Araucanas...Not!

I've kept chickens in town for several years now. I started with five. One turned out to be a rooster and 'went away' quickly. My favorite, a lovely Rhode Island Red, took up swimming as a hobby a couple of years ago and promptly drowned in a stock tank.

Alas...I'm left with Araucanas.

I got them because they're pretty. In retrospect, it's tempting to class this as a typical, stupid, guy-thing...my first relationship, etc. I promise to go for the smart, interesting ones next time.

I'm sure somebody out there likes them, but in my experience the Araucana's are just dumb and mean. My red would happily ensconce herself between my elbows as I weeded the garden so as to gobble up the worms I found. By contrast, after four years, the Araucana's remain convinced I'm going to murder them at every turn and generally keep their distance. That despite the fact that I hand fed one of them of them for six weeks after she lost half her beak to some marauding predator one night! The also Araucanas variously take turns trying to murder eachother. When Sarah (my Red) was still around, they collectively tried to snuff her out, a perfidy I suspect may have driven her to drink.

Chickens will be a continuing part of the big adventure here. I'm down to three now, across two legal lots, which means I could actually pick up a fourth (two per lot) and still be within city code.
Grumbling about my present coop aside, I really like chickens in town. They make fantastic eggs. They're a riot to watch. They make great manure for enriching compost. They're easy to keep. What's not to like about them?

My hens lay from mid-April until October. I've found that about a hen per person is sufficient to provide us with a modest supply of eggs. They start slow in the spring, produce mind-boggling numbers of eggs in the middle, and start to slow down as the summer winds to a close.

I've built them a truly posh coop, complete with cedar siding, elevated nest boxes, a ramp with traction bars, and a screen porch. They thank me for this effort daily by crapping all over it.

The interaction between chickens and gardens has been educational for me. The first year I foolishly let them loose in the spring just as my garden was getting started and they practically scratched the entire thing out of the ground. I tried fencing and whatnot, but chickens are remarkably adept at getting to the food they want. So, now I mainly keep them in their penned yard which is large enough anyhow. The compost pile is contained within that yard too, which means they have first crack at the kitchen scraps etc.

In future chicken adventures, I plan to make chicken tractor of sorts to enable me to use the chickens to maintain grassy areas which would otherwise require mowing. They love greens! In fact, they've loved the greens in their yard right down to nothing...another reason a tractor would be a big improvement.

Tractor or no, Araucanas notwithstanding, chickens seem like a no-brainer to me (cheapshot!) for the permaculture adventurist.