Chickens are cute. They're fluffy. They're fun to watch. They eat bugs that would otherwise be crawling around your backyard and eating your flower or vegetable garden. They make you eggs. Some of them are so sweet they act like lap dogs. What's not to love? My husband could think of plenty of things not to love. When I first broached the subject of chicken-owning a little over a year ago, he was not as gung-ho about it as I was (that's an understatement).
I have always liked chickens. My grandfather had chickens when I was a kid. My uncle and aunt had chickens when I visited them in Wyoming (I still remember their beautiful little golden hen named Goldie. I took her picture while she was sitting on her nest.). However, my personal love of chickens was previously contained to inanimate chickens. I had chicken salt and pepper shakers, a chicken candle, a few chicken statues, and a chicken pitcher, but no actual chickens living in my yard. I live in the downtown area of my state's capital city. I enjoy the city life. I generally think of myself as a city girl with a little hometown flair. So live chickens never crossed my mind. That is, they never crossed my mind until I met The Chicken Man. I met him through work, where I found out he had chickens and where he brought a four-hour-old baby chick to visit us one day. I fell in love with that little fluff ball and wanted to take it home right then and there. Not long after that day, The Chicken Man donated more than a dozen chickens for us to raise money for a charity walk for which we were trying to raise around $5,000. A few of us went out to his house to see his 40 or more chickens. As I was driving home from The Chicken Man's house I decided this was a perfect way for me to raise the money I'd pledged for the walk and get a few chickens for myself. I just had to convince my husband.
At first, my dear hubby thought I'd drop the idea. This was just another hair brained idea I had that would never come to fruition. Then he tried putting obstacles in my way when I didn't forget about "the chicken idea." Can we have chickens? How many? We have to ask the landlord. I've said before that I'm a researcher. I didn't spend four years of college studying English and writing papers for nothing. I spent hours on the internet. I checked out books from the library. I talked to the landlord. Then one day he asked when we were getting the chickens. Actually, I may have said something about how we had about two weeks before the chickens were coming and the coop needed to be built. But who cares about those little details?
At first he was fine with the chickens. He liked them, but wasn't in love with them like I was. I'd go out first thing in the morning to open the coop and give them a treat. I went straight out to check for eggs and say hello when I got home from work. He would sit outside with me in the evening or on the weekends and watch them forage and sometimes he'd check for eggs. He wasn't so in love with them that when Erickson, our buff Brahma, went broody he thought getting eggs for her to hatch was an awesome idea. It's not that he hated the idea, it's just that he needed to warm up to it. He looked at me like I was a lunatic when I brought home seven fertile eggs for her. Then I got to hear about how we couldn't keep all of them. First, I convinced him that keeping one was okay (I really would've loved to keep three), then I had him up to keeping two, kind of. Now, we're keeping one and swapping the second one we were going to keep for a Silkie. Sigh.
Do you see the trend here? Well, besides my drug-like addiction to the chickens? Not long ago, I noticed my husband was almost always the one who collects the eggs. He gets them before I've gotten a chance. He's always telling people how great it is to have chickens and how relaxing it is to watch them pecking around the yard. During the work week, he lets them out when he comes home on his lunch break so they get some nice foraging time. He brings them treats everyday. And when our not-so-bright bantams decide to sleep outside on the perch when it's raining, he's the one who goes out and puts them inside the coop so they stay warm and dry (I say if they're that dumb, let them sit out in the rain. They'll learn or get wet.).
The scary part of chickens is they're so addictive that even the reluctant chicken owner gets sucked in. You can't help it. Now, my husband wants to move out to the country and start a chicken farm. I'm down with it. He says it's the only way I can get a goat.
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