I had a 10 gallon fish tank in the garage that had a mesh metal top that I had used to nurse a baby squirrel several months prior and the birds were so tiny, that it was plenty of room for them initially. I placed it on the counter in the guest bathroom to keep it out of range of our cat, affectionately and accurately named, “Sarah the Terror Coker Cat”, a rescue cat from Ocracoke Island. I put out food and water and carefully dipped each of their beaks in the water amidst much squawking, so they would know where it was, critical in their first days. The first dilemma struck. I went to put the heat lamp on and the bulb popped. Now I was panicking because I had to go find a “red” bulb (prevents the birds from pecking at each other and hides any specks of blood which would draw more pecking) and the chicks had to have heat right away since they had no mother to provide it to them.
I rushed to my neighbor’s house, embarrassed. But they had an extra bulb and lent it to me, along with a better water bottle set up. By the time I got back, the runt was squawking at the top of his lungs and wouldn’t stop. I had read that that was a bad sign and so decided he must be cold. I picked him up (to even MORE squawking) and cradled him in both hands, making a cave for him by cupping my hands around him. With just his head sticking out, he soon settled down to a warm nap as I sat on the toilet lid for the next hour cradling him. Any movement and he would let out a few squawks again – man, spoiled already. His name became Runt. He would grow up to be a regular little monster, ingenious at getting whatever he wanted, especially food and not afraid to hold his own in any fight. Notice I said, “He”. Out of the six bantams I had purchased, FOUR turned out to be males, but I’ll get to THAT later.
Then there was the beautiful little orange/yellow one with feathers like silk. She was a dainty little thing and her name became Goldie Locks. In the beginning she was the tamest and enjoyed being held, but that would change as so many things do.
My favorite was a jet black one who had been fast as lightening in the huge tub full of birds when I had originally picked her out. I was so afraid she too would end up being a rooster, but she didn’t. Her name is Raven – named by my husband. Her intelligence far surpasses the others and now she is spoiled rotten, rotten, rotten and demands to be fed by hand and starts making noise the minute I walk out the back door towards the coop.
Then, there was the kooky, S.B. – short for “sh@#tty britches” because as a chick he developed what they call “pasting up” where the uh, sh%^&t gets “stuck” and acts like cement, preventing a bird from being able to go to the bathroom. The remedy is a warm paper towel and is used to gradually er....”unpaste” the area in question. It is not a fun procedure for owner nor the “pastee” and S.B. did not like me much for awhile afterward. But his unusual curiosity and demand for attention could not stand ignoring me for long and he became a big, demanding clown who would fly on your hand and cock his head sideways at the strangest angles, stretching his neck to see and hear you. He was pure white, with little tufts of feathers sticking out from his ears that gave him a comical look.
Then there was Gwen. She was a dainty brown and beige little girl, who looked similar to Runt and pal’d around with him constantly. The only difference was Runt had what looked like dark brown eyeliner around his eyes and a dark brown v-shaped patch on his head. They were both stunning to look at. In the first week, Gwen started to look a bit sick and the books all said to quickly separate them, but when I did, she threw such a fit and would not shut up, that I put Runt in with her, then they BOTH pitched a fit so I gave up and put them back with the others and they calmed down and Gwen miraculously got better.
Last but not least was Sumo, named because he was fat and dumpy and looked like a Sumo wrestler. He was Brian’s favorite. He was flecked in golds and blacks and very beautiful with gray/blue eyes and a melodic voice that was totally different from the others. When he chirped, they all stopped to listen. His appetite was voracious and so was his growth, but he was a poor flyer and was constantly flopping down as if too fat, unless, of course, there was food that he wanted, then he could move with amazing speed. In the end, he became a testosterone-laden bully.
Time flew by and Brian and I took turns digging earth worms and putting them in the cage to watch the melee that ensued. It looked like an all-out basketball game with the chickens running at break-neck speed for the worms, playing tug of war with them and stealing them from each other, all too loud squawks like, “Hah, Hah, look what I’ve got!!!!” We soon discovered they loved mealworms as well.
By this time, I was unceremoniously advised that I was being laid off from work. I had injured my knee at a work outing and had gone out on leave to rehab the knee, when that didn’t work; I had knee surgery and was still out recovering when they let me go. This is the reward one gets today from Corporate America after giving 27 years service. Brian thought I should get rid of the chickens, but I had become attached to them and frankly, in the depression of losing my job and wondering if I would ever walk normally again, the chickens were the only bright spot in my day and I steadfastly and tearfully REFUSED to give them up. At this point, my husband thought I had surely lost my mind, spending money on chicken food and supplies after being laid off. It was a difficult time trying to rationalize to him why I needed to keep them. I had also put some seeds in prior to my surgery and the garden was beginning to grow as well, so the chickens and the garden became the center of my painful, depressed, limping world.
The birds quickly grew out of the fish tank and I settled on a large blue plastic storage tub that I got for cheap at Lowe’s. I placed the plastic bin in the bath tub since it was too big to fit on the counter and ran an extension cord precariously across the floor praying my husband would not trip on it each time he went into the bathroom to shave. No wonder he wanted the chickens gone, they were vying for his shaving area and had become little eating, sleeping and poop factories and had begun to stink. Still I persisted and visited them daily for hours. They had become quite tame and as soon as I took the top off of their bin, they would all fly up at once and try to sit on my hands and arms. As soon as I had moved them to their bigger space, they had also decided to start squaring off at one another, getting on their tippy toes and chest bumping in one macho contest after another, even the girls would do it.
When the smell and the dust and the inconvenience of having six chickens in the bathroom finally dawned on me, I had managed to put their small temporary coop together in the garage. Still barely able to walk, the act had exhausted me. The day I moved them out there, they were thrilled. But it was HOT in the garage, getting upwards of 95 degrees so I then began to worry that they would die of heat and started trying to figure out how to build a coop, who would help me and assumed it wouldn’t be that hard. Of course, I had no idea....but when I set my mind to something, I am a force to be reckoned with and will move mountains with sheer determination. It was at this point that hubby had had enough and flat-out REFUSED to help me build the coop even after he had said he could and knew how to. Later it turned out that not only did he not want to, he was afraid that if he did and didn’t do it correctly and something got in and killed the chickens, that I would blame him.
Now I was in a real dilemma, no one to help build it and me not willing to spend a lot of money since I had been laid off. Still I persisted....and I thought of Bob Davis, the man who had given the chicken class and organized Henside the Beltline, surely he would know of someone who would be willing to build a coop for a little bit of money? Hopefully? I sent him an email explaining my situation and he surprised me by replying that HE would consider building it himself. It couldn’t get any better than that could it? He owned chickens and had years of experience so he surely must know a thing or two about building a coop. But could I actually afford him? After a few conversations, we agreed on a price that I could afford, about half of his original asking price. I knew then he was doing it out of kindness and no other reason and I was grateful that there still were kind people in the world who understood a girl who had become attached to her chickens, was at the lowest point in her life and was hanging on to something that didn’t seem to make sense to anyone else. Bob and his wife Judy somehow understood this and after one day of me limping and sitting and limping and sitting, trying to help him as best I could, she showed up for the remaining two days, unasked, to help him finish it.
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