The Funny Farm: Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans of mice and men oft’ go awry” is a famous line from a poem by Robert Burns written to a mouse whose house suddenly gets plowed over by a farmer, despite the mouse’s careful planning.

I’ve tweaked those characters just a bit so they might read ” the best laid plans of chickens and women oft’ go awry”. In the first two stories tools are involved in the pursuit of creating a building to house those birds. I appreciate the folks who are skilled carpenters. Unfortunately I’m not one of them having occasionally failed the sage advice ‘measure twice, cut once’.

In the third, the culprit is an insurance company and the final tale involves something most of us can relate to – chicken math!

My husband I built this coop in the last four days and we learned a few things:

1. We absolutely suck at doors. We are trash. We hate them.

2. Hardware is the devil. It bites and I hate it. I look like I was attacked by a mountain lion.

3. My car automatically suggests Home Depot when we leave the house because we have been there so many times the last four days.

4. Patience in marriage is a virtue. God skipped us in that department.

5. My girls who aren’t even paying rent are spoiled.

No, but really if there is anyone in the Central Arizona area that wants to build me a nesting box door I’ll buy you a case of beer because it’s currently just a wall because we got frustrated and gave up. – Alee Lanier

I might have a small poultry problem. Behold the current state of my coop and run, designed for four respectable hens, now covered in a tarp like a sad backyard art installation because the roof isn’t on yet and the forecast says “rain all day.” Naturally.

City rules say we’re allowed four hens. That’s it. So, being a responsible urban farmer, I hatched eggs with a simple plan: keep four, give the extras to a friend. I wanted two Speckled Sussex and two Silkies. Clean. Sensible. Logical.

Batch one hatched. It all went well only one of the chicks made it fashionably late and clearly fighting some invisible battle. When it finally stood up, it was the tiniest chicken I’ve ever seen, like, absurdly small. The others bullied it immediately, so obviously I couldn’t send it with them and I had to keep it. That’s ok, who will notice one extra right?

Enter batch two: Silkie eggs and more backyard mix. Not only did four adorable Silkies hatch, but so did three more freakishly tiny mystery chicks, one a Naked Neck, who were somehow the perfect size to befriend my first lonely mini that I am confident now is a rooster. What could I do? Chickens are social animals. I couldn’t just say no to tiny friendship.

Meanwhile, I was also hatching a couple duck and goose eggs for my friend because why stop at chickens?. Only one duckling hatched. It was unable to stand and clearly needed help, so of course we kept it, and now my whole family is emotionally invested in this duckling. And since ducks need friends (ducks are also social animals, okay?), I had to find it a buddy. Enter: a Cayuga duckling from a local. And now we have ducks.

So to recap: The coop is too small. I need a second coop for the Tiny Chicken Posse. I need a duck house and a pond. I’m banking on the fact that we live next to a lake full of wild ducks and no one will notice the quacking. And I really hope our neighbours never move, because they’ve been successfully bribed with cookies and eggs not to report the backyard zoo I’m building. – Stacey Perry

Let me preface this with acknowledging that this is my fault. And some lessons are learned the hard way. A month ago, I changed my homeowner’s insurance to a new company and when asked about what animals I had on the property, I answered truthfully because I didn’t think 12 chickens would be a huge rule breaker. WRONG! I get this letter in the mail yesterday. I truly believe the one person that wrote this letter doesn’t know what a chicken is or how they live. Or they are a special kind of stupid.

I will add that I live in the state of Florida. And if anybody knows about Florida and homeowners insurance, then you understand that you can’t just go shopping and switch your insurance. I just switched to this new company and it saved me $800 a year after I put on a new roof. Florida insurance is always looking for reasons to drop customers and/or not pay. This company is actually very good and is ‘A’ rated. That’s why it makes me sad that they are being this way. I just purchased seven acres that I am working on building my forever home on so I will be able to have a flock of 12 with no problem. But I will be sending the underwriting department a very lengthy educational document about chickens. – Angie Marie

The plan was to get chickens last summer. Just a few. Everything in moderation. I researched breeds. I made a spreadsheet. I researched lifetime egg costs and temperaments and hardiness and egg colour. This was going to be an orderly process. We moved to a farmstead. And then we realized that there was waaaaay more work to be done on systems and structures, so we pushed chicken tending to this spring because we were in a real life version of the movie The Money Pit. All in good time.

And then the world stopped making sense in November and people started punching each other in farm stores and rushing the cash register as they fought over chicks like it was 1984 and the last Cabbage Patch doll was on the shelf. So I found a guy who knew a guy and bought clandestine chickens and hatching eggs from a neurospicy ally farmer living in deep red country with dreams of building an on-site distillery while also living the real life version of The Money Pit, but farm and riparian buffer rehab edition.

Hatching was fun. So I bought some more eggs from my list of breeds. And a third batch. Aaaaaand maybe a fourth. I mean, what if they didn’t hatch? What if I couldn’t find the breeds I was looking for? I shouldn’t count my chickens before they lay eggs, let alone hatch.

And now we own 21 chickens, some of which are still in the house because the seven big girls were super mean to them today and now they are escaping the brooder and perching on furniture and meandering the living room and oh my oh my this got out of control very, very quickly. A coop-adjacent coop is being built tomorrow. I don’t like how Panini gives me the stink eye when she’s at eye level.