Thinkpieces

Let's Play Chicken

my misadventures with what were supposedly simple pets

Charis Collins |

I’m no Wisconsin native. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where winter means 40s and rain. I had no idea what a pansy notion this was until I moved here a few years ago – a city girl with big rural ambitions, like growing my own food, getting off the grid (some day), and convincing my horses to pull logs out of the woods.

Of course if you’re pursuing this kind of lifestyle, it isn’t long before people start in with the chicken talk. “They’re easier than cats!” they say. “The fresh eggs taste like pure joy in your morning omelet!” So when we went and picked up our first batch of poultry, we were expecting nothing but sunshine and rainbows to trail after us and our new, low-maintenance pets. And everything was fine. At first.

While our chickens were enjoying their new shiny chicken condo very much indeed, we hadn’t yet gotten around to building their yard, which means they were stuck inside on a bright, sunny day. And just like my mom used to do when she’d catch us kids staring slack-jawed at the boob tube on a summer afternoon, I decided to kick those little chicken butts out for some free ranging.

Now, I’m sure this will come as a surprise to exactly nobody, but when you check the internet for information on this kind of thing, you will notice how wildly the opinions can vary. You get the folks who want to convince you there are HORRIBLE CARNIVORES around EVERY CORNER just waiting to DEVOUR your precious girls, most likely by RIPPING THEIR HEADS OFF and sticking them on a stake outside of the coop, just as a warning to the rest of them. Then of course there are the people who will REPORT YOU to the SPCA IMMEDIATELY if they hear you are keeping your chickens LOCKED IN A COOP like so many small, feathered inmates.

For the most part, though, I found the general consensus was that if the chickens had been in the same coop for at least a week, they’d consider it home, chilling out around the premises, eating a few ticks and other six-legged undesirables, and then popping back in when night fell, because they do like to cuddle up for bedtime.


So here’s what happened. I opened the door, and the chickens all flapped out madly, rejoicing their freedom, and promptly disappeared into the neighbor’s cornfield. I kept an eye out for them all day, alternating between feeling confident they’d find their way and worried that they were dim enough to get hopelessly lost in a giant cornfield.

So when dusk descended, I made my way out to the coop and found four of them back in the fold: two beautiful, brown egg-laying Red Stars, the little white one, and the friendly speckled one. They seemed perfectly content to be back at the roost. I then returned to the house, leaving the coop door open, because at this point I was getting my hopes up that more might actually make it back. And that’s when it happened. There was a rapping on my kitchen door. I went to answer it expecting a neighbor dropping in for a stop-and-chat, or perhaps a wandering Jehovah’s Witness.

And what I saw was the third Red Star hen, just standing on the deck watching me with her head cocked to one side. Trying to make sense of it, I walked out and she did a little dance around my legs. I then made my way down to the coop, and she followed right along with me, hopping down the deck stairs and heeling as well as any little dog you’d find in a celebrity’s purse these days.

At that point, our half-wit rooster came stumbling out of the corn with several of his ladies in tow. And then he proceeded to miss the coop entirely and bed down back in the corn, attempting to roost on a single downed stalk with three of what must have been the slower hens. This ended up requiring a late night ambush wherein my shockingly adept chicken-wrangling husband was able to grab three while they slept. The rooster came back acting all nonchalant the next morning, while we worked on getting the yard up, and then the neighbor’s beagle flushed out a very startled looking Barred Rock later that afternoon.

So at the time I write this, we have 10 of our 13 chickens back in the coop, including a rooster whose DNA I’m not even that sure I want passed down to future generations.

Remember those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books that were popular back in the 80s? That’s kind of how I feel about my time spent on this land. For better or worse, I tend to learn from my mistakes. Do you let the chickens out for an adventure? If you do, go to page 23. If you decide to keep them in, go to page 34. Good luck!