Free range eggs! Organic, fresh chicken for dinners! How great does that sound?
I grew up in the suburbs outside Detroit but have lived in
the country for a while. At the start of my country life, I made the mistakes
city people make when they move to the country. Most of these errors were
pointed out to me by experienced country folks but I did what most city people
do when they’re given advice by country people—I ignored it. The errors were
most obvious when I started raising chickens. The up side to these blunders is
that they make for good stories at parties and added a lot of humor to my
latest novel, Unfinished Business.
Free range eggs! Organic, fresh chicken for dinners! How
great does that sound? To someone who’d moved from the city and has no idea
what’s involved in raising chickens that sounds fantastic and like a whole lot
of fun. After deciding I wanted to raise chickens, I bought some books, went
online, and talked to people. Things I learned: how much space each chicken
needs, what type of heat lamps are best to keep chicks warm, and the best
atmosphere for nesting boxes. One piece of advice I ignored: put the nesting
boxes in a cozy, dim corner because hens prefer darkness. That simply didn’t
sound right. Surely the hens would appreciate my thinking of their happiness
and providing them with a cheerful coop.
After weeks of preparations, I brought the chicks home from
the feed store and every morning, afternoon, and evening I checked on the
adorable baby birds. I fussed over them and let myself be charmed by the silly
peeping and the ridiculous way they fall asleep standing up.
It wasn’t until the chicks’ sweet yellow fluff had been
replaced by brightly-colored feathers and the birds were old enough to venture
out into the yard that my errors became apparent and I learned a few things that
are, in retrospect, painfully obvious.
Chickens can and will fly. Right over the fence. My
perfectly measured yard? Abandoned. The birds’ favorite place to spend the day
was my herb garden, scratching and digging up all the tiny tender seedlings I’d
carefully planted earlier that spring.
Something else I learned is that hens really do prefer dim
lighting for egg laying. My cute tin nesting boxes, bolted to the wall of the
coop in the pretty morning sun–empty. Instead of filling the boxes with eggs,
the hens flew off, far away from the coop in search of cozy corners. Where did
they find them? In my garage. On top of the trash bins. Or in the barn. Way in
the back by the lawn furniture I’d bought at a garage sale years earlier and
kept meaning to refinish.
The harshest lesson? Roosters really are mean. They look
cute in cartoons and are pretty perched on fences, crowing at sunrise. But
they’re mean. They don’t appreciate the hard work of taking care of them and
they don’t want to be friends. Given the chance, they probably will hop up and
scratch you with their spurs. It was this lesson that found its way into
Hayley’s story.
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