To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day (23 page)

they will be tough.

If you are pleased with the color, you may now remove

the eggs with a slotted spoon and let them dry. If not, remove

the pan from the stove but let the eggs sit in it. If the color of the eggs is still not deep enough after the water has reached

room temperature, place the entire pan in the refrigerator

and let the eggs sit there in the pan overnight.

Your naturally dyed eggs will not be shiny. If shine is

important to you, rub each egg with some vegetable oil.

*

I do think seasonal traditions are great fun and add meaning

to our lives. But just as I do not want my spirituality to end at the completion of a monthly ritual, I do not want to express

it—to live it—only on holidays. And there is no reason why

any of us should. Another way you can connect with the

earth’s natural cycles and become more fully involved with

the cycle of life is by keeping your own chickens.

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Even if you live in a city, many municipalities today allow

a family to keep several hens. There are usually restrictions

as to how many birds you can keep and where they must be

located, so check your local ordinances. Those ordinances

almost always forbid keeping roosters, because of the noise

they make. Apparently some people find the pastoral sound

of a rooster crowing to be more annoying than distant gun-

shots, wailing sirens and screaming neighbors.

Other than the rooster thing, most ordinances are quite

reasonable and reflect the decent respect anybody should

have for his or her neighbors. But there are exceptions. One

Midwestern city currently has an ordinance requiring a resi-

dent to obtain written permission from every neighbor with-

in 100 feet of his property if he or she wants to keep a few

hens. Other ordinances in this same city address every pos-

sible offense—excessive noise, sanitation and so on—so why

the neighbors’ permission is required is anybody’s guess.

Similar written permissions are not required for keeping a

macaw or a Rottweiler. It is because of restrictions like this that you must educate yourself about the local laws concerning poultry.

Beyond this, chicken keeping is ridiculously easy. A hen-

house for two or three hens need be no larger than a good

sized doghouse. The hens will also need some room to run

around and stretch their legs, and this area must be securely

fenced. Building or buying the henhouse and run will be the

most difficult task involved.

And, no, you do not need a rooster. Hens lay eggs wheth-

er or not there are roosters strutting around. In fact you do

not want a rooster unless you have a dozen or more hens

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to keep him distracted. Almost every rooster is insanely

amorous and has the nuptial technique of a bulldozer. One

rooster will quickly wear down three or four hens to the det-

riment of their health.

You may be wondering how time consuming it is to keep

a few hens. I have a parakeet in a cage in my living room

and three Rhode Island Red hens in a coop in my back yard.

Caring for my hens takes up no more time than caring for

the parakeet. Both need food and fresh water every day. Both

need their enclosures cleaned out once a week, a process that

takes me about ten minutes for either the henhouse or for

the bird cage. There is one significant difference, though.

The chickens feed me.

More than that, they help me connect with the land.

They are truly a part of my spiritual experience as a Pagan. I

experience, first hand, what my ancestors experienced when

the lengthening days of spring brought an abundance of

fresh eggs. I feed my three hens commercially prepared layer

pellets, but they supplement their feed with grass and with

the bugs in the yard, and so when I eat their eggs I literally

become a part of the world around me.

If you would keep a couple hens, housing will be your

primary challenge. There are websites giving detailed

descriptions for building a henhouse, and if you have some

reasonable skill with a hammer and saw this will save you a

considerable amount of money. I, unfortunately, do not have

that skill. I bought my henhouse. Some assembly will still

be required if you choose this option, but none of it is very challenging. The disadvantage of purchasing a pre-built hen-f 170 2

the birds and the bees

house is that the cost of the structure is comparable to that

of a purebred puppy.

As for the size of the structure, the standard rule of

thumb is two square feet per hen. The common sense rule

(which I prefer) is “enough room for each hen to be com-

fortable”. You should be able to close the henhouse securely

at night. Ideally the henhouse should have at least one small

window for ventilation and light, and this needs to be cov-

ered with screening. The hens will need a sturdy roost, 2”

thick, set at least two feet above the floor. The roost is where they will sleep.

You do not absolutely need nest boxes in your henhouse,

but without them the hens will lay their eggs any old place.

The egg hunt that was so fun on Easter morning rapidly

loses its charm when you have to do it every day. A nest box

should be 12" to 14" in width and depth, and should have walls on all sides except the front. Assuming you are keeping no more than two or three hens, two nest boxes are suf-

ficient. If you purchase a pre-constructed henhouse it will

almost always include a roost and nest boxes.

Local ordinances may demand that the chicken run, the

fenced in area where your hens can run around, be locat-

ed a certain distance from your neighbor’s property. In any

event, you will want to keep your hens fenced from your gar-

den, at least when you have seedlings coming up. Chickens

are not the most graceful creatures. They will scratch and dig

and tear up tender young plants. Once those plants are estab-

lished though, the hens can be beneficial, nibbling away at

insects that would otherwise be nibbling away at your plants.

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The henhouse and the chicken run together are referred

to as a coop. Like the henhouse, the chicken run should be

a secure environment. The fencing must be sturdy. Some

people like to have a roof or screening over the run. Why?

Because almost
everybody
loves the great taste of chicken.

Dogs, raccoons, opposums, hawks, foxes; if it eats meat, it

probably likes chicken. Building (or buying) the coop is the

most difficult part of keeping hens, but give your birds the

most secure shelter you possibly can.

For the same reason, it is a good idea to work protective

magic over the coop before or just after introducing your

birds. Exactly how you do this will of course vary according

to your spiritual path. A Saxon Pagan could carry fire—using

a oil lantern or a candle protected from drafts—around the

coop, saying,

“Thunor, Red-bearded Guardian,

Let nothing be taken or lost,

Keep well the creatures that dwell within;

let them be not harmed,

Cherish them, and let them be not snatched away.”

Thunor is a god of protection, and the wording is taken

from an Old English charm to protect livestock. Since the

person is asking for Thunor’s help, he or she would follow

this by pouring a libation of mead or ale.

The stars known to us now as the Pleiades were called

“Freya’s hens” by the Vikings, so Pagans who follow a Norse

path such as Ásatrú or Forn Sed might invoke Freya’s protec-

tion on a clear, starry night. Roman Pagans might ask Mars

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to watch over their hens, even as the ancient Romans called

on Mars to protect fields of grain.

Plan on keeping two or three hens. Chickens are social

creatures. A solitary hen will be lonely and discontent, unless you plan to spend every waking minute with her. Two or

more hens will keep each other company, and will amuse

you with their antics. And two or three hens will probably lay

enough eggs for you and your family, unless you have very

poor layers or a very large family.

In an earlier chapter we discussed companion animals as

familiar spirits. Your hens probably will not fulfill this role.

They are very social, but not very smart, and they are not

inside animals. If your hens are all the same breed it may be

difficult for you to even distinguish one from another.

Some people develop very close relationships with their

hens, however if you are not one of these people, you will

still enjoy your birds much more if you relate to them as

pets rather than as “farm animals”. You will
not
produce eggs more efficiently than professional commercial producers.

You will not save money by producing your own eggs. You

will, however, produce more flavorful eggs and derive other

benefits, both tangible and intangible, from your pets.

You may discover that the chicken is your personal totem.

Chickens, and hens in particular, are associated with both

fertility and sacrifice (Andrews, pp. 126–127). Roosters have

been considered solar creatures because of their habit of

crowing at sunrise, but you will also see a solar connection

with your hens as you observe how the hours of sunlight

affect their egg laying.

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I suggest you provide no additional artificial lighting to

stimulate egg production. As I said, you are not going to pro-

duce eggs more efficiently than the professionals. If all you

want are eggs, just run down to the supermarket and pick

up a dozen. On the other hand, if you want to connect with

world, let your hens experience the natural cycle of seasons;

the lengthening days in the spring and diminishing daylight

in the autumn. Personally, I think this is better for the chickens. I do not mind that my hens go a few days in January

without producing an egg. They deserve a break after feed-

ing me all year!

So you have set up a henhouse and chicken run; both of

these together are your coop. Now the fun begins! Do you

want to get chicks or young layers? There are few things

cuter than a baby chick, and chicks are usually easier to

obtain than pullets (hens under a year old). Feed stores very

often sell baby chicks in the spring. You do not want roost-

ers, so only purchase chicks that have been sexed (examined

to determine if they are male or female). Even then, one of

your sexed female chicks could mature into a young cock-

erel! Sexing chicks is not an exact science. The exceptions

are a couple of hybrids—the Red Sex Link and the Black Sex

Link—that have different colored male and female chicks,

and these may be your best choice if you want to begin with

chicks.

Baby chicks are delicate. You will need extra equipment,

and they will need extra care to get them through childhood.

You will need a brooder, which is a small cage or enclosure

where the chicks can be kept free from drafts. You will also

need a heat lamp over the cage, and a thermometer. Place

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the thermometer on the floor of the brooder and raise or

lower the heat lamp until the temperature is 90–95 degrees

Fahrenheit, for newly hatched chicks. Each week, for the

next four or five weeks, you will need to decrease the tem-

perature five degrees until the temperature in the brooder is

the same as the surrounding temperature.

Your chicks will need constant access to water, which

should be placed as far as possible from the heat lamp. They

will not drink the water if it becomes too warm, and a young

chick dehydrates very quickly. They will also need a com-

mercial chick feed. This is usually sold in both medicated and

non-medicated varieties. If you are only raising a few chicks

the non-medicated feed should be fine, as the diseases that

occur in large farm flocks are less likely to affect your little family of chicks (Kilarski, p. 81).

In my opinion, rearing your own chicks is a lot of work

for that little bit of cute you will get in return. Maybe everybody should try it once in their lives, but keeping a small

home flock is far easier if you start out with pullets. The

problem here is finding someone who will sell a few to you.

Farmers are understandably less than eager to sell five month

old birds that are just beginning to lay. Unless you just hap-

pen to know of someone willing to do this, look on the

internet for local farmers with hens they are willing to part

with. You do want to look for somebody who seems reliable,

because a three year old hen looks pretty much the same as a

six month old pullet to the untrained eye. You will also pay a

premium price for a young layer.

Farmers are often happy to get rid of older hens that have