Don’t you think we have enough going on? This was my husband Fred’s logical response when I suggested that we add a flock of baby chicks to our already expansive brood of four children, two guinea pigs, a 15-year-old German shepherd mix, and one tetra fish.
But I had already been wooed by the backyard chicken lifestyle. (Thanks, Instagram.) I could just picture it: me in my prairie skirt (that I didn’t yet own), holding a wicker basket (ditto for the basket), and my darling kids plucking fresh eggs from the coop each morning and tossing the chickens feed as joyfully as one tosses rice at a wedding. The image did not woo my husband with the same fervor, so I instead appealed to his wallet. “Eggs are six dollars a dozen! Think of the money we’ll save!” We got the chicks—four of the cutest balls of fluff you’ve ever seen (only $2 apiece!). We also picked up a heat lamp ($20), some organic starter feed ($31), a chick feeder ($9) and waterer ($11), and bedding ($26). We put them in a cardboard box (free) in our mudroom, while my husband and eldest son Henry put together the prefab wooden coop we bought online ($125).
I say that because, much like young children, they cost us a lot of money, and we didn’t get much back in return. As it turned out, the shoddy design of our coop was not water-tight. Also, its flimsy door left our hens vulnerable to the hawks and coyotes that roam our suburban Atlanta neighborhood at night, so my husband and Henry built a second, sturdier coop with lumber and chicken wire from Home Depot ($200). We dutifully tossed the hens their feed ($50 per bag per month), and, after six months, they dutifully began laying one egg each per day—until they went on strike! (Apparently, chickens don’t like to produce when it’s too cold outside. Or when it’s too hot. Or when they simply don’t feel like it.)
Then, one late winter evening, a fox literally got into our henhouse. The kids were heartbroken. I was…less so. At least now we were going to save a lot of money on eggs. Wistfully, I hung up my suburban chicken farmer dreams, and I gave the prairie skirt to Goodwill. So, you can imagine my surprise when, a year later, Fred mentioned that our local feed and seed had just received a new shipment of baby chicks.
“Don’t you think we have enough going on?” I asked. “Yes, but I figured out what went wrong with the coop,” he replied, a gleam in his eye. “I can build a better one this time.” Three hundred dollars in materials later, we are once again the proud parents of four chickens. Would you like some eggs? They’re only $45 a dozen.
—Colleen Oakley Is The Author Of The Mostly True Story Of Tanner & Louise.
