When I was pregnant with my first daughter, my husband and I nested like all parents. We renovated the house and created and painted the nursery. However, before all that, one of my first nesting urges was the procurement of four hens for our backyard.
Named Judi Dench, Hattie McDaniels, Ginger Rogers and Betty White, the jazzy hens became wonderful pets and a nostalgic reminder of my own childhood growing up on ten acres with a menagerie of animals. As a result of that childhood, I am an egg snob. Once you’ve had homegrown, it’s hard to go back to store-bought. So the chookies earned their keep, laying eggs for us in exchange for kitchen scraps and free-range of the yard.
Soon, baby girl number one arrived and from the moment she could move, she wanted to wrestle the chickens. By the time she could walk, she was helping me feed them every day.
Even now, there is something deeply calming about feeding the chooks and collecting the eggs. Beyond that, it is deeply important to me that my children have a relationship with their food and the plants and animals that produce it. The simple act of collecting the eggs creates a somatic memory of where that food comes from. Our modern lives are pathologically disconnected from our food sources, courtesy of fast food, supermarket chains and the allure of convenience. That convenience is fast becoming a necessity in order to maintain the ever-increasing busyness of our lifestyle.
Keeping chickens won’t solve that. But, it does go some way in reminding us what it means to procure our food. To slow down long enough to watch the whole process and eat with the joy of knowing exactly where that egg came from. And besides that, chickens are hilarious and their antics will bring you and your children happiness.
Well, some of their antics. It wouldn’t be fair if I only laid out the good parts. Left unprotected, your chickens will decimate your garden. I was cavalier about fencing the garden too many times to count, and therefore the chickens have had many wonderful adventures eating through my veggie patch and excavating enormous amounts of soil from my garden beds.
Additionally, where there are chickens, there cometh rats. This is probably the worst part about keeping chooks. You can get feeders and coops that are rat-proof, but regardless the rats will still come. We manage by sealing food bins and cleaning the coop regularly, but it’s something we’ve learned to accept and live with.
Two years ago, I impulse bought a small incubator and was subsequently gifted some fertilised eggs. Excitedly, I embarked on an experiment with my kids, letting them observe the process of incubation and waiting three weeks for the eggies to hatch.
Now, whenever my youngest sees an egg she coos and says ‘ooo bubby chicky in there'. It’s heartbreakingly sweet. Funnily enough, it doesn’t seem to bother her when we crack those eggs, or they’re served to her soft boiled with toast soldiers. I like to think that being so close to the process brings a duality of feeling: a love for the animal and a sense of respect for the fact that we are consuming a product that (if fertilised) would have become another chicken.
I’m totally projecting my own embodied ideology onto my child’s innocent macinactions, but I hope my children absorb that ideology nonetheless.
Two chicks hatched after the three-week incubation period and the joy they bought my girls was palpable. Every day the requests came in hard and fast to ‘cuddle chickies'. Every. Single. Day. My eldest girl named one Bobbi Toffee and the other Jacqueline Blackeline. My second daughter, much younger at this time, said her first word: 'chickies'.
Unfortunately, Bobbi Toffee turned out to be a rooster. And despite his loving upbringing, he became a VERY aggressive rooster. Roosters are not permitted to be kept in Wollongong suburbia due to the noise pollution created from their crowing. So, Bobbi Toffee had a lovely 18 months of life with us before he attacked the baby and signed his own vacating notice. Not before he had the chance to sire a clutch of new chickies for the girls to cuddle!
Few things have brought as much richness to our lifestyle as the humble chooks in our backyard. They are incredible emotional regulators for both me and my children. They provide us with hours of entertainment; my eldest has become a chicken hypnotist and likes to line up prostrate chooks to stroke their tummies. And of course, they are the invaluable source of our Sunday morning poached eggs on toast.