Her beautiful golden feathers stood out dramatically against the muted greys of the November landscape — even in death. Another dead chicken lay at the base of the fence, presumably dropped there by her killer while making a hasty escape. There was no sign of the other four chickens Krista and I left to spend the night in the horse shelter in the pasture the night before.
We had not even moved into our small farm yet, and already we were learning tough lessons. Sure, when Krista and I first decided to take this big lifestyle leap we took some farming classes at Delaware Valley University, but now our real education was beginning.
Our first six chickens came with the farm. They were living in one of the horse stalls in the barn with a simple perch made from a branch, a couple of cardboard nesting boxes, and an ultraviolet light hanging from the ceiling to stimulate egg-laying. When Krista and I noticed the chickens didn’t look super healthy we began letting them out of the barn in the evenings after work so they could get a little fresh air and sunlight.
Neither of us had ever picked up a chicken before and we didn’t have a clue how to get them back into the stall when night fell. We were just winging it. They ran every which way when we tried to grab them. Fishing nets didn’t work well. Their feather got all tangled in it. On several occasions we’d find a chicken on the wrong side of the fence in our new neighbor’s back yard and I would have to climb over it. We must have made a hilarious first impression. We had yet to discover the luring power of a handful of dried worms.
On the night before that first stark lesson in the realities of farm life, we let it get too dark before attempting the round-up.
“They’ll probably be OK left outside for one night,” we told ourselves.
In December we officially moved into our new farm, and soon afterward decided to give chickens another go. We mail-ordered six new chicks of various breeds — which I never would have guessed was a thing you could do. My favorite was Artois, a Sicilian Buttercup. We kept them at just the right temperature in a re-purposed recycling box while their down filled in. Stella stood over the chick’s temporary nursery and stared at them for hours, drooling.
At first we were concerned she might want to eat them, but we soon came to believe she thought she was their mother.
While the chicks were incubating, I got to work on a coop.
My design began with our German shepherd Stella’s old doghouse as the top-floor roosting area. To this I added a nesting box on each side.
A ramp led from the penthouse on the top floor to a lounge area on the second floor to provide a dry place on days when we might not be around to let them out to free-range in the morning. We definitely wanted our chickens to be free range.
Another ramp led to a 4′ X 8′ chicken run with mesh wire fencing extending 12″ below the surface to prevent fox from digging under.
The site for the coop was in the pasture behind the barn, where from my studio window I could keep an eye on the flock during the day when the chickens free ranged.
Stella would provide back-up security— a job she took very seriously. Nary a day went by when I wasn’t alerted to one sort of threat or another. When Stella barked, I put down my paint brush and ran down the steps with a slingshot in one hand and a few steelies in the other. I very rarely arrived on the scene in time to see the perpetrators. I usually encountered only a bunch of frightened chickens and a few crows hanging around. I’d sling a few steelies in the direction of the crows and return to my painting.
Then one Spring weekend—at around sunset during a family get-together— while we were all in the house playing board games — Stella heard some crows cawing and began whining at the door. I’d forgotten all about putting the chickens to bed, the kind of opportunity the sly fox waits for.
As soon as I opened the front door of our house, Stella sprinted full speed toward the pasture, barking like crazy. I ran behind her. Stella gave chase to a red fox while I assessed the damage. It was an eerily familiar scene: scattered feathers and dead chickens.
“Damned fox!” I shouted.
The fox leapt onto the top of a fence post just beyond the invisible fence line she knew Stella couldn’t cross, sat there for a few seconds as if to mock us, then disappeared into the nature preserve beyond our property.
I searched the pasture for survivors but found none. I didn’t find any survivors in the horse shelter either. As I stood there silently mourning the loss of yet more chickens, I heard a faint trilling in the rafters above my head. It was Einstein and Artois, the only two chickens to survive the second great chicken massacre.
The next Spring we ordered more chickens.
“Maybe we get a donkey?” I asked Krista. “I’ve heard donkeys protect sheep, so maybe they would also protect chickens.”
And that’s how we ended up at Pleasant Farms looking at donkeys. We were considering adopting two because apparently, they get really sad if they don’t have a buddy, which when you think about it was probably Eyore’s problem. Ultimately, we decided not to add donkeys to the mix. Too much added work and expense. We were reaching for a solution.
I had a friend with a flock of sheep that she kept protected with a Great Pyrenees. This sounded to me like it might be a great solution to our chicken attrition problem. If a Great Pyrenees can protect sheep, I thought, it would probably protect chickens, too.
Enter Maggie, a three-month-old Great Pyrenees and the newest member of our elite chicken security force. Maggie, we decided, would live in the barn. Being nocturnal, she would act as a round-the-clock bodyguard for our chickens.
And let me tell you…she did guard those chickens fiercely. If you tried to take one of her chickens away from her there’s no telling the harm that might befall you. She loved her chickens and if anybody was going to eat one of her chickens it was going to be her.
We lost half of this third batch of chickens to friendly fire.
To make matters worse, Maggie and Stella fought tooth and nail. Stella didn’t think it was right that Maggie ate her beloved chicks. Maggie didn’t think it was right that Stella got to live in the human-house. It was a very unpleasant situation. Sadly, after a couple of years of trying to make things work with Maggie, Stella, and the chickens, we found Maggie a new home. She’s now chief of security at a horse farm in South Carolina.
Again, we ordered more chickens to bolster our flock, ever optimistic that this time we’d get it right.
The accidental rooster that came with this group was the low point. The Colonel, as we called him, was a regal creature…and admittedly, he did keep predators away…but he also did things to the hens that I don’t care to talk about.
I wasn’t terribly sad when Maggie got a hold of The Colonel.
While all this chicken trial-and-error business was going on, our farm was metamorphosing in unexpected ways. We began planting a variety of grasses, wild-flowers, and trees. Krista’s garden expanded. We began raising pigs and added a couple of sheep to the flock.
Every new life we added led to other new life. The wildflowers begot bees, the pig feed begot a pumpkin patch, the chickens begot crows, and on and on…
Things were coming together nicely at our little farm…except for the chicken situation. The cycle of acquiring chickens and loosing chickens continued for three years.
But then it stopped unexpectedly. Three more years passed without loosing a single chicken to a predator and we didn’t know why. We had a few theories, but none of them quite added up.
Then one unseasonably warm day in March while out in the pasture hammering shingles onto the roof of a new chicken coop I was building, a commotion in the trees overhead caught my eye… a rustling of branches below a single black crow at the tip-top of our tallest maple tree.
“Uh oh! Uh oh!”, it cawed.
The chickens in the pasture instantly went into defense mode. A few just froze where they were standing. The more vulnerable scrambled for cover. Then I witnessed a full-grown hawk swoop down and attempt to intercept one of the chickens while she was run/flying toward the safety of the horse shelter. The hawk was simultaneously attacked by two crows, one on either side. The crows continued to pester the hawk until it gave up and flew away.
“Could it be that the crows are the reason we haven’t been losing chickens?” I wondered.
I began reading about the subject and learned that crows are very territorial and will defend their territory from any predator — including fox and hawks.
I began observing the crows more closely. The more I observed, the more it became clear that the crows were in fact protecting our chickens. It’s also interesting to note that it’s always three crows: one lookout to sound the alarm and two to go on the attack. I also learned they recognize faces, develop opinions about people, and hold grudges.
This surprising turn of events was one of the most gratifying lessons we’ve learned in our great farming adventure.
Now Krista and I leave offerings of shiny objects and special treats for the crows so they know they’re welcome.
I talk to the crows, mostly apologizing for slinging steelies at them. I sense it might take them a little while to completely forgive me. We’re working things out as we go.