I really should have started this blog in March. That's when the "Horrible Spring" began. It started with the suicide on March 30 of my cousin's 17-year-old daughter, followed by the fatal car accident of my daughter's good friend's sister a week later. What do these tragic teen deaths have to do with farming? Nothing. They just set the tone for the calamity, frustration, and despair to follow in the next days, weeks and months.

The first sign of farm trouble was the disappearance of one of my layer hens. I only keep 6 hens and 1 rooster - enough for eggs for us and some to sell. I thought maybe she was hiding in a nest box. But then the next night, we were down to 4. After inspecting the chicken coop, I discovered that the chicken wire had rotted away where it entered the ground, leaving a kind of large swinging door for any animal motivated enough to push under it. And push under it did. Twice. I figured it was a coyote since we have many around here. Therefore, I pounded any form of stake I could find lying around the yard in front of the coop spaced about 6 inches apart. No coyotes were that thin. In addition, I had to replace those layers because 4 eggs a day or less would not be enough, especially since several of them didn't lay every day.

Starting hens from chicks is a long, sometimes frustrating process. There are 3 major barriers to successful raising:

1) Said pullet may turn out to be a cockerel (ain't no eggs comin' out of him)
2) These wee babes from the farm store may be diseased or weak and you don't find out until you get them home and wake up one day to find a stiff wee babe.
3) Introducing them to the established flock is tricky and often perilous to their health. There's a reason it's called "pecking order." There's no Welcome Wagon in the ole' chicken coop. Just a gantlet of pecking until the Queen Hen is established, and on down the line, until the lowliest of fowl is the one with the bloodiest and least feathered back. Sad but true. It's the equivalent of $10 jeans at the half-yearly Nordstrom sale. It's every hen for herself, and don't get bloodied in the melee.

In any case, I decided I had to bite the bullet and bring home 6 chicks. My son and I went and decided to have fun with picking new breeds. We picked exactly 6 different kinds. They ranged in price from $3.50 to $4.50. We stuck them in the rabbit cage (that's another whole story) and put them in the barn. Since this post is getting too long, I'll finish the story later, but here's the cliff hanger. Within one hour one chick was spotted at dinner time in the mouth of one of my cats.