The Spent Hen

What does a chicken have to teach us? An ugly, raggedy spent hen at that? Recovery from past trauma is a long, slow thing but if we are patient with ourselves we can move forward into the life ahead of us. Nobody is a spent hen... we just need to give ourselves time to clean our feathers.

Transcript

Hello folks,

I thought I'd do a contemplation today on chickens,

More specifically just one.

Before I get into it though,

There's a lot that we can learn from chickens.

I find them really wonderful animals.

I realize that in our culture,

The term bird brain means you're stupid and being chicken means you're a coward and all this negativity around chickens and birds.

And you know what?

From working with my own flock and other people's birds,

It's really not true.

And I think chickens are just great.

They're industrious,

They're productive.

There's so many good things to be said about chickens.

The way I use them is I let them have run of my compost pile,

So my animal manures,

My kitchen scraps,

And they turn it over and get the bugs out of it and whatever it is the chickens eat.

And my girls don't even eat anything out of a bag anymore.

They don't need it.

They're never skinny,

They're never hungry looking,

And they just do an excellent job and they turn out the most beautiful compost you can imagine and eggs and really pretty feathers and all sorts of useful things.

They molt twice a year and because my girls are out on pasture,

Their feathers are clean enough to craft with right when they shed them.

So I just walk around the yard and pick up feathers and stick them in a bag.

So all my crafter people ask me,

Are they molting yet?

Are they molting yet?

But today's contemplation is about one bird in particular.

And now I don't like to have favorites,

But Penny is my favorite.

And I didn't even intend to get her.

But years ago,

She's seven now.

Years ago,

I was on my way back from work.

And on the route to and from work every day,

I passed a chicken farm,

An egg house.

It's called an egg house,

But these are huge buildings that are multi-story and you know,

50 foot by 200 foot long.

And this one was the old kind that are dark and they have the stacking cages and it's not a nice life.

The thing is,

The egg industry uses word salad a lot.

So the only way to know that your birds actually came from a flock that got to see sunshine was to would be to buy from your neighbors or get pasture raised.

That's the sticker you want.

Everything else is gobbledygook.

So these birds were organic and heritage breed.

So they lay dark brown eggs.

And they were fed,

I guess,

No antibiotics or whatever the organic standard is.

They eat corn too.

So you know,

They keep them for a while and then they get rid of them.

They go up to the Campbell's soup plant,

You know,

To be what's on the label.

And it is what it is.

And it's not my favorite thing in the world.

I'm not a big fan of commercial eggs.

Having my own home flock and seeing how smart and how fun these little birds are,

I find it personally abhorrent to keep anything in a cage.

That's just me.

I guess that's not the industry standard,

But that's just me.

So I was going by and I'd had a terrible day at work.

And I had a million things on my mind.

And it was loading day.

Loading day is where they pack all of the birds into crates and pack them on a semi and drive them to the plant.

So that's always a depressing,

Smelly,

Awful thing.

And the semi was in the middle of the road,

Taking up the whole road and they had people directing traffic and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And I noticed that just like always,

There were some chickens running around loose.

I was waiting.

I was waiting.

And one of these sorry little hens,

And they do look sorry.

They look like they're already plucked.

They're like rubber chickens.

They just,

They don't look right.

They have a hard life and they look terrible because of it when they get packed out.

But anyway,

One of them came over and was pecking at my tire on my car because she was just out in the middle of the road and had no idea what to do.

This poor thing had probably never been out of a cage in her life.

And she's pecking at my tire and looking at my car and eating rocks,

Which chickens use rocks for their gizzard.

She'd probably never seen rocks before.

And she was so excited.

And I just felt for this shabby little bird.

And I rolled down the window and I made a mistake.

I called out to the foreman who was leading everything and I go,

Can I take this one?

He goes,

Yeah,

Sure.

She's not worth it to catch.

And to them she wasn't.

She was worth 75 cents.

It wasn't worth the effort to pay a guy to catch the birds that get loose.

So being an idiot,

I opened my door,

Scooped up the hen and put her on my passenger side seat.

And she rode home with me.

And this poor,

Sorry thing looked like she was already half dead.

She fell asleep on the trip home.

And of course,

I get her home,

I get her set up and she just eats and eats and eats and drinks and drinks and drinks and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

And the neighbor was over and she laughs and she goes,

Oh man,

The thing's already dead.

And I didn't really disagree.

She looked terrible.

This poor thing looked like a little zombie chicken.

Now the thing is,

I didn't know this because I'd never brought home a spent hen before and that's what they're called,

Spent hens.

What a terrible word,

Right?

Like they have nothing left to give the world.

They're only two years old.

You know,

Birds in a home flock live to be five or six,

Maybe older.

These ones are only two and they're already spent.

Terrible thing.

Imagine if we thought of people that way.

But anyway,

I'd never had a spent hen before and I put her in her own little pen and let her just do her thing.

And I called up a friend of mine that had had a few of these because she was kind hearted and she's had chickens since before I was even born.

And she just laughed into the phone.

She goes,

Just feed her,

Just water her,

Give her a safe place and let her clean her feathers.

I told her,

Yeah,

But she doesn't have any feathers.

And my friend laughed.

He goes,

Give her time,

Let her clean her feathers.

So I did.

And within a few months she had mostly feathered out.

She looked almost like a normal chicken and her comb,

The bit of skin or whatever on top of their head that indicates a lot of information about a chicken.

You know,

Their health,

Their blood pressure,

Their excitement level,

All these sorts of things.

In hens,

It'll flop over if they're sick.

And her slowly straightened up and got really red,

Which is a sign of health.

And so about two months in,

She was up and about,

Her feet had been kind of messed up from the wire.

And she had started getting up and about and my girls live on grass and dirt.

So she had been cleaning her feathers.

They take dust baths,

Kind of like chinchillas.

Chickens don't like to be wet.

So they use dust and dirt to clean their feathers with.

And so she had been doing this.

I thought,

Okay,

It's about time.

I have my girls out in the yard and I let little Penny out with them.

I had named her Penny because why not?

It's like the chicken and the children's story,

Henny Penny.

So I let Penny out and she was terrified.

She just stared up at the sky and stared at the grass and did this funny walk where she picked her little feet up and looked at her own little feet and was so confused and asked all kinds of little chicken questions with their funny little voices.

Those that are confused make all sorts of chirping,

Chittering sounds and she was.

But she saw that there were other chickens and that they were okay.

And they came over and they checked her out.

But my girls have always been kind of laid back.

They don't have any reason not to be.

So they checked her out and she went and followed them and tried her best to keep up with them on the grass while doing her funny high foot run.

And she got used to it and about a week later she discovered the compost pile.

And that has become the work of her life is to dig through the compost pile and then a few months later she discovered the other thing that has become the driving force of her existence,

Setting on eggs.

She rolled four or five eggs under her from her neighbor and she laid an egg and she sat on them and 28 days later on the nose little fuzzy chicks popped out.

And something changed in this bird.

She had been waiting to be alive,

I think,

Before then.

And a cage,

They can't really be chickens,

They're just things in a cage.

And when I saw Penny come out with those chicks and run all over the yard with them and call to them and dig things up in the compost pile for them and feed them.

They feed them with their own little beaks.

It's the most magical thing.

When I saw that I knew she was going to be okay.

And now that was about six years ago.

And at the moment I don't have a single chicken in my entire flock that has not been sat on and raised directly by Penny.

She stopped laying years ago but she sets on every single egg,

Golf ball,

Kitten,

Anything she can get under her.

She sat on a bottle cap last week and I had to take it away from her.

She was very upset.

And over the years I have put things under her like a clutch of ducks.

And she raised them just like little chickens except she was terrified when they found our pond and started swimming because chickens don't swim and chickens don't go in the water and she stood on the bank of our pond and cried.

She was so afraid.

She's raised turkeys.

She raised one very mean guinea hen.

She sat on orphan barn kittens and for quite a while there she had a golf ball and nobody was brave enough to take it away from her.

And over the years her feathers have grown back.

Snow white.

And I don't know what breed she is.

She may be a Delaware or a Dominique but she has the most beautiful ruffled lace of black and brown feathers around the back of her neck.

And the tips of her wings have a single black feather at the end and there's a couple of black feathers in her tail.

She's beautiful.

She's stunning and she is this stately regal bird that all the other birds recognize as their mama and she's friendly to us.

She has been the best chicken I've ever owned and has been so much fun and brought so much to our flock.

All I had to do was let her clean her feathers and let her sit on some eggs.

The point here,

I think,

Is that sometimes we all feel like Penny.

And the lesson in this bird is to not dwell on where we've been and what's been done to us.

We don't live there anymore.

Penny's never been in a cage again in her entire life.

And we all have been somewhere that has changed us,

Limited us,

Shaped us.

Don't dwell on where you've been.

You don't live there anymore.

That's not your cage anymore.

And just like Penny,

We all need to learn to just clean our feathers.

Give ourselves some time to raise our vibration,

To care for ourselves,

To do whatever we need to do to get ready to move on.

To get excited about our own compost piles and our own clutch of eggs or whatever that is in our lives.

None of us are spent hens.

We are not as spent as we think we are.

All we have to do is take the time to clean our feathers.

Thanks for listening.

Have a beautiful day.

Reviews

Good story to hear. I definitely need to grow back my feathers ❤️

Such a heart warming story. And a beautiful lesson in humanity.

Beautiful story! I loved this and I’m so glad I listened. I thought it was a story for kids.

I adored this story with such an uplifting message, thank you for sharing🙏❤️

This was such a simple story but it really shifted my thinking, thank you.

That is an amazing story, I raise chickens myself and have seen a few go through hard times but come back to life after tender loving care. Thank you for sharing this uplifting inspirational meditation

Beautiful ❤️

I loved listening to this sweet experience you have been blessed with. You have a wonderful way of telling it. Thank you for taking that moment to pick up “Penny” on that road on that day. She has given so much to so many🤗

I ❤️ Chickens! I had 30, but those mutha cluckers took over the farm!! Now Im settled with 8 girls and a cock. They still try and take over. My OG hens are 6 & 7. They hold their own and run the farm still. Felisha has even snuck in the house and laid an egg in my bed!!
They provide me with endless joy and enough eggs to share with the neighbors. 🤩
Thank you for this!

That was absolutely amazing! It did bring memories of my daughter spending time with her chickens in the backyard - many of those had seen her face before their mother hen! I can't wait to get her to listen to this beautiful story & reminder to pause, take time to heal & then move on.