Two Words: Pasty Butt

Chickens are a serious pain in the butt. I neglected to mention that one of the jobs involved in raising the chickens is to wipe their butts. They get something called Pasty Butt and they die if you don’t wipe their butt. You must do this until they get adult feathers which is at about 5 weeks old. Just sayin’. They constantly kick hay into their water and it gets stinky, they eat a lot and need to be fed all the time. It’s just no fun.

Meanwhile, the bigger the baby chickens get, the more interested our dog Cheezit gets. Which is not a good thing. One night we heard all kinds of commotion at about 1:30 in the morning. We were shocked to see Chicken Number 2 running around the hallway, with Chicken Number 1 and 3 huddled in fear in the box. What in tarnation is going on here?! Shreds of cardboard were everywhere, hay and mess everywhere. Cheezit had destroyed their brooder box and the chickens were so scared. We had to jury-rig something to plug the enormous hole in the box and throw the dog in the office.

 
The next night we weren’t making that mistake again, so we closed the closet door to the chickens to protect them. We also thought maybe this blasted dog is sending us a message that he’s not being fed enough, so we put extra chicken in his dinner. But that didn’t stop him! He wedged his nose in there and opened the door again! I heard suspicious noises and had to get up in the night, sure enough he was trying to get in there. Fortunately I caught it before he did anything so I threw him in the office. The next morning the dog had ripped the office apart. This is so out of character for this dog, he causes so little trouble around the house for a good decade now. What’s up? I guess he just can’t stand having chickens in the house. But what can we do? They need a temperature controlled environment. The next night we put cheese in the playroom so he wouldn’t tear the office to shreds. But that wasn’t great either because I found hair all over the bed and all the stuffed animals looked like they’d been licked to death. So frustrating! He left us no choice—the dog is going in the garage at night. So we had to put him in the garage at night with his dog bed.

 
About a week later, we were eating our lunch and a chicken jumped to the top of the cardboard box and was sitting there, I had to shoo it back in. We really have to get these chickens out of the house! Finally the temperature at night rose above 65 degrees, officially time for the chickens to not need temperature control. We moved the brooder to the garage and placed our busted sliding screen door over the top so they can’t jump out. At least they have their feathers now so we don’t have to check their butts anymore.
I was like, finally they can go to the coup! But no…apparently there’s even more inconvenience. If we just put them in the coup the existing chickens will be mad and kill the new chickens. So we have to build a cage or something for the new chickens inside the coup. Dad is working on it. They have to be able to see the coup so that they learn this is their real home, but it has to stop the big chickens from attacking them. We almost don’t care if they die anymore, we’re so tired of taking care of them! How quickly things change. They have to learn the coup is their home or else they wont return to it at night and get attacked by predators.

 
By the way, we borrowed a book called The Plot Chickens from the library and it is hilarious. I love that book so much. It’s just a little picture book for kids about a chicken who wants to write a story and become an author, it’s so delightful.