Not sure if this is a true ad...but it sure is funny
http://burlington.craigslist.org/grd/824552027.html
I believe I have the most dysfunctional flock of layers this side of the Mississippi. No amount of Blu-Kote will keep these hens from pecking themselves until they all moon me as soon as I walk in the door.
When I picked these girls out of the catalog, this isnt the picture I saw.
Dont get me wrong these are good layers. All large breeds.
We (me and a friend my wife was away for the weekend and didnt have anything to do with this as she has told many people) imported these layers from one of those fancy Midwest hatcheries a year ago. I bought Silver-Laced Wyandottes, White Rocks, Partridge Rocks, Cuckoo Marans (mostly roosters that made good soup), Reds, Barred, Partridge, Araucana, Columbian, you name it. Healthy. Strong egg production. And no bugs (theyd be easy to see).
I guess I wanted to create a veritable United Nations in my hen house, and maybe thats where I went wrong.
Instead I built a struggling parliament for a fractured country. And some of the members possess only what could be called genocidal tendencies.
So heres my plan: Im disbanding the government.
I need to send the members packing to the four corners of the country (or state). Put them on a plane (well, car) to whatever yard will harbor them, or at least keep their bare hindquarters warm for a few weeks until the feathers grow back in.
Why?
Because I know it will work.
How do I know?
Well, you see, a few weeks ago, when my wife was collecting eggs, a Partridge Rock escaped.
Lets call her Fred (the chicken, not my wife). My 6-year-old daughter named her Fred (she named the dearly-departed Araucana rooster chick Princess). Fred is a very fast Partridge Rock, it turns out. Fred has (so far) escaped the clutches of the family of raccoons that kill every rooster that Ive never been able to get rid of on Craigs List.
(Have you ever noticed that Craigs List always includes free roosters? I swear there are more free roosters on Craigs List than there are prostitutes, err, women seeking men.)
(Not that Im admitting to looking at the personals part of this site, being happily married and all. I just heard about it from that friend who told me to order so many chickens.)
(I digress.)
So, besides escaping the fearsome raccoons sharp claws of death, Fred has grown all of her tail feathers back. All of them, which is a very good thing considering how on occasion she now perches near the road and I only just received a conditional use permit to keep said dysfunctional hens.
(It cost me a hundred bucks to get a zoning permit even though I own one of the oldest farms in my town. For this price Ive been able to teach my kids what it means to add insult to injury.)
So why dont I just set all the chickens loose?
Well, if youre still reading up to this point, let me review a few parts of the story:
1. These chickens are good layers (most good layers are fetching $10 to $14 each right now, and Im giving a dented-can discount).
2. Once these chickens are disbanded they should all behave better and regain their normal appearance (although I cannot guarantee this just as I cant guarantee that a Vice Presidential candidates teenage daughter will learn something useful in her abstinence-only health class and wont turn up at a political convention several months pregnant).
3. These chickens arent all as fast as Fred, and the raccoons wont pay me $7 each for them (Ive tried).
So, if you want a few laying hens or if you want a lot of laying hens and have all-suite accommodations to keep them apart from each other e-mail me.
If you dont, its OK. I have a fall back plan: Ill schedule a tribunal.
When we dispatched the roosters my 8-year-old son looked at one of the birds on the block, picked up the hatchet and said, I do like swinging things.
Ill have him hitting home runs by the time were through.
Oh, and one last thing:
Fred stays. Shes earned her roost, if I can ever catch her