Andrea's story, or, How we came to have a House Chicken

There are many mysteries at Itchy Dog Farm, but what everybody wants to know is, how did we come to have a House Chicken? This is actually a story of suffering and triumph. I thought it would be a good way to start off The Blog at Itchy Dog Farm.

Craig and I have had backyard chickens for several years now. Our custom is to get day-old chicks, or "peepers" as I call them, at the Feed Store each spring. Even in Florida its too cold for them to be outside, so we start them in a galvanized tub with a heat lamp in the living room. In the evenings we socialize them by holding one or two while we watch TV for an hour or so.

The Feed Store gets three or four different breeds of chicks every week, and its fun to study the schedule and decide which we want to try out. This year we selected four Brahmas, two light and two dark. Brahmas are heavier birds than most, good for both meat and eggs, and one of only a few breeds to have feathers on their feet. By coincidence, we had also discovered Breaking Bad years behind everyone else in the world, and were watching our way through a marathon of Netflix episodes. We named the four peepers after female characters in Breaking Bad -- Lydia, Andrea, Skyler and Holly. I would have named one Jane, after Jesse's girlfriend who Walter White allowed to OD, but we already have a Rhode Island Red hen named Jane.

When our peepers get big enough we shuffle them between dog crates in the yard and in the Chicken Palace, and finally they graduate to free range chicks that sleep in the chicken palace with the big chickens at night. Tragically, one night some varmint got into the Palace (we still don't know exactly how, although now it is sealed up tighter than a can of spam) and ate (most of) Lydia, Skyler and Holly, leaving very disgusting carnage behind. Everything likes chicken.

Our rooster Big Red and the larger hens were unscathed, as was Andrea, who we found tucked under a board against the opposite wall from her sisters' bodies. All the chickens were spooked, but Andrea was super-spooked and refused to return to the chicken palace at night. We couldn't think of anything else to do but move one of the dog crates onto our screen porch at the back of the house. Andrea moved into the dog crate, retiring there every night after the other chickens settled into the palace.

At dusk Andrea and the other chickens would gather just outside the Chicken Compound, until some chicken signal was given and all but Andrea would go through the Compound yard to roost in the Palace. Craig would go out and latch them in, and Andrea would follow him back to our own front door where she'd cluck around until it was time to pick her up and take her around back to the screen porch. At some point we figured, might as well just let her in the front door. So we opened the door, and she strutted in, looked around, and hopped up on the back of the sofa.

So that's become our nightly routine. We tuck the other chickens in to roost, Andrea struts in through the front door, and we all have quality family time together until its time to take her to her crate and go to bed.

And that's how we came to have a house chicken.