Chickens in the Back Garden

I have always wanted to raise chickens.  Ten years ago, when my daughters were in elementary school and the class hatched chicken eggs and begged parents to adopt the birds, I wanted to.  But of course there's a fifty-fifty chance you'll get cockerels (which are illegal here in my city), and I didn't have a particularly permanent abode anyway.  Now, for the first time in my life, I'm a homeowner.  A homeowner with a large, grassy backyard.  Within a couple of weeks of moving in, I ordered four chicks.  I warned Harman it was just the way it had to be.  I ordered them in late February, and they were slated to arrive in April.  

The company I ordered them from, MyPetChicken.com, warned that they couldn't guarantee an exact date of delivery, but the chickens would arrive in the US Mail, overnight.  I actually wanted only three chickens, but I was worried one would arrive dead, or would die during chickdom, so I ordered a spare.  

Meanwhile, I was unemployed.  The restaurant I had worked for went under about a week before we moved into the new house--which was great timing, since I had leisure to pack and organize.  But of course I needed a new job, and I applied to a culinary school as a chef-instructor.  I got the job, which was only part-time.  I applied for another job and got that too--a full-time gig at a trendy local eatery.  All of a sudden, I was dramatically over-employed.  As the chick arrival date drew near, I was terrified I would kill the birds through neglect.  

But the chicks arrived and I didn't kill them.  I got a call from the post office, telling me they were ready to be picked up.  I rushed from work to the post office.  

"Hi!  I'm here to pick up some baby chickens.  The box will probably be cheeping."  

The postal worker behind the counter demanded my address and zip code.  When I gave it, he breezily told me I was in the wrong post office.

"But I got a call from the post office telling me to come to this location."

"No, whoever told you that was wrong."

"But he gave me the address and everything..."

"Sorry, we don't service your zip code.  You need to go to the post office on Fair Oaks.  They're already closed for the day, though."

"But he called from this post office.   See?  Here's my phone, with the recent calls, and this was the number he called from."

"Well, that is the number from this post office, but we don't service your zip code.  You have to wait until tomorrow and go to the other post office."

"But he told me this address.  He said this branch was open until 7:00 p.m.  Why would he lie to me?  How could he have called me from this number if this isn't the right branch?"

"I don't know, but you have the wrong post office.  We don't service your zip code."

"Listen.  There is a package for me here, at this post office.  I was told to come pick it up before seven o'clock.  Why would he have told me that if he was working in a branch that closed at four?"

"I don't know, but I can't help you."

"THERE'S A BOX OF LIVE ANIMALS THAT WILL DIE IF YOU DON'T FIND THEM FOR ME RIGHT NOW!

Pause.

"Oh!  You mean the birds!  Yeah, I have them right here.  Ha-ha!  I didn't know you were picking up live birds."

"Maybe you should've listened to me."

I drove the cheeping box four blocks to my house and sat down with it on the couch.  I could tell that at least some of the chicks were alive, because there was really quite a lot of cheeping.  Lo and behold, all four were alive!  One, however, was noticeably smaller and weaker than the others.  She seemed unstable on her little feet, and kept falling over or hopping backwards where the others were hopping forwards.  

There were two yellow chicks (an Exchequer Leghorn--the tiny one--and an Ameraucana), a red one (a Rhode Island Red), and a gray (an Andalusian Blue.)

I took them up to their temporary home (a cardboard box in our shower) and introduced them to food and water.  The littlest one seemed dazed and confused, unable to eat or drink.  Harman and I fussed over them, and wondered what to call them.  Harman suggested Rummy for the tipsy one.  I had a sudden brainstorm. 

"How about Tippie?  Like Tippi Hedren from The Birds?" Harman is a big Alfred Hitchcock fan, so he agreed.  

"We can name them all after Hitchcock leading ladies.  Doris, Grace, Ingrid and Tippie," I said.  So it was done.  Tippie (I hate girls names that end in "i", so our bird got an "e" added on) recovered just fine, though she has remained significantly smaller than the others.  

The birds grew really fast.  By the end of the first week they seemed about twice as big.  Tippie, of course, trailed the others.  Every time I picked her up, it seemed as if there was nothing in my hand.  Holding her was like holding a piece of cotton candy.  It is important to handle the chicks plenty, so that they learn to trust you.  

After about five weeks, the chickens were ready to move into their coop.  We had ordered a coop from Amazon, and assembled it in under an hour.  But I realized we would need to reinforce it to keep out the wild beasts so surprisingly abundant in Southern California, so we hammered, tacked, screwed and bludgeoned some improvements onto the existing framework.  Spring locks to foil the clever fingers of raccoons, wide wire netting on the otherwise open bottom of the run area to prevent digging dogs, tiny shims to stabilize the roosting bars (just to make the chickens comfortable as they perched), screws here and there to tack down a shoddily attached roof, and long wooden runners with handles so we could pick up the coop and move it every few days (otherwise the grass under the coop would die from the nitrogen-heavy poop.)  I've heard terrible stories about coops with regular-sized chicken wire--apparently, raccoons will reach in through the relatively large holes of chicken wire fences, grab a chicken, and remove it from the coop, piece by gristly piece.  When you have only four hens, and you've named each one, and you are anxiously awaiting your first egg, such an idea is anathema.  Let's face it, these were pets.

In mid-September, Ingrid laid the first egg.  It was tiny but perfect.  Bigger than a quail egg, but smaller than the smallest chicken egg you could buy, it had a lovely vivid yellow yolk, and fried up perfectly.  Within a day or two, Doris laid an almost normal-sized brown egg, and proceeded to lay an egg a day since.  It wasn't a week before Grace laid her lovely green egg.  Laying went along like that, with between two and three eggs a day.  I eat a fabulous scrambled egg each morning, and I scramble one for Harman, too.  Tippie showed no sign of laying anything until today.  I can't be sure the little egg I found today was hers, but when I got home from work, Harman said she had been making some noise in the vicinity of the coop, and I found a slightly smaller, more ivory-colored egg than Ingrid usually lays, and it was smeared with traces of blood.  Doris lays brown eggs, Grace lays green eggs, but Tippie's breed is supposed to lay white eggs, as does Ingrid.  I guess time will tell.

All in all, I am besotted with my birds.  They are funny and pretty (I never realized how beautiful chickens are), and I have never tasted such delicious eggs.  When I whisk the eggs in the bowl for our breakfast, it looks as if I had whisked together a bowl of yolks, rather than whole eggs--the yolks are such a dark yellow-orange color.  Recently we went out for breakfast to--of all places--Bob's Big Boy.  I ordered eggs (big mistake) as did Harman.  I could barely choke them down.  I'm sure they buy cartons of frozen, chemical-augmented eggs, but I was not prepared for the crappy flavor.  I might be permanently spoiled.  I guess I'm OK with that.