I learned a lot from chickens
… Chickens, who knew?
My husband loves eggs for breakfast. Wouldn’t it be fun to have chickens and have our own eggs?
Read some books and some articles.
Too much work. Too germy.
Not enough time. Too many problems. Too many predators.
Idea dies.
Here comes Spring. Ticks everywhere. More than any season before ever. In places that used to be safe.
Happened to read that chickens can eat 80 – 300 ticks an hour. Each. Hmmm,
we need chickens.
We need chickens.
We need chickens.
We really need chickens.
These ticks are terrible.
We need chickens.
Trailer the horses to trainer an hour and a half away. Trainer has chickens.
Everywhere.
Like last visit, I said … “We need chickens!”
Unlike last visit, when he offered, “Do you want some chickens?” I didn’t
immediately smile and say “Yes, but no thank you.”
Instead, I looked at my husband and he looked at me. “Do you have babies?” “Yes,
this mother and her 4 two-week-old chicks.” Again, I looked at my husband. He
smiled, I smiled, and soon we were rounding up chickens to take home.
Heading home … pulling a trailer with two horses, 3 dogs, and five chickens, we
were thinking we were crazy, again. (We’ve been known to be occasionally crazy).
Where are we going to put these chickens? We have no place to put them!!
Husband: “We can rig up something in the garage for awhile.”
Me: “Chicken poop and salmonella everywhere. Yikes. Let me think.”
I literally challenged myself to come up with a GOOD solution – not just a solution, a good solution.
Moments later, BINGO. “We can keep them in the horse trailer!!”
“What?”
“Yeah, we can park it near where we want to put our (then non-existent) coop. We
can put down the ramp, put down shavings, they can go in and out all day and we
can shut it up at night and protect them. It’s perfect.”
“I’m brilliant!”
And indeed I was. And I truly surprised myself.
This was our solution for several weeks and it worked absolutely perfectly. It
bought us time to secure a coop – another exciting story.
But first, the moral of this story …
Sometimes you just have to be a little crazy.
Sometimes you just have to go for what you want and trust the answers will come.
Sometimes you have to believe in your own creativity.
Sometimes a little extra work coupled with craziness can be energizing and fun.
You haven’t lived until you have had a chicken who was scared of you come and eat
out of your hand!
Benefits:
Social – everyone helped us build the coop
Social – we had conversations with anyone who knew about chickens
Social – we got to post cool pictures on Facebook
Exciting – we have watched the chickens change from being people-shy to literally
running from nowhere to be with us and following us around the yard – okay, yes,
it’s because we give them lots of treats, but still.
Added spark to my marriage – this is something we shared, it was spontaneous,
neither of us thought it was a good idea, but we did it anyway.
Creative – will save that for the coop story, ha!
Stimulating – I get to see them out my office window. It’s been six weeks and my
heart/stomach still do a little flop every time I look up and see them clucking along..
All of this and we don’t even have any eggs yet … (but we do have a lot fewer
ticks)!!!!
It’s hard to explain, but these chickens have somehow expanded our world.
Not a day has gone by that one or both of us haven’t declared (often multiple times),
with twinkling eyes and a crooked grin … WE HAVE CHICKENS! It’s become our
mantra, our way of expressing the delight in the unexpected and crazy.