Stories from the Farm

This was posted to one of the Yahoo e-mail groups I’m a member of, it was found on Craigslist –  it sure brought a smile to my face – Enjoy!

http://burlington. craigslist. org/grd/82455202 7.html

IF LAYING HENS ARE FROM MARS, THESE ARE FROM URANUS (7.00 each)

I believe I have the most dysfunctional flock of layers this side of
the Mississippi. No amount of Blu-Kote will keep these hens from
pecking themselves until they all moon me as soon as I walk in the door.

When I picked these girls out of the catalog, this isn’t the picture I
saw.

Don’t get me wrong — these are good layers. All large breeds.

We (me and a friend — my wife was away for the weekend and didn’t
have anything to do with this as she has told many people) imported
these layers from one of those fancy Midwest hatcheries a year ago. I
bought Silver-Laced Wyandottes, White Rocks, Partridge Rocks, Cuckoo
Marans (mostly roosters that made good soup), Reds, Barred, Partridge,
Araucana, Columbian, you name it. Healthy. Strong egg production. And
no bugs (they’d be easy to see).

I guess I wanted to create a veritable United Nations in my hen house,
and maybe that’s where I went wrong.

Instead I built a struggling parliament for a fractured country. And
some of the members possess only what could be called genocidal
tendencies.

So here’s my plan: I’m disbanding the government.

I need to send the members packing to the four corners of the country
(or state). Put them on a plane (well, car) to whatever yard will
harbor them, or at least keep their bare hindquarters warm for a few
weeks until the feathers grow back in.

Why?

Because I know it will work.

How do I know?

Well, you see, a few weeks ago, when my wife was collecting eggs, a
Partridge Rock escaped.

Let’s call her Fred (the chicken, not my wife). My 6-year-old daughter
named her Fred (she named the dearly-departed Araucana rooster chick
Princess). Fred is a very fast Partridge Rock, it turns out. Fred has
(so far) escaped the clutches of the family of raccoons that kill
every rooster that I’ve never been able to get rid of on Craig’s List.

(Have you ever noticed that Craig’s List always includes free
roosters? I swear there are more free roosters on Craig’s List than
there are prostitutes, err, women seeking men.)

(Not that I’m admitting to looking at the personals part of this site,
being happily married and all. I just heard about it from that friend
who told me to order so many chickens.)

(I digress.)

So, besides escaping the fearsome raccoon’s sharp claws of death, Fred
has grown all of her tail feathers back. All of them, which is a very
good thing considering how on occasion she now perches near the road
and I only just received a conditional use permit to keep said
dysfunctional hens.

(It cost me a hundred bucks to get a zoning permit even though I own
one of the oldest farms in my town. For this price I’ve been able to
teach my kids what it means to add insult to injury.)

So why don’t I just set all the chickens loose?

Well, if you’re still reading up to this point, let me review a few
parts of the story:

1. These chickens are good layers (most good layers are fetching $10
to $14 each right now, and I’m giving a dented-can discount).

2. Once these chickens are disbanded they should all behave better and
regain their normal appearance (although I cannot guarantee this just
as I can’t guarantee that a Vice Presidential candidate’s teenage
daughter will learn something useful in her abstinence-only health
class and won’t turn up at a political convention several months
pregnant).

3. These chickens aren’t all as fast as Fred, and the raccoons won’t
pay me $7 each for them (I’ve tried).

So, if you want a few laying hens — or if you want a lot of laying
hens and have all-suite accommodations to keep them apart from each
other — e-mail me.

If you don’t, it’s OK. I have a fall back plan: I’ll schedule a tribunal.

When we dispatched the roosters my 8-year-old son looked at one of the
birds on the block, picked up the hatchet and said, “I do like
swinging things.”

I’ll have him hitting home runs by the time we’re through.

Oh, and one last thing:

Fred stays. She’s earned her roost, if I can ever catch her.