Chicken Challenges

It seems I have to start this blog entry with some very sad news. No one likes to be woken up by their husband at 6am while he is holding a Lysol wipe in his hand, hanging his head, but that is what happened a few weeks ago. Poor Baby Chick was murdered in our yard. She was pulled from her little rabbit cage and taken to chicken heaven with all the other farm animals. I am so thankful that Keith was observant enough in the morning while making coffee to notice something was wrong and took care of it before Taylor bound outside to “check for eggs.” I actually really cried, a lot, more than I thought I would, over Baby Chick. We didn't have room for her and she wasn’t mingling with the big girls very well, so it was a hassle to keep her locked up separate, feed her separate food and get scratched every single morning and night while getting in and out of her cage. Keith and I felt so guilty that we didn't take better care of her, getting her into a permanent home, but we did the best we could at the time. Thankfully Taylor had not noticed she was gone for a while. She was fun and beautiful and I wish I could have seen her grow into a big chicken, but as my grandma always said, “that is how it goes on a farm.”  Sadly, today Taylor was running around the coop chasing chickens when he stopped, looked up at me and asked, “Where’s the little one?” My mommy brain said a bad word and I asked, “The little one what?” even though I knew the answer; I just wanted to be sure I didn't give up any unnecsaary information. So he answers while holding a long tree branch in his hands, “The little baby chick.” Oh for God’s sake. My eyes got watery and I started to spin a story the best I could to shelter him from the worst kind of explanation. “Well, she went with some other baby chicks. Someone came and got her and she went to a new home.” He stood there, processed that, and then got distracted by a hen and ran after her. Phew. White lie for a little white chick and a sad mommy and daddy. Ugh.

Rest In Peace, Baby Chick, "The Little One."

Next topic: Dirty Roosters. I didn’t get or want a rooster on purpose. They are loud, sometimes very mean and I didn’t want any fertilized eggs. Sick. But who decided to come over and socialize (read: deflower) our girls? Our neighbor’s free-wheeling rooster. He is one lucky rooster, all 7 hens to himself while he lures them into his pasture under the fence. I’m waiting to see my hens asleep in the dirt trying to cool down while he is smoking a cigarette in the pasture, blowing smoke rings, giving himself high fives and Tweeting about how “busy” he has been. I will say this: he isn’t mean, he is quick to get “the job done” and while he gets the girls out to his pasture, it keeps them from taking gigantic chicken turds on our deck. I guess he can stay. But once in a while I will be taking in the view of our little ranchette, like a lovely sunset, and in the foreground there he is, just going at it with a hen. Thanks for that, rooster friend.

Tater and The Rooster. She doesn't try bite it, she just runs it almost to death. She just wants to PLAY!

When you decide to get an animal you don’t really take in to account all the issues that may come up. When we got Tater I didn’t realize I would be constantly searching for my other shoe or cleaning up dirty clothes she packs into the front room when we leave her alone. As with chickens, I was not aware of the amount of poop I’d be dealing with and I was also not aware of what a disgusting issue soft-shelled eggs would be. I remember my grandma feeding her chicken oyster shells to firm up their shells, but I never saw why. I have seen why. And it’s nasty. While this one chicken (she will remain anonymous since this has got to be embarrassing for any chicken) has since figured out how to solve her own problem, we were dealing with a “yolky water balloon” as Keith calls it, for a while. You’d be walking through the yard and run across what looked like a water balloon with a yolk and when you lean down to inspect it, you have to hold back barf. To give you more detail (as if you wanted it), the first time I noticed this problem was when I was outside with Taylor feeding the chickens. I walked along the fence line and noticed what looked like to me as a condom with a mandarin orange inside. I was furious! What neighborhood kids thought it would be funny to throw a condom with a mandarin orange in my YARD! I was ready to unleash some kind of unneighborly assault when I realized one, we don’t have any neighbors close enough to launch a mandarin-filled condom and two, cows (our closest neighbors/culprits) don’t have access condoms or eat mandarin oranges, so that’s when I picked it up. And then that’s when I freaked out and almost puked. A change in feed and just dealing with the issue has finally got us to a beautiful stage of “7 chickens, 7 hardshelled eggs a day.” Phew. That was icky.

While this is a harder soft-shelled egg, this is what it's like. Ick.

So, with 7 eggs a day, you’re looking at about 49 eggs a week, give or take some breakfast emergencies or dropping/breaking of eggs (note: we have a hen who always, ALWAYS, lays an egg on a glass-top table on the deck. I tried to put stuff up on the table so she would not get up there, but she would push it off and lay an egg on the table top. The egg would either break or get a pretty large crack so I decided to just put a towel up there for her. Problem solved. I get a nice egg, she gets a place to sit and sometimes if you’re lucky, you get to witness the laying of an egg. They stand UP and lay the egg! Whoa. That’s using gravity. It’s weird, but pretty awesome.) we have a lot of eggs!  After trying and tiring of eating eggs in all different forms for breakfast, I asked my friends if they wanted some. Wow-what a response! Now I’ve got a little side job of delivering ranchette-fresh eggs around town. I’m just thankful we can spread the love (literally love: those eggs are fertilized and good), and I don’t have to throw any out.

That is what life has been like lately with the chickens. They are so much fun and I adore them. Taylor has the best time with them, running out each morning about 10 times to check for eggs. We let them out of their coop around 8am, but they don’t lay an egg until around 9am after they get their morning “exercise” and meet and greet with the rooster. They are so funny as they run out, taking the same route around the garden beds and running to the slide that has some water in it to take a drink as if it was the best chicken liquor in the world. Then they eat some grass and slowly make their way into the pasture.  I do have two girls, the one that lays on the table and The Stalker, who like to stay on the deck and yell at me while I drink my coffee. The other 5 are out with their rooster. After they all do whatever they do, we can collect the 7 eggs until around 10am. Taylor even sticks his hand under the hen’s butt and steals the eggs so they don’t think they need to sit and hatch them. The hen is pretty pissed off, but she’s gentle enough just to make a weird chicken noise and let Taylor root under her feathery fanny for an egg.  It’s odd, I will admit, but it’s pretty sweet and funny. Then the squeal from Taylor, “TWO EGGS!” and we are off running into the house to put them in the fridge. And that’s my morning. Awesome, right?

Until next time…

Friendly Chickens

The egg the chicken laid under the Coug sign on our first Cougar Football Thursday of the season. It wasn't good luck, but it was still fun.

Momma Chicken Rancher and Mini-Chicken Rancher

After we got back from The Cabin in Idaho, Taylor  picked up this chicken and brought her inside. He missed his girls so much! But Dad did take very good care of them while we were gone.