Chooks at the end of the rainbow

It was a dark and stormy afternoon. We had picked the children up at school, piled them with Sergio (our spectacular Spanish WWOOFer) in the back seat of the car. The children were scratchy; Michael was peckish. But the mission was at hand and not to be turned away from. It was chicken day at last.

Long-time readers will remember that I asked for chickens for my birthday last year and held out hope that they would be here when I arrived home from the European trip I took in May 2008. Alas, no chooks. Since then there have been hints and wishes and nags galore. No chooks. But as my birthday approached this year, Michael got a severe case of the guilts, and by 1 June 2009 there was a rough but nearly-finished chicken house. Then some back and forth with A and J’s neighbours who raise (and show) purebred chickens. We told them what we wanted—quiet chickens, good with children, good layers. They told us what we’d get: a Rhode Island Red, a blue Orpington, and a black Orpington.

On the way north, through the driving rain, I tried to figure out why I had wanted chickens so badly, why I had nagged and moaned about them for so long. At first, it was in the panic of the beginning of the recession, the Ocean Rd house not selling, the never-ending house renovation bills. I was wanting to conserve and save. We turn our kitchen scraps into nasty smelly compost; what if we could turn them into something seriously wonderful?? Rob brought us fresh eggs from the places where he was house sitting, and the idea was, er, hatched.

Many weekends ago this stopped being a cost-effective pursuit. How long will it take to save $500 on eggs? I’m guessing a long time. And so I was feeling silly when we pulled up to the old shed in TeHoro and ran through the rain to huddle with the owner, chickens stacked in cages all around us, many more strutting proudly at our feet.

The chicken keeper, E, was matter of fact about these creatures all around her. All those in cages were getting ready to go to another fancy poultry show on the weekend, and she had been working to clean and primp them for their moment in the limelight. Our chickens sat squished in a cage like the others, maybe twice as big as I had thought chickens were.

“What do we need to know about these guys?” we asked. “How, for example, do you feed them/pick them up/take care of them?”

“It’s all common sense,” she said (a theme she’d come back to rather frequently), and then she told us about mites and scales and lice (can you BELIEVE there are more ways for me to have to deal with LICE??? The deal was almost off right then). She told us to feed them protein (they love cheese and yogurt) and good quality food. She told us to paint their perches with kerosene to keep the nasties out. Never hold them by the wings. Fresh water every day. Common sense. Our minds were spinning.

And then I finally got up the nerve to hold the grey one. Ahh, she’s soft like velvet and gentle, making the rumbling noises that don’t sound anything like the way this city girl imagined chickens might sound. I held her close and scratched at her feathers (no lice though) and maybe started to fall in love with her. And then with the brown one. And then with the black one as they came out of the cage to be introduced.

This was no time to be sentimental, though. The chickens were shoved into cardboard boxes (seriously, it looked almost like a magic trick) and we carried them unceremoniously to the trunk/boot of the car. Once home, we walked to the new coop and opened the boxes and suddenly there they were—our new girls. These creatures are not the money-saving food-producers I once imagined (in fact, these girls are young and won’t lay eggs for months, much to the chagrin of Sergio, who is leaving at the end of July). But they are our pets now, and I am already shockingly attached to them. We went out to visit them in the dark and fretted over whether the perches were enough and if they liked celery (no and who knows).

We picked Paekakariki New Zealand, in part, because it is as different from our former life as we could ever imagine. Now our house by the sea (unimaginable) with my little writing cottage out the back (unimaginable) has three chickens: the brown one (Cocoa, named by Naomi), the grey one (Star, named by Aidan) and the black one—Joy. We have a house by the sea and a coop full of Joy. We have a dog at the end of the rainbow. It is a beautiful strange life here in the wintery June. Next time you’re around, Gentle Reader, stop by for some poached eggs and a cuddle in our menagerie.