Wilder Home Lifestyle

I love eggs. I could and pretty much do eat them every single day for breakfast. So, I wanted chickens so I could have fresh eggs all of the time. We have fallen victim to chicken math a couple of times. We started off with five chicks, but then decided because we weren’t sure who might be a hen and who might be a rooster that we should get four more.

Of the original five, only one ended up being a rooster. So, we re-homed him. But then, after they were all fully grown and mature, one of our hens accidentally died because either she or someone else broke her neck. This was the first chicken death and I cried about it for a while. I am not a farmer, so I do not have the mindset of animals die. Which is a good mindset to have if you are raising animals to eat, but I was not ever going to eat my pet chickens. So, this was devastating to me. Chickens are very emotional animals, so this hen’s sister got really depressed and stopped eating for a while, then she kept getting vent gleet from stress. She lived for about a year after her sister died. But she was always stressed and sick after that. She was egg bound a couple of times and we had to help her get the egg out. She always looked sick, but I had a lot of anxiety that she was seemingly getting much worse. So, I had my husband go outside with me so we could sit with her while she died because I didn’t want her to die alone. The third death was a chick. It was a very cold winter and the heat lamp lightbulb died in the middle of the night. She didn’t make it despite our efforts to warm her back up. So we sat with her while she died. I think it is sad to read about, but I didn’t really know how likely it would be for our chickens to die. So, I would have liked to be able to look it up to know more about it. But I couldn’t really find any. That is why I am writing about this.

The next year, we got 8 chicks. One ended up being a rooster and the other was the one that died because of the heat lamp. The reality of chickens is that they have a lot of needs but they are easy to take care of if you are diligent about taking care of them. They love grub and they love worms from the garden. They will destroy everything in the garden in under an hour, so they hang out in the run mostly. But we let them out to roam when we have time to watch them. Their eggs are amazing. I don’t try to force them to lay eggs, so I am not super familiar with methods to increase eggs because I just let their bodies do whatever. I love having chickens but it has been a lot of work during summers and winters especially with constantly cleaning their water and changing it. I would say for people who want chickens, that they are very worth it. I also think that there are a lot of people who do chicken things in a much more low maintenance way. But as with the ducks, the chickens are our pets so I want them to be comfortable and happy.