The Squat

I can't stop thinking about this so now you have to also

Loretta is a wild chicken. While she was hand raised along with the rest of her group (the country music ladies: Dolly, Wanda, Emmylou), she never became friendly. If I’m hand feeding treats to the flock, she carefully positions herself so she’s always at arm’s length. She comes for treats—most of the time. She just doesn’t come up to me.

I like to let my chickens be chickens. I enjoy watching them dust bathe and run and yodel. I love when one of them finds a worm and decides to run with it, clucking the whole time, until there’s a conga line of chickens chasing her around the yard. There are a lot of things people don’t know about chickens—that they fly, don’t need a rooster to lay eggs, can sometimes live over 20 years, and so on and so on. I alway tell guests who come by to meet the flock that chickens are also very soft. Surprisingly so. The outer feathers cover a layer of warm downy fluff. On Cochins, who have elaborate bustles for tails, you can sink your fingers right into the ball of feathers.

Except for Emmylou who has taken to jumping on me or anyone else who bends down nearby, the chickens don’t like being picked up. I stopped caring whether the hens lay eggs (it helps that we’re getting three to eight a day right now for our two-person household) but I do want to pet them. So I consider their momentary grumpiness at being petted and held to be a fair exchange for an otherwise very spoiled life. But how do you pick up a chicken who is against the idea?

If you find yourself chasing them, you’ve already lost. The average chicken can run 9 miles an hour; the average human runs 6.5-8 miles an hour. That speed goes down even further when the human is hunched over trying to pick up a chicken who is darting around a foot off the ground. Often, I use mind games to catch the chickens. I sit amongst the flock, throwing treats on the ground, thinking about yard work, then WHOOSH, my hands spring out to firmly but gently capture the hen when she least expects it. (If I’m thinking about catching them or looking at them, they seem to sense something is up. The mental component is important.)

But that’s not the easiest way to pet a chicken. In the spring and summer when the flock is laying regularly, they roll out the red carpet for me to pet them—even Loretta. If they see me coming, even if I’m ten feet away, they drop to the ground, hold their wings out from their sides, and freeze. I can pet them to my heart’s content. I give their backs a few gentle strokes and ruffle their feathers. They are so soft.

Most of my photos of Loretta are her squatting as it turns out. I really wanted to come up with a punny caption for this: a squantage, a squat-sortment, sqélange, a squat-work, a squat scramble, a squatiche. I’m so sorry you read this.

This is a simple enough admission: when a hen squats in front of me, I can’t help but pet them. Yet there’s a reason it took me five paragraphs to get here. Because the party the hen has invited me to and the one I think I’m attending are very different. Hens squat when they are ready to mate. That’s why they only do it when they’re in lay. And petting a squatting hen is not not similar to chicken sex.

Chicken mating takes place through a process called the “cloacal kiss” (I talk about this in my book Under the Henfluence) where the rooster mounts a squatting hen. He usually balances himself on her low back, digging his claws into the feathers right above her tail. If the hen doesn’t squat, the rooster, who lacks a penis, can’t easily mate with her.

I recently posted about petting my crouched hens on Instagram, mentioning that I had very mixed feelings about the whole thing. At least eighty-six people have at least thought about this dilemma before. I got comments like:

“I figure they are offering so it would be rude to not accept.”

“I feel ashamed and yet I continue.”

“I feel bad, but selfishly I go for it every time.”

“I always thank them for seeing me in that way then sneak in a few pets and then let them be”

and

“Wait. Did you just ruin my life?! I knew it meant submission but I didn’t connect those dots.”

Sometimes, yes, a hen will squat in front of a dominant hen in the flock. (People do refer to this behavior as a “submissive squat”.) I couldn’t find any studies on whether this is strictly a mating behavior, a social one, or a little bit of both and—importantly for my purposes!—what in the world it means when a hen squats for a human. Yet the fact that the squat is a behavior that only happens in my flock when the hens are laying eggs seems telling.

In parrots, veterinarians will tell you to only pet the birds on the heads or legs. “Improper caresses” on their backs can lead to hormonal behavior like attacking anyone who gets too close to “their” mates. Thankfully, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in chickens who don’t commonly pair bond to mate.

If I ruined your life with this post, I’m sorry.

Look, maybe none of this matters. Maybe squatting in hens is a bit like how dogs will both hump each other during mating and as a play behavior. It’s possible that my virginal hens who have never met a mature rooster in their lives know the difference. Maybe petting a squatting chicken is something that builds a bond between hen and owner. Maybe humans are just making it weird! It’s probably that! But, just in case, maybe I’ll pet the girls on the wing when they squat from now on.

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News from the Coop

The last stop on my book tour for Under the Henfluence is this weekend! On 6/17 at 7pm, I will be reading at Auntie’s Books in Spokane, WA. My book and the event got a lovely write up from The Inlander.

Since the last issue of this newsletter, I had an article come out in The Atlantic about Hawaii’s feral chickens. (Gift link here.) While there’s a whole chapter on feral chickens in my book, I was thrilled to get the chance to look at the Hawaiian population in particular. They have a really unique backstory and the way they’re flourishing on islands with minimal or no predators is worth discussing.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading, gifting, and reviewing Under the Henfluence! I probably should stop reading the reviews but I do and 99% of them are so lovely and generous. If you want to leave kind words on Amazon or Goodreads in particular, the flock and I would appreciate it.

If you post a photo of your chickens with my book and tag me on social media (ebook and audiobook formats count too!) I will repost it. You can see some of the adorable posts showing up under the hashtag #UnderTheHenfluence.

If you need a chicken fix before the next newsletter, you can follow me on Instagram or buy my book.

If you liked this email, please share the newsletter with a chicken or animal lover in your life! As always, email me at underthehenfluence@gmail.com with any tips or comments. See you next month.