Okay, put your hands in the air, anyone else who decided to take on a coop for 2023. Anyone?
Guess we’re standing alone.
Apparently, not satisfied to cajole, tame and spoil the free-roaming fowl, best friend Lynne and I decided to step it up a notch this year. We are now the proud owners of a hen hotel; a rooster rest home; a clucking bed-and-breakfast.
It wasn’t exactly a thought-out acquisition, where you start with a coop, then some cattle move in, and before long, you’re shopping for dungarees and swapping moonshine recipes. We were more helping a friend who needed to re-home their feathered babies and rightly pegged us as a couple of soft touches. Let’s just say it’s been a learning experience.
As soon as word got out, supportive compadres started extolling the advantages of keeping chickens. A goodly supply of free, fresh eggs in these times of insane inflation was top of the list. Perhaps this was going to be the answer to our omelette prayers.
When the structure was first assembled in place, I was a little surprised at the sheer size of it. I guess I’d watched too many Foghorn Leghorn cartoons over the years.
We got our container of feed in place; familiarised ourselves with the different little doors that opened to laying stations; and finally managed to get the big branch that acted as a perch to balance properly after it had dropped and smushed my foot at least once.
Then there was the water trough to tackle. It consisted of a tall, upturned repository that, when filled and correctly positioned, would consistently funnel liquid into a surrounding moat. Seemed simple enough. We filled it, attached the base, turned it upside down, and hey-ho, water flowed into the deep groove. The six hens and one very big rooster minced their way immediately over and started drinking. Excellent.
We gave them a large scoop of feed, checked the hay in the ‘condo’, found two eggs (the bounty was beginning already!) and happily retired to the human coop for the evening.
The next day, I encountered the first issue due to the fact that the latest house extension was situated on top of an area covered in landscaping stones. Overnight, our new guests had either entered into a cheeky game of footie or were trying to skim pebbles across the water in their trough. One way or the other, they had managed to create a dam and their drinking station was dry. I hate to admit it, but after removing the whole water station, dislodging the offending blockages, and cleaning it out, I promptly put it right back in exactly the same position. What did Einstein supposedly say? “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”?
Sure enough, 24 hours later, it looked like beavers had set up shop. This time, after going through the increasingly filthy process of demucking everything (note to self: Google ‘chicken outhouses’), I got a bit of a pedestal sorted and put the freshly operational aqueduct atop it. Yeah… these feathered masterminds would have to get up pretty early in the morning to outsmart the Queen Cluck.
Thus began my descent into madness. No matter what I did, the chickens were determined to ‘befowl’ their own drinking supply. They were still able to knock the odd stone into it, push it to an angle where the liquid inside refused to flow, or pull the whole thing down to the ground. You might say I was meeting my Waterloo.
In the meantime, Lynne was trying to become au fait with how to check for eggs under a sitting hen. “Hold her by the neck,” advised a knowledgeable work colleague, as my friend doubtfully considered that very pointy beak.
Every time she opened the little door, the occupant would slowly turn towards her, ‘Exorcist’-style, with a warning “Bgawwwwww…” shot across the bow, which would have Lynne gently backing off.
In fairness, she found a solution within a day or so, while I was still wrestling with my challenges. She got something akin to a spatula and used it as a soft shield to keep beaks at bay, whilst reaching around frantically under a feathery bum for treasure. I, however – decked out in yoga pants and fluffy slippers – made the ridiculous decision, in that getup, to check on the water supply a week in to see if my latest tweaks had improved the situation. I walked into the cage and lifted the contraption by its handle to observe the level close up, only to watch the base fall off in almost slow motion. This sent a torrent of the tepid, slightly niffy contents cascading down over my slippers. It was like ‘Chicken Run’ come to life, because I’d swear I caught the rooster looking pleased with himself.
Of course, all that aside, I had to make sure they had a good and regular supply of water, so I’m now trying a replacement system that seems to be much more effective and less prone to anarchy. We’ve re-familiarised ourselves with the Department of Agriculture and its 50lb bags of feed, and Lynne has become an egg-retrieving whiz.
Just like the old saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” warns, I can tell you there’s no such thing as free eggs. I’m already down a pair of slippers and that feed, and we’re about to buy some hay so the laying ladies can live in high style.
In about six months, start looking in the supermarket for cartons of ‘Jes’ Eggs’ on the shelves. We’re fixin’ to make ourselves a fortune.
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