The Simple Chicken
I knew a few things about myself before we started homesteading. I mean I recognized a few aspects of my personality that would be obstacles to traditional homesteading. I knew that I didn’t exactly have a green thumb. I knew that I would have to develop greater upper body strength to chop wood, and I was pretty sure I would have a hard time eating any quadruped I had fed and cared for.
I honestly believed that my pig-headedness, problem-solving skills, and work ethic would help me overcome the first two. As for the last part, I decided we would just stick to chickens. Birds with such little brain definitely didn’t tug at my heartstrings. I would never become attached to simple chickens.
It was pretty much fall before we settled in and we weren’t about to start with chicks this late in the season. We still wanted to get started right away. Bad enough we weren’t in the traditional farmhouse we had pictured and there were no surviving gardens; we had to at least incorporate animals. My father-in-law gave us 6 hens to start us off. His flock was large and on the older side, but he assured us they should lay.
It became clear within the space of a few days that the chickens were in full molt. They looked mangy, were super skittish, and definitely were not laying. About two weeks in I mentioned to my husband that they might be destined for the stew pot if they were not going to produce. Our then 2 ½-year-old, who had named them all the first day, was outraged.
“We don’t eat chickens!” he exclaimed.
My husband and I blinked at him. “Honey, you ate chicken last night.”
He looked so appalled I thought we might have sent our already picky eater down an early path to vegetarianism. He quickly rallied and put his hands on his hips and declared, “ We do not eat OUR chickens.”
Well, this seemed like something we should have anticipated. We discussed it a bit after he went to bed. The chickens did seem to be helping with the tick population, so we decided this crew would be our pest control crew and we would get heirloom dual purpose birds in the spring that we would NOT let the lad name.
Over the weeks the girls, named Stumpy, Bucky, Lady, Whitey, Sassy and Big Red, started to fill out and settle down. On the lad’s first day of “school,” they gave us our first egg. He was more smitten than ever.
And slowly, they started to grow on us as well. Big Red and Stumpy were clearly ancient, didn’t take much to the free-range lifestyle and prefered to hang around the coop. Useless and we told ourselves the would definitely be headed to the pressure cooker if it wasn’t for the lad. Bucky was our best forager and was clearly going to need to be kept out of any gardens we built, Whitey was the most vocal and the would-be rooster, and Lady was your quintessential buff orpington, simple and friendly. They were good tick eaters and eventually some of them started laying eggs.
Then there was Sassy. I named that one because on her first day of free ranging she decided to go after the dog and then after the lad. A well placed cowboy book lifted her into the air, and she was told in no uncertain terms she would be cooked if she tried it again. She cocked her head to one side as if she was listening…and never caused a problem with the lad again (the dog got it a time or two if she got too rowdy). It soon became clear that Sassy was the real leader and had loads more personality than I ever expected in a chicken. She loved to free-range, loved the rain and exploring the back meadow. I thought we had lost her several times as she was always the last one to come home at night. She would come, however, if I called her. She was also the first to follow me around begging for treats. She kept me company if I was working outside, luxuriated in a dust bath next to the garden and snacked on bugs I tossed to her, and was the most tolerant of the lad.
She always had a bit of an attitude, and made integrating new members into the flock a little tricky at times, but a stern talking to always seemed to be all it took. She responded as if she understood every word an blew me away time and again. You couldn’t have paid me to cook her and I became ridiculously protective of her even once she stopped laying. She definitely didn’t fit what I had believed chickens to be like.
I realized homesteading would be even tougher than I thought…