With the price of eggs apparently climbing to $150 a dozen, it’s tempting to start back raising chickens and turkeys.
Up until about four years ago, I had a couple of dozen chickens, with a peak of about 80, and a dozen or more turkeys, plus a few guineas I kept in the belief that they would eat ticks.
The chickens were Delawares and Dorkings and the turkeys were the Narrangansett. breed. The guineas were a nuisance, and noisy to boot.
Both breeds of chickens were good layers and the roosters filled up a crockpot nicely when the time came to invite them in for dinner.
The home-grown chickens tasted eight times better than store-bought birds, and I enjoyed many a plate of scrambled eggs.
(In a blind taste test, you can’t tell the difference between a turkey egg and a chicken egg. You need a chisel and hammer to crack a guinea egg, so I never tasted any of them.)
Sadly, the possums and coons that lived along the creek liked the chickens and eggs, too. So did the skunks. And the foxes and coyotes and the occasional stray dog.
There are lots of furbearers in our part of the county. Sunday night, in fact, Kindra opened the front door and found a possum chilling on the front porch.
I already had the chickens and turkeys by the time Martin came to live with me, and he got along well with all of them.
Martin spent his nights in the house and soon began alerting me when a furbearer would come up in search of a feathered snack.
He would give single “oof,” almost like a cough. It would be just loud enough to wake me up. I would shine the long-beam flashlight out toward the chicken and turkey pens and most times would see a pair of shiny eyes looking back at me.
About a year later, Monroe came to live with us and it took quite some time for her to adapt to all the house rules. So, the dogs slept outside.
Turns out, the “oof” was Martin’s indoor warning voice. Outside, he resorted to a full-throated bark. Monroe was even louder, and so I would be roused three or four times a night by the dogs letting me know something was messing with the birds.
Not too long after, a dog got into the pens and wiped out my flocks. Killed all but one tom turkey.
By then, I was getting tired of the sleep interruptions, so I gave away the turkey and started buying eggs and chickens at the store.
I sleep much better now and have discovered that I enjoy a good night’s sleep even better than I do fresh eggs and home-grown chickens.
So, if eggs continue to get more expensive, that’s still better than sleep deprivation.