Author: Anna & Mark

I WISH I’D KNOWN HOW MUCH I CAN LOVE A
CHICKEN!!!



If I’d known this I
would have gotten chickens sooner.  Yes, I love their eggs,
their fertilizer, and sometimes even their meat (with great &
humble thanks).  But oh their personalities!!!



Chicken antics
brighten every day.  From the rooster chasing the hen, the
mad dash for a juicy worm & the tussle over who gets to eat
it, to the newly hatched chick discovering her first drips
dripping from a nipple waterer
. . . watching chicken TV
never lets me down!

Since I didn’t know
anything about raising chickens I made a few, uh, humorous
mistakes.  Winter was coming on in my southern, and thus not
too cold, North Carolina hometown.  Not knowing any better, I
was worried about my 7-month old chicks’ combs & toes freezing
overnight.  My solution?  Why bring them into the house,
of course!

I put up a roost in
front of a window, built a platform below to catch the drops &
drippings, and voila — I had some very happy chickens.  I’ll
never forget the night I watched a movie with chickens squawking
in the background.  Curious (the papa) went nuts! 
Flapping his wings, squawking right back at the “intruder,”
defending his territory — the hilarity still makes me grin!



I can’t believe I didn’t get pics of Curious
& Redhead (the mama) on their indoor perch.  The quirky
delight didn’t last long — a coyote had them for supper soon
after.  SOB!  At least the memories are still vivid . .
.



Chicken-love. 
Yes, I have chicken-love.  My chickens no longer live indoors
(just imagine the fumes . . . no room for deep
litter on that platform!).  I miss that bittersweet
experience, but make up for the loss with a larger flock, a motley
crew of chicken beauty.  And personality.  Now, today, I
know exactly how much I can love a chicken!!!

Edith’s answer to my
question about what she wish she’d known about chickens when she
first got started involved breeding:

“PeepPeep is 3 1/2 and a
full blood Buff. He has Fathered all of our chicks since he was
able to. In the picture he is doing his dance trying to win over
the Hens.

“To answer the question…….I wish I had known about inbreeding.
The Hen in the other picture set twice this Spring…..the only
problem is that we hatched out 4 chicks from both settings. Dud
eggs. We tried incubating also….all duds. Very sad to learn the
hard way.”

Although Edith’s
photos are beautiful, I’m not 100% sure I agree with her that
inbreeding is the problem.  It would be worth checking
several of the hens’ eggs to see if they were fertilized (maybe PeepPeep is
shooting mostly blanks?) and to autopsy the eggs that didn’t hatch
to see how far the chicks developed before they died.  I
provide more information on solving hatch-related problems in Permaculture
Chicken: Incubation Handbook.  Good luck on a better hatch next time!