Adventures with Mail-Order Chickens
(Page 2 of 2)
January/February 2008
Joshua Young
Like parents when first informed they will be giving birth to quintuplets, Allan and Alison were initially heady with their success, and then sobered by their impending responsibilities. The farm had no fencing, except for a wisp of barbed wire surrounding the garden plot. The house had neither screens on the windows, nor doors on the porch. Chickens soon ruled every roost.
RELATED CONTENT
Poultry are an all-natural, animated insecticide....
Flies may be more than a mere nuisance. They may also spread food poisoning bacteria like Salmonell...
A nitty GRIT-y guide to heritage breeds....
Trials of a chicken foreman raising chickens become more than a job....
More than 200 free-ranging chickens quickly devoured everything edible within reach. They stole dog and cat food from under the animals’ noses while the poor pets were trying to eat. Any human venturing outside was immediately surrounded, like St. Francis of Assisi, by scores of faithful followers expecting sustenance.
Between the chickens and the flies, we humans developed a feeding reflex of constantly waving one hand over our plates, while rapidly forking food into our mouths with the other. Conversation languished. Tempers flared.
I took to eating in my tent, from where I had an excellent vantage of the chickens as they devoured the countryside like locusts. Alison still enjoyed pointing out her Golden Polish to visitors, but they were getting harder to spot.
One afternoon I was reading in my tented sanctuary when I looked up to see a neighbor’s golden retriever galloping in slow motion amid the many chickens in the lower pasture. As he passed a particularly plump hen, he glanced sideways at her, caught her in his teeth and flipped her high over his head in a joyful cloud of speckled feathers. She was dead before she hit the ground, and he circled back to collect her body without even breaking stride.
The other catalog chickens never seemed concerned. The canny bantams flew down from the trees where they had escaped at the dog’s approach. The Golden Polish, with their impaired vision, had apparently been the first to get picked off by the dog.
Eight or 10 of the fancy chickens eventually made it into the freezer that summer. Allan made a coop around the chicken house and confined enough layers to provide a few eggs to sell. Egg sales almost covered feed costs.
When I acquired my own farm, I profited from my friends’ experience. I love to get my copy of the beautiful poultry catalog, and sometimes I make my selections sitting on the porch in springtime at night.
But never, ever do I drink margaritas while ordering chickens.
Josh Young recently wrote a second edition of his humorous guidebook Missouri Curiosities for The Globe Pequot Press. He makes his living on Long Creek Herb Farm, near Blue Eye, Missouri, from where his writings have earned him several state and national newspaper awards for humor.
Page:
<< Previous 1 | 2 |