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

[Iluveggers]

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!

That is so great! Will you be getting a small number like 3 or 4? What breeds? Let the chicken games begin!

 

[Callender Girl]

Glad to see this situation has a happy ending! Will be looking forward to hearing what happens next.

 

[Auntiejessi3]

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.