Sunday, April 14, 2013

            Chicken farming, or maybe ranching, is a pastime that I have aspired to.  Our first chicken came to us when we were in college.  She walked down the street in front of the house and we grabbed her.  She was a White Rock and, aside from the time a dog caught her and tore a hole in her back that we sutured up, she was a good layer.  We moved a few miles away and acquired  a small flock of chickens which were cast-offs from an egg operation nearby.  We got 5 or 6 eggs a day which was more than we could eat and it was satisfying to harvest the fruits of their labor.  When we moved to Boston to go to dental school, my Dad adopted our chickens and one duck and kept them for several years.  In the mid 1990’s we decided we wanted to raise chickens again so the kids could have the experience.  We hatched some and got some from a school project and others from friends who decided they didn’t want to have that much fun any more.  We built a chicken coop and fenced off a run in the woods and eventually had about 20 chickens and 4 or 5 beautiful Golden and Ring-Necked Pheasants.  After a couple of years, we got tired of caring for them.  Winter in Alaska is challenging for chickens and the economics and hassle became more than we wanted to deal with.  A neighbor’s dog broke into the pheasant run and killed the pheasants and we butchered our way out of the chicken business.  The coop sat idle for about 15 years and last summer I retrieved it, remodeled it, and moved it into our fenced back yard.  Our grandson Keith’s class hatched chickens as a school project and we took 14 chicks at the end of the school year.  We babied them through early summer and discovered that the predators that didn’t bother us when we lived in a neighborhood were a nuisance at our new home in the woods.  I ordered a dozen Cornish Cross chicks mail-order to raise for meat and after brooding them in the garage  moved them to the greenhouse to grow up.  Speaking of predators, the ravens, eagles, hawks and owls each took turns picking off the chickens when they would escape from the pen.  One day while I was at work and Beverly was in the bathroom getting ready for the day, she heard noise from the back yard.  She looked out to find three grizzly bears destroying the chicken run, killing and eating the chickens as they caught them, and trying to reach into the overturned chicken coop and catch the rest.  It was a bloody mess, and the chickens, being chickens, instead of running away tried to run past one bear to the other side of the run, and then back again.  One rooster and two hens did successfully hide away from the pen, and the bears, who were in no hurry to leave, calmly ate their lunch.  I was at work and Beverly called me frantically, but there was little I could do from there so I came home to destruction.  The bears had also discovered the chicks in the greenhouse, and while they couldn’t figure out how to get in, stood up at the side and raked the roof with their claws and destroyed it.  We moved the remaining chickens to the garage, uprighted the chicken coop, and tried to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, the bears came back every day for the next several days hoping for a repeat performance.  We used firecrackers to scare them away and I was justified in shooting them to protect “life and property”, but didn’t have the opportunity.  We have wintered over 3 hens who have laid intermittently, and are now deciding on chickens for the summer.  I have an electric fence that I plan to try and hope that nature smiles on us…..and not the bears.  There are, incidentally, many beautiful breeds of chickens you can order by US Mail.  Take a look at www.cacklehatchery.com for a look at the variety.  Who knows, you may be inspired to be a chicken rancher too.