…AND WHAT I DID ABOUT IT
A full third of chicken owners stop raising chickens after the first two years. That’s a pretty discouraging statistic. It’s a lot of time and money down the drain. But I totally get it. Although I enjoyed raising chickens, after six years I was ready to throw in the towel. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that I was disappointed with the chickens, it was that I felt that the chickens were disappointed with me! In other words, I felt like despite my best intentions, I wasn’t giving them a good home.
I could see that they were terribly bored, and I couldn’t let them out to free range because I didn’t have a fence around my yard. When it rained or snowed, their whole run became a massive miserable mud pit. We also had a terrible mouse problem, so my chickens were getting a lot of mouse droppings with their food. Their water was constantly dirty, and no matter how many times I filled it, it just seemed like a cesspool of filth. Their eggshells were thin and cracking—so I knew my hens had a calcium deficiency, but my attempts to supplement with crushed eggshells didn’t fix anything. To make matters worse, a dog pawed his way into the run because I didn’t have a lock on the door. Two dead chickens later, now I was dealing with guilt for not doing enough to protect them. The whole thing just seemed abysmal. Even though I liked raising chickens, I felt like I was failing at being a chicken owner.
I had a decision to make. Either stop raising chickens, or keep going and fix everything that was broken. Obviously, I chose the latter. I made a new run with a roof, and I started composting in the run. Both the compost and the roof help the run to be mud-free, and the chickens were now a lot busier digging and hunting in the compost. No more bored and pacing chickens. I made a new mouse proof feeder, so no more mice, and I made a new waterer that was always clean and rarely needed filling. I also made a simple oyster shell feeder, so they always had access to a calcium supplement—good-bye prematurely-cracked egg shells. Finally, I put childproof locks on the coop and run so that a stray dog wouldn’t pose any risk. Not huge changes, but taken together—they made a huge difference.
Raising chickens now seems like a breeze, and the best part is…I feel like I’m giving them a good home.
