Betty....

I suppose now is a good a time as any to introduce Betty, my white hen. She is a Dekalb Amberlink born Feb 28, 2011. Betty is a goon natured hen, not a bully by any means but not bottom of the tower either. Betty has a strong affinity for blue jeans and jumping.

Today, however, I have discovered that Betty is not at all well. She seemed a little lethargic, and when I picked her up I noticed that she was substantially lighter than she normally is. On closer inspection it appears that she has something stuck in her vent. (This is the part of the chicken where the eggs come out, and also the poo).

It comes at a bad time seeing as I am flying to Seattle Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, and tomorrow I have a long day at work trying to get ready for the long weekend. I work work a company that does entertainment lighting and we have several events going on. (Friday is the big ceremony for lighting the Tree on Fountain Square for starters...) Either way, I have part of tomorrow to hopefully figure out what is going on with Betty. My neighbor is watching the hens while I am out of town, and I don't know that I feel comfortable saying, well, Betty might not make it.....

Hoping for the best!

How it all started

I never intended to write this down…

There were two reasons I started keeping chickens. The first was that my fiancée wouldn’t let me have a pet bird in the house, so I needed to work around that. Unfortunately for him the chickens did end up being in the house for about 8 weeks during which I raised them in a rubermaid tote in our second floor bathtub that was in process of being replaced.  The second reason I wanted chickens was that store bought eggs made me a little nauseous. I think that problem was directly related to the terrible documentaries and photos I had seen on battery farms. Luckily I now do not need to entertain myself by watching icky TV documentaries- I can just poke my head out the back door toss a piece of bacon in the chicken run and watch some good ole chicken football.

I am hoping by writing some of my hopes and dreams I fully realize how important they really are to me and it encourages me to strive to continue to follow my ambitions. In the meantime I hope you will find some entertaining antic-dotes about raising chickens, traveling, reading, and coming to grips with who I am. I hope that by writing my story down, you may participate in it. In a world of instant gratification and instant information, it will encourage me to write when I remind myself that I will be able to slow down and, after time, look back on the experiences that I write about....