Bf is vehemently against having chickens :( What to do?

[CurvyCoop]

It's literally been my dream to have chickens since I was a little girl. My bf and I are hoping to move to a larger property in the future, and he has grudgingly accepted that I will have chickens then. But that future is a long ways off and to be honest there would be room for a small flock of 4-5 birds right now.
I was cleaning out our garden shed today and realized that pretty much the back 2,5 meters of our garden are taken up by this old shed. Our garden is about 5 m by 7 m, there's a gate at the back that we really do need to keep accessible, but I'd still have about 4 m by 2,5 m to work with. Enough to put up a coop with a run and have a small shed for gardenstuff. And I could give them access to the rest of the garden (just have to safeguard my veggies )

The problem is that every time I bring it up my bf shuts it down hard! He doesn't like chickens at all. He likes eggs and meat, but he does not want to care for them. As a kid his parents had chickens and he was forced to take care of them and he hated it. He also remembers those chickens as being mean and violent with each other, they were free ranged chickens but apparently still pecked at each other and fought. I guess you could say he has chicken trauma.

I just really want to live my dream and I'm confident that I can in our garden right now, but he won't even consider it! He won't even sit down and talk about it. He has autism and he often gets caught up in all the possible ways a new change can go wrong, but it usually helps if we sit down and calmly discuss his worries. Sometimes we conclude that the idea wasn't a good idea after all, but often it helps to assuage his fears. But whenever I bring up chickens he just refuses to engage.

I'm going to be breaking down the shed this spring, he hates doing any kind of garden work so the garden is basically my responsibility, and I am seriously considering just building a coop anyway.
I don't know... It just makes me so sad he won't even talk to me about it.

I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience and if so, what did you do?

 

[nuthatched]

Oh, that's a tough situation. You might want to consider couples counciling, if it means that much to you. Or just don't get chickens right now. While I understand that you're disappointed, your relationship is more important than chickens. It's common for autistic/sensory folks, when overwhelmed, to shut down at the mention of the topic, especially since he had a rough time (sounds like his parents had poor livestock managment) with them before. Bringing it up often or doing it anyway without his knowledge or consent is not going to end well and tells him that you care more about your wants then his wellbeing, especially since he's made his thoughts on the matter clear.
Maybe he'll warm up to the idea in time, it's not impossible. Just take it slow. I'm not telling you to pressure and manipulate (which is abusive and wrong) him but maybe he needs small, positive experiences around chickens , do you know any friends with a great set up and management (non-violent chickens) to watch while they're out of town or something?
Good luck!

 

[LaFleche]

Maybe he would be ok with quail instead of chickens? They are very small, not noisy nor intimidating at all.

So keeping some quail (females only) might be the acceptable compromise for both of you.

 

[nuthatched]

Quail might be a good compromise, that's a good idea.

 

[CurvyCoop]

Sadly quail isn't an option. Bf hates quail eggs XD

 

[Isadora]

As hard as it may be, I would bide my time and wait till you move. He's already agreed to let you have chickens in the future so I don't see why pressing the issue would help things.

 

[LaFleche]

Sadly quail isn't an option. Bf hates quail eggs XD

Well, you would not force him to eat them, would you?

Or does his aversion to chickens include all kinds of fowl or even birds?

 

[Skunkie]

I finally got chickens after several years of wanting them, and I am blown away by how much I enjoy having them. I thought it would just be about the eggs, but I had no idea how much fun they would be (I have 7). Maybe if you present it in a very structured way? Like this:

1. You will do ALL of the work and he won’t have to care for them or do anything with the chickens except enjoy the eggs. Make sure you stick to that part.

2. You will get only 4 hens while you are on the smaller property. No roosters! Pick a breed (or breeds) that are known to be easy going and friendly.

3. You both will see how it goes for a set time period, say 9 months (assuming you get baby chicks to start with, that will give them enough time to start laying and to grow past the awkward and unfriendly teenager stage). If at the end of the agreed time period he still hates the idea then you will re-home or otherwise get rid of said chickens.

 

[Iluveggers]

I finally got chickens after several years of wanting them, and I am blown away by how much I enjoy having them. I thought it would just be about the eggs, but I had no idea how much fun they would be (I have 7). Maybe if you present it in a very structured way? Like this:

1. You will do ALL of the work and he won’t have to care for them or do anything with the chickens except enjoy the eggs. Make sure you stick to that part.

2. You will get only 4 hens while you are on the smaller property. No roosters! Pick a breed (or breeds) that are known to be easy going and friendly.

3. You both will see how it goes for a set time period, say 9 months (assuming you get baby chicks to start with, that will give them enough time to start laying and to grow past the awkward and unfriendly teenager stage). If at the end of the agreed time period he still hates the idea then you will re-home or otherwise get rid of said chickens.

This is great advice.

Honestly, if your happiness is dependent on having chickens (mine have changed my whole mindset & personality..I’m much happier having chickens!), then a good partner would support you on that. My DH was not on board at all, until I absolutely promised I wouldn’t ask him for any help. I raised chicks myself, clean poop myself, feed and water myself, and nursed back 3 chicks from weak lethargy and pasty butt myself.

If you tell him how much happier it will make you, and that it is YOUR responsibility and you will never ask him for help with any of it, also promise they will stay in the run so he does not have any run-ins, he should not object. Standing in the way of someone’s personal happiness is not being a good partner.

Chickens are not a reason to end a relationship. However someone being unreasonable in you achieving your lifelong dream is a problem. You say you are “hoping” to move soon, but it could be years, and still no guarantee once you get there that he won’t change his mind. At thr point in my life now in my middle age that I’m not afraid to say what I need, and compromise within reason. In my case the compromise happens to be that I have chickens but they are fully my responsibility.

Good luck.

 

[CurvyCoop]

Thank you everyone for your advice. I did what I do best and got my ADHD ass to hyperfocus on the whole thing. I worked out everything, made to scale technical drawings of my coop and run designs and had a detailed plan ready. He saw the designs on the kitchen table while I was cooking and asked about them (I had actually planned on colouring them first before showing them because I'm fancy like that but oh well) I finally got BF to sit down and TALK. And after dinner he even suggested we call his parents to clear up some holes in his memory. It helped me understand where he was coming from.

After getting the facts straight I now know that they only had chickens for 3 years and not most of his childhood as he remembered. I already knew he grew up on a farmhouse (and yet he is the citiest of city boys ). They started out with a setup very similar to my plan in size, but with around 10 bantam wyandotte hens...and at least one roo, because by the end of the first year there were already three times as many chickens...
The following year things got completely out of hand. The chickens kept breeding and were eventually left to free range because they simply wouldn't fit in the coop anymore, this just meant that even more of them snuck off to hatch eggs. By the third year the whole colony had gotten inbred, there were several roosters fighting, there were diseases and injuries, chickens were getting picked off left and right by predators, the coop was cramped and a total mess and full of parasites and the remaining half feral hens were completely unmanageable.... In the end the whole flock got wiped out by disease and predators sometime in the winter of the third year.
Yeah... I get his trauma now
Especially because he confessed that he actually really liked the chickens, he just a) couldn't keep up with the care (his siblings were supposed to help but never did so the care of essentially ALL animals fell to him) and b) couldn't bear to watch the animals he loved get sick, injured and predated.

I now completely get why he was so adamant we never have chickens, he assumed I meant get the same thing he grew up with: an unholy amount of chickens in a far too small area, getting sick and needing hours of work every day to clean.
I think it really helped him to talk to his parents and get a clearer idea of just how mismanaged the whole operation was. And I think it made a world of difference that he could see my plan: clean, easy to manage, spacious and NO ROO. (I'd love a roo one day, but let's not push the poor guy too far for now )
It also really helped that when he mentioned he was worried about noise I pointed out that there are people with chickens all over the neighbourhood, at least one of them with a roo even, and that he'd never noticed anything.

So it would seem I finally convinced my BF!
I still have a lot of work ahead of me to tear down the old shed and clear the whole area, but once I have I will be able to build back a beautiful coop and run with a little attached storage shed.
Dreams do come true!