I never thought I’d spend so much time thinking about poultry…

When we agreed to buy the ranch, I begin mentally preparing for the chickens.  I bought books; I read blogs; I meticulously picked out the breeds I wanted.  I read articles about why chickens should only eat organic feed (for the record, even I don’t eat all organic feed…).  I read about all the ways predators can get to your flock.  I read about parasites and natural worming vs. chemical worming.  I started following Fresh Eggs Daily, Garden Betty, and DIY Diva, soaking up every last bit of chickeny knowledge they had to offer. 

This is how I do things.  Six years of higher Ed and a MA have made me a researcher by default.

Alternately, you could say I obsess.

Earlier this week, as I sat at a good friend’s table drinking coffee and watching her chickens out her picture window, I casually questioned between sips where she had had the good luck to find a blue laced red wyandotte hen…

My husband, a long-time equine professional, looked at me like I had sprouted wings and replied “I think you know more about chicken breeds than I do horse breeds…”

Researcher…

Obsessive…

But it was last month, when I drug home a Jetta-trunk load of mismatched feeds bags (50lbs rolled oats, 50 lbs cracked corn, 50 lbs black oil sunflower seeds, and about 10lbs millet) with the explanation that I was going to “mix my own chicken scratch,” my husband informed me that I was officially crossing the line between “chicken lady” and “crazy chicken lady.”

Of course, I had my reasons, one being that I felt like $11.00 a bag was too much to pay for the nutritionally-deficient scratch I was buying.  On top of that, I had read wonderful things about the benefits of black oil sunflower seeds, and I wanted to add them to my hens’ diet.  Also, somehow I thought it would be cheaper to mix my own, which would be true if I hadn’t added those sunflowers.

By the time I got everything mixed, I realized that I was paying about $2.00 more per 50 lbs of scratch, but the chickens seem to love it, and it’s undeniably more nutritionally dense than the generic stuff, so we’ll call it a win.

Even if it does, officially, make me a “Crazy Chicken Lady.”

Daisy chicken hijacking the hay feeder.