Chickabiddies

Backyard Chicken Keeping

Most of my life I’ve been around chickens. And goats, and ducks, and rabbits, and… anything but cows. But that’s another topic for another time. My family kept chickens for eggs and meat. Also, because Mom and Dad were interested in heritage breeds and selling eggs in local farmer’s markets, we tended towards odd chickens. Keeping chickens in Alaska, or indeed any cold climate, is a factor in selecting breeds, as well. You might imagine that a fowl descended from jungle birds wouldn’t do well with months of below-zero temperatures, and you’d be right. Chickens with smaller combs are less likely to lose them to frostbite, for instance.

When it was just Dad and I on the farm, we were selecting our laying chickens with an eye to producing a rainbow of eggs. From browns to pinks, greens, blues, and the only thing we didn’t have were classic Leghorns for white. After I moved away from the Farm, I thought I’d left livestock behind me. When you have stock, you can’t go anywhere. Day in and day out, you have critters that are utterly dependent on you for food and water. I wanted to travel, to be able to spontaneously get up and go, and you can’t do that with stock. Pets, you can have a friend look in on, or send them to be boarded. Stock, you need someone who knows what they are doing, and these days that’s harder to find.

Bertie, the Easter egger

This year, though, life had a tectonic shift. When a friend lamented she had over-ordered chicks, I eyed the enclosure where a 1980s era hot-tub sat useless. We’d been told when we bought the house that it wasn’t working, and I’d looked into getting it running, before realising that it would cost as much to repair as to replace. Then, my husband was told that a hot-tub would be dangerous for him to use. We’d looked into chickens when the cost of eggs skyrocketed last year, and found that we could keep up to six hens in town, with no rooster.

Ginger (Easter Egger) and Belinda the Brave (Cuckoo Maran)

“It’s a big job,” I told my son. “They welded it in, and you’ll have to cut the tub to removed it from the enclosure.”

His eyes lit up. “I have an angle grinder!”

I laughed at his enthusiasm, let him have his head, asked him to save and recycle the decking and other materials for the coop, and stood back. He consulted me periodically, but more of the work and design were him than me.

Since we had the enclosure already, it was a matter of taking the tub and decking out, then filling in gaps in the fencing. It’s on a concrete slab, and in shade all summer, a really good thing in Texas. Cleaning it out periodically won’t be terribly difficult. It’s plenty big enough for four hens, which is what we have now.

He built a little coop inside the enclosure, which opens all the way across the front for ease of cleaning and checking nestboxes when they start laying next spring. It’s made of the cedar decking boards and scraps of plywood we had lying around. He used the steps which once led to the tub and now lead into the coop so they can get in and out at will.

Once we had the coop built, we looked at local stores for supplies. We built a feeder out of a bucket, the way Dad used to set them up to do self-feeding, but later we replaced it with a version that was less messed up than our first attempt! I wound up ordering a watering set-up that allows me to keep them watered for days before I have to refill it. I still don’t want to go off and leave them on their own… the enclosure isn’t what I’d call predator-tight. They tend to roost on top of the coop, rather than in it.

Silver (Silver-laced Wyandotte)

After we got the chicks, I took a while before giving them names, waiting to see what their personalities suggested. It’s the first time I’ve named all my chickens, and made them into pets. It’s a bit different having just a few, rather than scads of them running around the Farm. I’m looking forward to eggs, in due time. The other morning as I put on shoes (I’ll run around barefoot in all weather, but I’m not going barefoot into the chicken coop!) I was thinking about the power of responsibility.

We are empty nesters, now. The Little Man has flown off to a good job, with benefits, and as of yesterday, a deposit on an apartment. He is staying with family friends, and will move into the apartment in early January. With my husband’s health being tenuous, I’ve faced a future where it’s just me, working from home, and the responsibility of the chickens is something I anticipate keeping me on a routine. Get them tucked into their coop in the twilight. Let them out of it about sunrise in the winter, and give them food scraps to see them cackle with delight and chuckle back and forth while they scratch around to see what they’ve got. Make sure they have food and water. I can’t hole up in the house and marinate in my own sorrow if I have them to drag me outside into the sunshine. Sure, it will make travel more difficult, but at this time of life I’m thinking that wasn’t happening anyway. I’ve got commitments close to home. I’ll be busy here and keeping my mind fresh writing, drawing, and feeding the chickens.

A painting I did of one of my mother’s Icelandic hens, done a few years ago.