Photo credit: Zach Olson
Meet the girls – Fancy, Goldy, Blueberry, Greta, Ottessa, and Fiona. Yep. They all have names. And personalities too!
I really don’t know what motivated me to get chickens. I don’t remember ever really thinking about it…or dreaming about it….or envisioning it. I also do not remember my husband saying he did not want chickens. It just happened one day while we were still living on the ranch. Maybe it was just a natural progression consistent with living in the country, but my cousin, myself, and my daughter-in-law found ourselves at the local feed store one spring day picking out cute little baby chicks. I bought five, my cousin bought five, and my daughter-in-law settled on two, making for an even dozen. We brought them home and set up their temporary dwelling in the basement of my cousin, complete with bedding, feeder trays, a waterer, and of course a heat lamp.
They were messy little critters. We took turns caring for them. I did three days a week, and so did my cousin. Kass, my daughter-in-law rounded out the week by doing her part one day a week. It was a fair deal since she really only had two chickens.
They grew so fast! Before we knew it, they no longer remained in the confines of their brooder. It wasn’t uncommon to find a couple escapees or to at least catch one of them on the edge of the brooder as their curiosity grew in conjunction with their size. It was time to move them into something bigger, though we did not have a coop yet. Remember how my husband didn’t wan’t chickens? Well, he certainly did not want to build a chicken coop either. We settled on a vacant stall in the barn for the time being until my husband could fashion the ideal coop with his craftsman’s hands, his flair for design, and his relentless attention to detail. We enforced the bars of the stalls with sturdy plastic mesh to keep predators out and relocated the feeders, waterers, and heat lamp. The young pullets were happy as could be in their new space, and my husband was able to put off building that coop for a little while longer.
I loved looking after the chickens. With them in a stall just below our loft apartment, I did most of the care taking at that time. I’m really not sure why I enjoyed it so much. I think I just like looking after those that need tending to.
Chicken keeping is not for the weak. In the almost three years that I have had chickens, I have learned a lot. There are plenty of ailments, diseases, and mishaps to which they are susceptible. One evening after work, I checked on our little brood as I always did when I got home. Much to my dismay, one of our little hens had come to her end very unexpectedly. My heart sank. Our first casualty. I found her curled up in the feeder pan in the stall. There was no apparent cause. She had no injury, no illness of which I was aware, nor had she been picked on by the others. When I shared the news with my husband, he seemed to remember that she always looked different from the others – held herself differently. We chalked it up to a “failure to thrive” and humbly accepted our first disappointment in our chicken venture.
Wanting to maintain an even number of chickens, I found a little pullet for sale on line in a neighboring town, purchased her, and added her to our brood. We introduced her slowly, and she was accepted into the flock.
On another occasion, our over zealous Australian shepherd, certain that her purpose in life is to protect us from all things dangerous from “killer” squirrels to the ever threatening mailman, began growling in a very subtle but distinct manner in the middle of the night one hot summer. From a very sleepy stupor I hushed her, not really cognizant of the fact that her quiet by insistent growl was extremely rare at such an hour. I finally realized that she seldom if ever growls at nothing, especially at 3:00 in the morning. Aware that the only precarious victims of a potential intruder in the barn were my chickens, I sprang to my feet to open the front door just in time to see the raccoon smugly walking away from my girls’ sanctuary. He actually made eye contact with me as if to say, “What are you going to do about it,” which if he were human would have most certainly been followed by a sticking out of the tongue to accentuate his rudeness. NO!!! I called for my husband’s help uncertain of the damage I would find. I couldn’t look and asked my husband to survey the scene. I was dismayed at what he would find. “He got two. The rest look okay.” With a heavy sigh I entered the site where the atrocity had taken place. Feathers, a little bit of blood, and some very scared and upset chickens. Yes, he had gotten two. They lay lifeless on the ground, their necks broken and bleeding. He didn’t even try to eat them. He just killed them. What a waste! That made me even more upset. Absolutely nothing was gained from the ruthless act….except one thing. Experience. My husband and I now knew how thorough we had to be to keep predators out and our chickens safe. One oversight could be the demise of our flock. Our oversight was this: though the chickens were secure (and had been for weeks) in the vacant stall with plastic mesh filling the spaces between the bars, any gaps in the stall filled with wood planks, we failed to take into consideration the unwavering determination and craftiness of a predator. The neighboring stall was open as usual, and the raccoon took to digging from the open stall to get to the girls in theirs. Something we had not even considered – how easily a motivated trespasser could simply burrow his way into the aviary. Sadly, we did suffer one more casualty as one of the pullets was injured during the attack. The vet recommended euthanization as recovery from her injuries was unlikely. She was my grandson’s chicken, so I offered to get him a new one. We picked out a Wyandotte whom we were told would lay blue eggs. This was still quite early in our chicken experience before we learned that Wyandotte’s do not in fact lay blue eggs. She’s a beautiful chicken. She’s our Blueberry, named so in the midst of our ill-informed anticipation of blue eggs.
Eventually, the stall was needed for a forthcoming horse boarder of my cousin’s which gave rise to a call to action for my husband. We had to have a coop. There was an old announcer’s booth along side the arena, and we collectively decided to build the coop underneath it. A friend donated a large chain-linked dog run which would comprise the outdoor run of the coop. My husband and son got diligently to work to craft an absolutely perfect chicken coop complete with nesting boxes, a people door, windows, and a sliding door for the chickens to come and go from inside the coop to the outside run. The nesting boxes were even accessible from outside the coop, making egg collecting possible without having to enter the coop or run – a brilliant design of my husband’s. When not open for collecting eggs, the outside door to the nesting boxes was securely fastened to prevent invasion by predators. We dug down several inches and installed chicken wire around the bottom of the chain-linked fence to ensure no intruder could dig to gain access. We extended the chicken wire up the chain link as well. Wood planks were nailed along the base of the interior of the coop to prevent entrance from predators. Sturdy wire was attached to the top of the outside run to protect against raptors and climbing offenders. We provided wood pallets for roosting areas, and finally the girls were ready to move into their new permanent residence. It was a fun and exciting day, and my cousin would finally have her stall back!
Currently I have six chickens as the brood has evolved over the course of three years, and of course they moved with us to Loveland (but that’s a story for another time). I’ve learned a lot about the care and well-being of chickens and plan to share some tips and tools that I find helpful in my back yard chicken-keeping experience. So stay tuned and look for follow up posts. I would love to hear from you, and please share any chicken stories you may have in the comments below.
2 Comments
The pictures are wonderful! I grew up spending summers on my grandparents farm. Pigs, horses and chickens of course. We used to chase them and play hide and seek in their coop. How we didn’t get sick as children is a wonder to me we spent a large amount of time playing in that coop.
Beth, I love hearing from you! Thank you for your comments! What a wonderful childhood pastime! I really do enjoy my chickens and their different personalities. The only time I’ve actually heard of anyone getting sick due to potential exposure to chicken poop is a horse. She was exposed to discarded chicken coop waste and supposedly contracted salmonella from picking through the waste. I am very good at washing my hands after “playing” with my chickens, and I have shoes that I wear only in the coop. Thanks again for sharing!