On Feathery Friends

Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted chickens of my own. I remember visiting the local farm near our house, and my best friend, Amanda, and myself hunting for eggs to hide in our pockets, so that we could bring them home and try to incubate them. Once, I even brought home an egg to put under my pillow–thinking that the down of the pillow might be like a mother hen. Of course, it didn’t hatch, and after a day or two I lost hope and threw it out (thankfully before it could become a stinky mess).

Now, as a fully grown adult, I’ve finally gotten to live out all my childhood chicken dreams, and frankly, it’s been even more fun than I expected (when it isn’t totally heartbreaking).

This past summer I ordered chicks from Alchemist Farms, a hatchery that specializes in humane treatment of their chickens. I definitely could’ve gotten chicks for a lot cheaper a lot closer to home, but Instagram had worked its magic on me: I was sold by their beautiful rainbow eggs, careful breeding of their chickens for friendliness, laying ability, and health, sustainable practices, and kind treatment of their livestock. They have a really cool program where male chicks are given to community members to be raised as meat birds–a humane (and hungry-family friendly) alternative to how male chicks are usually treated.

The moment when I finally got to put in my (very carefully thought out) order of chicks was a bit like a dream. I’d ordered four chicks that were guaranteed to be female (these are breeds that can be sexed based on their feather pattern when they first hatch), and four mysteries. Chicken math is tricky: my hope was that we’d end up with six hens and two roosters, largely because if you have too many roosters and too few hens, the roosters will harass the hens, pulling out their feathers and impacting their laying. They also can become aggressive, both with each other and any human they perceive as an interloper. Even in the scenario that we ended up with two roosters, I knew that we’d ultimately probably have to kill one for the freezer, both to protect our hens and ourselves.

Before the chicks arrived, we got prepped by ordering a pop up brooder tent, chick feeder and waters, and a heat plate. I’d done a bunch of research on the best way to brood chicks, and so when the day finally came that our chicks hatched out of their shells (always on a Tuesday) I had it all set up and ready to go.

Then came the nerve wracking wait as the farm packed them up in their special little shipping box (complete with nutrient gel, water, and heat packs), brought them to USPS, and they got sent express across the country. I watched every step of the way, constantly refreshing the USPS page to see if they’d made it to their next stop.

The catch was that the USPS page never updated. For two whole nerve wracking days, the status remained the same: Processed at regional facility. Chicks can only survive so long in a shipping container, and so on day two, I started calling around to try and figure out if they’d ever moved beyond the facility in California. And then, just as I was started to get seriously worried, I got a call from our local post office: our chicks had arrived, with nary a status update!

I loaded H in the car (I can’t remember where the two other kiddos were, but presumably they were occupied), and we drove the gorgeous country roads to our local post office with our windows down. As we drove, I felt this deep swell of joy and sheer excitement. H was cute, gazing out the window as he chattered about chickens and flowers, and I was fulfilling a lifelong dream after what had been a grueling year. I’d felt a vast array of emotion over the past year, but pure, childlike joy was scarce.

Our post office is a tiny little building on a winding road, so we nearly missed it. As soon as we stepped in the door, we could hear the chicks peeping. The sound filled up the entire post office, and the person at the front desk grinned at us as we approached. “It always makes my day, having chicks in here,” she said.

H and I peeked in to make sure they’d all arrived in one piece, and happily, we saw eight little chicks doing all their cute little chick things. We ran them out to the car, buckled them into the passenger seat (and H into his carseat), and hurried them home to their cozy brooder.

I wish I could say that it was a smooth start, but right away, I learned that where there are chickens, there is drama.

One of the chicks–the smallest–was lethargic, not eating, and spent hours loudly alarm peeping–filling the entire house with its shrill warning that it was *not* thriving. The advice the hatchery gave was to try syringing in drops of egg yolk, and wearing the baby chick against bare skin, so I did that–syringing tiny drops of egg yolk into its beak every hour or two, and sitting with it tucked into my sweater (the only time it would stop peeping).

Slowly but surely, the tiny chick grew stronger. Slowly but surely, it learned to eat on its own. And slowly but surely, it began to thrive without my constant attention. But at that point it was very attached to me, and would scramble to the front of the brooder every time it spotted me nearby. However, the biggest, strongest chick–also a French Black Copper Marans–noticed and did not approve of all the extra attention. He started picking on the littlest chick–running at and viciously pecking him, until finally we decided to put him in chick solitary confinement (a box with a separate warmer). When we finally reintroduced him, he’d been sufficiently knocked down in the chick hierarchy to no longer be a bully.

My nieces–who are chicken experts–informed me that he was likely a rooster because of his bullying behavior–and it turns out that they were right! Both the bully and the bullied turned out to be our only two roosters (a slight bummer because they lay gorgeous, deep copper eggs, but also something I was very excited about, because they are stunning roosters).

Now, my plan all along had been to approach these chickens with level pragmatism. I mentioned before that Jordan and I had made a deal that if any of our roosters were aggressive–either to the hens, or our kids–we’d kill and eat them. I also know how much the entire rest of the animal kingdom really likes to have chicken for dinner (and I’ve had chickens get eaten while we were chicken sitting), so I knew that we were likely to sometimes lose them to predators.

But I hadn’t counted on how much I’d enjoy interacting with each of the chickens. Or how much work it would be to keep them healthy and thriving on a daily basis–constantly changing out their food and water after they scratched woodchips into each, making sure their heater hadn’t been unplugged by mischievous toddlers, changing out their bedding, and watching them for the various ailments chicks can suffer from.

And, I hadn’t reckoned with my own weakness of spirit: I couldn’t resist naming them. Holding with them. Taking photos of them.

So when tragedy struck, I was woefully unprepared.

When our chicks were a few months old (and on my birthday, of all times!), I stepped inside to put Winslow down for a nap while they roamed the little outdoor pen we’d set up for them. Usually, I kept them strictly supervised while out, but I figured they’d be fine for a few minutes while I raced in. I was already looking forward to sitting out in the sunshine with H after, watching them peck and explore the brush inside their pen.

But when I got back, it was to a horrible scene: our neighbors’ dogs had escaped from their pen, broke into our chicken pen, and killed five of the eight chicks (including Bramble, the little chick who had needed so much help in the beginning). The other three chicks were gone altogether.

It was honestly devastating. And at first, it seemed like there may not have been any survivors. But while searching for more sad, little dead bodies, I picked up a piece of cardboard and found a chicken hiding beneath–still warm and rustling and fully alive. Louisa May, now our sole Alchemist Blue.

Then, later that afternoon, we heard cheeping, and found yet another chicken who had hidden out in the dense, thorny bushes beside our house and escaped: Charlotte, one of our sage eggers.

We searched and searched for hours for the last chicken–Beatrix, the sassiest of the crew. We were just giving up when Jordan came up from the back of our property and found her waiting for him in the backyard. He carried her into the house, and I swear that chicken jumped into my arms with total relief when she saw me.

The three of them made for a very subdued flock that evening. It was clear that they were traumatized–they huddled together, barely making a noise, when usually they were a rambunctious bunch. We watched them closely for shock, but thankfully, after a few days all three pulled through and started behaving more like normal chickens again.

Honestly, I was traumatized too. It feels silly to feel so very sad about a flock of chickens, but it is still hard for me to even think about that day. And I still worry every single time the remaining chickens are outside unsupervised (I really hadn’t expected my chickens to contribute to my anxiety, but here we are).

But this wasn’t the end of our chicken worries–oh no. As the chickens had been getting bigger, Jordan had begun working on their coop. However, the process of building it ended up taking far longer than we’d expected (largely because we have very limited time between two full time jobs and three very small children). To make matters more complicated, our chickens were also fall chicks, and so needed to be indoors through the harsh, cold winter.

Even with only three chickens, the brooder was becoming very crowded. We also had Thanksgiving coming up, which we were hosting this year. We would need the back room that the chickens were currently living in as a guest bedroom.

Jordan and I concocted a plan: not only would we insulate our coop and run a heater to it, but we’d also keep it in the garage, where the chickens would be doubly protected from the cold and predators.

He worked double time to finish the coop, building it to fit neatly inside the back of the garage, with a run beneath it and then extending outside of a door that leads to the backyard. Meanwhile, inside, the situation was getting desperate. Beatrix had figured out how to peck the zipped that held their brooder closed. Sometimes, we’d come home after being away to find three feathery little faces watching us from the french door that led to the backroom. This was less than ideal for multiple reasons–namely that if one of the dogs pushed open the door, our chickens could easily become food for our own pets, and that while out, they did what chickens did best and pooped EVERYWHERE.

I’d regularly have to scrub down the entire room, working for hours to remove any trace of chicken poop from the linoleum (I generally hate linoleum, but in this case, it was a lifesaver). And that’s not even to mention the smell. Chickens are stinky creatures, and soon their stink had fully permeated our house, so that walking in the front door felt a bit like entering an unkempt barnyard.

Finally, after hours of work, Jordan finally finished it the weekend before Thanksgiving.

We moved the chickens into the coop, got them set up with their fancy new feeder and waterer, and watched them explore their new space with utter delight. None of them behaved much like chickens–they were extremely shy and flighty after the dog incident, and every time I tried to bring them outside to reacclimatize them, they huddled near me or the side door, desperate to get back inside. But it was still the first step toward them behaving like real chickens, and so it felt like a victory.

Simultaneously, I got to work reclaiming the room they’d decimated. I scrubbed down every inch of it multiple times by hand, mopped twice, and then got to work setting it up as a cute little office/playroom.

But the real victory was yet to come: you should have heard the excitement that rocked our house when we got our first egg. Beatrix, good old, sassy Beatrix was the first to lay.

We knew it was coming because she flew over the top of the coop and then dropped down into the nest boxes that Jordan had yet to finish. But she couldn’t seem to find the right spot–for a couple of days she was very restless, escaping from her pen to roam the garage. And then at last: one day I went out after she’d been sitting in the next box. I almost missed it, the egg was so small and half-buried in the straw.

But it was there: tiny and misshapen and the most beautiful green-gold color I’ve ever seen.

I brought it inside to cook up, and the kids each took one tiny bite of it.

Since then, there has been a celebration every single time we collect an egg, and these days, we get three a day. Louisa was next to lay, and we waited with excitement to see her eggs (a light blue color). Finally, a solid month after the others, Charlotte started to lay. Hers are a darker green, and sometimes have gorgeous specking across them.

I honestly think that with these three excellent layers, we could potentially have enough eggs for our family–we get about 18 eggs a week, if not slightly more. However, we’d love to be able to give them away to our friends, family and neighbors, and I really would like a rooster around to help protect the hens from predators (and to give us the option of hatching our own eggs when we’re ready for more chickens).

And so last week, we ordered another set of chicks from Alchemist Farms: eight more chicks. This time, we’ve ordered four Alchemist Blue hens, two more French Black Copper Marans (fingers crossed for a hen this time!), and two Welsummers, which lay gorgeous dinosaur-esque speckled eggs.

This time around, I’m trying to rein in my excitement a bit. I’m trying to figure out where the line is between savoring the childlike joy that keeping chickens brings me, and protecting my heart from breaking again and again when we inevitably lose them. If you find the balance, let me know.