I would like to reflect back to when I first got to pick out my first 6 hens at Fuetrels on Palm Beach Blvd in Fort Myers. I started naming everyone of them. My grandmother told me that it would not be a good idea to name them for the fact we might need to eat my new baby hens. I named them anyway. We put the hens in a box for the first day we had them. My grandmother and I went to HomeDepo and picked out our chicken wire, wood, and hinges for the doors. We also bought nails and screws to put our chicken coop together with. My grandmother and I spent all day designing and putting together our coop. We had a little trouble getting the door to work just right, but when my Papa got home, he fixed it right up. He asked us why we did not just wait until he got home for us to put it together. We told him that we wanted to do it and prove that we could. Girls are just as good as boys. Hahaha. My grandma, which I called Nanny and I fought over who was going to get to use the screw gun. It was the newest thing out at that time and we just learned how to use it. We got it for my Papa that year for Christmas.
In the meantime my mother brought home a bird case to keep the chickens inside for a few days until they were big enough to go in the chicken coop. Wow, did they start to stink after a few days, and boy did they grow fast!!
After about 5-7 days they grew twice their size and where ready to go in the coop we made. Truthfully my Nanny and I let them go in the coop as soon as it was done without my Papa knowing, so that he would not yell at us.
We put crates inside the coop with hay for the hens to lay eggs and sleep. We bought special drops to put in the water that turned it yellow, so that the chickens would not get sick drinking the water. We also built a six foot fence type thing around the coop to that we could let the chicken out and roam around to eat weeds and things.
Funny story, every night when there were scraps or leftovers that were too old for us to eat, my Nanny would tell me to go feed it to the hens. A few times we fed them chicken scraps, hahaha. I thought that was the funniest thing when I was little.
The first time we got eggs from our little chicks, I ran and screamed all the way inside to show my Nanny. She thought something happened to me. Our first egg had a double yoke. I claimed it that morning as mine, and I ate it for breakfast. The eggs were so small at first. They were so cute. After a while they got bigger and bigger, and before I knew it they were larger than normal size. We started to have our neighbors save their egg cartons to that we could use them.
I made it a rule that if there was a double yoke egg cracked for breakfast it was mine. I thought since I collected them every morning it was my right. My Nanny saw how much I enjoyed collecting the eggs and caring for the chicken, she made me a special basket that she lined with special cloth. She sewed a little pillow for the inside of my basket so that the eggs would not break. I can still picture the material she used.
Another thing I remember was our chicken shoes. We had special canvas shoes that we always wore when going in the chicken coop because, we heard that it was bad for you to step barefoot in chicken poop. Otherwise I never wore shoes outside. Shoot you could not keep shoes on me. The day we built the coop I was shoeless and even today while typing this journal entry I’m shoeless.
I can’t say that I don’t enjoy shoes anymore; I am a woman and have a shoe fetish now, but only in public. Shoes are still the first think I kick off when I get home.
Autumn Barionnette
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