I was surprised how much I enjoy “The Natural History of the Chicken” directed by Mark Lewis (VII) each time I watch it. Tonight I watched the video for the third time. (The DVD is available to borrow at the Thelma Parker Memorial Public and School Library in Waimea.)

I am entertained and educated by the many human & chicken stories, especially about the city silkie rooster and the country silkie hen.

Cotton is a white Japanese bantam silkie rooster who is Karin Estrada’s soulmate. (Silkie feathers looks and feels like long rabbit fur.) They live in West Palm Beach, Florida. Cotton is one spoiled rooster! He gets pampered by shampoo & blowdry; he has a special rooster perch in the passenger side of Karin’s car, he gets to watch TV, especially Pavarotti. And he has a teeny tiny little red diaper to catch all the poop. Karin thinks Cotton thinks he’s human. I think she’s right.

Liza, also a white silkie, is a courageous hen who lives in a minature hen house built by Pastor L. Joseph Tauer. He was inspired by Liza self-sacrifice to protect her 6 chicks when a hawk soared in the sky looking for food. He wrote “Call Me Chicken” which he narrates in the video. I shed a couple tears towards the end of his story. <sniff>

I definitely want to raise several bantam silkies in the near future. <sigh>

Scott Johnson of Waimea writes:

We have a coop that fits 25 nice and snug with plenty of acreage for them to roam.  However, when they were big enough to be let out, but not full grown yet, we had mongoose issues.  A mongoose made repeated attacks on the young chickens (6-8 wks old) and killed most of them.  We thought at first it was a dog, but couldn’t figure out how a dog was able to get into the small ‘yard’ around the coop.  We were finally able to trap and dispose of the mongoose, which stopped the killing.  Then when the chickens are full grown, the mongooses end up going for the eggs instead of the chickens, leaving few for us.  My first question is how do you deal with the mongooses on your farm?

The short answer is, i believe we’ve been lucky, but also a bit prepared.
We have a chicken run fence, enclosing a roughly 40’x60′ area.  It is chicken wire, buried a few inches into the ground.  It surrounds and includes the coop.  The chicken stay in their run all night and morning; we let them out to totally free range in the afternoon, and they put themselves back in, in the evening, then we go down and shut the door.
There are definitely mongoose living around here – we see them – but they have never attacked either chicken or eggs.  Some factors that might explain why we haven’t been attacked:

1. Much of the chicken’s time, especially at night, is inside a fence.
2. The run is not far from our garden and greenhouse, so the presence of humans might be scaring away mongoose.
3. We are frequently going down to the chickens to gather eggs and spend time with them.

Next Q:

What do you do with your chickens after two-three years?  We actually don’t eat meat, and we are not the type to kill them ourselves.  We would be happy to give them away to someone who will use them for stewing, but have not been able to find that person.

We are still on our first time with such a large flock, so, like many people, we’re not quite sure!  The options seem to be:

1. Process and eat them ourselves (too much work for all 40 hens).
2. Kill them and bury them in planting hole as fertilizer for tree crops.
3. Find homes for them, families that want mature docile hens and don’t mind the low egg output of a 3-year-old hen.
4. Find some local folks with intact traditions, who will happily take them for eating.

The only thing i don’t recommend is to just set them free, as some people do.  They are likely to die of starvation or dog attack.  Any of the above options seems more humane.