It’s been more than 13 years now since we started keeping chickens at the far end of our backyard here in Augusta, Maine, and almost six years since we stopped doing so, in November 2019.
Keeping chickens was fun, but also frustrating. From time to time, we had an assortment of problems with one hen or another, which goes with the territory. In our experience, chickens are hardy (in terms of coping with the weather, for example) but delicate as well.
A hen might become sick or die unexpectedly; or an egg would become “bound,” preventing a hen from laying it until we intervened; or pesky mites would turn up in the coop; or part of a hen’s oviduct would turn inside out and protrude from her body, forcing us to push it back into place. (Yes, that’s a thing.) We coped with several types of problems over the years, usually successfully, but sometimes not. My wife and I are not veterinarians, after all. And even our wonderful, chicken-owning vets could not work miracles.
Yet despite all of the heartache and stress that a backyard flock can cause, I still miss our “girls” all these years later. I remember all of their names. Their distinctive personalities and antics still bring a smile to my face. And I recall, without checking records, the year in which each of them passed on.
I don’t regret our decision to “fly the coop,” so to speak. It was time. But I do have fond memories of what was. That’s especially true when I catch a glimpse of the bare spot in our yard that once held a coop, a pen, and a small flock of beautiful, bouncing, squawking, wing-flapping, snack-loving comics.
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