[Sca-cooks] Chicken question
Jane Boyko
jboyko at magma.ca
Fri May 18 10:03:33 PDT 2007
Okay, I am enjoying these posts as well. I agree with Maire - the
ammonia can make your eyes water. Being Cdn the coop didn't get as
clean as I would have preferred in the winter but come the first decent
weather in the spring the coop got cleaned out entirely. In the summer
they were cleaned out on a regular basis. btw one year old manure from
chickens makes great garden fertilizer. Terrific for greenery. We had
fabulous potatoe plants.
I raised hens and sold their eggs (never got an allowance). I had a
flock of 50 and they were very entertaining. btw herding chickens is
like herding cats. My chickens escaped on a regular basis. When the
wind was just right it would hit the pen door and the latch would
release. I would then have to heard 35 chickens back inside. I guess
my best memories of them are people's reactions. People were very
frightened of them. One guy drove up in a VW Rabbit and wouldn't get
out his car. One chicken strolled up and took on look at the driver's
door with open window and thought it would be a great place to roost.
Luckily I was able to see the squat and bob signs for what they were -
an introduction to taking off - and rescued the poor man from the
chicken without him realizing what almost happened.
Other people were amazed that chickens could dig holes. We had big dust
bathing holes dug by the chickens.
I also trained a couple to ride around on my shoulders but that stopped
the day one decided that my eye was edible. The only thing is that
chickens are comparable to goats. I don't know if this is true for
geese and ducks but my word - chickens eat everything. I don't know how
many toads I had to rescue and I never, ever, gave thought to the ones I
didn't know about - still gives me the colly wobbles. The one snake got
lucky or rather I did since it escaped the pen without a mark and I
didn't have to rescue it. Yikes - snake terror for me. They also loved
shoelaces, cigarette butts, kleenix. Not that we fed them these things
but they did their best.
I have some wonderful memories of my chickens (an I can do really good
imitations) and loads of stories.
Marina (like Maire - former farm girl)
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