Friday, March 2, 2012

Ann Wants Chickens in her Back Yard


This post also appears in the Curmudgeonly Professor blog, due to the widespread universal interest among educated urban people of experiencing the joys and delights of having chickens clucking, etc., in their back yards.


My sister Ann called me yesterday to inform me that she is about to raise chickens in her back yard, which apparently is allowed in rural Orem UT pop 80K or so.  She and her husband even attended a chickens class with about 35 other excited chicken enthusiasts.  She opines that she would have a mere five chickens which, if my arithmetic is correct, and if the biddies would perform optimally, would produce 35 eggs per week, 140 eggs per month, and 1,680 eggs per year.  After subtracting down days for biddy headaches, egg no-shows, and tired chickens, one might get 26 eggs per week if one can find where the clever old birds have laid them.  

I'm not sure Ann asked me what I thought, but I told her anyway.  I told her I can buy 2 doz. eggs at Albertson's for less than $3.  I don't have to clean up chicken you-know-what, buy feed for $20 a bag, and shoo them out of the kitchen door.  As an economist, I figure each egg would cost more than the 2 doz. carton I could buy at the store.

The Curmudgeonly Professor is not an amateur at this chicken business.  As the Wyoming State President of the Future Farmers of America and the editor of the school paper, one of my most egregious jobs was to clean off the chicken roosts in our chicken house each Saturday.  I do not want to go into detail.  Numerous red mites were in evidence and I was worried that they would give me some infectious disease and that I would die before the State FFA convention.  I became adept at chopping the heads off chicken bodies and watch them flop around until they realized they were deceased, at which point Mom would de-feather them and we would have wonderful fried chicken for Sunday dinner.

Moreover, I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture from the University of Wyoming.  This major was sort of by default because it was the fastest way I could graduate and I was sick of scrubbing every toilet on the UW campus a plethora of times and cleaning the ash trays on the President's desk.  One of the requirements for this degree was to take a course in Poultry Production.  So the summer of my last year, I took the required course in chickens by correspondence.  I remember drawing spectacular lab exercises of an egg, a chick within an egg, and a few other anatomical and scientific depictions of chickens in their various states of life and death.  I may or may not recall being required to write an essay on the topic, "Which came first?  The Chicken or the egg?"

Thus, I am an expert chicken expert, not to be confused with being a coward, which I can also be one. of.   As I offered these scenarios to my sister Ann, I think she became more and more excited about the bucolic and idyllic experience of having five old biddies follow her around the back yard, clucking and doing their business at random, and laying their $5 apiece eggs.  At least, I told her, the eggs would be fresh; the whites would stand high, and the yolk would be perched at the summit.

I will keep you posted on how this drama plays out.

18 comments:

Dwight said...

Doesn't anyone care about Ann's chickens? Anyone?

Dwight said...

I'm sorry Ann, absolutely no one except me cares about your chickens. Sad day.

Elizabeth said...

Not true - we're all still chuckling about how to help a chicken to demise without pain by getting it inebriated so that it will just flop over, and voila, the meat is now marinated and ready to cook. Guess Ann is just too busy getting her yard ready for the new inhabitants. I hope her five chickens will be exotic and gaudy. If you're going to have chickens, you might as well go all out.

Ann said...

Your writing deserves a much more involved answer than time permits at the moment. I will give you a running commentary as the project progresses.
There is still a major intriguing correlation that just doesn't work for me. The fact that an economist would take a chicken class is amazing.

Ann said...

PS Judy has been busy with the caucus stuff today. After tomorrow she will have all kinds of time to spend writing on the blog?!?

Judy said...

Does it seem that Dwight has an underlying purpose in this particular post? Me thinks he would love to have chickens of his own!
Do you really believe Dwight's Characterization of these innocent fowls? No I do not.

Dwight said...

Dear Judy: I am a Doctor of Philosopnhy. I cleaned chicken coops. I studied chickens in college. I became an agricultural economist wherein I added up $ of costs and $ of income and compared the two. I do not like cleaning up after chickens. But they do cluck cluck cluck rather prettily.

Dwight said...

Dear Louise and Steve: Have you no interest in Ann's proposed chicken venture? At least it will keep her from coming up with something else we all will go out and buy for awhile.

Dwight said...

Dear Ann: To assist you in your deliberations, I have posted two items on the Professor blog about chickens in one's back yard. Enjoy.

Ann said...

A few Australorps, Silver Laced Wyandottes and Red Stars and our backyard will be a clucking, happy place. I'll keep you posted. Our 12 fruit trees all look healthy after a mild winter. That is another experiment. They are planted close together like a wind row and will be kept pruned low, like is being done in CA. It is fun to see what we can do with our little piece of dirt.

Dwight said...

How about adding a cow, two pigs, a goat, and a pony?

Ann said...

If only -----

Elizabeth said...

I told you - you can bid on the Nevada mustangs that were recently rounded up. However, I'm not sure where one would fit in your backyard. Back to chickens, for sure.

Judy said...

But pigs are a real possibility. So are goats. One of our neighbors had goats that they let in the house. (they have since been evicted) Another has just gotten some dirty black pigs!!!!

Dwight said...

Pigs are not dirty.
They are quite fastidious in fact. From the Society of Anti-Defamation of Pigs.

Ann said...

Chickens are sounding better and better.

Steve Blood said...

I'm just too chicken to comment.

Elizabeth said...

Steve, nice to hear from you, even if you did get away with a play on "chicken". Don't you have any chickens on your New York farm?