That’s it. This year is the year! I’ve had it.
It’s time to get some birds.
We’ve wanted to buy chickens for several years but never felt like we could. We live inside city limits, cats roam the neighborhood, and it’s quite a bit of money upfront.
However, with the rising cost of eggs, we decided to go ahead and get some chickens. Hens specifically.
We’d take a rooster, too. That way, if we ran out of meat, he’d be around, you know…for other purposes that I’ll not mention.
Anyway, we eat lots of eggs. Eggs go in more recipes than you’d imagine.
Recipes like fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, omelets, boiled eggs, quiche, and egg sandwiches. Not to mention egg and potato skillets and egg salad. And there’s no telling what else eggs go in.
We looked into purchasing a chicken coop and were instantly deflated. The cheapest one was four-hundred U.S. dollars. And being the least expensive, it was also the smallest. It could only fit FOUR chickens. And since chickens refuse to guarantee their production quantity, we’d likely still be buying eggs. Oh, how I wish I could build. I’d contrive a coop that would hold thirty of those birds.
We saw another option that could hold up to ten chickens, but this one cost (are you ready for this?) eight hundred U.S. dollars. God help us. And you know that they’re not built the best they could be.
I don’t want to pay mucho dinero for a piece of flimsy particle board held together with staples and glue.
Oh well. Such is life.
In 2011, I decided I wanted some chickens. I didn’t want to raise them from chicks. I didn’t have that kind of patience. So I went to a local swap meet and bought some already-raised chickens. I swapped hard-earned cash for six hens, and get this, TWO roosters.
I was as green as…an abnormally green thing.
I loaded up those chickens in the back of my Yukon and headed home. A couple of days later, I noticed one of the roosters wasn’t looking well. There was blood and missing feathers. Come to find out — ROOSTERS DON’T GET ALONG. Especially when there are HENS nearby. And I had six hens.
I’m telling you, I was green as…that green thing.
Nobody told me. How was I supposed to know? That chicken salesman knew an easy sale when he saw it. He saw that I was green and I was holding beautiful green money. He was happy to get rid of those chickens. He knew they weren’t good laying hens.
Sometimes you learn the hard way. My ignorance caused a rooster to have a miserable life.
Until raccoons and chicken hawks stopped by for a little social call. His misery was over rather quickly.
I came home from work that fateful day and the chickens had gotten out of the sorry excuse for a chicken coop I had made.
In the middle of the field was a perfect circle of chicken feathers. In my parent’s yard was a perfect circle of chicken feathers. Over by the coop, a battle had been fought, and the chickens had lost. I don’t know if it was a raccoon, chicken hawk, fox, or a joint effort between the three.
I had left the chickens in the coop that day and was going to let them out when I got home.
How did they get out? Good question.
My grandpa had an old shed on the edge of his field. It had one open side, which faced toward his house. Long story short, I took a wall off one side of it and put it on the side that was open so that the opening faced toward our house.
I took that wall down, literally. At one point, it was held up by two walls and a post on the opposite corner. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a construction worker. But the shed is still standing. So I put it together really well.
Except fill in all the gaps, which caused a chain of events that included losing all my chickens in a single day.
That was the end of my attempt at farming.
But it’s that time again. No, not the time to fail at babysitting chickens. It is time to bite the bullet, buy a chicken coop, and get some good laying hens. And fill in all the gaps.
It’s time to go to the local Tractor Supply.
to those who need to try again,
– Caleb
caneymountainblog.com 