Betty the Easter Egger—Her Life — Randy's Chicken Blog

Betty the Easter Egger passed away last week. If you’ve followed my blog or its Facebook page for any length of time, you know Betty. Life threw a lot of adversity in Betty’s path, so she “made the news” on the blog on more than a few occasions. Betty dealt with each obstacle life put in her path in her usual, stoic, chicken-hearted fashion. I’m not using “chicken-hearted” in the usual sense when I use that expression. Chickens can be courageous, intrepid, and even heroic—and that’s what “chicken-hearted” should mean.

Betty came to live with me back when I was a chicken ignoramus. She was one of the original Hipster Chicks in the original flock, thus she shared the task and responsibility of educating me in all the important things any chicken keeper needs to know.

Betty arrived in a batch of chicks I ordered through the mail, and because of my terrible experience with that batch, it has been the only batch of chicks I’ve ever acquired that way. The chicks were shipped Priority Mail on a Monday. I fully expected them to arrive at the post office on Tuesday morning. They didn’t. Priority Mail is guaranteed to arrive “within 72 hours” of mailing. 72 hours is, without question, the outer boundary for chick survival without food or water. Wednesday came and went—still no chicks. Finally, on Thursday I received a call that my chicks had arrived at the post office and I drove over to pick up a package that was emitting only weak and sporadic peeps. At home, I opened it to view the carnage. Five chicks were dead on receipt. One more died within a few hours. Two died during the course of the afternoon. Two more died during the night. Of the sixteen chicks I ordered, I’d lost nine within the first day. I was devastated. Betty was among the seven intrepid survivors that became the founding members of my flock. Betty and her surviving sisters learned about overwhelming hardship in the first tender days of their lives.

Because I was a chicken ignoramus, I had no idea what breeds my surviving chicks were. I began to figure that out as they grew by comparing them to pictures, but I was not completely sure about Betty until she laid her first sweet little green pullet egg.

Betty’s first contribution to the flock was the treats bar. The earliest version of the coop was covered in fencing with two-inch spaces between the wires – I moved to hardware cloth only after learning about how small predators like weasels can go right through a two-inch space. A two-inch space does allow enough space for a hen to fit her head through the fence, though, and Betty figured that out pretty quickly. She would sit on the roost right by the fence, poke her head through a hole, and fix an icey chicken stare on me as I moved around the coop. Eventually, I would become unnerved by her steely gaze and defend myself by giving her a handful of scratch through the fence. Thus, that roost bar eventually became the “treats bar” where Betty would get snacks. When I finally replaced the fencing with hardware cloth, I had to put a small door in the fence by the treats bar so I could offer treats to Betty and all the other hens to whom she had taught the significance being on the right roost and paying attention.

As Betty got older, thing went awry inside her body. First, I noticed that she seemed to be unable to make any more of those pretty green eggs. Then she started to show a weakness in her legs – subtle at first but then significant enough that she had trouble getting on the roost. Then, almost simultaneously, Betty underwent spontaneous sex reversal and became a rooster and the flock outcast on the receiving end of almost constant vicious pecks from the other birds, all of which I documented here. I assumed that Betty’s sex reversal and lameness had one underlying cause—a tumor pressing on a nerve and also shutting down Betty’s ovary, perhaps? The prognosis did not seem promising, and I decided I would do what I could to make their remaining weeks comfortable. That was June 2017. I should have learned from the first few days of Betty’s life that Betty was a fighter. They didn’t just survive over the last two-plus years, they lived. Their life was as full as a chicken’s life can be. They lived on their own for a while, then moved to Coop 2 – the island of misfit toys of the chicken world. Coop 2 chickens couldn’t live with the flock in the big coop for one reason or another. But in the smaller coop they formed a gentle happy flock. I wrote about Betty and the Coop 2 chickens here. I built a wide, flat roost for Betty there, since their feet had become too useless to grip a normal roost. And over the past year, as they have become increasingly unable to get on the roost at all, they’ve been sleeping on the floor with their Silkie friends.

Betty adapted to their increasing leg weakness by using their wings to get around the coop – thus they continued to hang around with the flock even though they moved around in a different way. Last week it became obvious to me that Betty was losing strength and reaching the end. I believe that the Coop 2 flock never would have bothered Betty in their last days, and I know Betty liked being with their friends, but I separated them to their own space because they needed water and food within easy reach, and because I needed to be able to check them easily and frequently. The very last time I checked Betty, I found them with their head resting on the floor. When I walked in, they lifted their head and gave me one of those long, steely Betty stares. Then they took a long drink from their water fount and laid their head back down. Then Betty was gone.

Betty was preceded in death by most of the original hens who were the founding Hipster Hens, and many others who joined the flock later. Betty is survived by Sam the Easter Egger and Mary the Campine, the only surviving hens of the original seven. And by Bonnie the blind Cream Legbar and the five Silkies, their flock when they passed. And by all the other Hipster Hens. And by me, Betty’s student in chicken keeping and in life. Gurus don’t just live on mountaintops, they can live right there in your coop.

Finally, I’d like to quote the last few sentences from the obituary of Poe the hen, who recently passed and whose life was memorialized by her human, Crystal Sands, in her blog “Pajamas, Books, and Chickens:”

“In lieu of flowers and donations…please buy humanely-raised eggs. ‘Cage free’ means nothing, so please look for the humanely-raised label on your eggs. Better yet, if possible, buy your eggs from a local farmer. You will pay a little more, for sure, but chickens are beautiful, intelligent, complex little beings and deserve good lives while they are here.” Betty would have heartily agreed.