Hens, eggs and golf balls

From the beginning the my hens has been engaging and challenging but one of these mysteries of raising chickens has been going on now for a month. Liz, named after Liz Taylor because of her totally black feathers, is unlike any of the other five hens.

My two beautiful black and white hens, I call the twins. They are largest of the group and now I find them to be the most assertive and top of the pecking order. I often make up a cereal mixture, or have food scraps from the dinner table and I serve it in two plastic long dishes in their coop. Without fail, these two hens control who eats first and are particularly aggressive toward my two red hens. Liz usually is not seen at this feeding moments.

One of the red hens is called Autumn because she displays the colors much like a pheasant in autumn colors, she is the best layer, blue/green eggs and is an Americana breed. I find her intense on the business of being herself. Unlike any of the other hens she has a little puff of feathers on the side of her head that stick straight out, I understand that is over her ears.

The other red hen is called Red. She is my best flier. She manages to get out on average once a day. Red is probably the lightest in weight and is the smartest of the birds. As I leave the house, Red comes to greeting from behind a raised bed or from a far corner of the yard. I walk toward the coop shaking some oats in a container she will follow me and easily go back in as she has missed the rest of the flock. Red suffers the most bulling from the twins at feeding time.

But Liz is the one that is a mystery. Liz ignores my noisy food container, ignores fresh water and food. She sits on three golf balls and devotes her days and nights to keep them warm while laying no eggs of her own. Occasionally, I push her out of the nest, weekly I will force her to run the yard when I am feeling generous about leaving my chickens roam free for a couple hours. I am amazed to find she will fly lowly across the yard, a flight that could easily be 20 to 30 feet. I can attest to her feasting on some clover, dancing her little two step over some bare ground but before I turn my head she is heading back to the open coop door and her golf balls.

I have tested her and moved two of the golf balls four inches away from her nest. I check 30 minutes later and she has moved her "eggs" back under her. Golf balls are one of the standard tricks to encourage chickens to lay in the nest. Liz puffs up her feathers when ever I open the nest box door to look larger but she is as gentle as humming bird. The light on her feathers produces all the colors of nature bouncing off her black. Yesterday, I found she had moved a golf ball out of the other nest eight inches.

Broody hens are common in a flock and Liz is in that mood now.