Chickens are a perfect introductory animal for people who are interested in homesteading, farming, or anything that pertains to livestock and self-sustenance. They’re easy to care for, relatively cheap compared to other livestock, hardy, provide plenty of high quality food, and are readily available at most tractor supply’s. When I was a freshman in high school, I became a member of the FFA, and chickens were my introduction into taking care and raising livestock. We got 4 chickens, Gulia, Kurtis, Doja, and Wilbur. One by one however, our chickens were dwindled down to just Kurtis.
Me being a fierce animal lover, now with only 1 chicken, became attached to Kurtis. She was even part of the house, frequently coming inside and hanging out with the family inside the house. One weekend, I left Austin and Kurtis to go to my moms house, and thought nothing of it. However, when my dad picked me up from school on Monday afternoon, he said he had something to tell me. He told me that over the weekend, Kurtis had gone missing, and he had no luck of finding her. My dad got worried of my reaction, and feared that I would be devastated. So, he searched the entirety of Austin for a Leghorn hen of the same age in order to trick me into beliving that Kurtis was safe in sound in our backyard. So he drove to go get this chicken whilst I was at school, none the wiser. However, when he got home to introduce this new chicken to her new home, Kurtis appeared and began pecking at my dad for food; She was home! My dad was now in a tough situation, he now had 2 identical Leghorn hens and had to find out how to explain this to me when I got home and noticed the Kurtis-clone when I looked outside. I didn’t believe him at first, I thought he was joking just to mess with me, so that every time I looked at Kurtis I wondered if it was really her. Lo and behold when we got home though, there were in fact 2 identical chickens in my back yard. That second chicken was named Drew, and the duo became great friends.
When spring time came around, we went to tractor supply and got more chickens, we got 4 Plymouth rocks, and kept them inside until they grew more. When they were big enough, we moved their cage outside so that they could be more comfortable when they were big enough to freerange. I went outside later that night to take a picture, and there was a racoon in the cage, eating my chickens. Little did we know, racoons have opposable thumbs and can open chicken cages in order to break in and eat the chickens. The next couple of weeks were spent with the two remaining chickens, Kurtis and Drew, sleeping up high on the edges of the branches in the tallest tree in order to escape the racoon, and wait until morning until coming back down. However, the racoon waited until Drew came out, and got her. Kurtis went missing a couple weeks later, and thus, the chicken saga of our lives, came to an end.