It’s funny. As of next month I’ll have been living out in the boonies for six years. But I was born in Detroit, lived most of my adult life in cities, and my outlook is essentially urban.
Which is why sometimes things that a country person wouldn’t think the least bit strange, strike me as hilariously incongruous. Like the email I got from Landlady (who actually does live in a city) saying she was going out of town for a few weeks and could I take care of her chickens?
Chickens. There’s nothing weird about it, really. I dunno why it struck me as so weird. Got me to wondering, though. I’m planning to have chickens of my own next spring. What if I have to leave for a while? Who’d take care of my chickens?
Ok, I can dig the chicken sitting thing… especially if you get to keep the eggs. I’m wondering if you must travel to them… or if she’s bringing them to you – considering that you don’t have a chicken pen built yet.
I have no idea how many chickens we’re talking about here. 🙂
Huh. Valid point.
We’re not talking about managing her egg factory here. She keeps three laying chickens at her home, and there’s a portable coop at the Meadow House. So she’ll be bringing the birds here and I’ll care for them. Tentative plan is to keep them in Gitmo but I don’t live there anymore or visit every day, so I’ve got this week to put up a suitable temporary enclosure at the Lair for the coop. Which is, as aforementioned, portable.
And yeah. I get the eggs. Which is a part of the deal I like.
I chicken sat for a friend one week. Things almost killed me. Thing was, I had to let them out of the coop in the morning, into an largish outdoor fenced area, and then herd them back inside at dusk. There were maybe 40 hens and three roosters. The roosters didn’t like me at all and would charge me one by one, launching at me with their talons first. Fortunately, I had an instinctive reaction to treat them as footballs and just kept booting them back until they quit. The rest didn’t take to my herding, and as I’d get almost all of them in and have to go back for stragglers, others would run back out. I was running myself ragged, and it occurred to me that if I suffered a heart attack over it, there wouldn’t be much of me left in short order. Nasty buggers.
Yes indeed, Joel, the egg part is my favorite too. Three hens should not be much trouble, and you’ll have a much better idea whether or not you want to fool with having some of your own.
I’ve gone through a situation such as Mike describes… no fun at all. The hens must be kept all the time in a safe place to roost for a few months when very young, and then they’ll do everything they can to return to that roost at night ever after – even if turned completely loose during the day. If they get used to roosting just anywhere, up in trees or whatever, they will be hard (try almost impossible) to corral at night.