Chickens

Gina and I like eggs.  Even in Yakima, Washington, we thought of getting some hens so we could have our own supply of fresh eggs, with orange yolks, and hens that eat bugs mostly as they peck around our house during the day and only are stuck in a shelter of some sort at night or when they are keeping their eggs warm.  Here in Zambia, it is pretty natural for people to have some chickens so we decided to live our hope of raising our own egg-laying chickens.  We bought 2 chickens, 1 hen and 1 rooster from outside of our village to reduce the chance of inbreeding issues.  And I banded each of them to be able to identify them, with the idea that eventually we'll get to know them without the band, but also so that other villagers will know that they are ours.  A funny thing about buying chickens is that I started noticing a lot of things I never noticed before.  You know how you buy a new shirt in the States from a popular store and notice that other people have the same shirt all of a sudden, even though you had never noticed the shirt existed before you bought it?  Or when you buy a car and when you are driving around with your big smile while you are smelling that new car smell you notice that the same model and color is zipping around in what appears to be every fourth car?  It's the same with chickens.  The very same day I bought our chickens and stuffed them into a box, strapped the box to my bike, and rode my bike 25 kilometers back to our hut, I noticed that there was a rooster just next door that was much bigger and prettier than ours.  And it crowed every time my rooster crowed, along with all the other roosters in the village.  I'm not sure if they always crowed in the afternoon or just this afternoon because their was a new cock in town.  And I started noticing the difference between the different breeds of hens, some with tupees, some with colorful necks, some all black, and some with no feathers on their necks.  The first couple of days I kept our chickens in a coop that Ryvus and Ryford built and fed them there so they would get used to sticking around.  On the day that I let them out I realized how much bigger the next door neighbor's rooster was.  It was quickly apparent that our chicken was no match for this comparative bully, and my first instinct was to shoo the bully away.  But then I realized that these are chickens.  If the bully is bigger and can fight better than my rooster, then that is the rooster that I want to have knocking up my hen.  Each night the rooster and hen would come into their coop to sleep, but after about 5 days my rooster stopped coming back to then coop.  I'm not sure if the other rooster scared it away, or it was killed by some animal from the Zambian bush, or if a villager decided to have a free meal, but I didn't worry about it too much and just bought another hen to be another potential egg layer.  After a short fight to establish who was the "queen" of the coop, the two hens tolerate each other now.  We haven't had any fresh eggs yet, but it sure has been fun watching these birds up close while we wait.