The other night at open house, the mother of one of my students introduced herself by saying, "So you're the chicken lady? I'm a chicken lady too!" I had told my class about my chickens the first week of school while playing the common icebreaker activity "Two Truths and a Lie,' but I had never really categorized myself as a "chicken lady" before. "Yes, I guess I am," I replied.
It all started with one hen, Mrs. Cluckington.
This was never supposed to be my hobby, but I guess now I am a bonafide "chicken lady." I have nineteen hens and two roosters, and I know more about chickens than I ever imagined I would.
My husband acquired Mrs. Cluckington from a friend of his, without even asking me first! She was broody, and came complete with a nest of eggs that were expected to hatch in about 21 days. Now I am usually a mellow wife, but when my husband called me to tell me we had a hen sitting on a nest of nine eggs, and that he was about to set her up IN OUR BATHROOM to sit on her eggs for the next three week, I literally said, "If I get home and there is a chicken in my bathroom, I will turn around and leave, and I will not return until my bathroom is once again a chicken-free space!" So he set her up in the garage instead. I made it clear that this was HIS chicken, and that the forthcoming chicks would be HIS as well. Fast-forward a few weeks, and those eggs never hatched, so my husband ordered a batch of 24 day old baby chicks (all female) to be delivered the next day. Twenty-four chicks! I was not exactly pleased. It seemed like overkill if the intention was to replace the nine unhatched eggs, but when my husband sets his mind on something, it's hard to stop the trajectory of it.
Now Mrs. Cluckington was an ornery hen. The original plan was to let her raise this batch of chicks, but when he picked them up from the post office and we saw how tiny and cute and delicate they seemed, we got nervous and decided not to integrate them with Mrs. C until they were a bit older. If i'm being honest, seeing those adorable babies, I started to soften right then.
So, once we took her off of her nest and broke her of her broodiness, her true colors really started to show. We could get nowhere near her! She wouldn't go into her coop to sleep at night! She would basically sneak in to nibble her food and drink her water when we weren't looking. If we did see her in there, we would sometimes try to close the door, but she always noticed and ran out before we could! She would free range during the day, and at night, she would roost high up in one of our trees. Everything went on like that for quite awhile.
Weeks passed, the chicks were old enough to start free ranging, and everything was going well. The chicks roosted voluntarily in their coop each night, and Mrs. Cluckington continued with her rebel routine. She started to warm up to us slightly, enough to meet my husband in the driveway when he got home from work, and give him a long drawn out complaining noise until he'd go back and refresh her food and water. Then she's wait till he walked away to go in and feast. It was quite amusing, really. She still wouldn't let him touch her or get too close, but they had clearly started to bond in some odd way.
Then one day we noticed what appeared to be some sort of infection in Mrs. C's left eye. I start researching how to treat an eye infection for a chicken. People are online talking about "...gently rub erythromycin ointment in the chicken's eye three times a day" and I'm thinking "Who the heck has these cuddly chickens? And what do you do if you literally can't get within 20 feet of your 'pet?' " So I'm picturing trying to build some kind of spray gun and spraying it towards her eye from a distance! It seemed like an impossible situation. In the meantime, we were worried about the infection spreading to the chicks. We decided to try to quarantine Mrs. C while we tried to figure out what to do. It was a comical scene watching my husband try to bait her into her coop with treats, and sneak up to close her in. I think it took a good 30 minutes, but he finally managed.
Poor Mrs. C didn't make it one night. Early the next morning, a short while after my husband left for work, I heard it all go down. I woke up to a pack of coyotes yelping and squealing in my backyard. I ran out, turned on floodlights, slammed doors and made as much noise as I could! It worked. They ran off, but not soon enough. When I walked over to her coop, there were only white feathers left. I was hoping she was up in her roosting tree, but she was not. She was meant to be free, I guess, and I still feel bad that she had to meet her end that way. But she was the start of it all. Standing in the backyard in my nightgown and bare feet, having just rushed out into what I presumed to be a pack of wild coyotes without regard for my own safety, I realized they were not just my husband's chickens, they were mine too. But I figured I'd just keep that to myself for a little while longer.
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