Breeding chickens, communicating with them, learning about life and death | thoughts

Chickens are multifaceted animals. They are easy to maintain, save manure and eggs, don’t take up much space, and are fun to watch. Their upbringing teaches us about life and death. It allows us to participate more actively in our food cycle, without having to sacrifice another organism to do so. Chickens offer us an intermediate point: because it is possible to have small chickens in a small garden …

Chickens are multifaceted animals. They are easy to maintain, save manure and eggs, don’t take up much space, and are fun to watch. Their upbringing teaches us about life and death. It allows us to participate more actively in our food cycle, without having to sacrifice another organism to do so. Chickens offer us a compromise: Because we can have small chickens in a small garden, we don’t have to move to a farm to live a life more in tune with the natural world. We can have our own little farm right here on our urban plot.

However, for most people, the joy of keeping chickens remains a well-kept secret. Announcing that you plan to raise chickens in the spring is often received with enthusiasm among subcultures of animal lovers, organic gardeners, and urban gardeners, but there will be plenty of people who might find it a little strange. We have divided our lives into such large chunks, putting food in this corner, hobbies in this corner, and pets inside our heated homes, that being able to combine all of these aspects in one place is amazing. Prior to the 1950s, raising chickens in an urban or suburban garden was not uncommon, although, as E.B. White attests, raising chickens is a fad that comes and goes. After World War II, when science was the protagonist, from television to Sputnik and antibiotics, the ground chicken lost ground. Today we find it once again tapping and digging in the newest urban gardens around the world.

When I was a little girl, my best friend kept chickens in her backyard. I loved taking a basket to hunt for eggs. If there was a hen inside the nest box, it would scare me a bit. He wasn’t brave enough to reach under their soft bodies. He wasn’t brave enough to go to the pen either. But it was so much fun throwing food prizes at them and watching the birds fight and scratch.

Years later, she studied organic gardening and volunteered on an organic farm. One afternoon, I was given the task of feeding a new group of chicks some grass. My heart raced as I walked into that cozy barnyard-smelling shed and gave my twenty five-week-old chicks. Real chicken! She didn’t know it yet, but she was in love. I had chicken fever, although the symptoms were slow to come on.

Little by little, the idea of ​​raising chickens by myself was brewing in me. She wanted that relaxed farm lifestyle, but without the huge cost and huge responsibility of a farm. I wanted my kids to grow up knowing not only where tomatoes come from, but also eggs and other sources of protein. I still remember my childhood friend’s yard, and I wanted my kids (and me!) to know the pride and joy of collecting eggs from our garden. However, we had very little money and I wasn’t sure how we could buy a chicken coop, which would cost €350 or more to make.

I heard about a plastic chicken coop available in a range of bold colors, but decided I wanted to keep a few more chickens, not just the two that could fit in there. My goal was to have a more rustic chicken coop. I wanted to build it myself, but my rudimentary knowledge of carpentry stopped me, and although my husband gave me a power saw for my birthday to my delight, we didn’t know where to get the wood.

Then a friend of mine gave me a pile of wood they were about to throw away and inherited it with the house. Our husbands moved the woodpile to our backyard, where it sat for a month or two, named after the different spring snows. I stared at the jumble of boards, stacked and unstacked thinking about the design of our little chicken coop. I was determined to build our own chicken coop, no matter what Robinson Crusoe looks like.

I started to form the house in my mind. I looked for breeds of chickens that are easy-going, lay good eggs and are cold-resistant. You choose four races: Buff Orpington, Australorp black, Rhode Island one red Easter eggsAnd I asked a friend of mine to bring the puppies over to save me shipping costs. I managed to get another friend to lend me a dog crate to raise my chicks.

Once I was safely settled in, I did the math: My chicks would be fully fledged and ready to hatch by mid-May. Until then I had to build a little predator-proof house out of old wood pile and racks. Meanwhile, the four fluff balls are serenading me from their dog crate on the office floor as I write. We kept the cats out of the room and taught our daughter to handle them carefully.

In the end, we can not put it off any longer. While our three-year-old daughter played in the garden (I gave her a packet of carrot seeds to keep her entertained, and that spring carrot popped up in the most unexpected of places), my husband and I enjoyed our little chicken coop with a door for eggs and a nest. (…)

The presence of chickens in the garden dates back to the time when we were responsible for our own resources. It’s about being able to produce food in your own garden. It’s about being able to walk out the back door on a crisp spring morning, open the nest box door, and pick up a clean brown egg for breakfast. On the perfect day, I cook dark egg yolks with fresh tomatoes and some herbs also picked from my own garden. I’ve lost my childhood fear of chickens, but their innocent demeanor and beautiful brown eggs delight me in the same way they did when I first started raising chickens.

(…]Our actions affect our health, the health of those around us, and the health of the Earth. At this stage of development, we break the illusion that we are independent beings who can do whatever we want. Raising chickens is a vote for a more compassionate, nature-based economy. It is a lesson in connectedness, responsibility, and empathy. Developing a relationship with chickens is a clear example of how we are independent and, at the same time, interdependent beings, what Suzuki Roshi defined as “a full flash in the vast world of phenomena,” beings that fit together in the bosom of an immensity.

Register here In the weekly newsletter Ideas.