Introduction: My husband and I were both born and raised in suburbia. We raised our son in suburbia. As we approached midlife we decided to slow our pace down by moving to the country. We’ve had a goat, but it was stolen. We are learning how to raise chickens and sharing the laughter of the learning process. This is our latest misadventure.Wile E. Coyote
I walk around shell-shocked.
Three weeks ago I lost my 14-pound Black Jersey Giant rooster, Elvis, to a daylight attack by coyote, fox, or dog (not mine). That morning I had just sold at auction four roosters of Bantam mixes that I didn't want. I was now down to one rooster. I looked at my flock of 22 Black Giant hens that were to be bred to Elvis and wanted to cry. My remaining rooster was a hen-pecked, Americana mix that had a tail protruding from his plucked rump resembling an old feather duster. I sighed. I wanted Elvis…but so did the wildlife.
It being August, most hatcheries were stopping their shipments of baby birds. I found one hatchery in Missouri who was still shipping in what is called "Straight Run" or "non-sexed" assortments. This means a mix of unspecified proportions of male and female. But they called back within a day and said "no more this year".
What was I going to do with 22 Black Jersey Giant hens? Besides sell their eggs?
I wanted a rooster, but everyone was settling in for the winter and not really selling their stock or what they had, had already been sold. I found a hatchery in Florida that was auctioning off a batch of 25 straight run Black Jersey Giant chicks. Going directly to the seller I ordered a batch and was notified they would email me when the order was shipped. I looked at my yard full of chickens and asked myself, “What am I going to do with 25 more chickens?” Buyer’s remorse was setting in.
On the following Monday we received a phone call telling us that a shipment of chicks was waiting for us at the post office. No email had been sent. We were in some shock. We already had some 2 month old Australorps in the brooders so it was just a matter of adding a second water dish and more food dishes. I sighed. I was internally battling myself over the need for a rooster and having to spend 6 months raising these birds to see if we got one. Looking at the baby chicks I asked myself why did I need a rooster? For more chicks? The chicks peeped and fell over on their faces, jumped and pecked at the walls of their bin.
Hah! I resigned myself to raising more chicks.
Friday morning around 2 am I heard strange noises outside the bathroom window. It was a barking/grunting noise that sounded like barking squirrels...foxes? coyotes? I flashed a light towards the chicken runs from my bedroom window. (Yeah, those roosters woke us up in the morning!) All the doors were secure. I shined it towards the dog run where we had some juvenile hens safely locked away. No big bodies in there, gate was secured. Maybe it was just gophers destroying my vegetable garden. Bastards. I wasn't going out at 2 in the morning to shoo them away, and I wasn't going to wake my husband up who had his first job in several months scheduled early the next morning. I lay down and went back to sleep.
The next morning as the crew arrived to load up trucks I awoke with thoughts of the previous night's noises on my mind. I needed to investigate who had been up to what before my husband left in case there was something freaky I would need him to fix or pursue (broken garden fencing, gophers sticking their tongues out at me, dead deer carcasses...)
Outside my bathroom window was a pile of feathers.
Uh-oh.
My husband had let the chickens out already and I went to the kennel where the five juveniles were. I counted only four.
I made my way to the crew who were in the front yard and heard my husband who had cut through the house in the back yard. I turned around and joined him there as he looked in the kennel.
"Where's the Rhode Island Red?" I asked referring to one of our adolescent pullets. I suspected where she was, I was in denial about where she was, I was hoping he’d seen her somewhere else.
He said she usually finds a way out of the kennel and then comes back in the morning.
My heart fell into my toes. I indicated he should follow me and pointed to the pile of feathers by our bathroom window. He frowned and indicated across the yard where more feathers were. I told him about the noises I'd heard last night. He frowned and said it didn't look like the Rhode Island's feather color, this must be a separate bird he concluded.
We then proceeded to the vegetable garden, a short distance away from the pin feather incrimination, only to find that our carefully constructed gopher proof vegetable box had indeed been raided by a gopher...or a vole. Bastards!
The watermelon that was growing on the vine was fine but the gophers had attacked the vine and my husband pulled up the gray limp plant. I brought the watermelon in to ripen it.
An hour later, after my husband had left, I received a call from my mail carrier. "We have 25 baby chicks here for you."
This is when the numbness set in. "You do?" I croaked.
"You sound surprised. Were you expecting them?" She asked pleasantly.
"No." I answered still feeling numb. I looked in the garage where my batch of 24 (2 died within a day of arriving) chicks were cheeping and eating and sleeping.
"Well, it's best if you come down and pick them up." She advised.
"Okay." I respond meekly.
My state of mind was so distracted that I left the house with the dogs still outside, which I never do because they go right under fencing and are basically loose. I went straight to the jobsite where my husband was working, only to see him drive by me in his truck, loaded down with construction debris. He waved, I stuttered, and he kept going.
I managed to track him to the local gas station where he came up to me as I got out of the car and asked "what's wrong?"
I guess my puzzled expression and blank face was a give away.
I actually had difficulty telling him that there were 25 baby chicks waiting for me to pick up at the post office. I couldn't even think how funny a situation this was. Once I got it out he looked at me blankly. "25?"
I nodded. Or I think I nodded, maybe I said yes, it doesn't matter. Animal lover that he is he said, "well you can't leave them there, they'll die. Better pick them up."
He also advised me to get another waterer, feeder, and bin to hold them all. Maybe the feed store would know what to do with them.
I went to the post office, picked up the loudly cheeping birds, and turned to leave. People in the post office smiled at me saying "we know what you've got, baby chicks how cute!" and one old man said, "They still ship those that way? We used to use baby chicks as bait for sharks." He smiled fondly at the memory. I asked "what kind of sharks?"
"Sand sharks" and he explained the process for tying the chick onto the line which in my numbness went in one ear and out the other.
"Isn't that nice?" I mumbled as more people paused to admire my cheeping box.
A woman called from across the parking lot "I know what you have!"
I said, "Would you like to buy some?"
She asked what kind and I answered "an accidental double shipment of Black Jersey Giants."
Her eyebrows rose. "Accidental? Aren't they cute!"
She laughed; I smiled carrying my box to my car.
The feed store explained to me that they couldn't sell chicks in their store due to health concerns and chicken diseases but if we wanted to hang flyers they would be more than happy to help us place some and did I want some chick food?
I walked away from there with a new feeder, a new waterer, a new chick bin, and went home. I didn't bother with a bag of chick food, since I had some at home.
I unpacked and looked at my 50 baby chicks and didn't see the bouncing cute puff balls that they were but the large birds they would become, examples of which were in my poultry yard clucking away right now. Twenty-two of them.
Two separate people had said that with the coyote attacks and the large number of birds I already have that I'm sponsoring wildlife "all you can eat buffet".
I'm still feeling a little numb.
That night after realizing the Rhode Island Red was definitely gone (the Coyote must've eaten the evidential red feathers) we moved the kennelled adolescent birds to the solid chicken houses.
That night when the coyote came he dug up my other watermelon and my cucumber plant.
I haven’t seen anymore gopher mounds in my vegetable garden.
The next night my young dog decided to pursue an interesting new smell. Believing she and my shepherd could chase off the coyote, and that they must need to go out for personal reasons, I let them out. After several washings at 10:30 at night she still has a trace of skunk smell on her face.
It takes 24 hours for a skunk to recover enough scent to spray again. I heard a coyote off in the distance causing the neighbor dogs to sound the alarm. I thought I knew what the coyote would be eating for dinner that night. I almost felt sorry for the skunk.
