The Farm - Part Seven

Chickens - yes, it's as bad as you think.

Of all the animals on our farm, I will go on record to say I liked chickens the LEAST. Luke decided to raise chickens for his 4H project and like everything else on the farm, we knew nothing about how to buy, raise or care for our feathered livestock.

But being clueless never killed anyone at our farm. We did a bit of research and spoke to the resident chicken 4H expert and decided on starting with about a dozen white leghorn chicks. We purchased them at a very reasonable price at Tractor Supply. Additionally, we bought a large steel trough to use as a temporary container to keep them in until we could build an enclosure. We also purchased some chicken grain pellets and sawdust. The folks at the farm store trick you by selling you ADORABLE little chicks like you see in Easter commercials that are gentle and make tiny little chirping noises. When we bought them, they looked like this:

They grew fairly quickly and went from cute little fuzzy chicks to gangly (and ugly) pullets within a few weeks. They lost their peach fuzz and evolved into long necked birds that were half fuzz, half feathers with large talons and sharp beaks. I remember having to go to California for a conference for a week and when I got back, the transformation was shocking. They started to look like this:

Pullet

They quickly outgrew the steel tank they were living in, would occasionally jump out and we would have to chase them all over the basement. It was time to build a hen house and enclosure. We consulted our 4H leader once more for chicken coop designs. After some planning, we built a chicken coop enclosure out of plywood and screening complete with a little door to let them in and out. It even had a tiny little ramp. Honestly, it couldn't be cuter.

The rule of thumb for a hen house is 3-4 square feet of space per chicken. With a dozen chickens, ours was more of a McMansion size wise. We followed the plans for proper ventilation, nesting boxes and a roosting space. We fenced the entire coop in to allow them room to run around on the dirt.

Once the chickens were in their coop, Luke made sure they had adequate water and proper grain and all seemed well. Our initial purchase was for 12 female hens but two of them wound up being male roosters. I wasn't too upset with the idea of roosters. It would add to the ambience of a farm to wake to a rooster crowing as dawn arrived.

WRONG...The roosters crowed at dawn, then 8AM, 9AM, lunchtime, mid-afternoon and whenever they damn well wanted. There was no rhyme or reason to their crowing and what was once a novel attraction started to drive me crazy. I would yell at the roosters to shut up, which only made them even more vocal.

And then, there were the murders. One chicken killed another. And then another. We were down to nine, then six. No explanation - just bloody feathers. The 4H leader called this "pecking order violence". I suspected the roosters, but this was before everyone having cams set up outdoors, so we never really knew.

On top of crowing roosters, the smell of chicken feces was HORRIBLE. But at least, I justified the smell by the idea that we'd have eggs! Wrong again. During our short sojourn with chickens, we didn't get a single egg. 4H guy told us to be patient...that sometimes chickens don't lay eggs until they're several months old or may not lay eggs because of stress or some other unknown variable.

Between the murders and me yelling at the roosters, there was stress. I blamed myself for no eggs. I tried to be calm but to no avail. And then, the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was the rain. We had a solid week of rain that summer. No one wanted to walk through the mud, each thinking someone else was caring for the chickens. Once the rain stopped, I discovered that no one was feeding or changing the water for several days. I went out in the slop and opened the little door to free the poor creatures.

What happened next can only be described as opening the gates of Hades. The second the door opened, EVERYBODY came out at once, flying right into my face. One of the roosters pecked my hand (I still have a scar) so hard that I ran into the house all bloody.

I had enough. I told Luke the Great 4H Chicken project was over and that I was closing shop. I called the 4H leader and asked how to dispose of the remaining flock. He gave me a few options (If you're squeamish, don't read this next part):

• Take an ax to the head of each chicken. (A non-starter for me).

• Put my thumb under the beak of each chicken and push the head upward until I snapped the neck. (I actually tried this. I evidently owned rubber necked chickens....no matter how far I pushed back, the neck didn't snap).

• Grab a chicken by the head in the palm of my hand and spin it violently to break the neck that way. (All this accomplished was getting the palm of my hand pecked painfully).

In the end, I wound up giving the chickens to the farmer down the road who was more than happy to add to his flock. I ran into him months later and he told me that my chickens turned out to be GREAT egg layers. Go figure.

While we had some great successes with our farm, chickens were NOT one of them!