Check out Joyce Vances Substack - She is a former federal judge who provides brilliant legal commentary but also is a poultry fan and posts frequently about her feathered lovelies. The photos are enough to make you want them all!
I love chickens! I love their shapes and sizes and different colorations. I have been tempted since moving here to have some but that’s the one thing I worry about too... can I keep them safe? Also, I don’t have any helping hands to clean out the nice warm and dry coop, which I don’t have. But I am an artist and have decided to be content photographing, drawing and painting them. So that’s that. Your piece was so entertaining. I loved it and can’t wait to see how the chickens become part of your creative process maybe:)! Your children will be delighted!! Oh yes... you are getting chickens:)
My husband has dozens of them. For 3 months out of the year, my garage smells awful because he uses one of the bays as a brooder. The eggs are nice but if my husband ever died, my entire flock will be given away and I will return to buying store-bought eggs....not sure if I'm pro or con, but misery loves company so join us in chicken farming.
I will NOT get chickens. I know people say, “Never say never.” But I really, truly (italics, highlight, bold that, please) cannot imagine a world in which I would have them. I briefly flirted with urban homesteading (though it never got past a few tomato plants and raccoons in my compost pile because I had to move), but I always knew I couldn’t be all in if it meant keeping chickens. Your Mr. Rooster anecdotes are the stuff of my nightmares. I grew up around chickens too in Bangladesh, and I was always amazed at how dumb they were. Pecking each other poop to check for bugs?? Why?? Whyyyy?! I’ve had lots of friends who had chickens, and they talk about having to do therapy for them because they were eating each other’s eggs. I have enough drama in my life without chicken drama. Hard pass for me. 🙅🏻♀️ (But I did enjoy this post; it made me actual LOL.)
Oh absolutely loved this compilation of memories, so well connected and meandering. On that note: I held a chicken this year for the first time, my sister-in-law has a coop and I was so excited but then realised that chickens smell, a lot. Like how bad is that stench?
An uncanny collection of chicken relevance! Some friends of ours just got backyard chickens and my daughter is in love. My Mom had chickens for a while and had one that loved to be held, so I loved the story of the one that asked to be picked up! Sometimes I think I’d like to have chickens, if only to have happy eggs. Those mass chicken farms make me so sad.
Chickens have been a delight for our family and especially our children. They have a good place to practice care for a living creature and to encounter and mourn death when it inevitably occurs.
Free ranging hens are so fun to watch but the way they rip up any semblance of landscaping is atrocious and the poop left on the patios and such is something I am SO OVER.
We’ve had vicious toddler-attaching roosters who have had to be “re-homed” (aka turned into rooster soup by someone other than me because my kids would never forgive me for taking the life of their beloved but very mean pet).
This very week we are witnessing one hen gone broody hatching her babies and it’s so darn exciting. The chicks are really the cutest.
The multi-colored eggs are aesthetically very satisfying not to mention delicious and wholesome enough to eat raw in my morning coffee or afternoon smoothie.
When I was younger, I traded my ‘clean the chicken coop’ chore for ‘make breakfast twice a week’. Best deal I ever made; I hated cleaning out the muck. But are you getting chickens? Yes, it sounds like it 😅 maybe someday I’ll have small humans convincing me that cleaning up chicken poop is worth their delight
Yes, you should! I miss my chickens so much. They were so funny and demanding and quite affectionate. But even in my urban setting they weren’t safe from furry (opossum and/or raccoon) oppression and they dwindled. We just couldn’t bear the heartache of losing them again.
I was laughing out loud, especially about that mean rooster. When I was a kid we had one named Bagawk (Like the sound of a chicken, you know? Wow, I've never spelled name out before, I don't even know how!) and I always took my dog out to the coop with me because she would chase him off for me. I love watching my kids with our chickens. They learn responsibility and the rewards (eggs!) of hard work, and other important life lessons ("Mom, why do the eggs only turn into chicks if we have a rooster?"). We've lost a few here and there, and had opportunities to talk about death and grief. And I hardly have to do I thing. I mean, I built the coop and pay for the food and all that, but the kids feed and water them, clean out the coop and the run, and if they ever escape (we don't have enough room for free-ranging, dreaming of our future farm still), I just sound the alert and five little chicken keepers run around gathering them up. There are definitely downsides, but my vote is always in favor of chickens. Or...ducks!! I want to try ducks! Apparently they are smarter and nicer than chickens haha.
Check out Joyce Vances Substack - She is a former federal judge who provides brilliant legal commentary but also is a poultry fan and posts frequently about her feathered lovelies. The photos are enough to make you want them all!
I love chickens! I love their shapes and sizes and different colorations. I have been tempted since moving here to have some but that’s the one thing I worry about too... can I keep them safe? Also, I don’t have any helping hands to clean out the nice warm and dry coop, which I don’t have. But I am an artist and have decided to be content photographing, drawing and painting them. So that’s that. Your piece was so entertaining. I loved it and can’t wait to see how the chickens become part of your creative process maybe:)! Your children will be delighted!! Oh yes... you are getting chickens:)
So much misery, so much joy, and yes, the chickens are coming. At least get the ones that lay blue or green eggs?
My husband has dozens of them. For 3 months out of the year, my garage smells awful because he uses one of the bays as a brooder. The eggs are nice but if my husband ever died, my entire flock will be given away and I will return to buying store-bought eggs....not sure if I'm pro or con, but misery loves company so join us in chicken farming.
I will NOT get chickens. I know people say, “Never say never.” But I really, truly (italics, highlight, bold that, please) cannot imagine a world in which I would have them. I briefly flirted with urban homesteading (though it never got past a few tomato plants and raccoons in my compost pile because I had to move), but I always knew I couldn’t be all in if it meant keeping chickens. Your Mr. Rooster anecdotes are the stuff of my nightmares. I grew up around chickens too in Bangladesh, and I was always amazed at how dumb they were. Pecking each other poop to check for bugs?? Why?? Whyyyy?! I’ve had lots of friends who had chickens, and they talk about having to do therapy for them because they were eating each other’s eggs. I have enough drama in my life without chicken drama. Hard pass for me. 🙅🏻♀️ (But I did enjoy this post; it made me actual LOL.)
Oh absolutely loved this compilation of memories, so well connected and meandering. On that note: I held a chicken this year for the first time, my sister-in-law has a coop and I was so excited but then realised that chickens smell, a lot. Like how bad is that stench?
An uncanny collection of chicken relevance! Some friends of ours just got backyard chickens and my daughter is in love. My Mom had chickens for a while and had one that loved to be held, so I loved the story of the one that asked to be picked up! Sometimes I think I’d like to have chickens, if only to have happy eggs. Those mass chicken farms make me so sad.
While I am trying to convey the joys of chickens, your posts about sheep are giving me a real itch to get some sheep!
Chickens have been a delight for our family and especially our children. They have a good place to practice care for a living creature and to encounter and mourn death when it inevitably occurs.
Free ranging hens are so fun to watch but the way they rip up any semblance of landscaping is atrocious and the poop left on the patios and such is something I am SO OVER.
We’ve had vicious toddler-attaching roosters who have had to be “re-homed” (aka turned into rooster soup by someone other than me because my kids would never forgive me for taking the life of their beloved but very mean pet).
This very week we are witnessing one hen gone broody hatching her babies and it’s so darn exciting. The chicks are really the cutest.
The multi-colored eggs are aesthetically very satisfying not to mention delicious and wholesome enough to eat raw in my morning coffee or afternoon smoothie.
So, pros and cons. Just like with any animal.
When I was younger, I traded my ‘clean the chicken coop’ chore for ‘make breakfast twice a week’. Best deal I ever made; I hated cleaning out the muck. But are you getting chickens? Yes, it sounds like it 😅 maybe someday I’ll have small humans convincing me that cleaning up chicken poop is worth their delight
Yes, you should! I miss my chickens so much. They were so funny and demanding and quite affectionate. But even in my urban setting they weren’t safe from furry (opossum and/or raccoon) oppression and they dwindled. We just couldn’t bear the heartache of losing them again.
"I'm getting chickens, aren't I?"
yep
Seeing the weather this morning I wonder if flooding is happening around the farm?
I was laughing out loud, especially about that mean rooster. When I was a kid we had one named Bagawk (Like the sound of a chicken, you know? Wow, I've never spelled name out before, I don't even know how!) and I always took my dog out to the coop with me because she would chase him off for me. I love watching my kids with our chickens. They learn responsibility and the rewards (eggs!) of hard work, and other important life lessons ("Mom, why do the eggs only turn into chicks if we have a rooster?"). We've lost a few here and there, and had opportunities to talk about death and grief. And I hardly have to do I thing. I mean, I built the coop and pay for the food and all that, but the kids feed and water them, clean out the coop and the run, and if they ever escape (we don't have enough room for free-ranging, dreaming of our future farm still), I just sound the alert and five little chicken keepers run around gathering them up. There are definitely downsides, but my vote is always in favor of chickens. Or...ducks!! I want to try ducks! Apparently they are smarter and nicer than chickens haha.
Our London back-garden chickens indisputably changed our lives for the better. I just wrote/podcasted a happy/sad Substack about them.
Chickens are the most humorous of creatures. I wrote about our ladies a while ago, and reposted last Thanksgiving (to give myself aposting break): https://technocomplex.substack.com/p/the-ladies-out-back-turned-me-into. They are great, those chickens.