Creating Mini Ecosystem In Your Backyard

It’s amazing how hens adapt to the environment. It’s been only three weeks since my hens found their new home in my backyard. They are settled in so nicely now. They look like they’ve been there for a very long time. It’s also surprising how easily my family found the way to adapt to the lifestyle with the hens.

In the last three weeks, we named our hens, Twistie and Hops.
Twistie has twisted beaks. Basically the top beak and the bottom beak don’t match properly. The twisted beaks can cause troubles for hens to feed themselves. Luckily, Twistie doesn’t seem to have trouble pecking her food and feed herself.
Hopes, on the other hand, loves to jump on what I touch. When I touch a perch timber to clean, she hops on it, when I touch a coop ladder to clean, she hops on it, when I’m cleaning the nest box, she has to do more than just ‘a hop’ because the ladder is usually removed to block hens coming into the nest box while cleaning, but to Hops, it’s not a problem, she just flies into the nest box.

When we named them I couldn’t tell the difference between those two unless I go very close to them, but now I can hear the difference in their voice. Hops has deeper voice and rather quiet. Twistie is a chatter box with high voice. She gets chatty especially when there is no food, too much rain, or need for attentions. Both girls love to get attentions by the way. Whenever someone comes near the coop, they follow the person and talk to him/her. Very social animals hens are.

We bought Twistie and Hopes when they were at ‘point of lay’. That means they were about to start laying. For three weeks, we had no eggs, but we were happy, given how entertaining they are to watch and how easy to look after.

Every morning I move the coop for fresh patch of grass. Where the coop was yesterday often has leftover hens food. Wild birds come for cleaning up, they are now frequent visitors (cleaners) in my backyard. My hens don’t seem to mind ’sharing’ food with the wild birds, Twistie, particularly is more interested in watching them. Her latest hobby is this, birdwatching. How funny is that!! She is a bird too (I don’t know whether she knows it or not).

My other pets (cats and dogs) are used to hens now. Although I had to make the cat wear a collar with bells because she is interested in catching the wild birds. (even though she’s scared of the hens for some reason.) The noise from the bells gives the wild birds enough time to fly away before the cat approaches. The wild birds can sometimes bring diseases to my hens so I don’t mind chasing them away, but I don’t want hurt them. We can all coexist I reckon.

Dogs were very interested in hens at the start and very jealous. Now they are settled and don’t make whinging noise when I feed hens. I don’t know where the dogs placed themselves in our pet priority hierarchy, but they now know that the hens are not something to make a big deal out of.
I’m still amazed by hens behavior, and learning everyday. For an example, their legs move in such a big range. The powerful legs move very flexibly to scratch the ground, step up the ladder and of course to walk and run. They can easily lift up their toes to touch their tummy every time they walk. How flexible are they!! The wings are opened occasional to stretch and clean. I like to watch when they groom their wings. I haven’t figured out how the wings are located on the body. So I don’t seem to find right spots to grab them yet.
Anyway, the first egg was amazing, it was very exciting too. It was a small egg, probably the smallest I’ve ever seen. The tiny egg was found among the golf balls in the nest box, not much bigger than the ball. The light tan colored egg. I was so excited. I gave both the girls compliments. I didn’t know which hen laid the egg but they both deserved compliments.

Next day, in the early morning, I brought my ‘harvest basket’ with me to visit the girls, but no eggs. Oh well, that’s OK. It’s still the early days of egg laying. I wondered if the girls were feeling different by being able to lay eggs now, I imagined it could be a bit like the first period that a human girl experiences. It would be a kind of shocking experience. Later in that morning, my husband found an egg in the nest box. Lucky!! I guess my girls lay eggs sometime around the morning tea time.

Now, my hens are officially ‘productive animals’ in my house (unlike cats and dogs). The priority of my pets was automatically changed It’s everything about the hens now. I prepared a container in the kitchen for hen’s food. Any kitchen scraps that hens can eat goes in there. The rest of the kitchen scraps are placed in the compost bin as I’ve been doing for a while. Hens added a new life cycle to the kitchen scraps, another recycle method. So, say I have a carrot. I peel the skin and eat the rest. The skin goes to the hens. The hens might eat it all or leave it. What’s left in the hen’s feed bowl goes to the compost bin next day. Compost worms eat that and create compost. The compost, then is placed in my garden to grow some veggies, say,,, a carrot!! The cycle starts again.

What a wonderful cycle to have. This is a mini Ecosystem in my backyard. It’s nice to feel that a human being, in this case me, is fitting in the life cycle of the mother nature. That’s something invaluable, and something I’ve been forgetting to actively participate for a long time.