Chickens at the White House

With the Presidential inauguration nearly upon us, we’re all focusing our attention on the White House as President Obama gets ready to move out and President-Elect Trump gets ready to move in.  So of course the question foremost in my mind is “What about chickens at the White House?”  A natural progression of thought, right?

Amazingly, there’s a dearth of information on the topic.  For instance, when I Google, “Chicken White House” I get a lot of results for the “White House Chicken” restaurant chain.  That’s followed by some fried chicken recipes by various former residents of the White House.  And then there are a few articles where the writer thinks that the White House is displaying cowardice.  Which brings up the question, “Why did ‘chicken’ come to mean the same thing as ‘coward’?”  The person who created that meaning for the word never met my brave little rooster, Emile!

Anyway, I challenged myself to uncover what I could regarding Presidential chickens, and was eventually able to uncover a pretty sizable trove of material about White House pets, but unfortunately, only a paltry bit of information about White House chickens.  But here goes.

Battening Down the Chickens

A faithful reader of this blog asked this question during last July's heatwave, "Dear Randy's Chicken Blog, What are you and your chickens doing to beat the heat? Your fan (who is now in front of a fan), Katie" Her question resulted in the blog post I called "Hipster Hens Hate Heat!".

And now it’s December and how the weather has changed!  Last night we hit 24 below zero and the predicted high for today is destined to wind up somewhere in the negative numbers. So the time has arrived for me to write a blog entitled "Hipster Hens Are Completely Disgruntled With Cold, Too!"  But since that title’s a little unwieldy, I’m going with “Battening Down the Chickens.”  That’s probably a more appropriate title anyway, since this post is really about preparing your coop for cold weather.

Veronica the Easter Egger turns herself into a cold-resistant
 feather ball by tucking her head under her wing.

For starters, here are the three absolute basic requirements to keep your chickens happy and healthy during the cold winter months: 

Poop

Readers:  I'm transitioning my blog to a new platform on Squarespace.  I've updated this blog post and moved it to the new location.  Click here to get there! - Randy

Lawyers Guns and Money

The last few days I’ve often caught myself humming the Warren Zevon song “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”  I think the song is playing in a loop in my subconscious mind – for obvious reasons. No, you don’t need to worry that the Hipster Hens and I are incarcerated in some foreign prison as the song lyrics would suggest.  But I did allow ads to be placed on my blog—you probably noticed.  And I did have to jump through a few legal hoops in order to do that.  So there you go—money and lawyers.  Please trust me when I say that “Randy’s Chicken Blog" is not involved with gun running.  It’s just that my subconscious mind doesn’t know any songs that refer to just lawyers and money.

Picture: Clipartsgram

So what’s up with the ads?  Let’s just say that if you ever anticipate getting some backyard chickens so you can have really fresh, humanely produced, locally sourced, high quality eggs and save a few bucks, you should go for it.  And if you do, you’ll achieve half of the goals outlined in the previous sentence.  Don’t expect that you’re going to get cheap eggs.  If that’s what you’re after, stick with the grocery store.  Everything I said about the eggs is true, though.  You’ll also discover that chickens are amazing—beautiful, interesting, intelligent, amusing—if Emma Watson was poultry instead of an actress, she’d be a chicken!  So then, if you’re like me, you’ll give all your chickens names and then when they become “hens of a certain age” and aren’t laying so well anymore, you’ll be horrified when anybody suggests the stew pot.  “Eat my sweet elderly hen?  Are you nuts?!  We’re talking about Florence here!”  And then, if you’re like me, you’ll go out and get more chickens when Florence can no longer provide the fix for your egg habit, and no doubt many of those new hens will be poor egg layers, but you’ll like them anyway because they lay unusually colored eggs or have really bizarre and beautiful crests, or really unusual feathers.  And then you’ll have to build a few more coops so everybody has enough room.  And, of course, with all those chickens hanging around, your chicken feed bills will skyrocket.  I wish the guy who started using the phrase “chicken feed” to refer to cheap stuff would pay my feed bill!  So then, if you’re like me you’ll have started writing a blog about your chickens by this point, and it will occur to you that if you monetized the blog, you could make a little spare change to fill all those hungry beaks.

So that’s why there are ads.

My ads are placed on the blog by a Google advertising program called “Adsense”.  While Google claims that the ads will be relevant, I don’t have much control over what shows up.  I can block ads that I deem to be nonpertinent or offensive.  The “Date Foreign Women” ads went away pretty fast, and I’ve blocked a few others as well.  So if you see any ads that you find objectionable, please let me know and I’ll deal with them.  In addition to Adsense I’ve also joined the Amazon Associate Program, which allows me to link to specific products sold through Amazon.  The way it works is that if you click on an ad or an Amazon link, it doesn’t cost you anything, but the Hipster Hens and I get a little pocket change.

All the legal niceties are now spelled out in great detail at the bottom of each page of my blog.  I’ve tried to run through all the necessary information without being teeth-grindingly dull, so take a look!

And while you’re down there, read the new mission statement.  I did spend some time thinking about why I write this blog in order to capture it in the statement.  I think these four bullets sum up the inspiration and motivation behind every post I write:

•        My chickens are really cool.

•        All chickens are really cool.

•        The majority of chickens being raised for meat or egg production, in spite of their inherent coolness, are treated cruelly. You can help make changes by your purchasing habits. Educate yourself! Read labels! Check company websites!
•         If you have the means and desire to keep some chickens, go for it!