I promised in my last post that I’d explain my strong dislike of chickens.

Our friends from church, John and Debi have gone to Florida for a week with their family, and have left Kelly and I looking after their mail, several plants, 3 tanks of fish, and 26 poultry dishes waiting to happen. 2 roosters and 24 chickens, she tells me. I keep forgetting whether it’s 26 total or 26 chickens + the two roosters.

They live two doors down, so we wander down to do our duties before wandering back up. The chickens aren’t so bad, so long as they do what they are supposed to do, and it may improve this week when we can revert back to their routine. We’ve been doing things a little earlier or later than usual because of other things happening in our lives that we needed to attend to, but there are no planned events around chicken-time this week as yet.

Basically we deal with them 3 times a day. At around 9am we let them out of the chickenhouse, we give them a ‘snack’ of hotdog buns, then check for eggs and refill their food/water. This is not so bad, in the morning they’re rearing to get out of the chickenhouse, so once they’re out we shut the door to stop them getting in and then go in and do the work, opening it for them again when we’re done.

Around 12-1pm we go in and do an egg run, this is usually as simple as making sure as many chickens are in the yard as possible and shutting the door to them, and collecting the eggs. Again, not so bad.

The b***h of a job is around 4:30-5pm when we round them in for the evening. We’ll lock of the door to them and go in to check eggs, fill food/water etc, and then open it again and try and coerce nearly 30 chickens/roosters all through a small hole into the chickenhouse (which is rather crowded near the end) while trying not to let others back out. We also struggle in this time while we have to be in the pen with them, as the roosters are very protective and have begun to attack at us. I don’t like things I don’t understand (IE, chickens/roosters) and Kelly is afraid of birds flapping at her, which is what they do. The other annoyance is one white chicken (with a brown feather) that has escaped 3 days in a row, having to try and get it back in with minimal fuss.

I’m incredibly glad I didn’t have to deal with them at all today – this morning I was at the churches chicken barbecue, a very pleasing event ;-), this afternoon and evening I was asleep through both events. Kelly’s brother, Matt, gained leadership over the one rooster that was defying him by ‘hitting’ it with the stick (swinging it and nearly touching but not quite), and I need to do that if necessary, I’m just afraid I’ll hit it and hit it too hard – I don’t like dead things either!

So we shall see how it goes until Thursday when the family returns!