Chickens

My husband wants to get chickens. Yes, real, live fowl to live in our yard. Why you ask? For the cuteness? Um, not so much, because while they are cute as babies, they are ugly, ugly animals as adults. For the eggs of course. Yes, my city dwelling husband thinks that now that we own 13 acres of land we should have chickens. Good grief Charlie Brown.

I can see his point. We are a family of six. When we have say, scrambled eggs for breakfast or dinner, it takes a DOZEN eggs to feed us all. I am now buying the 18 pack of eggs. I don't even know how much it costs; I just grab them and put them in the cart. Given the economy, maybe having chickens is a good idea. It sounds like a great idea. But then I gave it some thought and came up with these objections.

1. Bird flu. Can we get bird flu from the chickens? Probably. Not something I want.

2. Who is going to care for the chickens? The husband who is working 10 hours a day, or the wife who is home all the time? Hmmmmmm.

3. Chickens get killed by weasels, coyotes, etc. A co-worker of his had 3 chickens killed recently by weasels. That isn't going to be easy to explain to my children.

4. Speaking of the children. I don't want them playing with the chickens, or in the chicken poop, or anything else disgusting like that. Eww. Granted, we'd build them a coop, but they'll still need exercise.

The list could go on. Our neighbors up the road are getting chickens too. That gave my husband even more reason to want the chickens. If Becky can get chickens, so can I, he reasoned. It was a look of glee in his eye while they chatted about chickens. I don't get it. I too am a city dweller, living in the country. I lived in Boston without chickens. I lived in New York without chickens. I grew up in Maine, WITHOUT CHICKENS. This is just something I can't wrap my head around. Now a cow for the milk.....that's a different story.