously back over the fence (tough love from my husband), the other was visibly terrified. We couldn’t get near her, and we couldn’t see her as shining a torch directly was too frightening. Eventually, after more gentle coaxing than he’s ever adopted with any of our human children, my husband convinced her to let him approach, and we gently returned her to the coop.
A quick check revealed the catch on back gate had broken, and it was ajar. The gate is kept closed as it borders a path popular with dog walkers, and we can only assume it was a dog which chased hens over the fence. We reassured ourselves of no injuries to them, but for a few days afterwards we noticed one fewer egg in our morning crop. And then one day we were surprised to discover the usual four eggs, but one of them a tiny, half-size specimen, unlike anything we’d seen before. A quick reference check confirmed the obvious explanation: stress. The tiny egg was from the hen who had been especially frightened by the dog.
From the following day this hen began producing eggs normally again, and we kept a careful eye on her to make sure she was eating and acting normally as well. We have fixed the gate, and the chickens don’t appear to have any lasting fear of it or the fence. But the incident showed that just as in humans, stress can have a physical expression in chickens - the tiny egg was a sharp reminder that trauma and stress is a body and mind issue.