Our Chicken Story

The first time we got chickens was in the summer. Dani, Margalit and I were at camp and the Anisfeld's were going to Israel for a month. They had four chickens and we said we would take them. So my dad built a chicken coop and we got their chickens. In the letters I got from home my parents wrote to me about the chickens, and when I came home from camp we still had them. I was interested in the chickens. I tried to hold them a couple of times but when the just ran away, I let them be. When the Anisfelds came back from Israel we returned the chickens. That was our first very good, delightful and successful time having chickens.

Almost a year later in early spring we got two young chickens from our neighbor's cousin. A week or two later the racoons ate them. We tried to get chicks from Agway, a farm store but whenever we call or ordered them, they didn't have any.

Finally the Anisfelds managed to get ten chicks and they split them with us. We had them for 5 weeks before we had problems. Then one day when I came home from school my dad told me the Anisfelds chickens had gotten eaten. I was sad, but very happy that we still had ours. The very next morning, my dad told me about the racoons feast. I decided I didn't want chickens anymore because all they did was get eaten. The only problem was that we had already agreed to take two of the Jackson's chickens, because they had too many. So once again, we re-inforced the coop (for the second time) and accepted the Jackson's two little chickens. They were cute but I did not want to get too connected, because who knew what could happen to them. On Sunday, two or three days later, I came downstairs and ask my mom how the chickens were. She said she sees one, so she assumes they are fine. I told her they probably are fine, but it isn't enough for me. So I went outside to only once again get upset over chickens. My mom hadn't lied. There was one little chicken,but she was standing there all by herself while the other one lay on her side beheaded. A week later we returned the remaining chicken to the Jackson's. That's when we decided that if we wanted chickens, we needed to build a whole other coop.

The next time we got chickens was earlier than we expected. We thought we would just get chicks in the spring, but we got chickens in the fall because our neighbor had chickens for the summer but could not keep them for the rest of the year. So in late summer we built a huge aviary because our old coop was not safe , and inside it put the old coop.Then right away we got one of our neighbor's chickens. (One of the reasons we only got one chicken to start with was because they were not sure that our coop was safe, so they only wanted to give us one at first.) A week later after we had proved that our coop was safe we got another chicken. Then a week or two later, we switched our old coop with a different coop designed like a dog house because it would keep the chickens warm in the winter. We had build this coop ourselves. Unfortunately, a couple of days later, the new chicken that we had just gotten died of a disease. The very next morning, my dad and I drove out to New Hampshire and bought four four month-old chickens. That is where we are now.