“I may, or may not, have chickens in the car”

Have you ever heard of chicken math? Jennifer from Kittanning was hit before she even knew what was coming. Her journey started with an impulse purchase of six hens, quickly growing to a flock of 18 chickens, two Eglu Cubes and a Walk In Run. We sat down with Jennifer and learned all about how her flock came to be.

Obviously, we’ve come to chat to you about chickens. And you’ve got a couple of Cubes, a Walk In Run, and how many chickens?

We have 18 chickens. I decided to get some because I was buying eggs from people with backyard chickens and loved the fresh taste. We have a camp up north where a lady sells fresh eggs, and I’d also been getting some from a nearby friend. So I thought I’d just have some of my own.

Basically you thought, why not? And obviously you guys have got the space here. You’ve got a lovely amount of land. So, then what happens?

I tried to convince my husband to let us get chickens. I kept asking, and usually, if I want something, I can get it. So we started looking into different coop options. We considered modifying a shed like a friend did, but it would’ve been a lot of work – and we weren’t up for that.

This was all around November 2022, and who gets chickens in November? Nobody. But I started looking anyway. There was a local poultry farm that I called to see if they had any chickens, and they did – but they said if I wanted them I’d have to get them right now. I was working from home, and Matt was out at work. I looked at my calendar and thought, okay… and went and got six chickens.

But wait, you hadn’t even got a coop yet, right?

Right! So I brought the chickens home in a big dog cage, finished my work day, and waited for Matt to get back. When he arrived, I told him, “There may, or may not, be chickens in the car.” His reaction was, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” We moved them into the garage using a larger dog crate and realised we really needed to figure out our setup.

Then I remembered the people from Rent The Chicken recommended checking their website. Rent The Chicken is a local business where you can rent chickens and a coop for the nicer seasons, then return them. It’s really cool. Their website featured Omlet, which caught our interest. It was plastic, easy to clean, and simple to assemble. We thought it was the perfect solution, so we bought the Eglu Cube with a 9-foot run.

I think people get it with the Omlet design, you know? They look at it and go okay, I can slide that out, I can hose that down – I can figure that out.

Exactly, the ability to hose it down was a huge plus for me. I’m a bit of a neat freak, so I loved that we could take it apart and pressure wash it without worrying about bugs burrowing in, like with wood. Plus, the chicken coops at Tractor Supply seemed quite chintzy.

Anyway, I brought home six chickens on Wednesday, and on Friday when Matt got home, he said, “Oh, I see they’ve multiplied.” I had gone back that day and got four more.

I’m always hearing about chicken math, but I’ve never heard of a case where it hits so fast. So, you started with the one cube and 9ft run, how did you go from 10 to 18 chickens, two cubes and an extended Walk In Run?

The 9ft run was great, but it was short. We had a hard time getting in and out. So I said, that’s it, we need a Walk In Run – that’s what we bought next. It was a game changer. Then in the spring, I put my name in again to get more chickens.

This was following the COVID pandemic when there was an egg shortage and a big interest in keeping chickens. It became really hard to get chickens or chicks, so I signed up early, expecting to receive them by the next fall. But the chicken craze eventually waned, meaning fewer people took chickens than anticipated. I ended up getting eight more in May, along with another Eglu Cube.

So, what breeds of chicken do you have in your flock of 18?

They call them Red Sexlinks, they’re the high-production layers of brown eggs. And then I have blue eggers which are a Legbar/Leghorn mix, and they lay lovely light blue eggs. We usually get 15 or 16 a day now, and that’s them in their second year. We use them to make egg salad, scrambled eggs, deviled eggs. And when the family comes over, they go home with eggs, and I have a few friends who buy them from me to help out with the cost of feed.

How do you find the interactions with them as animals and as pets?

As soon as I come out the door in the morning, they know I’m going to give them a treat, so they all crowd to the edge waiting for it. It’s funny because if you’re walking by the coop, they’ll all move along with you. And when we’re mowing the lawn, they even follow the tractor! And now, they follow anyone who steps outside, thinking they’re going to get a treat.

You mentioned earlier that you have a high standard of cleanliness.  How has cleaning out the coop changed since starting your chicken keeping journey? 

I am getting away with less than I did at the beginning. Every day I would go out and wipe the inside of the coop with wipes. It was obsessive, it was too much. We had to come to terms with what chickens are… messy. But I didn’t know about chickens, and I didn’t know how messy they were – now I do, and I’m okay with it. Once a month, or once every two months, cleaning out the inside of the coop is okay, but Matt wasn’t on board to do it every week – or every day. 

I can see, actually, right now, they’re all up on the chicken perch. They look really happy up there, having a little preen. Do they do that quite a lot? 

Yeah, they love those roosting bars. Actually, in the winter we were having trouble with them going into the coop when it was getting cold. The guy from Rent The Chicken had actually suggested taking the roosting bars down.

Because you couldn’t get them in the coop? Because they were too happy on their bars? 

Yes. But we didn’t want to do that because they got on them during the day – so we decided to try to retrain them to go inside, and he thought that wouldn’t work but it did! 

Most of them would go in at night, and then the ones that didn’t – before we went to bed we would go out and pick them up, put them in the coop and shut them in there. And then in the morning the door would open and they’d come out. Eventually it got less and less, and then finally they were all going in. 

Something we hear a lot is that people start reading about chickens and end up learning all kinds of things they didn’t know. Could you just go out and get chickens? Or is it more learn as you go?

Definitely learn as you go. To be honest, I probably read more than you’d need to about chicken keeping before I started. It’s very interesting to learn about, but if you only had a couple of chickens, it wouldn’t be much work at all. They’re quite low maintenance generally. And the Eglu is made to move around if you want to use it as a chicken tractor. 

You’ve done a lovely job with your garden – and it all kind of goes together: gardening, chicken keeping, cooking, living off the land. Is that kind of sustainable living important to you? 

It was really the eggs. A couple of my friends have the fancier chicken breeds purely for the quality, type or amount of eggs they lay. My friend who has 30 chickens actually buys eggs from me. I’m like ‘What are they doing with their eggs?’ and they say ‘Well, we only get one a week’ – she has all different kinds, but you know, maybe they’re not bred for egg production. Mine are layers.

Have you had much trouble with predators, despite the bears? 

We haven’t really had any. I’d say foxes, coyotes, opossums, and snakes are the biggest threat. 

Snakes would probably get the eggs, if they could.

But they wouldn’t be able to get into the Eglu.

I don’t think they’d get into yours. Yours is like Fort Knox.

I did catch an opossum on my camera. It wasn’t trying to get into the coop – it was just walking along the run. We have raccoons and hawks too. I guess I never worried about hawks, eagles and aerial predators because the run is always covered – and my chickens don’t free range. Our set up is decently close to my house – we see it every day, so we can watch out for predators. And I go out there every day so I can check on them. 

I think I own everything you make for chicken keeping, other than the Eglu Pro. I bought my set up just before it was released, but I would have definitely bought the Pro had I known. The people who say you can only have four chickens in a Cube – the chickens will stuff themselves in there, and they’re fine. They like snuggling in there at night. 

 

This entry was posted in Chickens

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