“FOWL LANGUAGE:
CONVERSATIONS WITH MY CHICKENS”
Part One
This is something I wrote about a year ago….which I am just now posting…hopefully better late than never!
The call from my local post office arrived as a message on my cell phone around 11:00 a.m. In the background I could hear the faint ‘peep, peep, peep’ and knew the good news had arrived. “This call is for Mary Brandenburg. Mrs. Brandenburg, your baby chickens have arrived. Please call us to let us know when you’ll be by to pick them up. We’ll be here until 5:00 this afternoon.”
Silly as it may sound, my heart leapt! I had been planning for this day for weeks on end. I was ready. At the age of 58 I was about to become the mother of 8 baby ‘peeps’: two New Hampshire Reds, two Barred Plymouth Rocks, two Silver Laced Wyandottes and two Speckled Sussex. I had poured over the hatchery web site (www.my petchicken.com) and picked our these girls specially: all large breeds, known to be docile and friendly, and not given to ‘flightiness’. All good breeds for the beginner, the web site assured.
Admittedly, I must say this was not my first attempt at raising chickens. The first time wasn’t so successful. In fact, it was pretty awful. Those chicks, ‘day old peeps’, also arrived by mail, ordered right out of the Sears catalogue. Twenty five Rhode Island Reds (not very imaginative….gives you an idea ‘what did I know?!), half boys and half girls (a straight run as in, “you get what you get”). They started their life with us in the kitchen of our old farm house in West Virginia. I was a girl from the suburbs of Washington D.C., and didn’t know much , or anything really, about raising chickens. And this was way before the appearance of the Internet…so information was harder to come by. Oh dear.
Their ‘brooder’ consisted of a large oversized cardboard box which had once held a washing machine. There they huddled under the light bulb fastened above on the side of the box. By six weeks, mid- Spring, or so, they were sturdy enough and feathered enough to be housed in a pen outside in the yard. In the meantime, my husband (at the time) built a sturdy chicken coop with a large run surrounded by, of course, ‘chicken wire’. Finally it was time for them to graduate to their permanent home up the hill from the house. All went well. Pretty soon the boys began to attempt to use their voices and they all grew steadily. By now it was July and was hot in the evenings. As I later learned, when chickens are hot they spread themselves around so as to not touch each other. Thus, they positioned themselves around the perimeter of the run, rather than to be ‘cooped up’ in the chicken house. And so they were just like that when I arrived one morning to feed and found 13 of them dead, even decapitated, laying along the edge of the chicken wire with the others walking around dazed and traumatized. It was truly the chicken killing fields. I never really knew what predator had managed to penetrate the run. From what I have heard it was likely a possum whose habit it is to kill and just move onto their next victim, not even bothering to eat the carcass. And as luck would have it, if I could call it that, whatever it was left mainly the young roosters.
This time, 30 years later, I was determined to create a better fate for these girls. I was committed to do whatever it took to create a safe environment for them.
Upon bringing the little ones home I carefully opened their well designed shipping box to find eight little one day old girls all standing at attention, peering up at me as if saying ‘reporting for duty’! I carefully placed each one in my daughter’s retired hamster cage which had been retrofitted for the purpose. Above a table in the basement I had hung a red grow light suspended from the overhead joists, and piled in clean pine shavings to be used as bedding. Attached to the side of the cage I placed a thermometer to monitor the temperature: 95 degrees for the first week and 1 degrees lower for each succeeding week until time to go outside. The week before I had ventured to my local farm store to purchase a waterer and feeder, outfitted them with Mason jars, bought 50 pounds of “Start ‘n’ Grow” poultry feed, and the pine shavings. I felt like a real farmer.
After carefully placing them inside their new home I watched and listened. One by one they recognized the chicken feed as food, and one by one each discovered the waterer, taking a sip and then raising their head upwards to swallow. For the next twenty minutes they wobbled around on their little chicken legs making loud, distressed peeping noises. I began to think, yikes, if they make this much noise at night we will never sleep as our bedroom is right above that part of the basement. However, before I knew it, silence took over the basement. All eight had fallen asleep cuddled together in a pile of soft chicken fuzz. For the next several hours I didn’t hear a ‘peep’ out of them!
That was just about a year ago, June 2010. In the meantime the girls have grown big and bosomy. It’s really quite startling how gorgeous and healthy they are! By December 5th they all had begun to lay…and today, June 2011, we are getting between 4 and 6 eggs a day! They are producing an income….I have my ‘egg ladies’. Why just the other day I deposited $100 cash in the joint checking account. The girls even have their own line item in our family annual budget.
Compared to what I didn’t know thirty years ago about raising chickens this past year I have learned a lot. I have to say that I am a bit proud of them, and myself.
So tomorrow morning I will be calling our local post office to them to expect a new batch of peeps…call me when they arrive!
CONVERSATIONS WITH MY CHICKENS”
Part One
This is something I wrote about a year ago….which I am just now posting…hopefully better late than never!
The call from my local post office arrived as a message on my cell phone around 11:00 a.m. In the background I could hear the faint ‘peep, peep, peep’ and knew the good news had arrived. “This call is for Mary Brandenburg. Mrs. Brandenburg, your baby chickens have arrived. Please call us to let us know when you’ll be by to pick them up. We’ll be here until 5:00 this afternoon.”
Silly as it may sound, my heart leapt! I had been planning for this day for weeks on end. I was ready. At the age of 58 I was about to become the mother of 8 baby ‘peeps’: two New Hampshire Reds, two Barred Plymouth Rocks, two Silver Laced Wyandottes and two Speckled Sussex. I had poured over the hatchery web site (www.my petchicken.com) and picked our these girls specially: all large breeds, known to be docile and friendly, and not given to ‘flightiness’. All good breeds for the beginner, the web site assured.
Admittedly, I must say this was not my first attempt at raising chickens. The first time wasn’t so successful. In fact, it was pretty awful. Those chicks, ‘day old peeps’, also arrived by mail, ordered right out of the Sears catalogue. Twenty five Rhode Island Reds (not very imaginative….gives you an idea ‘what did I know?!), half boys and half girls (a straight run as in, “you get what you get”). They started their life with us in the kitchen of our old farm house in West Virginia. I was a girl from the suburbs of Washington D.C., and didn’t know much , or anything really, about raising chickens. And this was way before the appearance of the Internet…so information was harder to come by. Oh dear.
Their ‘brooder’ consisted of a large oversized cardboard box which had once held a washing machine. There they huddled under the light bulb fastened above on the side of the box. By six weeks, mid- Spring, or so, they were sturdy enough and feathered enough to be housed in a pen outside in the yard. In the meantime, my husband (at the time) built a sturdy chicken coop with a large run surrounded by, of course, ‘chicken wire’. Finally it was time for them to graduate to their permanent home up the hill from the house. All went well. Pretty soon the boys began to attempt to use their voices and they all grew steadily. By now it was July and was hot in the evenings. As I later learned, when chickens are hot they spread themselves around so as to not touch each other. Thus, they positioned themselves around the perimeter of the run, rather than to be ‘cooped up’ in the chicken house. And so they were just like that when I arrived one morning to feed and found 13 of them dead, even decapitated, laying along the edge of the chicken wire with the others walking around dazed and traumatized. It was truly the chicken killing fields. I never really knew what predator had managed to penetrate the run. From what I have heard it was likely a possum whose habit it is to kill and just move onto their next victim, not even bothering to eat the carcass. And as luck would have it, if I could call it that, whatever it was left mainly the young roosters.
This time, 30 years later, I was determined to create a better fate for these girls. I was committed to do whatever it took to create a safe environment for them.
Upon bringing the little ones home I carefully opened their well designed shipping box to find eight little one day old girls all standing at attention, peering up at me as if saying ‘reporting for duty’! I carefully placed each one in my daughter’s retired hamster cage which had been retrofitted for the purpose. Above a table in the basement I had hung a red grow light suspended from the overhead joists, and piled in clean pine shavings to be used as bedding. Attached to the side of the cage I placed a thermometer to monitor the temperature: 95 degrees for the first week and 1 degrees lower for each succeeding week until time to go outside. The week before I had ventured to my local farm store to purchase a waterer and feeder, outfitted them with Mason jars, bought 50 pounds of “Start ‘n’ Grow” poultry feed, and the pine shavings. I felt like a real farmer.
After carefully placing them inside their new home I watched and listened. One by one they recognized the chicken feed as food, and one by one each discovered the waterer, taking a sip and then raising their head upwards to swallow. For the next twenty minutes they wobbled around on their little chicken legs making loud, distressed peeping noises. I began to think, yikes, if they make this much noise at night we will never sleep as our bedroom is right above that part of the basement. However, before I knew it, silence took over the basement. All eight had fallen asleep cuddled together in a pile of soft chicken fuzz. For the next several hours I didn’t hear a ‘peep’ out of them!
That was just about a year ago, June 2010. In the meantime the girls have grown big and bosomy. It’s really quite startling how gorgeous and healthy they are! By December 5th they all had begun to lay…and today, June 2011, we are getting between 4 and 6 eggs a day! They are producing an income….I have my ‘egg ladies’. Why just the other day I deposited $100 cash in the joint checking account. The girls even have their own line item in our family annual budget.
Compared to what I didn’t know thirty years ago about raising chickens this past year I have learned a lot. I have to say that I am a bit proud of them, and myself.
So tomorrow morning I will be calling our local post office to them to expect a new batch of peeps…call me when they arrive!
