We started raising chickens when our kids were young. Our son, Kent, needed some kind of a hobby, and we agreed this would be a good one.
We decided to order the chicks through the catalog. They were flown by plane and arrived at our local post office where we were to pick them up.
In the meantime, Kent and his dad started building a chicken house. It turned out a very nice fit for all 75 of the little peepers.
For a really good start after their long flight, each chick’s beak had to be dipped in sugar water. What fun! Then they were moved, in their big box, into our bathroom where there was a heat lamp. Perfect to keep them nice and warm until they got big enough to move out to their chicken house.
When the chickens were about a year old, Kent decided he wanted to enter three or four of them in the Clark County Fair. A couple of days before the fair, they were given a bath, their features all groomed and fluffed, even their toenails spruced up. They looked beautiful when Kent was done with them.
Well, things turned out much better than we ever expected them to. Kent won champion and grand champion, out of all chickens entered at the fair.
In-vest-ed in the hen
About five years ago, we moved out to Battle Ground, and my husband decided he wanted to raise some chickens, so he built a really nice house for them, nesting boxes and all. After we’d had the chickens for a while, he noticed that one of the hens was getting some bare spots on her back and sides. It became worse until she was almost all bare. She looked really awful, but we didn’t know what to do for her.
One day we were showing a friend around our place. Our friend has quite a sense of humor, so I wasn’t surprised at what she said when she saw our barebacked hen: “Let’s go to a thrift store and buy a little vest with a zipper up the front. We’ll put it on her to protect her from the other chickens and maybe, just maybe, she’ll grow some feathers back.”
The day they put it on her should go down in history. A vest on a chicken, really! It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. After they zipped it up she walked around like she was quite proud, but the other chickens looked at her rather strangely.
This was in spring. She had the vest on for a few weeks. One day when this friend came by again, I said, “This weather is starting to get pretty warm, don’t you think the vest should come off Henny Penny?”
We made our way out to the chicken pen. My husband and our friend took the vest off. Let me tell you, she had the most gorgeous reddish-gold feathers you’ve ever seen. They glistened in the sunlight.
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