Twenty-one days

Once upon a time (like a week ago), a little orange hen known as The Nest Queen (actually she has another name that I dare not type here) decided to sit. She sat, and sat, and sat. While her friends scratched around the yard and enjoyed a beautiful Spring day, she parked her fluffy butt on the nest and sat.

When I shoved the other chickens off their poopy porch and locked them in the coop that night, I realized that she was still sitting, and that it was the first time that she had been for the entire day.

She was determined.

It was time.

With much anticipation in the mystery that was about to be, I let her keep nine eggs that were laid in the following two days. She knew what she needed to do.

But the week was disastrous to say the least.

We have a big community nest. Two of them actually, but the girls only use one.

As fresh eggs were laid beside her, she collected and carefully rolled them underneath her featherless warm belly. But you can only fit so many eggs under a hen, and in doing so she kicked the eggs that she had been incubating out behind her.

That was only the beginning of her troubles.

You know when someone has something, everyone wants it? Nest space is hot like that. There are times those girls are lined up waiting for that nest like women have been known to wait to use the restroom.

Once I walked into the coop to find three birds piled on top of each other, and another one waiting for space to jump up there with the others. And on the bottom? Yes, my broody Nest Queen and her pile of precious eggs. Eggs were kicked around in the scuffle and a few of them cracked. Still she sat.

When an egg broke in the mayhem, and subsequently dried beneath her, it glued two more eggs to the feathers on the edge of her bare breasts. Those eggs smashed in the following day when yet another hen bullied her trying to get into her space to lay.

We were down to six eggs after only a few days.

I made her a perfect private cardboard box, with a little door, nice and dark, and full of soft pine bedding. We moved her and her eggs after dark. I was so hopeful.

She was not amused.

She pooped on her eggs in the new cardboard box nest and escaped back onto the old empty nest. She managed to knock four hens off their night-time roost in her mad dash back up there. Determined, yes.

The cardboard box nest wasn't right. The old nest felt right, even without eggs. Somehow I had figured she would be happy to be wherever her eggs were. I was wrong.

I gave her eggs back to her, she rolled them under her breast and glared at me.

I thought and thought and thought.

The next day was as bad as ever. She had only three eggs remaining by evening.

So we replicated the community nest. My sweet husband built a lip for the box, just right to match the one she wanted to sit in. We put it on the floor in the corner of the coop. Then he framed out a private space, stapled chicken wire all the way around it, and stapled a slanted cardboard lid to the top. I placed food and water in, put fresh straw in the new nest, and we waited for dark.

We snuck in, my husband held The Nest Queen while I moved her warm eggs. Then as I put her in the new space, we quietly watched and held our breath.

She pooped.

She tested one chicken wire wall, then the other.

She was agitated, and looked up toward her old nest.

She hopped onto the top of the replicated nest box and prepared to jump just under the high part of the slanted roof. It was clear she was about to escape her new private space. She had not seen her eggs.

I gently lowered her back down to the nest, and tried to aim her beady black eyeballs toward those shiny eggs.

She clucked.

Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck...

And she nestled into the new nest, beside her eggs, and one by one, she tucked those eggs under her beak and rolled them back into her warm place.

Cluck, cluck, cluck...

She sat, content.

Now her warm place is a safe place.

Today, convinced she is happy enough with her new nest, I climbed into her chicken wire enclosure with an egg carton in my hand. The carton contained precious cargo. I'm pretty flexible and have long legs. It was not easy. I was also just a bit concerned about getting out after I squatted down, because of how a cardboard flap kind of locks the lid down.

I took her three eggs and replaced them with nine fresh ones.

She didn't seem to mind.

So now we start over counting a twenty-one day incubation.

When my husband held her before we put her into the new safe nest, I took the opportunity to look her over. She had some poop stuck in the feathers on her behind. She has plucked her breasts completely bare, for better heat transfer to the eggs. The bottom edges of her wings, and the feathers remaining around her bare underbelly are thickly matted up with crusty dried egg, and even half an eggshell was still stuck there to her feathers.

I whispered, "She's a mess."

My husband smiled at me, "She's a mom."

Twenty-one days from now, the day I have marked on my calendar, the day I will be running to the coop every fifteen minutes to check on her if I can manage it, is Mother's Day.

It honestly is.

How perfect!