Time for a Chicken Story from the Farm

 Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, out in the middle of nowhere....

Just kidding. 

As many of you know, I am a woman transplanted out to the country.  And when I say country, I mean RURAL. As in FARM-rural. When we moved here, the closest neighbor was about 1/4 mile away. Now we actually have 2 neighbors we can SEE. I know! With living on a farm, it's only a matter of time before you start accumulating animals. The first thing we bought were chickens. Egg laying hens to be exact. 

There is a store called Family Farm and Home "in town". These wonderful people sell animals. Rabbits, ducks, chickens, etc. So we all go on down to the Farm Store, and decide that we need chickens. Gonna have some farm fresh eggs. Somehow, with these teeny, tiny, baby chicks, the employees there (or whomever they bought the chicks from...hadn't thought of that til just now)...anyway, "they" sort them by sex. We wanted all female chicks. Female chicks are called "pullets". (Yes, I've learned ALLLL kinds of new words out here on the farm!)

We chose a dozen or so pullets of various breeds (don't ask me what they were), and watched with delight as they grew into grown up chickens. I named only 2 of them, because they stood out to me. One was an Araucana, otherwise known as an Easter Egg Chicken.  They lay pink, green, or blue eggs.  It's pretty cool. Anyway, the one I named had such distinct markings, and looked almost like she had been hand painted. Well, she WAS, by God. I named her Cleopatra, because she looked very regal, and almost like she had make up on. She was something else.

There was one other one that wasn't nearly as fancy, but she struck my eye. Just beautiful, even though she was a little plain. (I'm googling chickens so I can get the breed names.) This one was an Orpington (or Buff) chicken; lovely blondish, golden brown, beautifully even feathers (we had one poor soul who had a coupla of feathers sticking straight up on one wing)...I named her Henrietta.  Just seemed like a chicken name.

We lived merrily along, raising our chickens, waiting for those first eggs. I will tell you right now, if you've never had farm fresh eggs, you need to find some. They are SO delicious! The yolks are almost orange, as God intended them to be...and they just taste rich and yummy. The shells are super hard because they lay one egg a day, and aren't forced to lay eggs many times a day.

Chickens are also very good to have because they eat LOTS of bugs! I am NOT a fan of bugs. {shudder} So that was another reason I was so happy to have chickens. One morning, I heard a crow. I thought, "Hmmm, someone has a rooster around here." Yes. Someone DID have a rooster. WE DID. My beautiful Henrietta was really Henry. Because I was already so attached, I wanted to keep him.  We just had to make sure we got the eggs every day, because while I loved our chickens, I didn't want babies. 

However, as time went on, Henry became very aggressive. We would go in the chicken coop in the morning to open the little door on the side, and then we had to RUN like crazy to get out and shut the fence gate before Henry came around and started pecking at us.  This flippin' bird would draw blood! 

One time, we were all outside, and the chickens were doing their chicken things...eating bugs, making noise, pooping.  A LOT. Jacob was about 2 or 3, and we tried to keep him away from Henry, because he could be so aggressive. (Henry, not Jacob.) Jacob LOVED to pet the chickens, and would really have liked to carry them around and take them in the house. (hahahahahahahaha). So we're outside just walking around, and here comes Henry. I try steering Jacob away from that direction, but Henry had honed in on us like a daggone locked on air missle. 

It's all in a kind of horrible slow motion now.... Jacob turns toward Henry.... Henry starts to jump, and fan his feathers.... And he pecked. my. only. baby. boy. right. on. his. precious. little. nose!! I turn toward Henry, and PUNTED him away from my child. I mean, like a guy-holding-a-football-for-me kind of punt. 

Then, I asked Doug to keep an eye on Jacob, and I went into the house.  I came out carrying our .22 rifle. I walked over to Doug to ask him where the safety was (I was not nearly as "experienced" with weapons as I am now...). He looked at my face, which was probably twitching a bit, and I know I had the crazy eyes goin' for me, and said, "Whyyyyy?" I said, "Because I'm going to shoot Henry!" 

Well, * I * didn't end up shooting Henry, but Doug did.  I think he thought I may go a little overkill on the thing and then we wouldn't be able to eat him. Well, we didn't end up eating him anyway because he was so stinkin' scrawny. Doug started plucking and quite quickly realized it was NOT worth the work. I'm pretty sure Henry became a wonderful dinner for some hungry coyotes. So I guess the moral of the story is, don't mess with my kid, or you'll become coyote bait! 

Thanks for reading, y'all!