Now that the holidays and two winter grandkid birthdays are behind us, our attention has to turn to farmette living and the one harsh reality we are facing here: there is a problem with the way we raise chickens.
(a Bresse girl, Henny, and Unie)
Yes, we free range. Cage-free, all day long. But, in the evening Ed must put them away in the coop. We have expanded the original structure and it was possible to fit 9 chickens in there (they all crowd together upstairs at night and keep each other warm), though 7 -- what we have now -- is a far more comfortable number. Still, out of those 7, two are old. Peach is very old, Henny is pretty old. We expect not to get any more eggs out of them.
Some chickens will only lay reliably for a couple of years. That means that within a year or two we may wind up with a retirement home for hens. Seven hens, no more eggs.
A Bresse rooster is now available for purchase -- both an adult one (though at a distance from us) and a newly hatched one. Should we add him to the group and start hatching chickens, raising them for consumption? If you answer "no" to that, then there needs to be another plan for getting back on track with egg production. Add more young ones? We cant keep adding little chicks without making room for them in the coop. The old girls would have to go. Somewhere.
And of course it is not cheap to feed and house nonproductive hens. But, even if you write this off as the cost of raising "pets," you have to wonder -- do old chickens really make good pets? The four Bresse girls -- we can't even distinguish one from the other (except the one who keeps on hiccuping). We gave them names and we promptly forgot what they were. Even the kids don't pay much attention to them. I used to get some level of excitement when I'd say -- I'm going out to give them some bread treats! Now, no one even looks up at me. Yawn... Okay, come back soon!
You don't think of these things as you buy your first day-old chicks from a hatchery (or pick them up at some reliable chicken farm). And you could say we have been lucky. The reason we are not already overcrowding the coop with seniors is because predators have kept the numbers at a reasonable level for us. Each loss to an invader is an opportunity to add a fresh chick come spring. A new layer as it were.
But assuming we keep them all safe, shouldn't we start thinking about butchering the old hens so that we can make room for new ones, with or without a rooster?
This was our breakfast discussion today.
And predictably, we came to no conclusion. When there is no easy way out of a farmette problem, we often ignore it for a very long time.
The clouds came back today and neither of us felt like walking. We are slated to have a rather warm January (temperatures will climb above freezing during each day for the next couple of weeks) so we'll wait until a more interesting weather pattern comes along. I know, I know -- buying croissants and skipping walks isn't the "do better" that I put forth as a challenge to the New Year, but in fact, we are moving more and I only had one run to the bakery so far this year! Last December I was bringing home vienoiserie pastries all the time! We are doing better!
In the evening the young family is here for dinner. One noticeable change is that Snowdrop has gone from years of never wearing a jacket from car to house, even on the coldest of cold days, to now always wearing a jacket, and if she had her way, she'd keep it on even in the house. Instead, she makes do with a hoodie inside. Preferably with the hood up. If you coax her into pulling it down, her very long hair will have managed to turn itself into a good sized tangle.
(here, mommy is helping with brushing it out)
(Done? Up goes the hood.)
This really reminded me of Judy Blume books that I read to the kids: in her novels, for every new behavior that a young protagonist would take up, the parent would always say -- it's just a phase.
(Hey Sandpiper, you're too young for Judy Blume!)
It makes you go back to your own childhood habits and thank the stars how many of those habits were indeed just a phase.
(Sandpiper is content to move away from Fudge-a-Mania to sitting on his daddy's lap and saying cheese, both because he loves and wants some cheese and because he sees me with my camera.)
Dinner.
A few minutes of play time...
And they are off.
Evening calm. A bookend to a fine day! Wonderful to the end.
