Part 3?
I'm back. And you know who is back with me? FIFTY EFFING CHICKENS.
Because when you can safely handle 5 backyard pets who produce deliciousness for you/your close family & friends, the next step is clearly to tenfold that into profit. Right? RIGHT?!
This February, the farmface and I decided to go full throttle on chicken nonsense after reading Joel Salatin's Salad Bar Beef and Pastured Poultry Profits. (Upcoming stories? We also have pigs.)
Long story short, we rotate our chickens after our cows have recently grazed pasture. This functions as a means of natural fertilization, pest-control, and egg producing awesomeness. Sounds pretty cool, right?
And it is.
But also, I don't know what I am doing.
Phase I - BABY CHICKS ARE ADORABLE.
To start, we purchased 25 Australorps chicks (hand-delivered from a sweet friend from Medford.) These ladies grow up to be black chickens (and they look like baby penguins as chicks,) and they're super friendly. Farmface and I were somewhat on the fence for ordering chicks, when suddenly the "if you want them to lay this season, we need to get them now" announcement was made. So just like the first time we got chickens, the decision was made suddenly with a "we have a few hours to prepare!" notice. Chickens love unpreparedness.
So we had 25 adorables in our kitchen in a cattle trough.
Within roughly 1-2 weeks, we got our second batch of chicks...this time: Rhode Island Reds. Equally adorable to look at, way less adorable in character.
But what's 25 more chicks once you've committed to a giant flock?
We put them in a second trough in our kitchen.
Sidenote: You know how many cattle troughs is too many in a kitchen? Any. Any cattle troughs is too many. We had 2, and they were filled with 50 chicks. That's 48 too many. (because: can you imagine 2 baby chicks just hanging out next to you while you do dishes? Awwww!)
Phase II - Chick-ish-ens: The Teenage Months.
Fast forward past cute baby chick time (aka one month) and move on to awkward bird-teen years. They are sorta like people, they get funny-looking and obnoxious and stinky and...wait...exactly like human prepubescent years.
So after they were way too big and stinky in our house, farmface built a super cool Chicken-Lawn-Mowing house, and we moved the chicks one by one to their new home.
This thing has ALL the amenities for high-class-chicken life.
-Half Tin-Shelter
-Half Chicken-Wire-Breezeway
-24 Hour Access to Grass
-Fresh Hose Water
-Continental Breakfast
-Heat Lamp
This thing is like a Chicken-Holiday-Inn-Express. And we moved it bit by bit on our lawn daily for fresh grass for the birds and fresh fertilizer for our lawn. Win-double-effing-win.
After ~3 weeks of front lawn mowing awesomeness, it was time to move them into the backyard.
The original plan was to have Farmface and I move the house slowly allllll the way around the yard. Since this requires super-baby-step-motion, and the chickens are stupid and like to get their toes in the way, this plan sounded terrible to me.
What was my brilliant less-toe-smashing plan?
Move the chicken mower to the backyard, then lure chickens with food. In my imagination, I was going to be the pied piper of chickens!
Look, in hindsight I realize how idiotic this was. But you don't understand. They were my babies! They knew I was their food provider, and they always seemed to follow me around. Plus, remember my 5 pets? Those ones TOTALLY follow me around!! So why wouldn't 50? It was going to be SO EASY.
Not convinced it was going to be "so easy," the Farmface insisted we do it together. He and I were going to do this as a team! He was fairly certain it was a two-person-job.
But farming is an interesting thing: sometimes other farm duties take over, and individuals are left to fend for themselves.
He was busy, and I? I WAS THE CHICKEN-PIED-PIPER!
hahahahahahahahahaha... Impossible.
I am fastforwarding past my awkwardness in moving the Holiday-Inn-Box up and over our stairs of doom. Awful.
I tried tricking the chickens into eating their way to the backyard by every means possible, but they would not go up stairs, around fences, or down gravel roads. Then, this:
I successfully trapped 7 via the sneaky-country-mouse-method.
Let me just tell you, each time you grab a chicken, they scream bloody-fucking-murder...or at least 90% of them do. Then they settle down instantly like it ain't no thing. Verdict? Chickens have personalities, but they're also super dumb.
Towards the end, when only about 3 remained, we noticed one looking mighty-roostery with a fluffy tail and a big comb. He was totally being a cock, also. And no, I don't mean "hahaha he's a rooster!" I mean holy shit, what an asshole. He was running all over the place and let me tell you, this was not the last time he caused issues with us before he "disappeared."
And he wasn't the only rooster. Within a few weeks we discovered 4 of our chickens were actually roosters. (That's a story for another day, though, involving terror, murder, and a post-wedding-rooster-feast.)
Phase III - Coming Soon! (Chickens Get Cooped for the Field!)
