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“Ruth, listen: ‘chirp, chirp, chirp!’” said my husband, Matt, on the other end of the phone. “They’re here!” He had called me at my office to share the arrival of our three little chicks from Meyer Hatchery. Like an expectant mother (a feeling I know too well after four children), I shouted the news to my colleagues.
On the train ride home to Douglaston, I could barely contain myself. By the time I got home, Matt had placed the babies in a rabbit cage we had in the garage, and had a powerful lamp shining over them. It was like handling a newborn, and we were new parents all over again. Was the temperature right? Did they have enough food? Were they comfortable?
The notion of raising chickens had just popped into my head one morning. “Chickens!” It was one of those pesky ideas that won’t leave you alone. The kids had been badgering us about getting a dog, but with Dylan’s allergies, it wasn’t feasible. Plus, chickens are pets with benefits.
I started researching my options, and soon found an interesting article about a little girl who kept chickens in her Manhattan co-op. I learned how it’s legal to keep hens, but not roosters, in New York City. I also learned you don’t need a rooster around for hens to lay eggs.
We bought three different breeds of female chick, each with her own distinct colorations. I’d thought all chicks were yellow, but only one of ours had the traditional hue: the Golden Buff chick that Leah named Tweety. For our second chick, a Rhode Island Red breed, the name Red was an easy fit. Rounding out the trio was a black Barred Plymouth Rock chick, which Dylan named Eggy (ironically, she was the last one to lay an egg). Our multi-colored babies hopped around the cage, chirping with glee.
By the third day, our chicks sprouted wings and before long, they were venturing into the yard. They liked pecking through the compost and garden, where grubs and other insects were plentiful. Within a couple months, the chickens outgrew their indoor cage and were ready to live outside. With no specific plan, Matt bought a bunch of wood to build a coop and started sawing and hammering. Before long, he had made a plain rectangular box. The chickens needed protection from predators, so we expanded the box into a raccoon-proof split-level, with a secure chicken run on the ground level and nesting quarters upstairs. After many evolutions, and lots of blood, sweat and rashes (Matt got poison ivy while building it), we had a respectable DIY chicken coop. As a final detail, we nailed an angel milagro to the front.
When you get chickens, it’s amazing how quickly neighbors start to ask, “Any eggs yet?” Our hopes were with Tweety. Like a teenager whose hormones are kicking in, she started acting a little erratic, making too much noise and trying to escape. At one point she even got into a neighbor’s backyard while they prepared for a barbecue. Matt scooped Tweety up and carried her home under his arm, and we resolved to keep a closer eye on her.
Somehow we lost her again the following day … or so we thought. Turns out, she just needed some alone time. That morning Matt left a delightful message on my voicemail. “Hi, it’s me. Got our first egg. Tweety was making a lot of noise. I thought maybe she was stuck behind the coop or something, but she was laying an egg. All right, I sent you an e-mail with a picture of the egg. It’s lightish, purplish, gray.”
After laying it, Tweety ran back to the coop several times to check on her egg; she was as amazed as we were. At exactly 20 weeks, she had laid her first egg. I blasted an e-mail titled “Egg-cited” to all.
Later on, we carefully passed it around to each family member. We marveled over its beauty and smoothness, eventually deciding to make it into a Christmas ornament. Leah and I first practiced by hollowing out a commercial egg. We pierced both ends with a sharp knife, then blew out the contents. It was pretty easy, but Tweety’s eggshell ended up being harder and stronger. The color of the yolk was also more golden and the white had a thicker consistency. This gave us the perfect opportunity for a taste test! I scrambled each egg separately and gave Matt and Leah the blindfold treatment. Not surprisingly, they both preferred Tweety’s egg. It was richer and more flavorful, made right in our backyard. (Lucky for us, it’s been months now and Tweety continues to lay an egg a day.)
We grew so accustomed to eating eggs that we lost track of their intended purpose: new life. Thus, it was a good lesson when a mocking bird made a nest and laid four beautiful eggs in our Kerria japonica bush. We took turns on a ladder to get a closer look at the deep blue orbs, while the mother and father birds kept a watchful eye from our swing set. Weeks later, I noticed the mother flying back and forth from the nest. I took a peek and there were three beautiful birds chirping for food. Time passed and the babies left home. I placed a mirror over the empty nest and there sat the fourth egg. I slowly lifted it from the nest and showed it to Leah. “Why didn’t this egg hatch?” Leah asked sadly. “The last one out is a rotten egg?” I tried to joke.
With eggs and everything else, we’ve encouraged our kids to learn their way around the kitchen. Kieran, Leah and Dylan, ages 13, 9 and 6, are all cooking pros, with skills ranging from homemade salad dressing to veggie dicing to pancakes-from-scratch. At age 2, Riley is more of a pancake tester than a cook, but her talents lie elsewhere—she is quite helpful with the chickens. She looks in the coop every day for eggs, retrieving them while they’re still warm and putting them in the wire basket.
Riley also loves feeding the chickens grapes, their favorite treat. She is stern but fair with her portions. When the chickens get greedy, she shoos them away: “Go!” Riley even likes cleaning up after them, though on her own terms—when she’s too impatient for the pooper scooper, she picks up the poop with her hands and throws it in the compost pile.
All our kids have learned to appreciate nature and spending time outside. They play soccer, identify birds, search for snails and collect seeds. Chickens have become an integral part of this outdoor experience, for the kids and for me. Along with gardening, composting and soon-to-be-beekeeping, keeping chickens gives us benefits most people only associate with farm families. Sometimes after I hang clothes on the drying rack, I mull this over while I lie in my hammock. Tweety often joins me as I swing back and forth thinking, “Life is sweet.”
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Follow along with the Harrigans as they turn their Douglaston backyard into an urban farm at www.veggiesforecology.org.
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