Raggedy old rooster-pecked chicken got out yesterday. Nowhere in sight at dusk. Out and about this morning. Would-be farmer tries to get chicken back in. Kindness fails, patience nonexistent, farmer defaults to what he learned as defensive end for 3-3 New Auburn Trojans football team in 1982. Chicken wins, farmer realizes why he never got that football scholarship.*
*a football scholarship to nursing school…now that would’ve been nifty.
Been having a whole lot of trouble on the egg-laying front this winter. Production dropped off to nearly nothing (there’s always a taper, but this year was especially steep), then when they started laying again, they were devouring all the eggs.
Last week we instituted a program of increased oyster shell, three-a-day collections, and daily re-strawing of the laying boxes. We also added a golf ball to the plastic decoy eggs (supposedly they try to eat the plastic egg or golf ball and get discouraged).
Sixty-some chickens, and yesterday we got 43 eggs.
Including a couple blue ones.
Bounty!
, stop pouring today’s chicken water atop the previous week’s chicken water (which is now a big round ice cube), get into the shed, fetch out the winter watering rig, and git’r done.
Even if it is deer hunting season.
The “Chicken Shack” Video that ran on In Wisconsin recently is now available online (although if your internet connection is anything like mine, it may take forever to load):
Watch the full episode. See more In Wisconsin.
The wind is still freight-training, so I’m not sayin’ we’re in the clear, but I did wake up three times last night to peer out of the window to see if the chicken coop (which is mounted on the running gear from an old haywagon) was still upright, and it was, and is now in the daylight. I was worried, because when I was in there at dusk, she was just a-rockin’. It was parked broadside to the wind and the rain had left the ground too soupy to move it. So, as the blurry rain-whipped cellphone photo below demonstrates, I took measures…
That’s a ground anchor, a boomer, and the chain from my deer-skinner.
Hadn’t thought about the bull for a few years…then I did this interview with the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel.
Prior to a reading in Plymouth, Minnesota, I sat for an enjoyable interview with Aaron Landry of the Heavy Table. Poor guy, I rambled like sixty. I hope he didn’t try to transcribe the whole thing. The excerpted interview has now been posted: you can read it here.
Once upon a time I wrote a book about (among other things) building a chicken coop:
Now we have a new project in the works…
When producer Todd Witter came up and spent a morning with me and our chickens, I had no idea what he’d do with the sound…he didn’t really interview me so much as let me ramble. When the following piece aired on Morning Edition as a “Wisconsin Life” essay, it was fun to re-imagine the morning (it was muddy and soggy as I recall). But my favorite part of the audio requires a closer listen, and is never explained: All this talk of chickens, and yet…you can hear interlopers…
Weekdays at 12:30 p.m. CST from now until February 12, Jim Fleming will be reading Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Chapter A Day.” Jim has a wonderful reading voice (I have learned he is a favorite of rural mail carriers) and you can listen to a live stream of the reading right here.
Missed a segment? The five most recent chapters are available here: http://wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code=cad&repeats=no
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