Faith

It was two years ago that my partner and I decided we wanted to get chickens. He had chickens growing up, and my grandparents did too. And even for a short time (less than a week) so did I. So we did a lot of researching via the internet, gathering up all the information we could on breeds, brooding and coops. We went to an urban chicken keeping seminar in Portland, OR only to be told the venue was at full capacity. Still, they had chickens and chicken keepers offering their advice, and we took what we could get, which including a great book called Keep Chickens! By Barbara Kilarski. This book is written by a Portland, OR urban chicken keeper who has three hens on her 3,300 square foot lot, which made us realize right away our 10,000 square foot lot was going to be perfectly fine for raising a small flock.

A friend of ours at church offered to incubate some of his chickens’ eggs and give us the chicks, and we took him up on the offer. They’d be mutts or Dominiques, which is an endangered breed. However, his incubation process failed every time, and by this point we decided that we wanted different breeds, not just to tell them apart, but also because we wanted a varied flock. And after researching which breeds lay all year, we had a pretty good idea what breeds we wanted. Now comes the hard part: Finding those breeds at local feed stores! This is when we found out that we have a feed store just down the street from our house, and within Vancouver, WA city limits no less, which, interestingly enough, we are not. It was at Thrify Feed and Garden that we went after church one Sunday in April and discovered they had two breeds of chicks for sale… neither of which we researched. But they were so cute! So, being the impulsive people we are, got one of each and named them Faith and Buffy.

Our original plan was to have three chickens, just like the author of Keep Chickens!, but then we wondered if just two would be better to start with. After all, we still had to build them a coop once they were old enough to go outside! And so, they lived in the garage, Faith and Buffy, and outgrew their cardboard box and ended up in our Great Dane’s dog kennel. But nobody warns you about the obsession that soon takes over. Nobody tells you that once you get chickens, you are constantly on the quest for more, different breeds, something new to add to your flock. And so within a week, our two chicks became six.

The four new ones were added in June, Willow, Tara, Cordelia and Dawn, and we decided six was a good number, as we’d still have to brood the babies and give them time to adjust to the outside before winter. But wait! We still haven’t built the coop! Faith and Buffy were now 2 months old and ready for outside life. So off to the Home Depot to get some lumber and build a 6 foot by 12 foot coop with a 4 foot by six foot henhouse without any plans or building experience. Piece of cake, right? It wasn’t, let me say, but the whole coop building experience will be in a later post.

So we start building the coop based off a picture of a coop we saw on BackyardChickens.com, and are almost finished when, surprise! our friend tells us that he had a hen go broody and she hatched out three chicks! And being the good friends we are, we took the chicks off his hands. You can add, right? 6 + 3 = 9. Good thing we were building the coop to accommodate up to 12 chickens! So we brought home Kendra, Anya and Joyce, put them in a cardboard box, next to the ferret cage where the four babies were, next to the dog kennel where Faith and Buffy were in our garage, which was quickly becoming overrun with chickens!

Faith and Buffy were almost 4 months old before the coop was finished, but once it was, they and the four babies were out of the garage and living in their new abode. A week later we tired of the three little ones and decided that it was August, and so the three newest additions would be perfectly fine outside with the rest of the flock. Which they were.

Now, chickens have immense personality, which I was pleasantly surprised about. Buffy was a little skiddish, but she was definitely the head hen and the pecking order started with her. Faith, who was second on the ladder, was sweet and docile and would fall asleep in your lap. She loved being petted, and often would jump into your lap to encourage you to do so. Chickens are also very cliquey and form small gangs, usually based on who they were brooded with. Faith and Buffy were always together, Willow, Tara, Cordelia and Dawn were always in a pack, and Kendra, Anya and Spike (formerly known as Joyce, but that was before he started crowing at three weeks old) were inseparable.

Now, from the time we put them into the coop, I checked the nest boxes and henhouse for eggs, knowing that any time Faith and Buffy would start laying. And one day, I looked into the run and saw all but Faith. So I walked up to the back of the coop’s henhouse and opened the small hatch to the back side of the nest boxes and there was Faith, sitting on the nest box! I quickly closed the door and waited a few minutes, opened it, lifted Faith slightly and saw it… a beautiful little orb of light brown speckled with white. Our first egg! I congratulated Faith, thanked her, then snatched up her freshly laid ova, ran to the house and took a picture to send to my partner. And so the laying began, with Buffy starting the following week.

However, tragedy struck at Sunnysideupdale Farm, and mysteriously Willow died, then Cordelia broke her leg and the rest of the chickens put her out of her misery, Anya became Xander (Yay! Two roosters! Ugh….), and Spike became increasingly mean and almost became stew. So we kindly packed up the boys and gave them back to our friend at church who gave them to us because, while we could legally have roosters, we got chickens for the eggs mostly, and roosters are loud and consume three times more food than the girls, and, well, Spike attacked my partner and the next day he was in a carrier ready to be given back. Don’t worry, they were both rehomed! But that left us with five, and five was a good number.

It was December and snow was blanketing the ground, which, for anyone who knows, is extremely rare in the Portland Metro area, and so I let the girls out to free range a bit, and so I could snap some pictures. Little did I know this would be the last picture of Faith before she passed.

Now, while we had already lost two of our pullets, neither of them were as sweet and friendly as Faith. And so with this, nearly a year later, I bid you goodbye.