I have had a small flock of chickens for over 30 years. Well, not the same chickens, of course. If you have a farm it doesn’t matter if you don’t need any eggs — chickens fill a very special place on a farm, even a little hobby farm like mine. What do you see when you think of a farmyard? You may see, in your mind, many kinds of animals but you always see chickens pecking around. The picture is just not complete without them.
So, one of the first things I did when we bought our 10 acres was to set myself up with chickens. We drove all the way to South Jersey to get the exactly right coop. We put it under a little mulberry tree at the edge of a pasture. I ordered 10 chickens. Real chickens. Big chickens. I wanted to start off with eggs right away — not wait weeks and weeks for those cute little fluffy peeps to grow up into real chickens. It was great. Every morning, I let them out to peck around in a pasture. I brought them in at night to sleep safely in their coop. Then one morning my neighbor, whose kitchen overlooks that pasture, called and said “there are foxes killing your chickens.” He was right — my girls were all dead out there in the pasture — bloody and dead. A mother fox had used my chickens as a lesson on for her kids: Killing Chickens 101.
The next year, I planned ahead. I was told that roosters were the answer. Not only do roosters wake you up at the crack of dawn, they guard the chickens out in field and warn them of danger. So I got 10 hens and a rooster. My dear husband was not thrilled about the rooster. The part about getting you up early was true. The part about guarding was not true. This time the foxes got all the hens — and the rooster. I decided that this was a lost cause. After all, the foxes were here first, and I was the interloper. I kept the new chickens inside the pen after that. Unfortunately, my pen was not as secure as I thought it was — it kept the chickens in but it did not keep raccoons and possums out. Now I had a different kind of predator to worry about. I carefully went around the wire pen and closed any small holes. That worked for several years. I never had put a cover over it because there was that mulberry tree over the coop and I always kept a big umbrella over the rest of the pen. That worked. For a while. Until last year — the Year of the Hawk. Hawks must have cleaned out all the rodents and bunnies that winter, because they came swooping in past the mulberry tree and umbrella, killed my chickens and snacked on them, but evidently could not fly away carrying a whole chicken. O.K., I gave in and put a chicken wire in to cover the whole bloomin’ pen, and trust me, that was a real chore. I never could have done it without dear elder son. By now I was down to one chicken. Nobody has one chicken. And Survivor was lonely. (She was the only chicken I ever named.) I found two for sale cheap, and a friend had a survivor from her flock, so I ended the summer with four chickens. That’s O.K. We don’t eat many eggs.
But then this winter my shepherd came in one morning and told me the bad news. I had no chickens. He had thoughtfully disposed of the bodies left behind by a weasel. Did you know you can tell what killed an animal by the way they did it and what they ate? You really don’t want to know the details. But nobody ever told me that chicken wire keeps chickens in but it doesn’t keep weasels out — weasels are so skinny that they can come in through a hole the size of a quarter. Yes. The only sure pen is made of something called hardware cloth. All these years I had labored under the misconception that chicken wire was the thing that you used for a chicken pen. Oh, no. Not a soul had ever mentioned hardware cloth. Hardware cloth is wire mesh with holes ½-inch wide. That should stop even weasels. Time to call on dear elder son again.
To add insult to injury, evidently we were not the only weasel victim and the local chicken supplier is sold out. There are 100 people on the waiting list and I am not even on it. Guess I will move to Plan B (whatever that is). I am too old to sit and wait for little Easter peeps to grow up and start laying — 19 weeks is a long time and I am too old to be patient.
Toni Kellers is a retired math teacher and a semi-retired farmer. She lives in Bedminster.
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