Describe 'My First Chicken---and How She Got me Hooked on Owning More' here
“Clucky”, as I called her, was my first experience of owning a chicken. My hometown is St. Louis and I lived in the heart of the city so chickens were not something I ever was around. I am a veterinary technician so animals are important and I love having many pets. But I never considered chickens until I found Clucky. I worked in Columbus, OH and lived in the suburbs. We had an acre of land so had room. I traveled a lot for my job and periodically found injured animals to nurse. On one travel day on I-70, I zoomed passed a white blob on a small bridge against the median and pulled off right away. I backed up to find a huge white chicken plastered up against the wall of the bridge, terrified. I waited until it was safe, ran across the 2 lanes of highway, grabbed her before she even knew I was there and was back in my vehicle within a matter of a minute or less (I never moved that fast before in my life---LOL). She was not injured at all, which shocked me. She did have some scrapes on her left face where she was up against the concrete wall of the bridge, apparently from pushing up against it hard as all the traffic whizzed by. She had her eyes closed and that’s why she didn’t see me coming. She huddled close to me as I drove down the highway, tucked in my coat as I talked to her. She was very frightened as you can imagine, but she did not fight me or try to fly away from me inside the car. I was able to find a box to set her in on my first stop and she seemed very content. I called my husband to tell him of this weird story and he was actually delighted that I was able to rescue her; he had no problem with her coming to live with us. I do not have any idea how she ended up where she did. I know people do not believe me at first when I tell this story because it is too unbelievable; sometimes I think they made it up just to own a chicken, lol. But this is how I found her, truthfully.
We built her a coop and run, got her a couple of companions and she was just great. My husband built a run that was fully enclosed with fencing, even on the flooring, to be safe from the raccoons and foxes in our area. She was a Leghorn. We adopted 3 Indian Runner ducks, a sweet Silkie Bantam rooster, and a couple more Leghorns. What a great flock they all turned into. Everyone got along, interacting well together. I loved watching the ducks eating together with the chickens. How fun this experience was and we were totally hooked! They were not loud and did not cause any distractions with the neighbors…I’m not sure the neighbors even knew we had them.
We did not have any desire to have chicks or use any of the birds for meat; we just wanted the companionship and interaction with them. The dogs and cats never bothered them except an occasional sniff nose-to-beak through the fence. Clucky was always friendly and I was able to hold her and pet her anytime. She did lay eggs for us and all of them really added to our little “family.” Because of Clucky, I got hooked but was not able to own anymore when we moved from Ohio until earlier this year. I have such fond memories of Clucky and love to hang out with my new ones because she left me with a yearning to have that connection again with chickens.