{"id":136,"date":"2025-08-08T15:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T15:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/guruofthebeauty.com\/hot-talk\/10277-he-thought-his-hens-were-acting-strange-then-he-found-what-they-were-hiding\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T15:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T15:36:09","slug":"he-thought-his-hens-were-acting-strange-then-he-found-what-they-were-hiding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"He Thought His Hens Were Acting Strange \u2014 Then He Found What They Were Hiding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Ellison\u2019s mornings on the farm were always the same \u2014 a quick cup of coffee, then out to tend the hens as the first light touched the fields. But one chilly April day, something made him stop mid-step inside the coop. At first, he brushed it off, thinking maybe one of the neighbor kids had been fooling around. Then he reached down, and his hand froze \u2014 what he touched was warm. That meant something had been inside his coop that very morning\u2026<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"in_article\"><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/guruofthebeauty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/kling_20250808_Image_to_Video_The_chicke_1564_0.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n<p>Mark Ellison had been keeping chickens for over 20 years, and in that time he\u2019d learned one thing for certain \u2014 hens are creatures of habit. They lay in the same spots, at the same times, and their eggs look the same week after week.<\/p>\n<div class=\"in_article\"><\/div>\n<p>So when he stepped into his henhouse one April morning, coffee mug in hand, he nearly dropped it.<\/p>\n<p>In the corner nesting box, tucked neatly into the straw alongside two pale brown eggs from his Leghorns, were three greenish-blue color with purple speckles eggs. They were smaller than a chicken\u2019s, shaped more like a teardrop than an oval, and their shells were so smooth they seemed to shine in the dim morning light.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p>Mark frowned. No chicken he owned could lay anything like that.<\/p>\n<p>At first, he thought maybe one of the neighbor kids was playing a prank. But when he reached down, the eggs were warm \u2014 freshly laid warm. That meant something had been in his coop that morning.<\/p>\n<p>He checked the walls and found his answer \u2014 a gap in the mesh near the roof, big enough for a small bird to slip through. A few feathers clung to the wire, but they weren\u2019t chicken feathers. They were dark, with a faint iridescent sheen.<\/p>\n<div class=\"in_article\"><\/div>\n<p>That night, Mark set up an old trail camera in the henhouse, curious to catch the intruder. The next morning, he played back the footage \u2014 and there it was.<\/p>\n<p>A female common grackle, sleek and black with piercing yellow eyes, flitted into the coop just after dawn. She hopped into the nesting box, sat for nearly twenty minutes, and then left\u2026 leaving behind another inky black egg.<\/p>\n<p>Mark remembered reading about \u201cnest parasitism,\u201d where wild birds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds \u2014 sometimes even in chicken coops \u2014 hoping the unsuspecting host will raise their young. Grackles were known for it.<\/p>\n<p>Still, he wasn\u2019t sure what to do. He didn\u2019t want to harm the eggs, but he also didn\u2019t want to risk his hens abandoning their own. After some thought, he carefully moved the black eggs into a small straw-lined crate in the feed room, keeping them warm under a heat lamp.<\/p>\n<div class=\"in_article\"><\/div>\n<p>Eighteen days later, the first one hatched.<\/p>\n<p>The chick was tiny, naked, and gawky, its beak already opening wide for food. Two more followed, all of them hungry and loud. Mark fed them small insects and soaked dog kibble \u2014 the same way wildlife rehabilitators recommended \u2014 until they were strong enough to flap clumsily from the crate.<\/p>\n<p>By early summer, they were fully feathered grackles, sleek and confident, darting around the barnyard in search of bugs. One day, they simply took off, joining a noisy flock in the trees at the edge of his property.<\/p>\n<p>Now, every spring, Mark keeps an eye on that gap in the henhouse roof. He patches it when he can, but sometimes, he leaves it \u2014 just to see if any more \u201cmystery eggs\u201d appear.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p>Because as strange as it was, he had to admit\u2026 the sight of those wild birds he\u2019d helped raise swooping overhead on a summer afternoon was worth every bit of the surprise.<\/p>\n<div class=\"in_article\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Ellison discovers and raises unique grackle eggs from his coop, releasing them each summer, enchanted by the mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hot-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/popbriefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}