Chickens

While visiting our friend Widow Bryant (see blog http://creekistan.blogspot.com/2006/02/boyz-from-wood.html#links) we got a glimpse of some baby chickens. She had some fancy chickens that were white with the large headdress feathers. She named them Ike and Tina. She also had some beautiful black chickens with some red feathers. Ike had fathered some chicks with one of the black hens. They were in Widow Bryant's kitchen staying warm under a lightbulb. My son fell in love immediately.

During our visit, we discussed how easy or difficult it is to raise chickens. Since we have plenty of property and no close neighbors, we could easily get some of her chicks and let them free-range in our yard. Zeb didn't like the idea, but I said that some day he'd come home and there would be chickens and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Before leaving, Widow Bryant gave us some eggs to eat. The next morning, I was about to make the eggs when my son tried to “rescue” one of the eggs so that he could hatch it. He carried it around for a while. I finally convinced him that we cannot have any chicks right now and that we need to eat the egg. He cried. What a hard lesson to learn.

We don’t have a barn and I don’t want the chickens roosting in the “haunted house” that we’re going to tear down, so a hen house is in order. I’ll be seeing what I can do to make one.

But, with bird flu becoming a big problem, we may have to wait until this pandemic is over before getting our own birds. We'll just have to visit Widow Bryant and Ike and Tina.