Chickens were our “gateway drug” into farm animal life. The attraction was farm fresh eggs.
We started with Buff Orpingtons, then branched out into Ameraucanas, Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, Dominiques, and Wellsummers. Buff Orpingtons are hands-down winners for egg production, amiable personalities, and general ease of care.
Hens Only
We have a “no rooster” policy to keep our no-killing-chickens situation in hand. Hens + rooster = chicks, on nature’s timing; no rooster = no unplanned births, no overcrowding, no need to end the life early. Also, roosters are more aggressive than hens.
We had a rooster once, with whom we utterly failed to build rapport. Whenever Amy walked outside, he sprang out from a hidden place and attacked her. When this got too old, we exported him to a professional chicken farmer, to live out his days, or not, at her pleasure. She was marvelously condescending about our failure until he’d been there a few days. The hired man christened the rooster “El Diablo” and after a few months, El Diablo became soup.
Except for that one slip, so far, so good on gender ID at purchase; may the streak continue. (Before going in to the feed store to buy chicks, we sit in the car and re-watch an instructional “how to sex chicks” YouTube video.)
Our Chicken Relationships
While we continue to eat chicken (although less than in days past, for sure) we have a no-kill management policy for our henhouse. We can’t bring ourselves to harvest animals we care for, visit with, laugh at, and enjoy a family relationship with, day in and day out. The chickens live out their natural lives. When they die, if we are present, we attend the death with solemnity. After, we have a ceremony to thank them and bid them a good path on the next stage of their journey.
The chickens have a lush life: morning kitchen scrap “extras” when the crumble is brought out; free range in the afternoons for dust baths, bug hunts, and other matters important to the Imperial Mining Consortium; scratch before bedtime. In the late afternoon, the chickens wait for us, watching the door, watching us through the window(see the picture above!) for signs we are moving toward the door. They are confident in their belief that we exist to give them food.
Putting in the Time to Hand Raise Chicks
The first group of chicks got cuddled several times a day, with Amy holding them in her hands and running healing energy. These chickens lived long lives and grew to an unusually large size. We made the mistake of letting the broody hen in chief from the first batch raise the next batch, Ameraucanas, and those birds *never* were cooperative about being picked up and handled for health inspections, etc. So, we time new chicks to periods when Amy can hand raise them, a small time investment up front for ease of management over the course of the chickens’ lives.
All of the original gals passed peacefully, most of them at the ripe chicken age of 7 years old. In 2019 we brought in four new baby Buff Orpingtons to the bathroom under a heat lamp until they were old enough to go outside. They completed the Baby Chick Curriculum of “come to be picked up and handled,” “climb up and down the little ladder,” “perch,” “try not to poop in the water” (not good grades on that one), and “eat your special treats—sprouted buckwheat—so you can grow up to be really smart chickens.”
We established the “Buck Buck” training phase, wherein Amy makes chicken noises while feeding baby chicks their scratch snack in the late afternoon each day. This gives them a positive association of the Buck Buck sound with yummy chicken junk food (think, Twinkies, Doritos style—all carbs, immediate feel-good boost). Later, when they are Big Girls and move outside, they will come when called, as other chicken generations before them have learned to do. All we need do is make the Buck Buck sound and they come streaming toward us from wherever they are out foraging in the field. Very handy.