You know you're addicted to raising backyard chickens when...
... You decide that you want to start a chicken-raising business for your sixteenth birthday... and three months later you count *your* chickens and realise you have 37.
... You go for your first riding lesson and find that there are chickens in a run next to the arena... and you spend your whole lesson working out which breed each one is.
... You have a very sick chick and you hold it in your hands for three hours straight just so it won't die alone.
... You convince your father that he should help you buy a fence for the chicken run for a mother's day present (because your mother's sick of having chickens coming onto the back verandah).
... You hear your sister ringing into a lesson and being asked how her day is so far... and she starts off by saying, "I helped my sister catch six escaped chickens this morning before I let my ducks out into their run."
... Someone asks you just how many chickens you have, and you have to stop and count them because you know them all by name... and then you come up with a number like 37.
... You've found a correspondence university course on backyard poultry raising which you're going to do once you've finished high school. (
http://www.acs.edu.au/courses/poultry-176.aspx)
... You go into the library whenever you can, just to see whether the most recent addition of "Poultry Australia" has come in yet.
... You start a conversation at dinner with "I was on the chicken forum today..."
... You're late to French school and your answer is, "J'ai vendu une poulet cet après-midi."
... You're not ready for a German oral because it was hatch day and you were watching chicks hatch rather than doing your homework.
... Your French teacher tells you to write a short biography about a living thing from birth to death, and you call it, "L'histoire d'une caille." (
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/647547/the-story-of-a-quail)
... You're volunteering at a youth camp that does mostly horse riding, and you spend an hour standing at the edge of the arena with two horse-mad campers listening to them try to one-up each other. The conversation goes something like this...
Camper #1: I have six horses.
Camper #2: I have seven horses.
You: I have twenty-eight chickens.
Camper #1: I have a pink bridle for my horse.
Camper #2: I have a purple and blue bridle with a nose ring for my horse.
You: I have a chick coop with a mural on the side.
Camper #1: I have an arena at my house to practice in.
Camper #2: I have an arena and a round yard.
You: I have a chicken run.
Camper #1: I have a horse float.
Camper #2: I have two horse floats.
You: I have a bird cage.
Nearby Staff Member: Is there a bird in it?
You: No... it lives in the car so that if I stop in at the grain & fodder shop and see a chicken I like, I already have the travel cage ready...
... You start learning Spanish and one of the first phrases you ask your teacher for is, "Tengo muchos pollos."
... You take a dozen home-grown eggs from your own chooks in to German school get on your teacher's good side.
... You know all the right vocabulary for talking about chickens in German but you can never remember the right words for the contents of your pencil case.
... You get into a heated argument with your younger sister about whether chickens or ducks are better.
... Your mother doesn't even bat an eyelid when you walk into the lounge room with a chicken in your arms and sit down to watch with her.
... You're convinced that the chicks in the brooder are singing along as you practice piano.
... You purchase six week-old chicks from a different grain & fodder shop to usual, and the lady selling them to you is surprised that you already have a brooder, heat lamp, and a bag of chick starter crumble.
... Your violin teacher asks you to come out to her back yard with her so that you can work out what breed her chickens are.