FOOD & DRINK FLASH IN THE PAN
Chicken Husbandry BY ARI LEVAUX
I
’ve raised a lot of chickens. Probably hundreds. For eggs, not meat. I give them the best lives I can, including a generous retirement plan when they reach a certain age, with free room and board, yet they rarely arrive at those emerald pastures. Precious few have lived long enough to die in their sleep. I blame myself. If you aspire to keep hens, don’t let me discourage you. The eggs are of incomparable quality, and the byproduct is rich manure that’s like steroids for your garden, which will produce plenty of weeds and garden waste that your chickens can turn into more eggs and byproduct. It’s a nutritious, virtuous circle, without the bother of a compost pile. But just know that hen husbandry is a full-contact sport. And while there are many upsides to flockster life, the eggs aren’t free, and they aren’t always sunny side up. You can order baby chicks in the mail. The little box is labeled “LIVE ANIMALS.” The post office will call you to come get them immediately, day or night. The box is full of cute little fuzz balls huddling together for warmth, perhaps standing on the bodies of their trampled comrades. If one develops a wound the others will peck at the wound until there’s nothing left to peck. Darwin would be truly impressed with baby chickens. Older hens, if given the chance, would quickly dispatch all the
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Illustration by Michael Burmesch.
chicks, neutralizing future competition like the plumed dinosaurs they are. Hens can also get a taste for eggs, causing obvious problems. And those are just some of the threats from within the flock. They will cower below the shadow of a passing hawk, but an owl strikes with more stealth. Some people think raccoons are cute, but not when they are pulling a chicken through a small hole, piece by piece. Many times I’ve run outside to smack their shiny-eyed heads with a shovel. When it’s a skunk, I keep my distance and throw the shovel, followed by any other throwable objects within reach. One night at dusk I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake, hunting eggs. Its hiss sent me running. I returned with my shovel. One might suggest that my choice of chicken farming locations has played a role in the dangers they have suffered. But chickens are never safe. If you raise hens in New York City, you probably have to fend off the rats. Huskies are chicken-killing machines. And they like to wander. Once, a husky wandered into my backyard when the hens were grazing and quickly killed them all before I could chase it off. Even the sun can kill chickens. In New Mexico one summer morning, I forgot to let the chickens out of their extremely fortified coop. When I got home that night, all but
one were cooked. A few years later while I was on vacation, a lightbulb exploded in the cold and burned down the coop. The fire department came. The house sitters were traumatized. Amazingly the chickens all survived, but that was the exception. I returned to the task of building a coop in the middle of winter. The other morning, I was on the couch with a cup of tea, and saw a fox in my backyard. A real actual fox. As in the kind of animal that you are not supposed to let guard the hen house. And presumably nowhere near the hen house. It had a huge bushy tail, and casually left the yard without appearing to notice the chickens, or so I thought. That was my cue to inspect the fence and coop for weaknesses, but its bushy tail must have hypnotized me. A few days later, four hens were dead. At the winter farmers market, I saw the farmer that sells me my chickens. I told her what happened, and she agreed to set aside a new flock. I prefer buying six-weekp-old chickens from willing, local farmers to baby chicks in the mail. Adolescents are tougher and less likely to get trampled, pecked, or picked off by the house cat. Until then, my remaining three chickens will have extra space in the avian equivalent of Fort Knox. In April my farmer friend will bring a box of teenage chickens to market for me, and the cycle continues.
