I my wildest dreams, this was never a question I would have envisioned hearing from my six year old. Oh how it makes me laugh that we have chickens, but how much fun they have been. We did have a nice even dozen hens, however, we experienced our first chicken loss while we were out of town for New Years' and are down to 7 chickens now.
I am quite sad to have lost my spring gardening buddy, Henny. She was at the top of the pecking order, and one of our original five. She would stay right by my side last spring while I was working new beds and planting, ready to gobble up any grubs or other bugs that I uncovered. The other chickens were too fearful when I would turn over a new shovelful of dirt, but Henny was right there next to me with every move I made.
Last May we added eight new chicks to our bunch, of which, seven survived. The new batch of chicks like to walk on the wild side. Last August they decided that they were not fans of sleeping in their coop, they preferred to sleep on top. Fortunately we did not have any predator attacks during the month or more that it took to get them moved inside the coop with the other chickens.
However, their "wild tendencies" continue on, which if not for the fact that we live in a neighbhood would be a good thing. Industry has been hard at work breeding natural instincts such as sitting on their eggs to produce chicks, otherwise known as broody. out of chickens. A broody chicken gets in the way of a large scale egg production operation.
We currently have two of last May's chicks that have recently gone broody. Now if we had a rooster, this would bring about a cute little batch of spring chicks. However "Big Ben" our "rooster" turned out to be a hen and is currently one of the broody hens. Big Ben has been a rebel from the beginning. I am not sure "he" (as we still refer to her) has ever laid an egg in the nesting box. She preferred hiding out, first, under my tomato plants in the fall and then when they disappeared, she moved on to the large cedar trees that line the edge of our property.
At some point this winter, she rejected those trees and has moved to the cedar on the other side of our neighbors fence, right next to their carport. Fortunately, they have not been too upset with her daily visits. But now we have a new problem. The chicken that has insisted in laying her eggs in the neighbors driveway is now broody and wants to sit on her nest in their yard all day! Oh my, the problems I never expected to be solving in my lifetime!!
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