On the road of raising chickens, the things those chickens taught me

In the past, during Chinese New Year, my family would always paste a red paper reading "May the six livestock flourish" at the place where we kept animals. Times have changed, and it has been a long time since I last saw that red paper. I had even forgotten the phrase.

The reason this phrase came back to mind is that my family has indeed had a flourishing of livestock lately. We originally kept chickens for their eggs, but these native chickens are simply bursting with vitality. Our chicken coop is a full 2.5 m tall, yet it still cannot contain them, because they are practically like birds, flying in and out as if the coop were not there at all. At present we have one rooster and four hens. During Chinese New Year the hens were fertilized and began sitting on eggs, and in the past few days the chicks have started following the hens around to forage. There are 13 chicks in total. Wow! How could a modest, comfortably-off family like mine afford such a huge feed bill? Fortunately, they are so full of vitality that they get by perfectly well without us feeding them at all.

All of this is because they are survivors. Why?

What Those Chicks Taught Me

Let me tell the story from the beginning. Three years ago we started keeping chickens. At that time we bought 4 chicks at the market. It was winter, and we set up an electric light for warmth, but two days later they all froze to death. After such a painful experience, one must press on and not give up, because success is not far away. We bought 4 more to raise, and sure enough, they all grew up into chickens without a hitch. At the time I once asked the shop owner who sold them how to get chickens to breed naturally. The owner said it was a bit difficult, because chickens nowadays no longer breed the way they used to, so it was faster and much more convenient to just buy them.

Hearing that was really discouraging, but I still held on to a sliver of hope that we could succeed in breeding them ourselves.

As it happened, I learned that a friend's family had a hen from a line they had bred at home for generations. After much coaxing I finally got one, but this hen was really a size too small. What was even more surprising was that from then on there was no keeping her penned in. For a whole year after we got her, she never laid an egg. I thought to myself, oh dear, could my hopes have been dashed again? Before long I finally saw her sitting on eggs, but it turned out they were unfertilized, empty eggs, which disappointed me even more.

Just when I had given up hope and forgotten about it, the little hen finally began sitting on eggs again. This time she brooded very conscientiously, and I very conscientiously watched and observed. A few weeks later, 3 chicks finally hatched. Oh, I forgot to mention: the rooster was one my cousin next door kept. He came over to my place to join in the fun and along the way left his seed behind.

These 3 chicks were like living toys for the children in my family, who grabbed them to play with at every opportunity. Watching someone else raise children always seems especially fast, and watching a hen raise chicks is also especially fast. In the blink of an eye the chicks had grown up, and the rooster was caught and returned to my cousin. The 3 chicks were one male and two females. This rooster grew up valiant and spirited, quite in the style of his father. Just before Chinese New Year he too left his seed and became a father. The 3 hens were divided into two clutches and laid more than 30 eggs in all.