A few weeks back I gave a Chickens 101 workshop in Concord, NH for people who are planning to establish chicken flocks in their backyards.
It was an introductory class on how to get chicks and then, once you have them, how to take care of the birds until they reach egg laying age.
The second workshop (cleverly named Chickens 102) scheduled for April 30th will cover some of the problems you need to be aware of with chickens and basic chicken first aid. (It’s also going to cover “coning” but we won’t get into that right now.)
Because chickens are new to Concord – it’s a probationary program where they are letting people have 5 hens on their property – there are going to be a lot of people who will need chicken support, at least initially. For this reason, not only am I holding the workshops, but I’ve also written an article for the Concord Monitor which covers some of the chicken basics.
The Monitor sent down a photographer (Brad) to get “action shots” for the story and he and I had a lovely chat about chickens in general. Brad was intrigued with the diversity in our flock and asked all kinds of chicken questions. (See, even during a photo shoot, our birds are fowl ambassadors, sharing the chicken love.)
I told Brad about Charlie and so he also grabbed a few photos of her (she happened to be posing perfectly on a couch.)
Brad took some pictures of Charlie our house chicken, – I wrote to the Editor, feeling that I needed to tell her why there was a photo of a chicken on a couch in the set. I gave her a quick version of Charlie’s history and explained that she was our adopted, rescued chicken who now lives indoors with a human flock and a dog.
Her response?
“What a crazy thing!”
But knowing a good story when she hears one, the editor asked me to write a short piece about Charlie that will run alongside the Introduction to Chickens article on April 22.
So much like our Good-Egg literary chickens, our video-character chicken, and our painting for a playground hen, we now have a new little celebrity-bird in our midst.
Our little chick; Charlie is brilliantly showing others that despite the fact that life may not have dealt you the best hand, with the help of others, and by being a member of a flock that cares and looks out for you, you can overcome anything and succeed.
Charlie likes slipper laces
NH.com
Lessons Learned from the Flock 
Coning? Never heard of it. Charlie is looking cute as usual.
Coning – a made up word (on my part) that means : Using a killing cone to humanely kill a chicken.
Not a pleasant thought but something I teach in my classes to those who make the decision to have chickens.
Wendy
Oh, I see. Yes, I’ve heard of a killing cone before but never used one. When the necessity arises we use a board, a brick and a wire loop to keep the chicken calm. We get them calm and in position for a once-off no-miss chop. A quick exit is the goal. Not a nice thing, but we all need to be ready for the day it has to be done if we breed chickens. I have to admit that in the case of a couple of indoor ‘pet’ chickens we have been sooky and taken them to the vet. They just felt like one of the dogs or cats, not like one of the chickens being grown for meat.