Living with the Birds by hollie holcombe
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t started innocently enough. When we bought our first house, I wanted pets and my husband wanted something green. Eventually he suggested the chickens. Since I like birds, and the hens would eat our table scraps and provide fertilizer, it seemed perfect. ¶ He started researching and found COOP (Chicken Owners Outside and in Philadelphia). One September day, he sent me a message asking if I wanted some chicks. That evening, we met a lady from COOP, and I picked out six unsexed five-day-old chicks from the bunch. She gave us some food and away we went! I gave the chicks spice names. Pepper, of the Cuckoo Marans breed, has also earned the title “Giant Velociraptor Chicken” due to her superior size. Cinnamon, one of the Araucanas, is brown. Nutmeg, her sister, is more of a redhead. Sugar, the little Papiseed, is white with rust and black. Ginger, the mutt who fell asleep in my hand, was golden, but turned white. And Lemon, the Rumpless Araucana, was yellow, but also turned white. First they lived in a plastic storage container with a heat lamp in the living room. They grew quickly, and after a couple weeks, we had to scrounge around for materials to build them a 3-foot wood cube. I held them each twice a day. We supplemented their Start and Grow Crumbles with various foods. They would jump up and grab a small pancake, then run around the box, peeping frantically to keep the treasure to themselves. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cooked potatoes and beets all sent them into a frenzy. Whenever they got the chance, they would jump up on our shoulders; we could tell they were planning something when they’d eye us up funny. Usually they aimed for my husband’s glasses, attracted by the shiny glint. By that Thanksgiving, we had put together a dog kennel in the backyard, added chicken wire to the walls and across the top, and put their little house inside. That’s when the neighbors started coming by to meet them. In late February, it was confirmed: Ginger and Lemon were roosters. The crowing began at 4 a.m. I foolishly had Lemon living inside after he became aggressive toward the hens. We found him a new home as soon as possible, and lived with Ginger, who we renamed Garlic, for a bit longer. As the weather warmed, the hens started laying eggs. The process was fascinating. Garlic would prepare the nest, and 30
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then watch over each hen as she took her turn. They have three nests to choose from, but they ended up using the same one. For a while, we were getting four eggs a day, giving them away to family and even attempting to sell them to neighbors. I started baking a lot. In late spring, we decided to build a nicer fenced yard for the flock. We got our first zoning permit, put up wooden posts and stretched metal mesh. The new fence doubled their space, and they happily scratched and pecked all the grass into submission. The older couple next door became concerned we were going to get hundreds more chickens. We just laughed. Keeping chickens was becoming a lot of work. We found a new home for Garlic when he became aggressive towards me, and by August we were back to letting the hens out first thing in the morning. One neighbor across the street came by and asked what happened to the rooster. She said the crowing made her “feel alive” — it was so unusual compared to the area dogs barking. The older lady next door said she thought we’d gotten rid of all of the chickens. She said she was actually very happy to hear that we still have the hens, but that we shouldn’t tell her husband that. A younger lady in another house next door said she was sad we got rid of the rooster, and hoped we would get another! We have decided not to, though. Two more hens would be nice, but six chickens is definitely the limit for us. By September, Pepper started molting. It looked like a feather tornado whipped through the yard. It took her a long time to grow back all the feathers, and she hasn’t laid any eggs since. Two more hens started molting, at different rates, around November. The last one started dropping feathers for Christmas. Luckily, they are hardy and have adapted to this cold weather. Our year and a half of backyard chicken keeping has been transformative: We’ve met most of our neighbors. Between the birds and the compost box, we have absolutely no food waste. And the garden has been amazingly productive in the first year. We love our fluffy little friends; I can’t wait to get up each day to let them out. hollie holcombe, LEED AP, is an alumna of the Master of Architecture program at PennDesign currently studying for her license and working as an independent contractor out of her home. She and her husband raise a small flock of chickens between the vegetables and the bramble patch she designed in 2009 as part of her plans for their backyard forest garden. i llust rat i on by k elly fra nkl in