Hens, Sweet Hens, At last!

Yesterday, at 9:36 am, a call from the post office marked the kick-off of The Urban Chicken Project, 3.0. After 2 unsuccessful attempts at hatching chicks from fertilized eggs, this spring, we have taken an alternate route to accomplish our mission of having fresh eggs. We ordered pullets (young female chickens) from a farm found online. www.hodgesfarms.net

I have avoided ordering live chicks because most hatcheries mandate an exorbitant minimum order requirement (24 chick for some)

Debra, at Hodges Farm, responded to my request to purchase only 6 with a kind and accommodating, "yes."

6 is still 4 more than the number that I am aiming for, but since these are "rare" Heritage breeds, I hope to find eager adoptive families (crazy, hobby farming families like ourselves) for the hens we can't keep.

For anyone considering ordering live birds, here is what you need to know:

• Shipping is a fortune!
• It doesn't work like when one orders a pair of shoes from Nordstroms or a CD box set on Amazon - your postman doesn't leave them on the porch swing.
• Communication with your shipper is important!

Debra emailed notice on Tuesday to say that the chickens had shipped. Wednesday morning, the post office called to say they had live birds, in a box behind the front counter, waiting to be picked up. I could here the chicks peeping in the background. Fortunately, I was able to immediately run over and pick them. They were shipped in a most fascinating box designed specifically for the transportation of live birds.

The boxes are USPS approved Bio-Secure shipping boxes.

Inside each single stall shipper were 3 exquisite fowl. This was better than Christmas! I love them at first sight. The package contents were as follows:

• 1 Black Copper Maran
• 1 Blue Copper Maran
• 2 Splash Marans
• 2 Blue Laced Red Wyandottes

If you have an interest in bird variety, you can appreciate the delicate and intricate traits of these birds. They look hand-painted. They seem to vary in age, clearly I have little experience here, but I am guessing they range from 5-8 weeks. The black and blue maran are the most mature looking.

I placed them all in the coop with fresh water and chick mash in our bird feeder. Then set about my busy day, pining for their company

It has been an interesting 24 hours. This experience is VERY DIFFERENT from hatching chicks. I have more empathy for Torry Hansen – the Tennessee mother who sent her 7-year-old adopted Russian child back to Moscow. That would be a harsh and extreme comparison. I am not saying there is anything psychologically (or physically) wrong with these pullets, nor that I am about to ship them back (at a shipping cost of $67, absolutely not!), but they are different from my other children, I mean chicken. They don't want to come out of the coop and eat the vegetable garden. I have soaked bread in milk, offered up cooked peas and rice and these birds express no interest in my cooking.

They actually sit in their nesting boxes. They don't like to be held. They don't run up as I approach. Its like they are ferrel farm animals or suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. If one of these pullets threatened to set the house on fire, I probably would walk them down to Thatcher Woods and let them find their way home.

I can actually understand why Carol, in Warrenville, was willing to take all 3 of our roosters. Quicky, Fluffy and Santa Claus had been hand fed and loved with all our hearts. They were healthy and brimming with personality. Fluffy loved to watch tv and Santa Claus' favorite perching place was on top of our Webber grill.

Our 6 unnamed, new chicks, had a mother who, well... was a chicken. They have probably been living in a coop, instead of a living room or kid's play house, for their whole lives.

I am hopeful that over the next 5-8 weeks of the live of these young hens, they will start to relax and realize that its ok to let their feathers hang down and run around. I am anxious to see their personalities bud. Most of all, right now, I am quite happy that they aren't eating my garden.