The pandemic has decided to change everybody’s plans for the near future. For us, living with my chronic lung illness, it meant we’re staying home for the summer. No travelling, no festivals, no volunteering at Refugee Community Kitchen or visiting grandmas. It was a shame, sure, but we decided to focus on positives and do the best we can with our forced “staycation”. And we did just that.
Homesteading was always something we wanted to do. Small scale cruelty free farming and growing our own healthy and environmentally friendly food is our long term ambition. Ecology is very important to us, but… We live in a rented accommodation and we travel often for work and pleasure, making it a back burner dream, waiting patiently for a convenient time in the future.
Since we realised that we’ll have to take the route of self isolation for a prolonged period of time, we though: why don’t we get chickens? We’ve done our reading, talked to friends who raise them, spoke to our landlady and decided to take the leap. We have ordered 4 Sussex pullets (immature hens) as they are the most docile, friendly, chatty and easy going breed and a good choice for both egg production and rearing for meat. The idea of having different breed hens sounded cool at the start, with different plumage and multicoloured eggs, but since we were total novices in the game, we decided to make it as easy and stress free (both for us and the girls) as possible.
Toby designed and built a super coop and sheltered run all out of scrap materials. We made ladders, dust bath, multiple perches and even a swing. We wanted them to fully enjoy their life with us.
We called the girls The Supremes and they really are just amazing. Now we have them chasing us around the garden, talking to us from the window sill while we work at our desks, laying eggs in designated nest boxes (not a small feat, just saying) and living a happy and healthy lives.
Was it easy?
Hell no! Within 2 days one of the girls got ill, had serious breathing difficulties that developed in matter of hours. We were worried sick. First we thought she was choking and given her a chicken version of Heimlich manoeuvre. Yes, seriously.
Brought her in, isolated her in a cage in our flat right away. Panicking, calling and emailing vets and chemists while googling what might be causing her symptoms. We were not prepared for this in any measure. As the national quarantine was in full swing, no vet would see her. We felt helpless and distraught at her suffering, we worried she might die. Long story short: after few sleepless nights and nerve-wracking days of force feeding her water with a pipette, giving her treatments for potential infections and parasites, and numerous inhalations (that’s right!) with my asthma meds, just to enable her to breathe, she started improving. It took 10 days for her to be reunited with the rest of the gang in the same shared area. And they were avoiding her for a few weeks, but all is good now.
Was it worth it?
Absolutely! We now get to enjoy the fresh eggs being laid for us every day. And one of the girls lays double yolkers! We also get to learn lots. Offer and receive the companionship. Laugh and marvel at their antics. There’s also Chicken TV. Toby, in his infinite wisdom designed the coop and run so we don’t have to go outside to let the hens out or to collect the eggs. We just need to lean out of the living room window. The girls have access to the outside window sill and provide excellent entertainment when they come to eat, or to lay an egg or chat. Yes, they do like talking. A lot.
Would you like to keep chickens?