Chicken Keeping Lessons

Reader Contribution by Heidi Nawrocki
Published on January 12, 2015
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When people would tell me how fun chickens were, I’d think to myself – they’re chickens! They can’t be THAT fun! But, boy was I wrong. And happily so, I might add. We have now had our chickens for seven months. We got 11 chicks in late April/early May and were gifted 10 hens from a friend moving out of state. The hens adapted quite quickly and hardly took a break from laying. We enjoyed the littles, as we call them, in the house for a few weeks. We have lost two over the summer – one of our chicks from reasons unknown and we had a hen wander off a few weeks ago. I suppose there’s hope out there that she might return, but it’s not looking good.

I’ll be the first to admit that before we got chickens, birds totally freaked me out. Like, I had visions of the movie “The Birds” in my head. It helped me tremendously by getting the littles. One little in particular, my dear little Barred Rock Amelia, became my therapist. She would roost on my shoulder while I walked around the house. And she only tried to peck at my eye once! I think she might have been enamored with my eyelashes, but luckily she missed. She is still a great little pullet. She has started laying, so whenever we find a pullet egg we can safely assume it is from her. And she’s still my therapist. A few weeks ago, I had a rough day. I went out and she came running to me. I picked her up and hugged her. It made me feel better. If that makes me weird, then so be it.

While I initially wanted to have a flock of Buff Orpingtons, I am glad we have a motley crew. We have Black Australorp, Speckled Sussex, Buffs, Light Brahma, Silver and Gold Laced Wyandotte, Red Sex Link, Barred Rock, New Hampshire Red, and an unknown white brown egg layer. Most of them have names, such as Butter the Buff Orpington. We also have Fish and Gucci. And Rex Roo (in the photo).

It really is no joke that they are easier to take care of than cats. We let them free range, and I just need to let them out in the morning and put them in with some feed at night. I occasionally go out and give them scraps or treats, but otherwise we see them all over the place hunting bugs.

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