You Don't Know What You Don't Know

The previous owners left two hens here, and we watched in the chicken coup for a few weeks and no eggs happened. Aji said that if you feed them they will lay more eggs which makes sense so we started giving them our table scraps of rice and the throw-away parts of the veggies from the chopping and all that and, what do you know, they started laying eggs. We thought it would be a waste to just throw the eggs away, and when I read about the huge difference in nutritional value that farm fresh eggs provide over commercial eggs, I thought, hey, a few eggs might be a nice treat. But we all started enjoying it so much that the eggs from just two chickens started to feel a little insufficient. And eggs at the store have more than doubled in price so that's not worth it. 

So we thought, what if we get more chickens? So easy, right? I was headed to the ranch store to getting some tools and buckets, and Ganesh told me to buy two chicks if I happened to see them. Sure enough the ranch store had them. I was immediately confronted by the number of choices. Who knew there were so many kinds of chickens? There was a little chart next to each breed, intelligence, friendliness, weight, and egg production. So if you wanted chickens for meat you would buy the heavy ones, I presume. I was looking for egg laying chickens so there were two that said "above average," in that category. But one of those also said "friendly" and the other said "intelligent."  First of all, intelligent and friendly are not on the same spectrum. Like someone can't be friendly and intelligent at the same time. And second of all, why on earth would anyone want an intelligent chicken? What precisely are the advantages of that? I asked the workers at the store and no one seemed to know. They were only 2 bucks each so I got four of the friendly egg-laying chickens. 

I came home so excited. I said, "Aji! Look what I bought! Baby chickens!" she looked very worried and said, "noooo" and explained to me that they need a place to live, they need a warm lamp, they need water and all this stuff, which we had none of. We scrambled together a cardboard box and a light bulb shining down on them. We made due with some ground up dry rice and we made it through the night. Aji remembered that someone in her family (maybe grandma? or mother? I'm not sure) had to hold a baby chicken in her arms for over a month to keep it warm. That's dedication. The next day I took myself back to the ranch store to get a feeder, waterer, a real infrared heating lamp, and something called "chick grit" which the little box the chickens came in said they needed. Winston dutifully named them Chicken Number 1, Chicken Number 2, Chicken Number 3, and Chicken Number 4. 

Our thrown-together brooder

Chicks

I added the chick grit to the feeder and gave them water and felt very accomplished. The next day I noticed they were very loudly tweeting which they hadn't been doing the day before. Part of me sensed that that was a bad sign but I didn't do anything about it. The next day, We looked in our cardboard box brooder and a chicken was sprawled out on the floor. Aji picked it up and it was just barely alive, I tried to put a drop of water on its beak, not knowing what to do. We wrapped it in a kitchen towel thinking it was cold. but just a few minutes later its head flopped over and died in our hands. I felt so sad about that stupid chicken. I had no idea why it happened. I'm sure anyone who knows anything more than absolute zero about chicken raising can tell what I did wrong...but we were clueless at that point. Winston was concerned and I told him the chicken went to the spirit world, he seemed OK with that. Winston informed me that it was Chicken Number 4 that transitioned to the chicken coup in the next life. I felt so sad though...it was pretty traumatic. 

Later that day, I just had this nagging feeling that I had not solved the reason why Chicken Number 4 had died. I watched the chickens in the cardboard brooder for a long time. I started to notice that they were never pecking at the feeder. I tried tapping the feeder because apparently that's how they learn from their mother hens where to peck for food. But they didn't do anything. Finally I read the bag of the chick grit, and it said, "granite blend" and I thought, huh? Granite? What else is in this? But they didn't say anything else. So I googled it, and sure enough chick grit is actually rocks that you are supposed to mix in to actual food...which I realized with dread was presently absent from the brooder. I got the chicken feed from the chicken coup and put it in their feeder and then tapped it and waited and eventually they found it. 

Finally they were eating and they started to move around and gain more energy. I was so relieved I had solved the problem. How was I supposed to know? I didn't even know what questions to ask the workers. As they say, you don't know what you don't know, and poor chicken number 4 had to pay for my ignorance. Ganesh reassured me and said that I saved the other three's lives. But still.