Raising chickens is a growing trend across the country. They are popping up in barnyards, backyards, and urban homesteads. From retirees to hipsters, people are jumping on the chicken bandwagon. We tell ourselves that we want to know where our food comes from, bringing us closer to the source. Or perhaps we want to explore our ancestral roots or developing homesteading skills?
Once you bring home those cute balls of fluff, you want to learn what you can. Sure, you can go online and read through chicken forums. Maybe you will subscribe to various poultry magazines for the articles? What about joining a chicken club? Or perhaps you chat up friends or neighbors who keep chickens? There is a mountain of information out there. Soon you will find yourself wanting to share your new-found knowledge with others. But there maybe a few things you aren’t willing to admit.
5 Thing You Shouldn’t Admit After Buying Chickens
- You have a favorite livestock/feed store. Yes, after getting chickens you will spend lots of time there. Maybe it begins with just a few basic questions about chick starter or layer mash, but then you progress to benefits of various types of bedding. In fact, you will become a regular and frequent customer to the point that you will be on a first name basis with the guy behind the counter.
- Raising chickens is addicting. Over time, the size of your flock increases. Perhaps you can’t help yourself when stopping by the livestock/feed stores in February or March. You hear the peeping coming from the brooders and so you tell yourself that you are just going to take a quick peek at the chicks. Next thing you know, your spouse is asking you if the flock is bigger?
- You will take pictures of your chickens and share them online. While friends and family send you photos of the kids, you’re the one who has a selfie with your favorite hen or newest member of the flock.
- You will spend more on organic feed and chicken treats than you do on fresh produce for your family. You start off telling yourself it’s because you are doing it for the eggs. But after a while, you drop the facade because you just like spoiling them (your chickens, not your family).
- Your chickens are your pets. Sure, you initially tell yourself they are animals, but soon you have given them cute names. This is then followed by allowing one (or more) into the house and watching them explore. From there it is just a matter of time before you have a ‘lap chicken’ who waits patiently for some cuddle time.
Chickens are a growing trend. We learn what we can and share that information with others. But maybe there are a few things that we should just keep to ourselves.
Hahaha – so true! That picture of the chick on your shoulder says it all.
That photo is when I knew that my chickens had moved from livestock to pet status. 🙂
Love this post! So true. I miss our chickens and cant wait to have more someday.
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed the post. I hope you don’t have to wait too long before you get chickens again.
Too cute! I am looking forward to the day we have a flock of our own and I’m sure all of these points will apply at one time or the other when we do 😉
I hope you get your own flock soon. Who knows… you may have a few other items to add to the list?
I smiled knowingly to myself all the way through this post – this is what I have always thought would happen should my dream of a yard big enough to keep a couple of hens or so ever come to be……. Thanks for the validation 🙂
I hope you get your dream yard and chickens. Growing up, we raised chickens and what I admitted in this post are things that I would never be able to admit to my dad. 😉
I have hens in a standard city lot, so it doesn’t require that much space…
We are also in a city. Our municipal code sets a minimum space for the coop (2 square feet per chicken).
I have a TINY ‘garden’ it is really a paved courtyard about 2 x 3 m – and a cat and a puppy share that…… sadly no room for anything else at the moment – but thanks for the encouragement 🙂
I like to encourage folks to go after their dreams.
I had a house chicken for awhile! She slept in a horse trough (couldn’t fly- special needs chick). She was our buddy until she passed away. Definitely a pet.
I bet your house chicken was a great pet. Chickens definitely enhance our lives.
I’m all for that except for full time house chickens 🙁 Ew, the smell of stinky poo! But I don’t let my older girls into the kitchen (vinyl floor) for an occasional peek 🙂
We have a friend who puts a diaper on her house chicken. That hen has free-range of the whole house. We keep our chicks in a brooder in the basement… but they then get moved outside.
I have a small flock, 6 hens & a roo, and all of this is true. I also just LOVE your photo of the 3 Barred Rock hens! 🙂
After chatting with other chicken owners, I realized that we all have our guilty admissions when it comes to chickens. Glad you like the photo!
So true! Love it!
It took me a while to admit (publicly) these, but I have found many others with the same confessions. 🙂
I loved this post and couldn’t help nodding as I read it! I have chosen this as my featured post at Green Thumb Thursday. Thank you for sharing and I hope you will join in again. ~ Rachel @urbanoveralls.net Grow a Good Life
I am so glad you enjoyed it! This is real life for me and I enjoy sharing my confessions.
Ha! This is really cute. I grew up always having chickens around, because my mom needs them for company. 🙂
I also grew up with chickens (we raised them on the farm) and now I have them as an adult. My dad would not understand my list.
We don’t have any chickens (yet), trying to convince my hubby but I bet I’d agree, hopefully we can get some soon!~
I hope you do get chickens. They are so much fun and really are entertaining.
LOL as a fairly new chicken owner (I’ve had my girls for about 6 months now), I can completely agree with #2, #3 and #4. I actually laughed out loud at #4 because it’s so TRUE! Too funny but I do love my girls. Pinning!
My husband just smiles and nods when we go to the feed store and he knows better than to let me go by myself when the chicks arrive. 🙂 And for us, the person behind the counter is Danielle.
Love your post. I don’t have chickens, but hope to some day.
Thank you. We really do enjoy our chickens and I have my moments of over-indulgence. Thankfully, my husband understands. I hope you end up getting chickens. They are so much fun.
I love sitting outside with my 4 hens. To be honest, when we bought them, I was freaked out by birds in general, and thought my husband would be the one “dealing” with them. Now, I’m the one who is always with them and taking care of them. I still like sitting outside with them and feeding them from my hands.
Of course, I don’t have pictures of them all over my Instagram account. Ahem. You believed that. Right?
I also love spending time with our hens. Each one has a unique personality. And as far as your Instagram account… I won’t tell. 😉
And… you’ll have more pictures of chickens on your phone than you will of your kids… 🙂
Yes! I have scrolled through the images on my phone and definitely have quite a few photos of them. 🙂
Ha, Anni. I’m bad, but not THAT bad!
Perhaps if you add up the photos of my dogs, hens, and plants, though… 😉
Hi Anni! We all have our guilty pleasures and chickens are definitely mine. I have to make myself take photos of things other than my flock. 🙂
Such a fun post! Thanks for the laughs.
Thanks! It was a fun post to write (even if I am guilty of all of them).
These are so true! I think it changes and morphs over years, though. We’ve had flocks that I just adored, and others (like my current flock) who are just so stand-offish that they’re absolutely “farm animals.”
I know what you mean Kris. Some of the birds in my current flock are stand-offish and so I just think of them as farm animals, while the others definitely are pets and they come running when they see me. One of them will even hop up on my shoulder if I stoop over.
What a cute little list. They are definitely addicting. I always say, if you have chickens, then you ARE “that crazy chicken lady” 🙂 .
Thank you. And yes, chickens definitely are addicting. I would love to have a huge flock!
yeah, I’m the one posting pics of the chickens vs. the kids online! 😉
🙂 Chickens are just so darn cute.
5… so number 5…. our chickens even have their own rug – you know – for when it is just too cold for them… or too hot for them… or too outside for them to be outside 😛
I have to admit, that I have thought about getting a rug… but then all I have to do is look at the chicken run after a rain. The rug would be dirty within minutes. Sounds like you really love your flock. Enjoy!
Too funny! Pretty sure I do all of these! Just found your blog and really enjoyed reading about your homesteading adventures.
Thank you. Keeping chickens is a constant delight.