Chickens

We have had chickens on the farm since the beginning of our lives here. Now they live further away from the main hub of the farm, which has its blessings as there is less destruction in the gardens and no more unwanted offerings on doorsteps. The dark side of this is that we don’t always catch sight of the hungry hawks—or the ravens, eagles and raccoons—that have them in mind for lunch or dinner.

One year the ravens were actually waltzing right into the chicken house through their morning exit door and taking all the eggs. Every day. Ravens are very clever birds, so we had to find an equally clever strategy for us and our chickens. I did some reading and learned that ravens do not like to feel enclosed. With this in mind, we built a small box inside the entrance to the chicken house—to get in, the ravens had to go in the box and navigate a turn to find a way inside. The chickens didn’t mind, but the ravens were having none of it. A simple resolution to a challenging problem.

All in all, as farmers we feel that we’ve struck a good balance with the natural world. We didn’t want to try to rid our landscape of ravens; we admire the raven who can find a way into the henhouse. If any of them decide that fresh eggs outweigh navigating dark corners, we’ll have to use our wits again to foil this intelligent bird. Working with natural systems and not against them is one of our goals.

A few years ago, we decided to buy an incubator to try to hatch our own chicks. This is quite a procedure, and we have not yet perfected this method of providing new hens for egg production. We still seem to get a preponderance of roosters, who then race around the chicken yard bothering the hens and fighting with each other until they end up in the stew pot.

Raising chickens appears to be like sowing carrots—mundane, not highly regarded as a skill, and yet a huge amount of time is needed to take care of them. In the meantime, the hens go on doing what they do best: laying eggs, finding new spots to hide in the barn hay, searching all day for tender grubs in the grass and fluffing up their feathers with dust baths. The children love visiting the barnyard and watching the hens’ antics and we all appreciate what they bring us in the form of that perfect egg.

The perfect egg basket - made by Milo!