Crazy Chicken Lady

One might think from my lack of blogging, that I've lost interest in Project Food.  The truth is, I've been having a chickenmoon.  Why write about food, when I can be feeding chickens morsels of broccoli, and watching them attack the spears like the little velociraptors from which they are descended?  Why scribe about chickens when I can be experiencing the brush of warm feathery bodies, or watching their pecking-order antics?  Did you know that juvenile chickens do the chest bump?  Did you know that when their feathers come in, it pushes out their fuzz, leaving them homely in the very cutest way? Did you know? Did you? Did you?

These moments of ecstatic discovery have been somewhat offset by moments of piercing anxiety.  Like when, after 4 days of intense research, I decided my chicks needed a Marek's disease vaccine. And the window for getting said vaccine closes at the end of week three.  And my chickens were 2 weeks and 3 days old. (Thankfully, Rich rode in on his white hypodermic charger, and gave my girls their shots so that they wouldn't hate me. BIG husband points there...)  Or like yesterday, when a lengthy sojourn on backyarchickens.com engendered paranoia that maybe ALL my chickens are roos.   Even my sexlink.   Are those saddle feathers coming in pointed?  Is that chicken taking a taller stance than the rest? Is that comb getting darker?  The answer to all of those questions is thus far "No."  But a chickenmom can worry, right?

One thread on backyardchickens.com that caught my eye last night was "You know you're a crazy chickenlady when..."  My answer? When your own father calls to ask how the chickens are doing, and what he means is, when do I get my fresh eggs, and what you reply with is a detailed report on each bird's personality quirks.  Or when your new friends at your daughter's school know to ask you about your chickens as soon as they see you, and then they follow up by sending you articles on other crazy chickenladies. Or when you begin to find the smell of the chicken brooder "soothing." Or when you invite your entire neighborhood over to watch you paint the trim on your coop.  Or when your husband, to make you happy, offers to install a webcam inside the brooder so that you can watch your chickens from work. (I said no, so I'm not too far gone...yet.)

I am a crazy chicken lady. It's official.  And I feel no shame.