The truth about Chickens - Birds of Satan

An average home laid egg costs $82

Greetings, readers. As the cost of living increases and the world burns, chicken egg prices increase exponentially. I see many people across the country buying chickens to ensure a good supply of eggs. Then, a few days later, panicked questions appear on the rural lifestyle and chicken group's social media pages. As is often the case, chickens are packaged in lifestyle opinion pieces and slick organic city magazines as the be-all and end-all for the home. Good for the garden, good for your table, good for the kids, all around good.

We have a few chickens on the farm, and before moving here, we also had chickens in suburbia for several years. In all fairness, they are an interesting bird, and so this is tongue in cheek, but they are also complete bastards at times. Here are a few things you should know before rushing out to buy them.

Right before her eyes are pecked out

Chickens hide eggs

“K,” I come back from the chicken coop empty-handed, “have you seen any chicken eggs of late?”

“No, not since last week.”

“Those little shits,” I say, “they are hiding their eggs again.”

This is a favourite chicken trick, especially if you are free ranging them. The egg supply slowly dries up at the coop until there are no eggs. Puzzled by this, you speculate it’s because they are off-lay, which can happen occasionally. The reality is that chickens love to hide their eggs.

Somewhere, on your property, or worse, someone else’s property, the eggs are being laid. Despite spending money on fake eggs to show the girls where to lay, they’ve flipped their middle finger at you and absconded.

A couple of years back, we had chickens free ranging but no eggs for months. We hunted high and low around the place to no avail. As it turned out, the chickens were absconding to our elderly neighbour’s tool shed and laying there. Old mate thought this was hilarious and didn’t tell us until the property sold. Traitorous birds!

I once had a flock of chickens that stopped laying. After a couple of months, I resorted to using a security camera to try and figure out what was happening. They were escaping the coop, had tunnelled under a weed mat on a bank, dug out a cave (I’m serious), and there were dozens of eggs inside.

I’ve seen eggs in the laundry, the ute, the printer tray in the office, gumboots, the couch, the spare room, and many other places. Anywhere except where you want them, the coop, which you have paid much money for, and the chickens hate. This brings me to my next point.

Don’t be a wanker and buy a coop like this

Chickens won’t stay in the coop

Now that you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on a coop and been to the market to buy your chickens, you’re all set to go. Chickens go into the coop, in goes the feeder, the water, the bedding, and now eggs will magically appear.

Although you have built a chicken house, the chickens will still hate you. Even if it has excellent roosting places and nesting boxes, warm in winter and cool in summer, the chickens will resent their incarceration.

The first thing they will do is escape at every opportunity. Despite the coop being their safest place, they have a death wish and will want to go out into the dangerous world. This is primarily to spite you, and should they get eaten by a predator, even in death, they will look at you with accusing eyes as if to say, “this is all your fault.”

Next, you try to figure out where the devil birds are getting out. A game of trial and error begins until your stylish chicken coop resembles a red-neck meth lab that belongs deep in the bush. Tacked on bits of iron, wood jammed in gaps, weed mat over wire, and so on.

Now that the chickens are trapped, more fun and games ensue. They won’t sleep in the coop; they’ll sleep on top of it. Nor will they lay in the coop. They will pull the straw from the coop and place it in the water trough. They will do that every single day. They will break the feeder if they can.

Despite multiple nesting boxes, they will all want to use the same one simultaneously when they decide to lay in the coop. When one chicken is laying, the others will stand around and angrily squawk at the top of their voice in protest for four hours.

Don’t believe this propaganda

Free range chickens

At some, you will have a romantic notion that chickens should be able to free-range your property. This is because the chickens have been secretly using telepathy to try and get you to let them out of the coop. Don’t fall for this.

If you do, then there will be consequences. Initially, the chickens will play ball, return to roosting (on the top of the coop) each night, and stay away from you and the house.

However, over time, despite the fact that you have eight acres of land for them to roam, they will only want to be on your deck. There they will pooh freely. They will look in the windows, and eventually, they will invade the house. Many times, we have gone out only to come home and find the chickens have made themselves at home in the lounge and eaten the dog food.

Of course, as per the first note, you’ll never see another egg.

Your lifestyle garden will be destroyed. They will tear to pieces and eat herbs, veges, grapes, anything they can reach. Then they will start roosting at night in very dumb places.

Sometimes up a tree, sometimes under a tree, or usually on the deck outside your window, so you wake up to them staring at you through the bedroom window at 5 am. Other popular places are washing baskets, outside furniture, the garage, the workshop, and the ute.

Whenever they see you, they will assume your sole purpose is to feed you and come running. They will follow you incessantly and peck your ankles to remind you that you are their slave.

Chickens with their human slave

Other chicken facts

There are so many more things you need to know before you buy chickens; I could go on forever, but here are some of the other pieces of information that will help.

1. Chickens will die for no reason. One day they are happily invading the kitchen and laying eggs. The next day their legs are in the air, and an accusing look remains in their eye. It is always your favourite chicken that does this.

2. Never buy a rooster. Even if you are deaf, if you are not deaf, the rooster will slowly drive you insane. Once the darling of the neighbourhood, you will become known as “the neighbour with the rooster.” Not just in your community but in the entire region. People will avoid you in the supermarket.

3. I’ve seen some people passing off eggs as “vegan” on account of the chicken not eating any meat. This is madness. Chickens will eat everything they can find, and I have seen them hunt down and kill mice. By the way, if you think free-roaming chickens are good pest deterrents, you are correct; however, it is not worth it for the reasons above.

4. Daily feeding is more manageable. If you have trapped the fiendish birds in the coop and left a full feeder, then the first thing the chicken will do is get all the feed out and mix it with their bedding. Then, kick all the bedding and feed into the water trough.

5. If you are free ranging and your neighbours don’t like chickens destroying their property, the chickens will sense this and divide their time 50-50 between both properties shitting on everyone’s decks equally. This is almost as bad as owning a rooster, but not entirely.

6. If you do find you have enough chickens to sell some eggs, when the chickens find out, they will immediately moult and stop egg production until your customers find another supplier.

7. The estimated cost of a home-grown chicken egg after coop purchase, chicken purchase, coop hardening, organic feed, time, destroyed furniture, insurance claims by the neighbour, and other damages is approximately $82.

8. Within five minutes of you replacing the bedding in the nesting boxes and the coop, it will be outside, and five minutes later, it will be in the water trough.

9. There is always a backup secret egg-laying spot. So when you think you have found it, you haven’t; that was probably just the decoy. Or worse, that was last season’s one, and the eggs are so rotten they are primed to explode when you pick them up.

10. Chickens are on their best behaviour when you have visitors. This is because they are desperately trying to escape. We have a contractor that visits now and again. When the chickens were free ranging, they would hide in the back of his truck. We’d watch them watching us out the back window as he drove out the gate.

Well, dear reader, I hope you are fully informed on the true nature of chickens, the devil’s very bird. I wish you luck in your adventures with these feathered demons an all the eggs you can gather.

PS I know I am overdue for a farm update, which I will do this week, I promise. It has been, as per usual, busy. Stay safe and spread the word about chickens.