Meet the Orpingtons
March 2nd, 2008Let me introduce you to our new tenants in the garden: Mr Orpington, Mrs Orpington, Mrs Orpington and Mrs Orpington, a family of bantams proudly acquired this morning from an almost-neighbour (20 km drive, with the poor things in cardboard boxes).
I had been considering the possibility of having hens in the garden for a long time, and now is the great leap forward for me and them. I count on them for many things:
- eat, peck, scratch, so that after a month, the patch of prairie under their chicken tractor is devoid of any weeds and pests, and I only have to fluff the soil up a little with a broad fork and then plant my seedlings.
- dispose of kitchen scraps, saving me 90% of the work with composting
- lay eggs
- brood some of the eggs and raise the chicks so that we can eat one of our tenants now and then
- entertain us and the kids with their chickenness
In return, they count on me for:
- moving the pen now and then
- replenishing the water bowl and grain plate
- leaving them alone when I can help it
Let us hope this very unequal partnership will give us full satisfaction. After all, they can’t complain. Industrial layers generally have to live on 2/3 of an A4 sheet of paper of real estate. My hens have twenty times that.
I feel as generous as a western executive building a brand-new factory in a Kuala-Lumpur suburb.
A warm welcome to your new tenants. I have a soft spot for bantams. We had some as kids, but the eagles and the vervet monkeys eventually ate them all. I don’t remember ever actually eating one of our own eggs, but they were certainly funny and adorable in their chickenness.
Hope the Orpingtons are well-behaved tenants who pay their rent regularly.
Because my regular encounters with chickens are thigh/leg quarters and eggs in cardboard boxes, I am always amused when I infrequently see a live one. I’m sure that they will entertain your family as well as providing those eggs. As much as I love the “farm-fresh” eggs I buy at the organic market in the Spring/Summer months, I’d bet that they would taste even better if just collected from the backyard.
Congrats on the chickens. I am interested to read further blogs about them. Do you anticipate difficulty when it does come time to eat one? See, this is where I fall down tragically and am one huge hypocrite…my father hunted - still does - but I could never stand to hear about it, although I happily ate the meat he provided our family. I think I would have an extraordinarily hard time killing a chicken but I would absolutely want to eat one. I’ve been doing some thinking lately, actually, on my relationship with meat.
Charlotte: they are completely sheltered (imprisoned?) in a wirenetted pen, so no monkeys will be able to eat them.
Cam: they will necessarily taste better because they will be our eggs. But let’s not count our eggs before they are laid. I am not sure there will be enough eggs to cover our appetite.
Courtney: if I cannot do the slaughtering myself, I will try to rely on my neighbours with ‘kill two, keep one’ bargains. Or I will turn 100% vegetarian, but then the safest way not to end up with too many chickens that need slaughtering is to send Mr Orpington in exile.
Welcome, Orpingtons! What a beautiful family. I look forward to vicariously experiencing chickendom. Re the difficulty (or not) of eating one’s chickens, you might be interested to read the following tale from another organic chicken farmer:
http://tinyurl.com/3d9wew
All tales of urbanites confronted to home slaughtering are good to read. I think I would not bother so much about ‘humane’ treatment, as I find it way too anthropocentric and hypocritical. As long as it is neither too long nor too messy, it’s probably OK by me. And if it brings me nightmares, well, that’s the chicken’s deserved revenge.
“The Chicken’s Revenge” — now there is a book that is crying out to be written.
Welcome to your new tenants! I think they’ll be very happy, and much happier than they would be had they been born into an “industrial layer situation.” I’ll be interested to hear how they get on and what it’s like to eat your own chickens, if you end up doing so. (I, as usual, am like Courtney and have been doing a whole lot of thinking about my relationship to meat, especially since moving to farm country where I see the animals all the time.)
Yesterday, as I was cutting some of the wood Mandarine was sunbathing in (see next post) for the stove, I found a nest of wood worms. I gathered them on a piece of bark, went to the hens, and laid down the loot as an offering. Mr Orpington came tiptoeing, stared at the thing with one eye, then with the other, and then started pecking, but instead of swallowing, he let it fall on the side, for Mrs Orpington #1. He repeated the operation at least two or three times, while taking care to exclude the other Mrs Orpingtons — this was clearly a treat too delicate for low-ranking hens. If I provide such delicacies on a regular basis, they are going to be very happy.
[…] all-around chickeny cuteness, go and check out Mandarine’s new tenants, the Orpingtons. We had bantams as children, and they caused us no end of happiness. Unfortunately, they […]