Chickens Know How to Earn Their Keep
And other domesticated pets at Chez Enlightened Omnivore
I have a rule in my house; every pet has to have a job. There is no free lunch at Chez Enlightened Omnivore. Each and every one of us has to do our part. And I’m a stickler for the rule.
Case in point, at nine years old, my eldest daughter wanted nothing more than to have a family dog. Knowing my position on the matter, she decided to draft a PowerPoint presentation to plead her case. We’d recently had a rodent problem at the house, and so she expertly argued that the Norwich Terrier–the best rat terrier in the world–was compact, a hard worker and thus the perfect addition to our family. Her performance was so persuasive that I almost immediately agreed. At the last moment, I asked to sleep on it. That night in bed, I looked up the price of a purebred Norwich: $2,000. We still don’t have a dog.
We did have some fish years ago. This time my middle daughter asked for an aquarium for Christmas. Santa Claus agreed and delivered a complicated aquaponic system that ingeniously circulated dirty water from the tank to fertilize an herb garden suspended above it. Everything was going great until I decided to add a cilantro plant I’d bought at the grocery store. The factory-farmed herb was loaded with synthetic nitrogen and killed the fish within hours. Death by garnish. Truly sad.
But the true champs of the employed pet rule live in a little shed in the southwest corner of our backyard. Four feathered companions strut proudly around a bright orange coop, working hard to produce eggs with even brighter orange yolks. We are the delighted owners of some of the most enlightened omnivores around. May I introduce Sunshine, Olive, Snickers, and Endor, our backyard chickens.
I never would have thought that chickens could be considered family. But not only do these industrious ladies play a crucial role in our eco-conscious homestead, they also bring us hours of entertainment, joy, and love.
Chickens are fascinating creatures. They will hunt and peck and scratch at the ground all day in search of food. They will primp and preen their feathers to remain elegantly kept. They will sit for hours on eggs despite hunger or cold with maternal dedication. They even bathe themselves in the dust, dramatically puffing up to twice their size, feathers erect, only to shake clean like a dog drying off.
Chickens have tons of personality. Some are timid, others arrogant. Some look out for the flock, others get lost in the world at their feet. When my kids were young, our birds would walk up and sit in their laps, or wait to be picked up and carried. We even had one that would come running when called like an eager labrador.
The pecking order is no joke. There is always a hierarchy. When young, each lady struts her stuff, shoving and nipping at her sisters until one chicken is awarded dominance; the mother hen. She now rules the roost. She eats first. She is first out the door, and last into the coop at night. The mother hen is always keeping a watchful eye out for danger.
But power is fleeting in this fowl world, and after a few weeks another hen asserts herself by performing the enchanting wing dance. The subordinate chicken will come up alongside the dominant and defiantly lower her outer wing, pirouetting in a half circle. If successfully executed, she will now be crowned queen. I’ve seen leadership in the coop change several times in a single season as a result of this instinctual ballet.
Quite honestly, I can’t think of a more perfect pet than a chicken. They are relatively self sufficient. They never shed. They don’t slobber or hump your leg. They do make some noise, but I find the clucking and cooing comically soothing. They can attract flies, but they also eat their weight in garden insect pests.
My favorite part about owning chickens is that they convert everything I don’t want into two invaluable commodities that I can’t live without: eggs and poop. The eggs are rich and robust. The yokes are pumpkin orange, and the whites clear and firm. The shells range from white, to brown, to green, to pink and blue. After ten years of home grown eggs, I can’t imagine going back to store bought.
And then there’s the poop. Normally this is the least popular output of a pet. But chicken poop is like garden pixy dust. The soil in the floor of the coop enclosure hints at its power. THe dirt is moist and black like chocolate cake. When I fold this stuff into my raised bins, it’s like miracle grow. If I put droppings directly into the compost bin, the compost temp climbs well above 140 degrees in days. Steam comes off the pile in the chill of the early morning. Rich with nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and microbes, the resulting humus enriches and rebuilds my topsoil. I give all credit in the garden to this organic concoction.
You only have to watch a chicken for a few minutes to realize that you are observing a walking dinosaur. They actually are the closest living relatives of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, that notorious Cretaceous predator. In captivity, we think of chickens as vegetarians, eating corn and soy and maybe the odd seed. In reality, free range hens are avid omnivores, if not fierce hunters. Watching chickens chase an unfortunate lizard around the yard looks more like a pack of blood thirsty velociraptors stalking their prey than a motherly flock of hens aimlessly pecking at tossed grain. I’ve even seen a dead rat inside the egg box, dispatched–no doubt–by the diligent mother when it scuttled too close to the clutch in the middle of the night.
I also love our hens because they clean our plates. They eagerly devour kitchen scraps, uneaten morsels, and spoiled leftovers from the fridge. We have a little white and green bucket under the sink just for them. Each morning, before I take the kids to school, I empty its contents into the birds’ enclosure. The girls thank me with an eagerness of appetite that would lead you to believe their feed bin empty. They ravenously gorge themselves on watermelon rind, bell pepper stems, and stale rice. The only time I see them more eager is when a Japanese Beetle grub unknowingly wiggles into the coop. Throwing hierarchy to the wind, the hens play a game of capture the flag, stealing the fat worm from each other until one lady wedges herself into a corner and swallows the grub in one convulsive gulp.
Chickens aren’t for everyone, but they bring our home so much joy and bounty. And if you’re interested in learning more about how you might introduce chickens into your home, I’ll be putting together a little DIY handbook (behind the paywall of course) with all the things I’ve learned over the years, and some helpful next steps to make a coop a reality in your future.
Oh, and just in case you all thought me to be the meanest dad in the world when it comes to pets, I did bend the rules a bit earlier this year.
In January, we got two rescue kittens, Kyle and Archer, brothers from the local shelter. When they arrived, I saw them as freeloaders. They seemed to only chase each other around the house at night, sleep all day, eat my houseplants, and pee on my socks. Maybe one day they will prove to be an insurance policy on in-house rodent control, but I’m not holding my breath.
Then I began to notice the joy these cats have brought my children, cuddling on laps during TV time, eliciting fits of laughter as they chase laser pointers, and calming anxieties with their meditative purring.
Maybe I’ve gone soft, but I think they may have the hardest (and most important) job of all.
Don’t forget, if you want to learn more about raising chickens of your own, become a paid subscriber and receive the DIY guide next week.
