My Way Or The Highway
If you come here regularly, you know that I was out of town for a week recently. This is the longest I have gone away since I got chickens (and, come to think of it, the longest I have gone away for much longer than that). I’ve gotten used to being o.k. with leaving the chickens in the hands of someone else for a weekend, or even a long weekend. It took some work getting there, but I did it. I can be a bit of a control freak, and since the chickens are my pets, I worry. For a long weekend, I know I can fill up the feeder, and they’re good until I get back. Basically, all someone needs to do is fill their waterer and cover their poops. They can go without their morning yogurt for two days (I usually leave them some on the Friday morning we leave), and so while I realize they’re not getting doted on the way they’re used to, it’s a short blip in the history of the universe and they’ll get through it.
Things that make you go blip.
Going away for a week, now that’s something else. Food will need to be replenished. Yogurt will need to be offered, lest vent gleet sneak one past the goalie. For that same reason, I feel it’s necessary to request apple cider vinegar in their water. Missing two days of that is acceptable, if barely. A week seems like asking for trouble. I’ve constructed the coop in such a way that the food and water fits under it nicely. The food hangs from a hook, the waterer sits on some bricks, so it’s level. However, the feeder is heavy when full, and you have to use a long pole with a hook on the end to get it hanging again after you fill it. I have a hard time with this, and I’ve been doing it for years. The water is somewhat easier, but I realize that I have long monkey arms, which make it easier for me to reach under there and get the water on the bricks. Other people who have cared for the chickens in the past have been unable or unwilling (or just forgot) to do this. The rest of the ground isn’t very flat, and the chickens are ding dongs, and they’ll knock it over if it’s anywhere else. So then I worry that they won’t get enough water in the summer heat. It’s probably not rational, but this is how my mind works.
Well, it’s not spilled milk, so it’s o.k. to cry, I guess.
I wrote up a list of the things I do for the chickens for my wife, so she would know exactly what to do while I was gone. It didn’t seem like too much, but it did start to worry me about asking a lot, since she would also have to take care of the cats and be a solo parent during this time as well. So then I completely shuffled the order in which things can be done to make it easier. Morning now only required a water check, and food for Boss Chicken (who is 1000x easier to feed than the flock, since she’s in a rabbit hutch). After work was now when most of what I do at 5am can get done. Chips on the poops, some scratch, yogurt, collect the eggs. Get it all done as soon as you get home, then all that’s left is to refill the waterer after the birds have gone to sleep. Refill the waterer after dark, and add some apple cider vinegar to it. And then put it on the bricks, or then you have to recheck it in the morning to make sure all the water didn’t leak out overnight because it wasn’t level. This wasn’t going as I had planned. The waterer is always a problem, and then I just bailed on the feeder altogether. “The feeder will get them to Monday, at least,” I said. “After that, just fill the container I use to refill the feeder, and dump it on the ground in the run.” It seemed undignified, but they are chickens. They enjoy eating things off the ground. This would be fun for them too. Who doesn’t like fun? I knew the chickens would be fine, and I had to accept that there were other ways of doing things, but these were my ways, and the chickens have survived throughout my doing them, so that’s reason enough to keep it up. My superstitious nature was really taking a drubbing. That’s fine. I think it needs to be drubbed. We’ll all come out of this stronger, right? It’s only a week, right? Right?
Just the man for the job.
(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Textraño by Colectivo Etéreo, universe image by the Hubble Space Telescope)
Tags: backyard chickens, chickens, Erik P. Kraft, hipster farming, podcast
