Life Lessons from the Coop

When I was a teenager I went along with a friend to her aunt’s house for the weekend. While other children spent their day inside the house playing Nintendo, I found myself sitting on the steps of their hen house. It was a beautiful weekend with temperatures around 75 degrees, sunny, and a few butterflies flying along the skyline as hens walked in and out of the coop to lay their eggs inside the nearby nesting boxes. Every time the hen cackled, I would jump up with glee as I reached for that hot fresh egg to then run into the house. I didn’t understand why no one else was as excited about it as I was, but those days impacted me more than any other weekend in my life.

I have now bypassed over 23 years of raising backyard chickens. I often joke that Chickens have at least 1001 ways to die and that if there was a way to screw something up, I have done it, at least two or ten times. Am I a perfect chicken tender? Not even close. I still make mistakes. Sometimes I forget things from one year to the next. In my years of experience, here are some of the top things I have learned.

Patience

One of the biggest lessons that I have learned during my journey in raising backyard chickens. Patience. Patience is applicable in many areas of raising chickens. If you are starting out with baby chicks, you will start out having tender sensitive baby chicks who are completely dependent on you to make the right decisions for them. If you rush their heat needs, you can have weak chickens, even death. You also want to make sure that you thoroughly clean waterers, feeders, and living spaces properly each time you do it and not do a hasty job. You can save yourself a few minutes here and there, but in the end it can cost you even more in terms of chicken health, even life.

Procrastination Can Catch Up to You

It is important to remember that a job worth doing is worth doing well and properly. Coccidiosis loves it when you procrastinate a little too much on changing out bedding and being slow on that fresh clean water. Foxes love it when you decide that you can just leave the coop door open tonight, instead of making the effort to put down the remote to the tv and walk outside to shut them in for the night. A few extra nails or a few extra screws into your chicken tractor or coop, might seem a little overdone, but in the end it may be what helps your coop to stay strong during a strong storm. I have learned that any time I tried to shortchange a project, I’d end up kicking myself later on because something broke or a predator had a fine feast.

Cutting Corners Can Be Costly

One of the hardest lessons for me to learn was to accept that sometimes cutting corners in the name of saving money would end up costing me a lot more in the end. This can apply to a lot of areas in life. The shortest path is not always the best path. The cheapest feed might result in a very poor egg laying rate or poor growth for your meat birds.  In my earlier years of raising chickens, I would go to the local feed store and buy the cheapest feed. It claimed to be everything needed for laying hens, but with every little weather change or stressor my girls would take a week or two off from laying. They generally looked unthrifty. They would die more often at the onset of winter when the weather started changing into its frozen state of bliss. I tried then to just toss my girls scratch grains and let them free range. They didn’t didn’t fare much better. Interestingly, not necessarily a lot worse, but certainly they were falling short of my expectations. In later years I learned to go with a different brand of feed, despite the higher cost. In the end, I found that my hens were healthier and the egg output increased 10x’s compared to the cheap feed. The breeds were the same. I was otherwise raising them in the same way. However, if you took my cost to compare it to how much each egg technically cost me,  the “cheap” feed was actually a lot more expensive.

Respect the Space of Others

A very important lesson that I learned is to respect the space of others. If I went around the corner and the rooster felt his exit was blocked, he generally let me know. It is also very important not to walk underneath a roosting chicken, especially not a roosting turkey. Did you know that birds defecate the most while on their roosts?  When they say sharing is caring, I assure you that love is not the emotion you will feel as you walk under a roost to feel a few tap taps on your back and you reach back to find out that the turkeys liquidy poop is now rolling down your previously nice clean pajamas. 

Not All is As they Appear

Sometimes things are not exactly as they appear to be. My first day with chickens I flipped out thinking that my rooster was attacking the hens. I did send him over the rainbow bridge before I learned that the behavior I witnessed was not an attack exactly, but that is how they mate. My first batch of chicks I freaked out thinking they had a disease because they had a fluid filled bubble on their chests. Come to find out chickens have a thing called a crop, which is where all feed and water go soon after consumption. The fluid was their water and it was normal. 

Take A Moment to Reflect on the Good

Lastly, the lesson I learned from the coop was that life can be hard. It can be stressful.  When everything in life seems to be going wrong, it can be important to take a moment to sit down with your girls. Pull up a chair and watch your chickens for a little while. Whether they are scratching around their coop or out frolicking in the grass, take a few minutes to watch them. Imagine how free it must feel to chase a butterfly through waves of clover. It has to be so exciting to kick up a rock to find a large earthworm. Then walk over and grab your chicken eggs out of the nesting box and thank your hens for the little nuggets of love.

New to chickens and want to know a great first time chicken? Consider the Buff Orpington!