Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, is a backyard chicken enthusiast. Her article about her poultry-keeping passion, “The It Bird”, appears in this week’s New Yorker. “Chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomic, and emotional matters of the moment,” Orlean writes, “plus, in the past few years, they have…
Sometime in late July, I become smug about chicken keeping. It’s just like everyone said – easy, peasy. Much easier than taking care of our three spoiled cats, and, an absolute breeze compared to chasing after our toddler. Gertrude, Virginia, Charlotte, and Emily get along, they entertain themselves with all their pecking and scratching, and…
My husband’s mom is visiting, and she graciously agrees to watch our one-year-old son while my husband and I get some work done. “You only have three chickens today,” she says when I get home at 6:30. “I haven’t seen the other one since lunch.” The brown hen who’s missing strays from the flock more…
I bolt upright. My eyes fly to the clock. It’s five a.m. A scream pierces the silence … then growling. Someone or something is getting hurt. Is it the cats? No. The sound’s coming from outside, from the backyard … from the hen house. I shake my husband. “The chicks…” I sputter. He’s already out…
I’m not sure I can really call them chicks anymore. They’re not full-sized, but they have all of their feathers, and they hardly resemble the sweet little balls of fluff they were a short five weeks ago. This week, the plumes around their legs flare out, making them look much more grown up. The chickens…
The chicks wander further from their coop this week. They stay together, pecking grass, eating weeds, and scratching dirt. They discover the shed, and spend hours in there eating spiders. One evening, we come outside, and they’re lined up on the pole to my husband’s old wash-tub bass. They’re sleeping. I rush in to get…