Our flock, a history

A year and a half ago, my wife (or DW, in backyardchickens.com-speak) and I ordered six one day old baby chicks through the mail. At first, my wife, or Chicken-Mama as she will be referred to hereafter, was skeptical. But when the mailman handed her that little box full of tiny little cheeps, she was completely smitten, and she has been obsessed with our chickens ever since.





















I, on the other hand, am very mature and dispassionate about our flock, which is why I have spent a fortune on a pen inside our barn as well as an outdoor run, secured on all sides with both chicken wire and hardware cloth, covered inside and out, and all surrounded by an electric fence (which I have upgraded for more power, twice). Also, I have a baby monitor set up so that I can check on any strange noises from the house, and I go out to the barn at least once a night to make sure everyone is safe.

As anyone who is kept chickens will tell you, they are highly addictive. If you go to one of the many chickens-discussion boards on the Internet, you will find thousands of people obsessively discussing every obscure aspect of raising chickens as pets. People keep house chickens, some keep tiny little Seramas in birdcages, some built coops that are nicer than my house, and nearly all end up with far more birds in their flock than they ever intended to have.

In this blog, I will periodically give updates on the goings-on of our flock. We have a mixed flock of 15 birds, including 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Easter Eggers, a Jersey Giant, an Australorp, a Dorking, a Silver Laced Wyandotte, 2 Cochin roosters, a Cochin pullet, a Sebright cockerel, and an Old English Game Bantam hen (I hope that's 15!)

Along the way, I hope to share some of the things we've learned about keeping chickens. It's not as easy as it seems, and there are a lot of things to learn if you want to keep your flock safe and healthy. When we first got that tiny little box of chicks in the mail, I never would've guessed that in the first year we would have rushed one of our chickens to a veterinary hospital after she got hit in the head by a rat trap, nursed one of our hens through two weeks of paralysis at the hands of Marek's disease, operated on the feet of two of our hens when they developed bumblefoot (to be fair, Chicken Mama was in charge of the surgery; I was in charge of the freaking out about it!), "escorted" a possum away from the coop with the help of a shovel, and witnessed more ridiculous antics than I can count.