The Lost Hen

     We count our adult chickens and guineas every night. With over a hundred up and coming chicks, that may fall by the wayside because of how overwhelming it will get. But for now, we know exactly how many adult birds are in each coop, and we know immediately when one goes missing. When one does go missing, it's an immediate man-hunt for a lost chicken.

      That happened last night. We have 13 bielefelders, five dark brahmas, five light brahmas, and six buff brahmas at the barn coop. In addition, we now have ten guinea fowl that roost in the rafters. I counted once, four dark brahmas. I counted twice. I counted a third and fourth time. Four dark brahmas. All of the chickens come back to their coop to roost regardless of where they are in the pasture. The only reasons why they wouldn't are if the hen is trapped, gone broody, or dead. In every case, we have to find her if at all possible before we shut everything down at the barn. With the predator pressure we have, it's not an option. I searched every paddock, the overgrown walkways, the inside of the barn, the goat pen, the store room, the tool room, out near the road, along the road, and even out into the west pasture behind the barn as far as I could get in the fading light. Even though we had all those other chickens and chicks in the coop to worry about, everything stops when a bird goes missing and we search until we either find it, or can't search any more. We go through this every time the count comes up wrong whether it's in the backyard coop or the barn. Whether it's a chicken, a rabbit, or any other animal we have. When it goes missing, the manhunt begins to account for it.

      Raising livestock has given me a new understanding of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep to go after and find the one. It sounds almost counterproductive when you first hear it coming from a more urban, non-rural setting. Why would you leave the other ninety nine seemingly unlooked after to go find the one? Because when you raise and breed livestock, you raise each of these animals from very young, if not birth. You know each of these animals, even their personalities. You care about each one of them regardless of what their final fate is going to be. You want closure if an animal is actually dead (and you want to remove the attraction for predators and scavengers to draw close to the rest of your animals), and if it is trapped or injured, the clock is ticking for you to reach and help it before it dies. In other words, you don't give up until you know for certain what happened to your animal. When Jesus spoke this parable to the people, a lot of them were from rural Judea and Galilee. They knew exactly what He was talking about. And the meaning of the parable is clear in that it is God who is the shepherd desperate to recover the lost sheep until it is found, and rejoicing when He does. God is the Shepherd that doesn't give up until the sheep is recovered, no matter how long it takes or what state it's in.

      After all that searching last night, we finally found the lost hen. She was broody in the inner coop's nest box. We missed her when we separated the adult chickens in the morning from the chicks. She never left the inner part of the coop. You want to bet how relieved we all were that she was safe and sound?