Off topic message

(To the two of you who read this blog, I'm having server trouble on another list I'm on, so I'm posting my latest comment here. If you're curious, I can give you a little background. We started discussing unusual plural forms, and digressed to a discussion on pet laying hens.) 


I agree with everybody who says that chickens aren't very hard to take care of. (Val says they're less work than a cat, and chickens pay their way. She says she has never killed a chicken from neglect, but many houseplants.) Chickens are not picky when it comes to housing. You could make something out of a garbage pail on its side. fasten a couple boards inside cut to a length that holds them about halfway up. Cut a good sized notch out of the lid (for a doorway), a couple 2" holes for ventilation and you're set. Keep it in the shade in the summer, under some piled up hay next to the house in the winter. A shop light with a screen over it will keep the place plenty warm. You want the light, too, in the winter. If they don't have enough hours of light, they stop laying. You can do the run two ways--permanent or movable. The latter are called chicken tractors. Anything you rig up that you can drag around will work. Once I built a frame out of PVC pipe and chicken wire, (and another out of 2×2's) but a kid's playpen will work if you have only one, maybe two birds. I staked some 2-foot chicken wire right on the ground outside the permanent run and wired it to the bottom two inches of the fence. Grass and stuff grew up through it and it works great.  Chickens are the kind of livestock/hobby that you can putter away at. They won't complain that their quarters aren't fancy.

Hens are allowed in town as long as the number is small, usually fewer than two dozen. And 24 birds is way more than you want in town anyway. Chickens are omnivores, and we have very little garbage to put into our compost pile. If you live in the country, predators are a fact of life. We're learning as we go, and we haven't lost any of this batch to predators, but we've lost plenty over the years.

Once you're set up, maintenance is easy. Chickens are very peaceful pets, and they are not hard on their facilities. Whatever you build will last a long time. Chicken feed is not expensive. If you bring food with you regularly, they will get very tame, as in underfoot. Summers Val and I read Sunday mornings out in the garden area, and we let the chickens out to run around in the yard. They hop up onto the chair arms and read along with us.