Chickens can do magic -

[hedgehog]

I've been keeping the chicken house closed these days because it's so cold. I go out, change the water, put down feed, collect the eggs, make sure all the birds are happy, then leave. Now, about a week ago we had a thaw and my son let the chickens out all day. He didn't latch the door open, so it closed leaving some birds out in the dark. I collected them and put them into the chicken house. Right after that, we had temperatures close to 0 and enough snow to make the school districts here dismiss early.

So, today I'm taking care of the birds and a rooster starts walking away. I walked up, grabbed him and put him back into the chicken house. I think he saw all the snow and was just as glad to be caught and carried. He was awfully easy to catch. So I close the birds up, head back to the house, and I hear a hen lamenting. I thought it was behind me in the hen house, but I stopped to listen. The noise was in front of me, along the side of my house.

I had to walk through knee deep snow to get there, but I found a Buff Orpington hen sitting under the furnace vent alongside the house. There were no tracks on the snow around her, and my Orpingtons are not good flyers. The nearest I can figure is that that hen was outside during some of the worst winter weather we've had for at least 24 hours, maybe more. She was harder to catch than the rooster, but I grabbed her and carried her back to the coop where she had a drink and sat down to dinner.

[Sanity Claws]

1. The Lamentations of a Hen

I love language but, as a city girl, I know nothing about chickens. I took notice (kind of laughed) when you said you heard a hen lamenting.
Is that the usual term used? What does a hen lamenting sound like?

[hedgehog]

2. I've never heard anyone else use the term, but chickens do have a language of their own.

Happy sounds, flustered sounds, warning sounds, etc. I've heard different calls from the roosters for hawks and foxes. If a chicken is in distress, it makes a specific sad call, which is what I heard. I think this hen thought it was the sole survivor of a massive Ice Age!