Chickens arrive and instantly win us over
Red Star chicken Blair roams free in Amy Pataki's Etobicoke backyard. Trio of hens take over the yard at Amy Pataki’s Etobicoke home and right away they lay an egg
The tiny dinosaurs have arrived.
Three chickens are now living in our backyard — the domesticated descendants of T Rex and Co.
They are 6-month-old pullets of different breeds who instantly win us over with their funny coos and clucks.
We take possession on a rainy Saturday. Rent The Chicken farmer Kate Belbeck brings the trio to Etobicoke on a trailer.
With them comes six months’ worth of food, treats and what proves to be a very secure wooden coop.
The care-and-feeding instructions are straightforward: Feed in the morning. Leave them in the coop until egg-laying time ends around 1 p.m.
Supplement their diet with crushed oyster shells (the calcium helps form egg shells).
Let them range freely only under supervision.
Until Thanksgiving, when Belbeck will take them back to her Moffat, Ont., farm, the chickens are ours.
Are they pets? I ask Belbeck’s son Fletcher, 10, who came along for the delivery.
“So-so,” says Fletcher, who lives with the family’s 75 chickens.
“The downside is having to go out every day to take care of them.”
Fletcher doesn’t name his chickens. We do, or more precisely, our three daughters do. Each picks a name for “her” chicken.
There is Zazu, a Black Star chicken, so called after The Lion King bird. The Barred Plymouth Rock chicken is Julep, from an episode of The Incredible Dr. Pol. Red Star chicken Blair gets her name from both Gossip Girl and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Precocious, I know.
Kate Belbeck brings a carton of eggs our hens have laid in the days leading up to the move.
She says the stress can interfere with laying. It proves unnecessary. An hour after the Belbecks leave, Zazu sits in a laying box.
When she stands up, there’s an egg amidst the pine shavings. The kids squeal in excitement.
“Can you imagine having an egg inside you? It must be uncomfortable,” says our youngest, 9.
We scoop up the egg, brown and lightly speckled, handing it around so we can all feel the warmth.