Let The Clucking and the Laying Begin

It's official.  For reasons that even I cannot fully articulate short of total insanity, we are getting chickens.  I know that it's official because yesterday the Missouri-built coop we had purchased was, with no small amount of fanfare, delivered to our yard.  Yes, I know that most people build their own poultry housing, but I care too much for any chicken that comes into our keeping to condemn it to an existence in anything I might slap together.  So we read, we researched, we shopped, we spoke to Murray the builder who resides and works in southern Missouri, and finally we purchased.

As is obvious from the picture, it is something a fowl castle with a built-in feeder, electric lights, an external egg removal access door, spacious run, laying boxes and roosts, along with wheels by which to move it around the property for a quasi-free-range existence.  The "quasi-" part a necessity because of the plenitude of predators in our neighborhood -- raccoon, possum, fox, coyote, bobcat, eagle and hawk just to name a few.  Those, and two only-occasionally behaved Welsh Corgis with an insatiable curiosity and an already developed taste for eggs.

The ladies of the manor -- two each of four breeds of laying hens -- are scheduled to arrive on or about March 5 having already reached the ripe old age of 20 weeks.  This, to leap-frog the close attentions required of the more usual purchase of day-old chicks, and move directly to the more interesting egg laying phase that commences at approximately 22-weeks.  Yes, I know this means missing out on that "cute and fuzzy" baby chick stage and all the bonding that no doubt occurs therein, but it also misses out on the heat lamp, the constant monitoring of temperatures, feeding, watering and cleaning up in our basement storage room.  It seemed to us a reasonable trade-off.

The birds themselves will warrant their own post.  Or perhaps I simply don't want to jinx their safe arrival by presuming too much right now.  They will, after all, be harried and well-traveled by the time they appear, but hopefully still alive.  Though I sourced them from an Iowa hatchery an hour or so away, when I suggested picking them up in person I was told that they would be coming from Texas.  Of course.  Perfect.  At least I will recognize the twang in their cluck -- and they in mine.

As to that still-unaddressed but larger question of "why", it is, as I indicated, hard to fully name.  It's true that as recently this fall I had steadfastly maintained that we weren't going to do it -- that there are perfectly adept farmers already raising chickens and selling farm-fresh eggs; that the better part of wisdom would rest in supporting them.  But here we are.

What nudged us across the line from refusal to enthusiasm certainly isn't economy.  Whatever the benefits of gathering and consuming fresh eggs from our own back yard, they do not include saving money.  The initial investment isn't...well...chicken feed.  No matter how prolific they prove to be, we'll never amortize the start-up costs of the imported coop and the well-traveled pubescent hens.  Neither we nor the chickens are likely to live that long.  Those, and the organic feed I have secured and the ground oyster shell and scratch.  And as enriching as I understand chicken manure can be in the garden, neither is the prospect of enhanced agricultural fertility enough of an explanatory incentive.  No, what we finally conceded is that we simply needed the experience -- the caring, the tending, the protecting, the gathering.  We have, after all, moved to the country to hone some skills of self-sufficiency.  There are certain incumbent obligations to the education. The eating, while not at all incidental to the project, is gravy.

So, now we wait for the chickens to make their red carpet appearance.  That, and we purchase the requisite heated waterer and a long enough extension cord with which to plug it in.  Chances are that they are going to want to actually drink something instead of pecking away at Iowa winter ice.