On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me … three French hens
The third of our 12 Days of Christmas falls on the Feast of St John the Evangelist. The song first appeared in 1800 as a rhyme in Mirth without Mischief and was later adapted to a folk melody by composer Frederic Austin. It’s believed to have secular origins as a memory game celebrating an annual period of drunkenness and merry-making. Six of the twelve days refer to fowl, perhaps not surprising for the era. Since medieval times, domesticated and particularly wild fowl have been highly prized and consumed.
French Marans
French hens were very popular as a dual-purpose bird and today French Marans are a common breed. Amateur breeders of the 13th and 14th centuries in the southwest of France crossed their local marsh hens with gamecocks brought ashore by sailors travelling from the Far East.
In 1921, Madame Rousseau-Charpentier cross-bred the first Cuckoo Marans. By 1931 the first breed standard was published and named after the French Port of Maran.
Rarely seen or heard
Though this history is interesting, what fascinates me more are the birds themselves. We have a flock of 30 hens, mostly Maran hybrids, and two cockerels who free range in a copse and meadow. They have a very happy existence – free to roam, perch, forage, play and dust bath. The cocks court the hens, the hens go broody, mother chicks and die a natural death.
Unfortunately, the majority of UK hens bred for meat and eggs are housed in large barns with no natural light. They have ostensibly been removed from our rural landscape, not seen, nor heard and therefore out of our consciousness, except in chicken idioms such as “flown the coop” and “shake some tail feathers” that remain in our language.
For the love of chickens
Our backyard flock began with a gift of three chicks. These were descendants of escapee Maran hens that had colonised Ditchingham roundabout in Bungay, Suffolk. Since childhood, I always wanted hens and moving to a converted barn on an old farm was an opportunity to fulfil that dream.
Over 11 years we have introduced other breeds and take pleasure in the unexpected. The Marans crossed with two Leghorns, a Blue Wyandotte and our lovely Rhode Island Red hen. Two years ago, we rescued eight Brown hens. The Maran genes are so dominant that time and again the genetic varieties of Copper Marans, Cuckoo Marans, Blue, White and Black Marans hybrids manifest in the new chicks.
Little personalities
Not only does our flock provide us with amazing eggs and excellent manure for the vegetable patch, they also bring joy to our lives, to our grandchildren and visiting friends.
Each hen and cock has a personality, some more telling than others. They are sentient, intelligent and determined, especially when there are juicy worms lurking in the bottom of holes dug for planting. And they are quite oblivious to the dangers of rotovators.
One curious hen, named Shed, persistently enters one of our sheds. Our successive alpha cocks are named Brave Heart and the beta males are called Chancer – do I need to explain? But our favourite was T-Rex, as she ran like her dinosaur ancestor. In fact, the Jurassic Park movie T.rex running animation was modelled on a chicken.
The cycle of life
Spring brings the delights of new chicks, not from an egg incubator but from our broody hens who just can’t help their natural instinct to mother. Their body temperature goes up and when it does, they sit determinedly on eggs – not necessarily their own – and nothing will shift them from their task.
The newest mothers become highly protective and aggressive – woe betide you if you try to interfere with them. They can sit for days with no food and water and hold back their need to empty their bowels until they absolutely must. While they are off the eggs, other hens will happily sit on them until the broody has returned. Their bodies create the perfect temperature of 37.5°C for the gestation process to begin, and hens instinctively know to turn the eggs from time to time. Sometimes two broody hens sit together, sharing eggs and motherly duties.
I am often struck by the lack of knowledge people generally have about hens. Here are some facts:
- All hens lay unfertilised eggs unless a cockerel lives in the flock.
- If he has done his gentlemanly duty, then the chances are that most of the eggs laid will be fertilised.
- Sperm remains viable in females from 10 to 14 days, on average, after copulation.
- Eggs are unique to a breed or variety of hen. Their shape, texture and colour differ.
Our most prolific and excellent mum is Tres, a larger-than-life Pekin Bantam with feathered feet. She is the only survivingsecond generation Bantam. Now aged six, she goes broody twice a year, guaranteed. She and two bantam sisters were abandoned during their 18 days of incubation. So we took over incubating the eggs under a light for three days until hatched, raising them by hand until big enough to join the flock. My husband decided to call them Uno, Dos and Tres… go figure!
The miracle of light
Hens are highly responsive to light. By October and November, with lowering natural light levels, all but the first-year pullets stop laying eggs and put their energy and calcium production into growing new feathers. They can’t lay eggs during this transformational process. This is why rescue hens almost always look patchy in their plumage. Artificial light levels in barns are kept high for the best part of 18 months to keep hens producing eggs. Therefore they never have a chance to re-feather.
The winter equinox in 21 December is when light levels begin to increase daily. Come the New Year, if we are lucky, at least three of our French hens may begin to lay eggs again. And so the circle of life goes on.
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