Cheri H Dorbritz

I am a city girl.  Not the big city just “in town”.  I’ve been fortunate enough for many years to live rurally.  I’m never far from civilization, but I’m definitely outside the city limits.  I have been blessed with a couple of friends who are of the farming ilk and they have been gracious enough to school me in water conservation ( a must when living on a well and a conventional septic system), canning, gardening and most all things rural. 

One of these friends gifted me with a jar of worms a few years back for my birthday.  I can honestly tell you that this was hands down the best birthday gift I ever received.  Under his direction I was able to take this small jar of red worms in shredded news paper and parlay it into two functioning worm beds for myself and some for friends.  These little critters have provided me with high grade compost for my garden for literally no cost.  I feed them garbage they give me compost tea for my grapes and berries as well as compost for my garden.  My garden is raised beds (which can be problematic) and this year was our best yet despite record heat and no rain.

For many years I’ve been concerned about the hormones being pumped into our food products.  I believe this is a contributor to early onset puberty in our children and cancer in adults.  I buy hormone free whenever possible, but since I live outside a town and not a large urban center my options are limited.  A suggestion ( from of all people my chiropractor) put me on the path to an urban chicken tractor.  I began to research them and found the idea to be interesting.  Then information from a friend of a friend who actually raises chickens commercially ( it appears the aim is to get a chicken to process ready in three to five weeks time) the total lack of hormone free eggs at my local grocery and rising food prices convinced me to take the leap.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I finally convinced my wonderful husband to build me a chicken tractor.  It took us a month of weekends, 2 or three divorces and a lot of use of the words stupid and boob but we produced a chicken tractor. 

Ova Office VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We shopped around for hormone free food, gathered up pine shavings, waterers, and food dishes and after a couple of weeks thought we were ready for chickens.  We took the grandkids with us to pick out the chickens ( you can’t actually pick a in the heat it’s sort of like catching fish in a tank and you give up long before the chicken does), settled on mature layers ( better able to survive the record heat) and took our purchases home to their home. 

Chickens VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The whole point to this is that next to my worms this is the greatest thing I’ve ever had.  Foghorn Leghorn ( not actually a leghorn or a male), Chicken Hawk ( not actually a chicken hawk) and Selena Gomez (need I reiterate?) are wheeled around our 3/4 acre fenced area several times a day.  They eat, they lay eggs and someday if I have enough courage they will end up in a stock pot.  I clean the poop out of their coop a couple of times a week to put in the composter and several times a day I herd them into their coop in order for the dogs to go out (our basset hound believes they are squeaky toys made for her) and I put them up at night to protect them from predators.  Other than that they are not much trouble.  

Alright…Honestly there have been a couple of incidents.  First our grandson waited until we brought the chickens home to decide he wanted to “pet a chicken”.  Don’t ask the experienced chicken handler we purchased them from if you can pet a chicken. Wait until you get home and ask Mimi.  Having seen the claws and beaks on these birds up close Mimi had no choice but to inform him that you can’t pet a chicken.  Tears ensued and Mimi felt like a heel, but there was no chicken petting. I chose to live with the guilt of having warped my grandchild because he will be forced to grow up without having petted a chicken.

The other incident was a chicken break.  Due to my own negligence one escaped about a week after setting up house.  Selena found this extremely liberating.  She fluttered pecked and scratched her way around the yard while I built and elaborate contraption of trash cans, boards, garden carts and sheets designed to funnel her back into he home.  With a window screen in one hand and a board in the other I tried unsuccessfully for an hour in the blistering heat to heard her into the tunnel and thus into the coop from which she had escaped.

During this hour ( when I would get her just shy of the tunnel before she squawked and flew off) two thoughts occurred to me as I sweated buckets and set off to round her up again

1) If my shotgun had been handy there would have been chicken for dinner and

2) They don’t charge nearly enough for eggs.

I also wondered what the appropriate course of action should be if she decided to fly over the four foot fence and take off.  Should I put up Chicken wanted posters or act ignorant and allow her to live the life of a vagabond chicken?

Eventually my husband came home and as I herded her around the cage he opened the door and she stepped in.  It took all of 5 minutes.  I was left to dismantle my tunnel in the heat and hate his smugness.  I am much more careful now, but I am also a few steps closer to placing one in the stock pot when her laying days are over (I was initially having visions of elderly chickens hobbling around the yard living out their golden years until they keeled over dead and were buried in the chicken cemetery we’d construct on the back acreage).

I can tell you that whatever trouble they might be is totally eradicated when you open the door and there sits an egg or two.  It’s like Christmas. So if you’ve never heard of an urban chicken tractor look it up and if you live in a city especially check out red worms.  Both are easy to care for, don’t cost much and (for me at least) are a source of personal satisfaction that I can say “I did it!”.

 

 

Cheri H Dorbritz