My chickens have PTSD

Everyone who knows chickens, generally, gets around to calling them stupid at some point or another.  It’s hard not to, watching these fussy butts for any length of time.  But there is one thing for certain:  Chickens know for stress.

Change a chicken’s surroundings and habits, change the dynamics of the group, change it seems anything, and the chickens get stressed. And when the chickens are stressed, they stop laying.  For a good long while.

Last Sunday, or maybe it was the Sunday before, I am not sure, I got two new chickens who I have named Miss Louise and Miss Mabel.  These are some mighty fancy Araucanas from a bootlegger chicken connection I have. They are beautiful and some day I will learn to take pictures decent enough to share. But for now, just take my word for it that the variegated feathers in browns, whites, blacks and grays is enough to make one rethink chickens as stupid urban barnyard animals.  And if that isn’t enough, Araucanas lay eggs in colors of gentle sky blues and maybe even sea foam green.

Really, they are mighty fancy.  But completely stressed out.

If you are wondering, the easiest way to tell if a chicken is stressed out is whether your frying pan is put away.  Four chickens, normally, lay enough eggs for a family of one that, frankly, I just leave the frying pan on the stove.  I use cast iron, and since it has to go back on the stove after it is cleaned anyway, set to dry over a hot flame, and because I will likey be eating another egg before I know it, I just leave the pan on the stove.

But if the pan is put away, well, it seems the best indicator of trouble. Because an eggless day is one thing, but if your frying pan has gone unused long enough for it to be put away, it means days and days, weeks, months, have gone by in deprivation.  Because a  stressed out chicken takes a long time to recover.

The first time this happened to me, I didn’t really understand what was going on and I thought I had chickens with some manufacturer’s defect as the chickens went a month or two without laying.  Now, of course, I know to wait until they are ready.  It is a wait.

By bringing in Miss Louise and Miss Mabel, I’ve upset the pecking order (really, these phrases do come from somewhere).  And by disrupting the politics in the hen house by bringing in two new tenants, so soon after the loss of Chicken #1 and #2, it seems everyone is too freaked out to lay.  The Araucanas from the move from whatever farm they lived on into my coop, surely, and possibly also from the fact that Nugget and Pot Pie are rather grungy rescue chickens rather than fancy breed chickens.  Nugget and Pot Pie from the revolving door of room mates they have had to endure, I am certain and Nugget possibly also still mourning the loss of her beloved Kung Pao.

There’s a lesson in this, of course.  Because a lot of us humans tend to not give ourselves enough time to recover from anything.  We push ourselves to adapt to whatever changes or upheaval happen in our lives, forgoing the spaces in between to readjust adequately before we launch forward. I have a friend who calls this time putting a hyphen in one’s life.  The life hyphen best described as taking a few spa days and some rest, sanatorium-style, before leaping back in.  It’s important to do but often overlooked.  And often rushed.

Chickens don’t rush their hyphens.  They take their time, figuring there’s always time for laying later. Maybe the chickens aren’t such dumb animals after all.