The Problem with "Learning the Hard Way"

is that sometimes it results in death.  Hopefully not yours (although sometimes that the case) but in this case it was the death of two of our chickens.

When The Scientist was a toddler I used to ask her, "do you want to do it the easy way or the hard way?  The choice is yours."  It didn't take her long to figure out that the easy way was the preferred choice.  Of course this came back to bite me later on when she was forced to do things the hard way to get the result she wanted, but I guess that part of the learning curve too.  As a small aside:  One day we were pulling into a shopping center and she asked what store we were going into and I said, "The hardware store."  She started to cry and said she didn't want to go to the hardware store she wanted to go to the easyware store.  Chalk another one up in the tell your therapist when your 30 column.  Anyway, no surprise, I digress.

In the winter the kids regret having chickens.  It's cold, the wind whips across our yard, it gets dark really early and they eat more, mostly because they are bored but also because they burn more calories keeping warm.  So for three months out of the year there is a lot of complaining about who's turn it is to care for them. 

Well, this winter they started getting lazy about making sure their feeder was always full.  It was rarely empty but instead of constantly filling it they would wait until it was empty to fill it.  The reaction that caused was subtle and not recognized until it resulted in a very painful lesson for them. 

You see hens have a pecking order (pecking/chickens/get it?).  We can't do anything about it and it changes as the birds age, new birds are added to the flock or just because, but if you spend any time observing them you will clearly see who's in charge and who's at the bottom of the order.

So what was happening, unbeknown to the kids, was the chickens were rationing their food because there wasn't a unending supply of food anymore.  The dominant birds were preventing the two birds at the bottom of the order from freely eating.  Even this probably wouldn't of been enough to kill them, they were getting some food.  Then the straw that broke the camels back occurred.

Every now and then one of the hens doesn't make it back into the coop at night.  For whatever reason they fall asleep outside and when the coop gets closed up they wind up spending the night under the stars.  This can be a problem if there are predators in the area but our run is enclosed so that isn't as much of an issue. 

The two hens at the bottom of the pecking order for a reason that will remain unknown didn't return to the coop one night last week.  What made this even stranger was it had been pouring rain all evening and they don't normally like to be out in the rain for long.  The kids are supposed to make sure everyone is in before they close it up, but that doesn't always happen.  It's dark, cold, windy, raining, essentially miserable; no head count usually occurs on those nights.

When the sun came up Baseball Boy went out to open up the coop for the day.  He found Oreo and Jersey laying in the run next to the coop.  Both were soaking wet and had died during the night.  The temperatures had dropped dramatically and I was surprised to find both birds were underweight.  I think that between being wet and too thin they were unable to withstand the cold overnight.

This isn't the first time we've gone out in the morning to find dead hens.  You learn to accept that farm animals do not have the life expectancy of family pets and they in general live a riskier life.  But that doesn't make it any easier on the kids who almost instantly realized what happened and that the birds being underweight contributed to their demise.

So they learned a lesson the hard way, and Oreo and Jersey paid the price.  I'm sure that they would would cry and want to learn it at the easyware store, if only that were possible.