I’m officially chicken-less now.
I didn’t lose my remaining 2 hens to a predator or to injury, illness or disease. I simply decided that I needed to take a break in chicken-tending for the winter. For the past 3 years, my mornings and evenings have been bracketed by tending to my chickens. Every morning meant early rising to open the coop, top off the feeder, and change their water. Every evening meant closing up the coop and — if I hadn’t found the opportunity earlier in the day — collecting eggs.
Lately the eggs have been few and far between and I’ve been thinking of what my next steps should be: getting more hens or taking a break. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d really like to rebuild my coop set-up before getting more chickens, so I took the hens to a “retirement home.” They’re now living with my mom’s flock out in the country, and hopefully they’ll enjoy their winter with all those other avian companions.
I was telling one of my friends about this momentous change and she said “How can we call you Chicken Linda if you have no chickens?” Well, I don’t really have an answer to that.
How could you bear to do it? I would miss my morning and evening routines too much to tell m girls goodbye. I could say part of me is jealous of your decision but not enough to try it for myself. It will be interesting to see how long you can to without fresh eggs.
Oh hell, you’ll always be Chicken Linda to me. Enjoy the hiatus-sometimes stepping away for a little while is best
[...] that I’ve really missed over the past several months is keeping chickens. Last fall I decided to take a break from having a home flock. It was nice having time to reassess my coop and run set up, and to make [...]