What came first, the chicken or the fox?
Today I was planning to write about our new chickens, and specifically on how completely awesome chickens are. That was the plan anyway when I woke up (to my alarm this time).
I have to admit the first time I came across a chicken in the backyard was before my husband and I got married. I came to visit him in Belgium and saw something moving around in the back yard. I went outside and saw two chickens and was totally terrified and ran back in the house. When he got me back outside and scooped one up and said “come on, hold it” I wanted to run all the way back to Boston.
But once you start to adjust to the whole chicken thing it really grows on you. A couple years later I was sitting with a friend in café in Belgium and we kept hearing these weird little chirping noises. Finally we asked the waitress what was going on and she told us there was a box of chicks behind the bar, and by the ways did we want any actually. So there I was an hour later driving home with two of them in a box on the back seat. I called my husband “you might want to plan to stop by the hardware store on the way home today.” I said. “Did you get chickens!” he laughing. Seriously! He always does this, knows exactly what I am up to. Is it really a good idea to marry someone that can read your mind? Probably not.
As the years have passed we usually had 2-3 chickens in the backyard. You typically get one egg a day per chicken, and actually that is a lot of eggs for a family of four. Over time the neighbours got to know that if they needed eggs to just ring our doorbell. Often after dinner parties our guests left with a half dozen in their bags.
The best part is that eggs taste amazing, as there is nothing like a fresh egg from a happy healthy chicken. There is also the satisfaction of realising you are just one egg short in a recipe – and then going to check the coop and finding one there. It is like a total miracle: “Abracadabra make me an egg right now!” Poof!
Another great thing about chickens is that they eat EVERYTHING. All the fruit and veggie scraps get eaten up quickly and happily. Also their favourite treat is spaghetti (my theory is they think they are eating really huge worms). I suspect you should not feed them pasta, but it just makes them so happy. On the evenings that they realised I am giving them spaghetti they run around in hyper happy little circles – which usually resulted in them ending up with spaghetti on their backs. So now picture chickens running around with spaghetti on their backs while trying to eat the spaghetti on the other chicken’s back. You get the idea.
This was my frame of reference last week when I decided that it was time to get chickens again. Two years ago we had moved into our new house, and getting here was somewhat of a challenge (more on that later) so once we got finally moved that was enough. But two years later I was feeling the pull of chicken ownership again. I looked out at our nice large garden and thought “but where are the chickens actually?”
I went online and found a second hand chicken house and bid on it and got it. Last Saturday my husband went to pick it up (as I was not allowed to walk for another 24 hours after that foot procedure). A little while after he left the phone rang. “Do we want chickens also?” he said “ Um, what, ok, sure why not.” I answered. Then he came home with two chickens who had been saved from a factory farm and needed a nice new home.
My husband went about setting up the pen, and the girls discussed names for these new family additions. The hens were let out into their new home and seemed very content. Everyone who came over the following days were introduced to the chickens and we soon had eggs from them. I felt at peace because now there were chickens in the backyard again.
And then I woke up this morning and came downstairs and looked out the window. ‘Oh my God the coop doors are open!” My heart was racing I ran out in the backyard chanting under my breath “no, please, no. please, no, please…” When I got to the pen they were gone. No chickens. A few feathers, that was it. A fox had taken them both.
I am not going to lie to you, I cried. I felt like we had a responsibility to these chickens and had failed. And then I thought about how I was going to have to tell my girls when they woke up. As I made my coffee I started a new chant “you are the grown up, you have to act like the grown up, you are the grown up, you have to act like the grown up.” Somehow I managed to pull myself together and they were able to deal with the situation and go to school in relatively good form.
After doing research on foxes and chickens I have to say I was pretty naïve about how to protect them. One particular seven minute video from a very animated Australia explained building chicken fences brought things into perspective (yes, you really can find anything online). Now I see that we have some work to do to keep the foxes away, as they are quite good at getting chickens. In essence we put them out in the back yard in the same manner as putting a plate of unsupervised cookies in a room of 4 year old. What did we think would happen!
So we will build the Australian inspired fence and then we will go and get two more chickens. Because really home is where the spaghetti covered chicken is.
Update February 2020: We now have 4 lovely chickens named Phoebe, Pickle, Pox, and Betty – and a really, really tall fence.