Having lived with chickens and all their moods for nearly a year now, I can see why we – at least we colloquial colonials in North America – have so many wise sayings built around the metaphor of the coop. This scant year’s experience has given me some minor authority to weigh in on this wisdom with a trace more believability than from someone – as I was just thirteen months ago – whose experience with chickens came solely from tossing their dismembered carcasses on the grill.

We’ve all heard of “hard-boiled” criminals. None of us “count our chickens before they hatch.” However, most of us have “flown the coop” at one point or another leaving behind “empty nesters.” Up until 2008 many of us had a “nest egg,” now safely ensconced in the outsized bonus received by an investment banker in 2009, which means we’re now reduced to “scratching out a living.” And if the whole economy looks a little “cockeyed,” you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Even if you’ve never seen a cock’s eye.

But it’s the more obscure aphorisms that are of interest to me today because those are the ones which most directly relate to my recent experiences with our feathered pains-in-the-ass. While you’re “brooding” about it, I will tell you that the “chickens have come home to roost” because I neglected the most commonsense – some might say obvious – little ditty of all: “don’t drop the henhouse when there’s eggs in it.”

We, as I have mentioned before, ended up with a rooster named Solo. I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out what with the crowing at 5AM and all, but it’s turned out to be not such a bad thing. This is largely because the cats start bouncing off the walls an hour before we hear crowing, but also, because he “rules the roost”, Solo is always looking out for the rest of his flock. As free-range chickens foraging in the south forty (square yards), when he uncovers a tasty morsel he’ll signal to the hens who rush over and fall upon the prey like a pack of wild dogs. They then resume clucking while Solo goes off to find another treat.

He also keeps a sharp eye open for our local avian predators: bald eagles and red-tailed hawks. They’re the only ones big enough to take on a chicken and it seems he can sense them long before they are visible to a mere human. I was working in the vineyard yesterday when – without warning – a line of chickens rushed by me heading for the safety of the chicken run with its anti-eagle flash tape and even more effective roof. I looked up and there was a pair of eagles circling about 100 feet up. They gave up on the Solo-protected flock and, instead, directed their attention at the hapless group of rooster-less chickens just across the road. I watched as they descended through the trees to wreak unspeakable horrors on the unsuspecting hens.

But Solo does extract a payment for his protective services (chickens originally being from Sicily and all). If a hen fails to comply – instantly – with an order, or wanders back after roaming alone for a while, he will rush up to her at a speed that is really unbelievable to see in a bird on foot and smacks her into a tumbling ball of feathers. He then, being “randy as a rooster” has his way with her just to let her know he’s still the “cock of the walk”, so to speak. In fact, the frequency which we observe – not that we’re watching mind you – this mating behavior is somewhat alarming given that there’s only one of him and eight of them.

The other thing that happened this past week is that one hen – Macaroon, if you’re curious – went broody. What happens is – for no apparent reason – the hen decides it’s time to be a “mother hen” and commences to put “all her eggs in one basket.” And not only her eggs, everybody else’s eggs too; even the fake eggs we use to show them where they should lay their real eggs. For the life of me I can’t figure out how a chicken can pick up an egg and move it three or four feet across the coop to where she wants to make her nest.

Now, there are a few things wrong with having a broody hen. First, while she’s trying to hatch eggs she stops laying and the income stream derived from her eggs stops. Next, since she’s trying to hatch as many eggs as she can, there’s the real possibility that we’d end up with many more chickens than the solar-powered, free-rolling (about which more soon), gated-community chicken facility could hold. This would cause us to make some life and death decisions, vis-á-vis which one(s) would end up “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” Lastly, and most importantly for the one tasked with chicken care, is that when hens go broody they get vicious. Get within a few feet of them and they’re like to try and rip your eyes out.

None of these is a good thing.

So I started research on how to “break a broody hen” as it is called in the trade, and my findings were not pretty. First off I’m concerned when the goal of anything is to “break” it. This is mostly because I’m so good at breaking things that I would rather keep intact that I worry what the effect might be if I really try to break something. But also, my tree-hugging, Crocs-with-socks, Kumbaya view of the world makes me prefer to work with the little animals in my care as opposed to forcing them – through pain and cruelty – to give up one of their God-given (or evolutionarily-determined, if you’re one of those) traits.

And then I tried to move the broody hen.

I didn’t know hens could make a sound like a pack of wild dogs (if you’ll forgive the appropriate, yet already used simile) nor did I know that one little beak could inflict so much pain. The gloves came off, so to speak, and, as payback, I tried all the methods recommended by others with broody hens; methods up until then I considered cruel. I isolated her from the flock, with the result that Solo got knocked on his ass as she rushed back to her nest. I tried dipping her in ice-cold water and found out the true meaning of “mad as a wet hen”. I even replaced – much to my hands’ chagrin – the eggs she was setting with ice cubes to try to cool her off and end her broodiness. All of these folk remedies were nothing that “they were cracked up to be.” So I went nuclear (or nucular for… well, you know who you are).

I put the hen in with the peeps.

We got a few more baby chicks a month ago – another French breed called cuckoo marans – and now they are solidly in their teens. They whine. They complain. They break out in fits of manic activity followed by hours of indolence. I stuck Macaroon in with the chicks, closed the door, and walked away.

By sundown she was frantically pacing along the side of the brooder as far from the chicks as she could get. When I opened the lid she fairly jumped into my arms in a desperate attempt to flee the unruly teenagers. She snuggled and clucked as I put her back in the coop, settled in on the roost with her flock, and fell asleep instantly. Since then she hasn’t looked at an egg; her broodiness cured.

As I’ve talked about, plans and I don’t quite see eye-to-eye, despite my skills being “scarce as hen’s teeth.” In spite of this, I am always willing to jump into a project with both feet, and, because of this, all those projects seem to go on forever. The chicken coop is no exception. I built it strong. I built it light enough to wheel about the yard. It was a thing of beauty. And then I stepped in it.

I was moving the coop a while back and the “it” I stepped in was the eight-inch deep hole the chickens had dug for their dust baths. I went down like Humpty Dumpty and the coop, its back legs still three feet in the air, rolled easily away. Then the legs came down. They snapped off flush with the bottom of the floor with a noise reminiscent of a crashing lumber truck and the once level coop ended up with a pronounced slope. I took the cinder blocks out from under the Chevy and used them to prop up the coop until I could effect repairs that 1) made the legs much stronger and 2) made the freaking thing too heavy to lift.

Now, to move it, I have to get out the jack, lift it up, bolt on a trailer hitch, hook it up to the tractor, and drive it to its new location. Nothing like progress, huh?

And to those who might ask if I ever learn anything from my failures, I can only say: “does a chicken have lips?”