I was getting ready to start a new article about the pros
and cons of using a chicken tractor based on my own experience, but I felt the
need to share with you this story concerning a friend of mine who has been
yearning to raise backyard chickens.
This is a true story which took place this past Saturday.
Three years ago when we started this whole chicken hobby, my
girlfriend remarked how cool it was to have fresh eggs everyday without having
to travel to the store. She knew the
value of the fresh egg. Not the monetary
value, but rather the nutritional value.
We can talk more about that later.
Every time we saw each other she would ask about the chickens and how we
were managing. I would tell her how they
would follow us around the yard and how some would even come when called by name. I shared what kind of bugs they were eating
in the yard as well as egg recipes. She
would always say that she wanted to raise chickens but wasn’t sure how to go
about it. The conversation went on like
this until last week when by surprise she blurted that she ordered a chicken
coop from mypetchicken.com. I was so
happy for her and couldn’t wait to help her get started.
I arrived at her home Saturday morning to help put the coop
together. She had most of it
complete. Based on the picture from the
internet I was expecting this coop was going to be very large and bulky. It was a nice size coop designed to hold 4 –
6 chickens. Personally, I think 4
chickens and maybe 2 bantams. I knew
based on my experience that she was going to have to make some modifications to
it in order to keep it secure from other animals that would try to get in. The hardware fabric that came with the coop
was not a very good quality and the thickness of the mesh was not sturdy. She knew it would need to be reinforced and this
would be easy to do. This was my only major
concern with the coop design. Everything
else would work out fine.
So excited to move forward with this project we decided to
make some phone calls to see if there were any feed stores in the area that would
either have any chicks or be ordering any soon.
No such luck! Springtime is when
the majority of places order chicks.
Within a matter of minutes of checking some places out, she received a
phone call to check out a local farm that may have them. We got in the car and drove over to see what
was there. Luckily the farm had some
baby chicks along with hundreds of full grown hens and roosters and turkeys and
ducks and rabbits and guinea pigs! (You
get the picture?) They were everywhere
we looked as we walked toward the back of the property to check out the
chicks. The further we walked back the
eerier things looked. There was a
rooster walking around with bumble foot.
There was a pen filled with hens that had been de beaked. Boy did we see enough! Let’s get the chicks and split is what we
were thinking. The owner took us to a
trailer that housed doves or pigeons, I can’t be sure it was dark inside and she
brought out the chicks in a small wired cage.
They had NO water! My friend and
I looked at each other and questioned the owner about the age of the
birds. She said they were about 4 weeks
old. Honestly, they looked around 2 to 3
weeks old and one was the size of my fist.
She couldn’t tell us what hatchery they came from, only that they were
hens and dropped off to her farm. You
may be thinking this is the worst of this story, but wait, there is more.
Our heads were spinning!
We purchased, (rescued) 3 of the chicks and headed out. We waited until we got in the car before
speaking of the conditions we had just witnessed. So, we got that out of our systems and then
rejoiced over the fact that my friend was finally starting her chicken
hobby! She couldn’t wait to get them to
their new home where they would be living a spoiled life. On the way back to her house she was throwing
out names for each of them. Before we
knew it we were back and the girls were in the coop. So much better then a small wire cage. They were checking out their new surroundings
and rolling in the Koop Kleen. The
family’s dogs came out to check them out and smell them and see what all the
fuss was in the yard. The chicks just
kept on rolling. They were so happy in
their new surroundings. We stood there
and watched and everything was ok.
It was a long day and we decided to grab a bite to eat at
the local tavern. The food there is the
best! My friend locked up the dogs and
we headed out. We were there for about
ten minutes and she decided to go back home to make sure the dogs were secure
and couldn’t get out through the doggie door.
She came back and said all was well.
The next day I telephoned her to let her know that I would be stopping
by to drop off a book on raising backyard chickens. That’s when she told me that one of the dogs
escaped its confines and headed to the backyard to investigate further the
feathery little creatures she would be sharing her yard with. The dog is about lab coon hound mix but
relative in size to the lab. She
apparently put her paw through the very fine hardware fabric making an
opening. I think you can figure out the
rest.
So upset but still determined to raise hens she got a
little smarter. Even though she
introduced the chicks to the dogs, the curiosity was just too much for one of
them to handle. The first thing she did
was visit the local hardware store and she purchased a heavy duty wire fabric
and immediately installed it on the coop.
The second thing was she secured the entire coop to a thick piece of
plywood. This would also protect the
coop from any predators that would try to burrow under the coop and make entry
that way. So far so good! She again got on the phone and made some more
phone calls to find more chicks. We
would not be returning to the other farm because of its condition. She was able to locate a reputable chicken
farm and was able to purchase 4 chicks at age 3 months. The third thing she did was she worked with
the dog and slowly introduced her to the new yard pets. So far, everything was going well. We did not want a repeat of the previous
tragedy.
All in all I thought she was going to give up, but she didn’t. There is a saying that says, “you don’t know,
what you don’t know” and this situation was not anticipated. This incident in my
opinion may have been prevented if the manufacturer of the coop used stronger
material. It’s a tough lesson what
happened but, I assured her that on her pet chicken journey she will discover
ways of raising her hens that will work while others will not. She is ready for the challenge. Now she has a beautiful secure coop with 4
healthy happy hens in it and at this point, the dog is accepting the new hens
and her curiosity is subsiding.
If you are referring to the crazy chicken lady, I've been to her "farm" once. NEVER will I go there again! The conditions of the animals are just heart wrenching!
ReplyDeleteVery nice story. This sort of thing has happened to everyone. I got smarter too. My coop is tighter then Fort Knox.
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