See what I did there?
Deciding to get chickens was a loooooong time coming. When I first purchased my home 2 years BC (Before Chickens), it went something like this “OMG I can totally have chickens! I can do whatever the hell I want!”. And then…nothing. But the idea was always in the back of my mind. Sort of a fantasy that I would NEVER actually pull the trigger on I mean COME ON. I compost, but only sometimes. I have a veggie garden, but rarely harvest in time. The Urban Hippie Life is appealing, but an awful lot of work.
ASIDE: East Dallas is about a hippie as it gets ’round here. Backyard chickens aren’t totally weird, but still a bit of a novelty. So, I was already in a chicken-friendly part of town. As much as you can be “chicken-friendly”. What a weird thing to talk about. CARRY ON.
Being bored at home (or at work) (or at the bar) often led to online research on chickens and chicken-keeping. I read blogs, joined forums, generally lurked like a total creeper. I looked up potential pitfalls like illness, predators, care, longevity, vacation plans, all the things. It’s important to me that if I make the decision to accept responsibility for the care of an animal, that I know what I’m getting into. Eventually, I saw that I knew more about chickens and caring for them than some jackasses out there. Booyah.
The tipping point was A Peep at the Coops. It was at the end of April (I think?) and I conned a friend into going with me. What is it? It’s like a home tour, but for backyard chicken coops and it was all VERY local to me (like, never had to cross major highways or anything). We visited 4 or 5 coops and I asked a ton of questions at each one. We looked at coop construction (pre-fab, homemade, contracted), breeds (Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, Cochins, Polish, Ameraucanas), run/coop size, free ranging, fencing, weather-proofing, wing clipping, and on and on and on. I was a sponge. And determined.
Having agonized over potential coop plans, I got my first ChickieBabes™®© (whatever) on Mothers Day. They were born on Cinco de Mayo, so they were 3 days old when I brought the little fluffballs home. I’ll do another post about what I learned while caring for baby chicks. It’ll be a barn-burner.
But, yeah. That’s how it happened. HOURS, nay…DAYS of painstaking research until I just bit the bullet and went to Gecko Hardware to “you know, just check out what kind of breeds they have.”
And then there were four. And lo, they were cute. #fluffybutts
KittyCow Farms 