Henny Penny Farmette

Several times over the last month or so, I’ve traipsed to the hen house to collect eggs and found a broken egg or one with a hole in the shell and the egg otherwise intact.

The rust-colored Rhode Island Red is the dominant hen in my flock

I wondered if one of the chickens had gone rogue and was pecking the egg that either she or one of the other hens had laid.

My flock is small and they usually lay their eggs during the morning hours, using the afternoon to free range and forage.

Each time I heard a cackle, I sprinted to the chicken house to see who was raising the ruckus and whether or not she’d pecked her egg.

Finally, I caught one of my Silver-Lace Wyandotte hens on the nest. With her head twisted behind and under her wing, I could not tell what was going on. I slipped my hand under her, causing her head to jerk around. It appeared I had caught her in the act as her beak was covered with yolk.

Hawks are capable of carrying off a chicken

So I thought I’d solved the mystery. My solution was to remove each egg as soon as the hen laid it. If I removed the eggs, any temptation for the chickens to peck the eggs would be eliminated, too. But running for every chicken squawk became so time consuming, I finally stopped.

To my utter surprise, there were no more broken eggs. That didn’t make sense. However, during the whole ordeal with the broken eggs, I’d been smelling a skunk. When my closest neighbor said a skunk had been raiding his coop for the eggs, I began to think I had wrongly accused my poor Wyandotte.

Indeed, since my neighbor took care of the skunk (by trap, I believe), my hens are producing eggs every day and none have holes or are cracked. I’m now thinking the skunk was the egg robber.

One of three foxes we caught checking out the chicken house

That experience got me thinking about other predators that will eat chicken eggs (and chickens, too). The list includes opossums, weasels, rats, snakes, minks, foxes, wild dogs, coyotes, raccoons, hawks, and owls. So, even if I’ve got a nice hen house and a run with a wire roof, it seems that a predator motivated by a good meal with find a way in.

Finches dining on small black seeds known as Niger seed

Back in my old neighborhood I spent many happy hours watching the birds that flew into the massive pines behind my San Jose home. Then when I moved to the Miami area, I felt thrilled to spot a long-legged, white egret, a small but determined sandpiper, or a bald eagle or two visiting my home on the lake. The visits of those exquisite creatures were always brief and all too soon they would fly back to their nests in the brush or tall pines of the Florida Everglades, only a mile or two away. Now here on the Henny Penny Farmette, I am serenaded every morning by songbirds, often sweet little yellow finches feeding at the feeder five feet above the fence at the back of the property.

Closeup of a wild finch, bright eyed and curious

If you feed them, they will come. Finches love the black nyger seed. Our local feed store sells the seed in bulk and also in white mesh sacks with tiny holes perfect for finch beaks, which are quite small. Of course, some seeds will drop to the ground and, in my experience, easily sprouts and grows into a tall, skinny plant with a blue bloom. I’ve heard that you can sterilize birdseed so it would not root and grow if you toast the seeds for a short time in the oven on high heat. But be careful not to burn them. Not even birds like burnt food.

A robin surveys the world from the top of a tall pine

While making coffee this morning, I peered out the kitchen widow to see a beautiful bird with a rust colored breast perched atop the fifty foot pine. I believe it was a robin. Grabbing my camera, I got off a couple of shots before the bird took flight. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen the last of that bird. Rain is coming again in a few days and robins love to hop around searching for worms. So regardless of what neighborhood I’m living in, I create habitat and put out food for the wild birds. It welcomes them and their presence nurtures my spirit.