Chicken Poop

Being a writer sometimes means learning things I would just as soon not know.

Take the other day, for instance. The phone interview started out innocently enough. The source, a nice-enough, raising-chickens-in-the-city expert we’ll call Dan, was telling me that chickens are divided into two broad categories — Standard (normal size) and Bantam (small) — and then further broken down according to human-oriented purposes: egg layers, meat, dual purpose (egg layers who also taste good) and ornamental.

Leghorns, Dan told me, are known for being good egg producers. Araucanas, the “Easter egg chicken,” lay blue and green eggs. Frying Pan Special, Barbecue Special and Cornish Roster make good eating. Black Australorp is dual purpose. Partridge Cochin, with its featured feet, is considered good looking.

Bantams, Dan said, tend to be gentle and make good pets, but “can be outright liars.” All chickens are vulnerable to raccoons and stray dogs.

Sometimes, Dan continued, “people get into chickens without contemplating the bigger picture of their care,” which includes everything from over-wintering (some chickens don’t do well in the cold), to deciding what to do with egg layers when they stop laying (Turn them into pets? Sell them on craigslist? Eat them?) and dealing with what can turn out to be a considerable amount of chicken poop.

Even if you find ways to use the poop as garden fertilizer, Dan said, the truth of the matter is, “There’s going to be a lot of it.”

“Ah,...right,” I said, before thanking him for his time and hanging up.

After the interview, I was sitting at my computer, filling in my notes, when my computer signaled that I’d received an email. It was from my sister Jean, who’d written to say hi. I immediately emailed her back, explaining about the chicken interview I’d just finished.

“All I know is that the chicken poop ate holes in our asphalt driveway, and they stunk way worse than pigs!!” Jean wrote back.

I was surprised to hear this. My sister is a very strong, capable woman who lives on several acres in the country where, over the years, in addition to chickens and pigs, she’s raised horses, goats and five kids.

“We never did chickens again!!” Jean emailed. “The one experience was enough!!”

“Wow! That’s some powerful poop,” I wrote back, feeling relieved that the only chickens I knew where the ones I’d written about and that, so far, at least, I’d managed to avoid sharing my living space with poop-prolific poultry, even if they have feathered feet and lay delicious, blue and green eggs.