Raising Chickens?

When I was in second grade, my family moved from the city to the country, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  Could 5 whole acres of land really be ours?  No fences, no sidewalks, no neighbors within spittin' distance...just peace and quiet living away out in the country.  (Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of our house with me.  This is representative.  Found it here .)

The previous owners had a small amount of livestock, so the property was equipped with some farm buildings.  There was a fenced-in pasture of 2-3 acres, a large storage barn, and a chicken coop attached to the back of the garage.

My mom had heard that a long-time friend was raising sheep and seemed to be having a good time at it.  Naturally, my mom's curiosity was piqued, so she began to read up on sheep farming.  We had the land for it, and the barn with a watering trough.  A few weeks of research led to dropping that idea - too much work.  No go.  And then, a few years later, the idea of chickens surfaced.  Much less labor, smaller animals, less feed required - so we decided to try it!!

Mom carefully chose Buff Orpingtons out of a farm catalogue.  A few weeks later, a box of peeping day-old chicks arrived at our local feed supply store.  I don't know who was more excited to open the box and welcome the little yellow fuzzballs - mom or us kids - but there they were!

Two dozen little balls of fluff peeping and cheeping and falling all over each other.  Once we turned on the heat lamp, they piled up into a heap under it to keep warm.  A tiny feed tray full of chick food and a self-refilling water dispenser had been placed in the coop a few days before they arrived, in case they were hungry.

After a few weeks, they were what we called "teenage" chickens.  They were so gangly.  Poofy round bodies, long legs and goofy looking heads on top of scrawny necks.  They were a little off-balance, so they ran into each other and fell down easily.  None of us kids were close to the stage yet, so we thought it funny to call them teenagers.

The best part of this stage was "grape football."  Somehow, my mom discovered that, if grapes were tossed in one at a time, the chickens would all want it, so one would pick it up in its' beak and run across the coop, then drop it.  Another chicken would grab it and try to run away with it, only to be intercepted by another chicken who wanted it just as badly.  They would go on and on until one of the birds ate it, then we'd throw another grape in and watch the fun all over again.
 
Our most amazing chicken story came when, for some unknown reason, one of our chickens laid an egg the size of an ostrich's.  I kid you not!  It was a mega-jumbo egg, the same homespun brown color as the other eggs.  When we finally worked up the nerve to crack it open, one yolk and one white poured out, along with another fully formed egg!!  When we cracked it open, there was also a yolk and white.  And that there is my most amazing (and true) chicken story.  We should've reported it to the Guinness Book of World Records or The Farmer's Almanac or something, but we kept it to ourselves.  A wonder of wonders.

After they had grown, we fed and watered the chickens, gathered eggs, and it kind of became ho-hum.  No more change, no more excitement.  Mom decided the cost of food was not being recuped through egg sales, so we decided to give them to our farmer friends.  We were done with our experiment.  Fun though it was, we had discovered we weren't long-term farm people.

So here I sit, wondering if I might be ready for another try at chickens.  I bet my kids would get a big kick out of raising them!  Now to discuss it with my dear husband...  

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Pictures of chickens came from the following sites:
http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/buff-orpingtons-chicken-breed-information-pictures
http://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/Day-Old-Baby-Chicks/Buff-Orpington-p229.aspx