Why chickens?

Hi!  My name is Chrissy (aka Chicken Mom), and I'll be writing a series of posts over the next weeks and months about getting chickens in the city.  But first a little bit about myself.  I'm a mom of two (4-year-old Sydney and Owen, who is almost 2) and wife to Bill.  We live in NE Portland in an old Craftsman bungalow which is in a state of slow but constant improvement.  I am an obsessive knitter and knitwear designer who spends most of my precious free time knitting or coming up with new design ideas.  And I am constantly working to lessen the impact of my family on the earth.  I was so delighted to discover the EnviroMom blog! 

Our newest venture will be a flock of three hens for our backyard, who will provide us with fresh organic eggs and lots of poo for our compost pile.  I love the idea of chickens as fertilizer producers and natural pest control (they eat lots of bugs, although they'll sometimes eat the plants right along with them), but the main reason I've wanted chickens for the past few years is I think they'll make fabulous pets.

Unlike Renee, I have great memories of chickens from my childhood. I'm with her that roosters can be particularly nasty buggers, especially when they've got their harem of hens or their pride to protect, but I learned to steer clear of them at an early age.  My grandparents were farmers, and I remember every spring a holey cardboard box would arrive filled with peeping little yellow puffballs.  My grandmother would set up a heat lamp in the kitchen and make a little pen out of cardboard boxes and newspaper.  I would sit and watch the little critters for hours.  After they grew up and moved outdoors, I'd chase the hens around the garden and feed them scratch (a mix of corn and grain that's like candy for chickens) in the driveway.  I'd collect their eggs from little hidey-holes all over the farm.  The chickens and I kept each other at a wary distance, but they were my favorite playmates on many long, hot summer days.  It never occurred to me why there were new arrivals every spring, but the number of hens in the flock seemed to stay pretty steady...

I first got really excited about the idea of chickens when I met my friend Brittney a couple of years ago.  She has a flock of three hens in her backyard that often come out of the coop to play on nice summer days. It's so fun for the kids to have hens to chase around, and I just love seeing chickens dusting themselves under a bush or hunting bugs in the grass.  And then there are the eggs.  Oh, the eggs!  Brittney has lots of friends who have known her longer and are higher than us on the egg totem pole, but we were lucky enough to get a half dozen last summer and we were blown away.  Big, flavorful yokes surrounded by a scrumptious, hefty white (so different from those watery factory-farmed whites), all enclosed in a delightful blue shell.  Who could ask for anything more?

I jokingly remarked to my husband that we should get our own chickens, and to my surprise, he agreed!  I immediately borrowed a bunch of Brittney's chicken books and started researching. Unfortunately, it was fall, so I had to wait for months before it was time to actually take action.  When March rolled around, I was ready to get us some chicks!  I went around to a couple of the local feed stores but then decided to hand-pick my breeds from an online supplier called My Pet Chicken, which is one of the few online suppliers who will ship as few as three chicks and has a great breed selection. I've known that I wanted an Amerucana or Easter Egg Chicken (so-called because they lay bluish-green eggs) ever since I learned there was such a thing, but it took a little research to find the other two breeds I wanted.  Between My Pet Chicken's breed guides and a list of good backyard breeds in the excellent book Keep Chickens! by Barbara Kilarski (who is also a Portlander), I decided on a Rhode Island Red and a Barred Plymouth Rock (the kid of chicken my grandma used to keep).  Both of these breeds are described as excellent layers with friendly, curious dispositions.  I'm definitely looking for chickens who won't run and hide when I'm trying to chase them back into their coop at night!  We are getting three hens since that is the maximum allowed in Portland without a permit, and because you need at least two to keep each other company since they are social birds.

We also set to work on figuring out the coop situation.  As a family, we're usually somewhat crazed and barely have time for the necessities, like loading the dishwasher and doing laundry.  I thought that the Eglu would be the perfect solution for us since it's basically idiot-proof and you gotta love that modern design!  Bill, of course, decided that we should try to build our own.  I was finally convinced when I showed my 2nd choice of coop design to Brittney (who wasn't so impressed with the Eglu due to its lack of space) and she decided that they wanted to make a new coop for their flock from the same plan.  We set up a couple of coop-building appointments and will be making the two coops as a two-family effort (hopefully before our chicks outgrow their brooder).  Brittney and her hubby are the kind of people who, unlike us, get things done.  I'm hoping that their positive influence will mean we actually have a habitable coop sometime this spring!

Now, we're waiting.  Materials for the coops have been purchased. The brooder is waiting for its chicks.  Our chick-rearing equipment is sitting at the ready, waiting anxiously to be put into service.

All we need now are our chicks!