We've had our chickens for several years now. I never have much to say about them. They live out there in the backyard, and they sometimes lay eggs, though the original chickens are fairly old now. We ate the first rooster, and after that, I didn't have the heart to butcher any more chickens -- we're just not that kind of sustainable family.
A couple of years ago, a neighbor gave us one of their Auracaunas, or Ameracauna, whichever it really is, and last year, a neighbor across the street who was moving gave us two black pullets, one of which turned out to be our third rooster, (the second rooster was given to a neighbor who presumably ate it).
The Little Black Hen, as I call her, has been brooding most of the spring. I have been trying to ignore the process, otherwise I will start Googling "chick raising", and the next thing you know, I will have purchased $300 worth of incubators and other egg/chick raising equipment down at the feed store and through Ebay.
She's been having a rough time of it. The Auracauna will push her out of the nest and lay eggs in there, and once I found one of the Red Sussex hens sitting in the nest box, (a rubbermaid container with a door cut in it), with Little Black Hen. The other chickens also seem to go in there and eat eggs periodically.
We were thinking we just needed to throw all the eggs away and start collecting subsequent eggs to eat. I went out to check on the eggs, and there, in the straw, among the eggs, was a little baby chick!
I know it shouldn't be such a surprise, but I'm very proud of her. I went out and bought some chick starter and a low waterer for the chick, but I'm trying to simply let the mother raise the chick. It's hard not to go out there and interfere. Because the Auracauna is still pushing her way into the nest, I moved the entire thing into our largest dog kennel. I hope that works out for her while we're out of town. I'm trying to make it as easy for our housesitter as possible, and I also want to protect her and her eggs and babies from the other chickens, and the skunk that seems to be wandering the neighborhood, not to mention that there's too damn many eggs in there with her. I hope isolating her will slow down the accumulation of eggs in the nest.
Currently she is sitting on about fifteen eggs. I sincerely hope they don't all hatch. That would probably be too many roosters for us to find a home for.
Our third rooster is driving us nuts. Someone on Freecycle wanted a rooster, but never showed up for him. I posted him on Freecycle, but there was no response. As in the past, our neighbors who we know either don't notice the crowing or enjoy it. We're the ones who aren't fond of our suburban rooster.
As for backyard chickens in general, I'm not sure it's the most frugal of sustainable activities, and perhaps, it really isn't that sustainable with the purchase of chicken food needed. Eggs at the Farmer's Market are about $3.50 a dozen right now, and the farmers who are selling eggs probably pay more attention to their chickens than we do. I know at least one farmer who sprouts wheat for his chickens to eat. I bought organic hen scratch for a while, but it was very expensive. The conventional chicken scratch has gone up from around $11 a bag to $16 a bag over the past couple of months. So often, I just kvetch about spending all that money for a chicken retirement community. Finding a baby chicken out there yesterday was a real treat though. We'll see what we have in the nest box when we return to town at the end of June.
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