I got this charming e-mail from a friend:
"My chicken is clucking loudly away outside making a big racket. I used to sometimes cluck back at her after she'd laid an egg, and then she would cluck again and we could keep taking turns (it's supposedly an evolutionary trait whereby after a hen laid an egg, the rest of the flock would have wandered away, and so she clucks, they cluck back, and she can re-join them). I did it because I thought it was cute but now she won't shut up. :-(
Plus I have 9 five week old chicks in the utility room making a mess until they're big enough with enough feathers to go outside and not need extra heat. I am obviously the engineer of my own demise."
10 comments:
I want one of your chicks someday. I have always wanted to keep chickens but we have so many cats in the neighborhood. One day when I have more time, I'm having chickens. And a dog too, just like my mother used to have, a cocker spaniel named Pattie.
I have two cats, and let me tell you, they do not mess with those chickens who would peck their eyes out. Dogs are the bigger worry, or foxes in the country. Think of all the fresh, yummy eggs!
I am jealous you have chickens..I have wanted them since we moved to this farm...fresh eggs, and they eat garden pests!! But hubby drew the line at 2 horses, and I suppose it's a good thing...
We DO have a pair of ducks that has chosen our pond to nest this year, it is very exciting.
To the chicken raiser - do you keep them in a coop outdoors? Do you have predatorial animals nearby?
Ellen, a woman down the road keeps chickens. You can buy this chicken run that is self-contained and so snazzy -- she just put it in the back garden and hey, presto, she has a chicken coop. She told me the name of it -- will try to remember. We live in an urban area and still she has no prob with them because this run is self-contained. My riding teacher long ago told me that chickens were the best pet to have.
There a couple of self contained \coops and runs - one is called (if memory serves, you need to double check this on google) Omelet, and the other is Eggloo (or maybe Egglu). Chicken people apparently love to pun.
Chickens are great pets! They recycle garden pests (as you noted) and kitchen scraps into eggs! They also put themselves to bed at night (when it gets dark, they just naturally go into their coops and perch). I have electric fencing around my girls, but I am deep in the country and foxes abound. In urban areas a fenced garden would work, or one of the self contained units.
Also, the birds will feritilise the ground they are on. You move those all-in-one coops around the garden from time to time, and you will see lush grass regrow in the places that the chickens were.
Egglu -- that's the name of the run my friend has. Thanks, chicken raiser, for the name. I don't think my friend knows to move the chix around for effortless garden fertilization; will have to mention it to her sometime.
I hope you're having a nice weekend - we managed to move the wretched chicks out to the barn today, and now the utility room really needs a cleaning. If those birds all end up being cockerels, I am going to wring their necks personally for all the work they've been. ;-)
Chicken raiser, I don't even understand the implication of what you say. if they are all cockerels, no eggs, right? then what do you do with them? Do you keep them or sell them or what?
If they are all cockerels, then: 1) they will eventually emit screaming crows when they see light at dawn, or at any other time during the night that strikes their pea-sized brains' fancy, 2) they eat lots of food, but you get nothing in return for it (unless you count the aforementioned crowing and complaints from neighbours), 3) one of them will spend all his time mating with the hens, and the remaining cockerels will fight and bloody each other for the right to be second in line, although the opportunity will almost never arrive, and 4) somebody then has to do the dang useless things in, and that somebody will almost certainly be me.
The last time I had to do the deed to some cockerels, I was about six months pregnant, and I looked like a voodoo woman, with blood on my maternity shirt. Then I ended up giving birth to a son who himself acts like a cockerel (up at the crack of dawn, we struggle with this even four years later).
Maybe it's just coincidence, but I'm not so keen to take any more chances. :-)
And you can't even give the bloody things away; everyone already has more cockerels than they want.
Keeping chickens is the latest cool trend! Read the article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024291/The-latest-way-save-supermarket-bills-Keep-hens.html
Post a Comment