Loving the Chickens

It has been a week since the masacre.  I don't know how the hell soldiers ever function in life after seeing combat.  I have PTSD from a couple of dead chickens. I go out every morning with a sick feeling that the others will be dead.  I hold my breath as I open the door to their little house waiting for a sign of life.  So far so good.

 Found out from some of my cool chicks who raise chicks (bad I know) that the culprit was most likely a weasel.  Who knew those little fuckers can fit through a one inch hole?  Chicken wire is now seeming like a dumb name for that wire we have all around the coop.  It should be dead chicken wire.   My chicken babes inform me that we should have used hardware cloth.  I guess I should have read the chicken manifesto after all.





How does this work with a chicken tractor though?  I had envisioned my girls digging in the ground and eating fresh grass and bugs whilst being protected from all the critters that want to eat them. Ahh, for that I should get electric poultry netting.  Ok, so at this point I am going to be shelling out about $1,000 for my chickens just to be safe.  Probably another $300/year for chicken feed.   If I get my eggs down the road from my neighbor, I could buy about 500 dozen eggs for the same amount of money and not have to worry about a thing. 















Prince has decided he is going to build a weasel trap so he can trap and kill the weasel.  He is completely obsessed with the demise of this weasel.  The kid is scaring me a bit. Basically the trap is a Have A Heart Trap wrapped in paper with some dangling meat.  My Chicken Babes told me I should have set a trap with the dead chickens, but that was just too gross.  

Every night we set the trap and every morning Prince rushes out to see what he caught.  I am panic stricken thinking about what I am going to do if  he actually catches anything, because what the hell am I going to do with it?  Shoot it with the nerf gun?

One night before bed I look out the window to see if there is anything in the trap.  My gaze is met with the evil red glow of two eyes.   Shit!  It has happened.  My adrenaline is raging.  I now have 20-20 vision and could probably smell bacon cooking a mile up the road.  I call the husband who is back in the city.  Not sure what he is going to do and he is none too happy that I woke him up.  I grab a broom as I quietly go outside.  I guess I will sweep the weasel to death.  My heart is racing like crazy as I approach the trap.  The murderer is not moving.  He is getting ready to fight.  I shine the flashlight on the trap.  It's the cat choking down some chicken meat. 

When the husband arrives over the weekend, he sets two traps both with meat and marshmallows.  He swears by the marshmallow bait.  This is what we found the next day.  Probably not our murderer, but definitely a threat with a sweet tooth.  The husband talks a good game about killing animals, but he can't do it.  This guy was relocated to kill someone else's chickens.

It's been a week since the chickens arrived.  The husband managed to build them a chicken tractor that allows them to peck at the grass  during the day and go into their little house at night.  It is called a chicken tractor because technically you are supposed to be able to move it around to new ground every few days so the chickens have fresh bugs and grass to eat, but this sucker weighs about 500 pounds and doesn't move so easily.

We manage to push the tractor up by our blueberry bushes thinking the chickens can eat all of those Japanese Beetles that are devouring my blueberries.  I wish I hadn't been preaching the benefits of organic produce for the past several years because I would love to spray the shit out of those little bastards and watch them drop dead on the ground. We are determined to do things organically though  so we spend hours every evening shaking beetles into a bucket of soapy water where they soon die. You have to do it in the evening when the Japanese Beetles are too tired from a day spent eating  blueberries and fornicating to fly away.  The husband loves this pastime.

But I digress.   The hens are not so keen on the beetles but our cute little rooster gobbles them up.  Yes, I did say cute little rooster (insert cock joke here).  Unlike those bitch hens, he is a sweetie who likes to hop over and let you pick him up.  The boys love to hold him and kiss him which kind of grosses me out, but it does give me joy to see them experiencing their first popcorn bowl moment on the farm. It makes me feel good about the decision to move them up here.

Yesterday I went up to check on the chickens.  I see the two big hens and the cute little rooster pecking away but I don't see the two smaller hens.  I get very excited thinking they are in their nesting boxes producing some delicious eggs for me.  I gingerly walk around and open the lid of the nesting box just as James Dean comes running up the hill.  We are both greeted by a horrific sight.  The two little hens are dead.  Blood and feathers are everywhere.  I want to vomit and James Dean is apoplectic.  Did I mention he is a REALLY sensitive kid?

The screaming soon brings the other two kids running up the hill to see carnage.  Now I have three hysterical children to console and a blood bath to clean up.  This isn't exactly the popcorn bowl memory I had wanted, but I am sure this is the one that is going to stick in their heads for the rest of their lives.  Good job Mom!

Luckily two of my friends come over with their kids and they help me push the chicken tractor down the hill and flip it on its side.  After 20 minutes, the three of us figure out how to work the staple gun and wrap the entire chicken tractor in chicken wire and staple it down.  The thing now looks like a maximum security prison, but nothing is getting our surviving chickens.  I now have a new respect for the two big hens that are left.  They must have put up a good fight to stay alive.  Who knew that life on the farm would be all about death.

The Chickens are Coming

What kind of assholes borrow an expensive convertible from a family member, load up five chickens into the backseat and drive five hours home without having a clue how the hell to take care of chickens?  Yeah.  That would be us.

Since the husband is still having to commute to his job three hours away every week, his mom kindly offered to lend him a sweet little convertible she hasn't been driving, so he doesn't single handedly start another war in the Middle East trying to supply his pick up with enough gas to make the long trek. When he got to his mom's, he called,  "My mom is going to give us four of her new chickens and a little rooster."  "Oh," I say.  "That sounds great."

 Really?  That sounded great?  The husband had just gotten back from a business trip to Europe, was stressed out and going to drive a Mini Cooper full of chickens five hours to our house and then try to figure out where the hell we were going to put them.

The husband is one of those guys who takes the bull by the horns.  I applaud him for that, but sometimes the situation is not that well thought out.  I on the other hand tend to think things to death before I make a decision, but every cliche city girl who moves to the country needs to email her doubting city friends photos of herself holding a basket full of fresh eggs surrounded by her beautiful heritage chickens, so I didn't question the impulsivity of this action.

The boys and I were so excited when he pulled up around 6pm with our little egg factories.  The car reeks of chicken shit and there are feathers everywhere, but we quickly decided we would each name one of the chickens since there were five of them and five of us.  When we try to get the roof down to take out the cage, we realize the roof doesn't work.  We will have to take them out one by one and put them into our makeshift chicken coop.  "How do you pick up a chicken?" I ask the husband.  "I don't know. You are the one who was supposed to read the book."  "The book" is this PhD thesis his mother emailed me the night before about how to raise chickens.  I have three crazy boys and at the end of the day, I don't have the time or desire to read a 200 page book about the origins of chickens in North America.  I need a 4 minute youtube video.

I go to the shed and come back wearing huge leather work gloves like I am going to be handling a wild falcon instead of a little chicken.  I grab the feisty one and she goes crazy trying to get away but I manage to get her into her temporary house.  The whole while I am thinking, "How the hell are we going to reach into the nesting boxes to collect eggs every morning with these crazy bitches pecking at us like something out of a Hitchcock film."  I am terrified.  I hate chickens.

Time to go watch some Youtube videos to see how to build a chicken coop.

A few years back, a friend of mine inherited the bowl she and her family used to eat popcorn out of while watching TV when she was a kid.  Recently, she accidentally dropped the bowl and it shattered.  She was so distraught over the loss of this bowl that she started visiting yard sales and scouring ebay for an identical bowl.  I didn't really understand why she was so attached to this bowl. Her childhood was less than storybook and I don't think I have ever heard her say a nice word about her mother.

The episode made me think about my own childhood and the metal bowl I would eat popcorn out of every Sunday evening while watching "The Wonderful World Of Disney."  I then realized it wasn't the bowl, but rather what the bowl represented; a happy memory from her childhood where the family is all gathered together contentedly munching on some popcorn. I decided to ask some other friends if they remembered their childhood popcorn bowls and discovered that everyone had vivid memories of said bowls.

This blog will be about my sometimes half assed attempts to give my children the same wonderful memories we all have of our popcorn bowls. If all else fails, I do have a special bowl that is only used to serve popcorn.