Do You Really Want to Live With Chickens?

May is International Respect for Chickens Month. I thought I would share my thoughts on raising my chickens to enable you to make the right decision for yourself. Do you really want to live with chickens? In this article I will be detailing the joys and woes of living with chickens. Chickens are very smart and many people don't give them credit for their intelligence.

     I live in a rural community and as I am in the country the only person I had to ask about having chickens was the owner of the property.  If I lived in the city my mail box is affiliated with I would come under the jurisdiction of the local police department. There have been lawsuits filed in the US for disturbing the peace (from crowing roosters), for too many chickens on too small a piece of property and smell pollution (due to the odor coming from the coop or from disposal of the manure chickens produce.
     Do you have room enough for your chickens? According to ChrisnTiff, writing for Backyard Chickens the minimum space to raise happy chickens is approximately 4 square feet per bird. He further states that his chickens are free ranged during daylight hours and are provided with 2 square feet per bird inside the coop. 
     Do you want to have free range chickens? According to the United States Department of Agriculture the definition of free range/free roaming is: Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside. That being said while they are to be allowed access to the outside, it may only be a cement floored area. They may only be allowed outside a few times a week, and sometimes not at all. It is up to the discretion of the owner how often they are allowed outside. The USDA doesn't have inspectors to check all the small egg producers in the United States. I know of at least one producer of eggs that claims his organic eggs come from free range hens. I have seen his coop and in all the time I have lived here, I have never seen him let his chickens outside. The only free range they have is the floor of the coop they are in.
     Your Coop: Do you have a secure place for them to live where predators will not harm them? Where I live in Minnesota we have dogs, cats, rats, eagles, red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, owls, coyotes, raccoons, skunks, and opossums. In other parts of the state there are also wolves, timber rattlesnakes and cougars. You need a secure building to close them in at night. It should be a complete building with a solid floor, with roosts for chickens above the ground to keep them away from predators that might attack during the night. If your chickens are not going to be free range they need a closed-in area outside to take recreation, sit in the sun, eat grass and hunt bugs at their leisure. 
     Roosts in the coop: When we moved here the highest roost in the chicken house on the property were only five feet off the ground. Coyotes can jump that high and an enterprising raccoon, skunk or opossum can easily climb that. I've seen a raccoon fifteen feet up in the air in our barn. The original roost are still there, but now my chickens have additional roosting spaces that are ten, twelve and fourteen feet in the air. 
     The floor of the coop should have several inches of litter to keep the chickens from walking in their own manure. I would advise 2 to 4 inches of litter depending on the size of the coop and the flock and the regularity of cleaning. We use pine shavings for the floor of our coop and when they are old, they are removed and placed in an area outside where they can compost and be used the next year in our vegetable garden. You might be able to use shredded newspaper, but I don't know what the long term effects of the ink on the chickens might be. In hunting for bugs in the coop our hens throw the shavings all over the floor and sometimes even taste them.
     You need to have electricity in the coop to heat water in the winter months and for a heat lamp if you have older chickens and the nights get below freezing for prolonged periods of time in your area of the country. Your coop should have insulation for cold winters. Windows will allow the chickens to get sunshine if the weather is too inclement and they can't go outside.
     Chickens need to have fresh water and food every day. Grit needs to be provided  for their crops (where their food is ground) as they have no teeth. Feeding eggshells and oyster shells are good to keep the shells of the eggs from breaking or ending up with eggs without shells. Do you want to feed organic food or corn? If you purchase bagged whole or cracked corn from a store you won't know if it is regular corn or GMO (genetically modified organism) or GEO (genetically engineered organism) unless you call the manufacturer, and they may not be able to tell you. If you purchase your corn from a local farmer, he can tell you what he grew. Chicken food should be stirred in metal cans with a tight fitting lid. Rats and mice can chew through a plastic garbage can or drum and can leap high enough to get into a 5 gallon bucket. Chickens should not be given raw soybeans, there is a poison in the hull that can kill chickens.
     What kind of chickens do you want to have? There are many varieties, sizes and colors; too numerous to name here. There are egg layers and meat producers (roasters, broilers). I have egg layers: barred rocks, leghorns (both red and white), bantams or bantys, Araucana, and mixed breeds. Chickens that are raised for meat production grow quickly and can have challenges walking, flying and moving around due to their weight. This can make them more vulnerable to predators. 
     You can buy chicks from a local feed store or order them through the mail. If you want hens only or a certain breed of chicken you will pay a premium for them. You can adopt chickens from an adoption service, there are many of them looking for homes these days. The advantage to this is you will know the chicken's sex, health and may even get some of its history.  Chicken Run Rescue is located here in Minnesota and they adopt chickens out to loving homes if they are properly equipped to handle them. Check the Internet for adoption agencies in your state.
     I check the local ads in our electric co-op and on Freecycle (though Chicken Run Rescue disagrees with that). Our beautiful Rocky came from Freecycle. Most of my chickens come from a local auction barn. I feel good about saving chickens from ending up on the menu in a restaurant (a local chef goes to the auction weekly) or someone's dinner table. The first batch of six chickens I bought cost me 25 cents each. They were white leghorns with no feathers on their backs from the base of their necks to their tails and many of them were missing tail feathers too. I remember the auctioneer's comment that "Someone will be making lots of chicken soup or stew this year." It never happened. I have never intentionally killed any of the chickens I have been lucky enough to bring home. I have paid up to $4.00 a chicken. I never understood why a farmer will buy chicks in the spring and get rid of them in the fall when they are adults and perfectly good for egg layers for several years. Our Araucana is closing in on 13 years of age, I've had her since 2000. While she slowed down in egg production and didn't lay an egg a day in the last few years, then stopped laying completely last November; she is still a member of the flock. She was a good producer and has just as much right to live here as any other hen or rooster in the flock. 
     Clipping wings: Many commercial chicken farms large and small use practices I do not condone. Wings are clipped to keep chickens from flying. Chickens can fly and maybe producers do it to keep them from roosting too far from the ground where they cannot be captured easily. If the chickens are free range and being chased by a predator, they will not be able to get away. 
     Debeaking is the barbaric practice of cutting the top beak of a chicken to keep it from pecking at eggs, or the other birds. It seems to me that this practice is done because there are too many chickens in one place. My flock is currently 35 chickens including 7 roosters. There are spats from time to time, but the only thing that eats eggs in my hen house are the rats that steal into the coop. 
     Clipping Spurs: We don't clip the roosters' spurs either, again this is a defense mechanism. While our roosters will spar from time to time, they don't fight to the death. The young roosters are the ones that usually start the fights, testing their mettle and trying to find their place in the pecking order of the flock. We had a wonderful Barred Rock rooster named Rocky that we adopted. Rocky stood about 18 inches tall and until he came along the goats bullied the chickens unmercifully. They would chase the chickens and butt at them. 
     During the first days we had Rocky there weren't any issues. One day Sabrina, our youngest goat (about 50 pounds) came up behind Rocky just after we let the chickens out for the day. She butted him square on the butt. Rocky spun around and launched himself at Sabrina. I was standing right there and couldn't tell you if he connected with Sabrina or not, he was that fast. Sabrina spun 180 degrees and took of across the yard at a gallop. We haven't had a problem between the goats and the chickens since. If we had clipped Rocky's spurs, we might still be having problems between the chickens and the goats.
     Henpecking: I believe that henpecking is again a sign of unhappy chickens that are overcrowded. Our girls have spats from time to time; they don't last long. It is usually the younger hens trying to steal a piece of food or a worm they feel might entitled to and the older hens are just letting them know what their place in the flock is. After all, if you worked hard for something would you want your younger sibling claiming it for their own? I'll bet not.
     The reality of egg production: Do you want to sell your chickens eggs? I read an article recently that stated several hens can lay 1400 eggs a year. By my calculations you would need four hens to accomplish this. The reality is that not every hen is going to lay an egg every day. In my opinion you will never recoup the monies you expend in the labor, time, care, feeding, losses and vet bills you put into your chickens. Eggs laid need to be collected every day to keep predators from eating them. I recently made the mistake of leaving 2 eggs in the hen house overnight and the next morning they were not there. I know rats got them because if the chickens had eaten them there would have been left over egg in the nest box. Eggs need to be candled unless you are collecting every day to make sure there is not a chick developing inside. If eggs are dirty they need to be washed then dried. Eggs need to be graded for size and put in containers suitable for resale.
     Nest boxes: If you have laying hens you need nest boxes for them to deposit their eggs in. Hens don't lay their eggs at the same time, they can lay from morning to evening. When my flock was smaller, Steven made me two sets of nest boxes. One was made from a reclaimed piece of furniture, all we did was add a perch for easy access. The other one is a splendid piece of work from reclaimed wood. It consists of four tiers of nest boxes with perches, and has a solid back, sides and bottom to keep the hens comfortable. We put pine shavings or fresh grass in each one. Each nest box is a 12 inch cube with an open front. The perches run the width of the nest boxes on each level from side to side and are made of 1x1's. This keeps the hens from getting their feet stuck between the perches.
     Do you want to let your chickens hatch chicks? If your answer is yes, you need a rooster for fertilization of the eggs and roosters crow. You may think they only crow at daybreak, I'm here to tell you, they will crow in the middle of the night if they feel the need. In an urban setting this may be upsetting to both you and your neighbors. If your chickens are free range, a hen may not choose to stay in the coop to lay her eggs and hatch them out. A hen may go out every day with the other chickens to lay her eggs outside and then when she feels she has enough, she will set on the eggs outside until they hatch. 
     I have personal experience with this happening. The first time it happened to me, I discovered a hen that I thought had been taken by a predator coming across the yard leading 12 chicks back to the safety of the coop. It took several hours to corral the hen and all her chicks and get them back to safety. I had another hen that lost a chick to a rooster that swooped in on her procession back to the coop and killed a chick by grabbing it around the neck and breaking its neck by shaking it once. I rescued the chick, but his neck had been broken and he died in my hand. A third hen was taken by a fox and we found her nest of three eggs abandoned after we found a trail and a pile of feathers the fox left behind.
     The process of hatching eggs: It takes 21 days for a chick to hatch. Mark your calendar the day your hen begins to set to keep track. Begin checking for chicks around 21 days after she begins setting. Caution should be taken here, as the hen will defend her nest with clucking, scratching with her feet, pecking with her beak and flying at you with wings outstretched to make herself look larger. We have bantys that go broody every year and they are the best nest defenders I know. 
     If other hens lay eggs in the nest box leave them be. If the eggs fit under the hen she'll try to hatch them. We had two bantys that went broody last year and they were successful at hatching many eggs that were larger than their own. If a larger hen lays an egg, it will become a full size chicken when adult. The size of the hen setting on the eggs has nothing to do with the size of the adult chicken unless the eggs laid are banty size to begin with.
     Taking Care of the Chicks: The chick will have a reserve of egg yolk for a day or two after they are born, then chick feed should be provided along with fresh water. The hen will take care of her chicks for several weeks. After the chicks are born you need to provide a safe place in which for her to do so, as the roosters and other adult chickens may try to eat the chicks. I have used a rabbit hutch and last year I used a wire ferret cage. 
     When using a wire cage you need to make sure that the feet of the chicks will not fit through the wire mesh. They could break a leg. Put bedding on the floor of what you chose to use and make sure that it is not too deep. We lost a chick last year due to suffocation after its mother sat on the hay it had burrowed under while playing. We were unable to save it. The waterer should be small enough that the chicks won't drown in it. Your local feed store will have waterers suitable for chicks. You can get a feeder base that will screw onto a mason jar (I use quart jars). You want to look for a feeder base that you can take apart for easy cleaning, in case it gets pooped in or on.

You should check with your local police department to make sure you are allowed to have and raise chickens where you live.


For more information on raising chickens see:

Backyard Chickens

Chicken Run Rescue

Mother Earth News The Chicken & Egg Page

Spring Has Come to Minnesota, Kind Of

Spring has come to Minnesota, kind of. Let's face it folks, this past winter has been odd in most parts of the country. Snow where it doesn't snow as a rule, torrential rains for days at a time, tornadoes prior to tornado season, and heat before it's time. I spoke with a man who lives in Illinois around Valentine's day, and he mentioned the nightcrawlers were all over his driveway the night before when he got home after work. No rain to drive them out of the ground, just an early thaw to fool them into thinking Spring had gotten here.

When I say kind of, we have had frost in the last two weeks and as of last Friday there was a warning that we might have freezing precipitation of some kind this past Monday. We didn't have freezing precipitation, but the weather has been what many would call more normal in temperature than it was in the last two months.

Don't get me wrong, it has still been strange. The asparagus plants began emerging in early March instead of May, the rhubarb came up early, tulips, crocuses, hyacinths, and daffodils were too. Many of the fruit and ornamental trees were budding early and their owners were worried about a hard frost or freeze. It could still happen. When I lived in Illinois, we had snow and freezing temperatures on Memorial Day one year. It was common knowledge when I was growing up (also in Illinois) that if you were a serious gardener you should wait until after Memorial Day to think about planting anything.

Not to mention the effect this odd weather has had on our migrating birds. The killdeer, meadowlarks, song sparrows, herons (and in some places hummingbirds) have come home to roost. The flowers that the hummingbirds collect nectar from to sustain themselves haven't even bloomed yet.

White and yellow cabbage butterflies and a small variety of orange/black butterfly (whose name I don't know) have come home or hatched early. At the rate creatures are returning, I almost expect to see Monarch butterflies soon, though their preferred food of choice milkweed hasn't emerged yet from the ground.

Some of the wildflowers that we enjoy in late spring have already bloomed. Many other species of flora and fauna are showing up every day. While Mother Nature has temporarily been fooled and Spring has come early to Minnesota, I hope we don't live to regret it. For my part, I will continue to love the flowers, plants birds and bees and other creatures that grace my yard with their presence.

I Made a New Friend

I made a new friend, her name is Alessandra, Alice for short. Alice is a beautiful gray, white and ginger cat that is several years old. Gray is her main color and she moves like a ghost when she needs to. She is very skittish, and only goes to her human family members. When company comes, Alice goes into hiding and does not usually reappear until the company is gone. I was blessed with meeting Alice this past weekend while in Illinois visiting family.

I had seen Alice flash through the family room on Friday night shortly after arriving. She was a gray blur as she raced past and I thought she was her brother Silver because all I saw was gray. I have been working on my animal communication skills, and had let the cats know when I arrived that I meant them no harm and would love to meet them if they would allow it.

For several years now, I have been making and selling holistic catnip toys. They are made of naturally raised, organically grown catnip. I make (2) varieties, birdies and socks; and use reclaimed, re-furbished fabrics. I have been using the cats owned by my extended family members as testers. Alice and her brother Silver were two of the participants in the testing phase.

I got to see one of the toys I had gifted them with last Christmas. It is a yellow sock and it has been so well-loved that it now has catnip stains on the outside. Alice takes it everywhere with her and it is called her "woobie". If you have kids and they had a pacifier or a favorite toy that they just had to have, you will understand Alice's love for her "woobie".

I was awoken Sunday morning around 4:00am by the sound of meowing and the rattling of the bedroom door. I got up thinking somebody wanted in, and went to open the door. No kitty wandered in. I went back to bed and back to sleep. On arising later I related the story to my sister and that I thought I heard a cat outside my door. She thought it might have been Alice or Silver trying to get into her room.

My sister got a phone call and went into my room to take the call so she didn't disturb the conversations we were having. She came back out a short time later and asked me to follow her. We went back into my room and she closed the door. She instructed me to sit on the floor between the desk and the bed because she had something to show me. I was a bit bemused but did as she requested.

I soon found out that there wasn't a cat trying to get in at 4:00am, there was a cat trying to get out. Alice had spent the night under the desk in my room. It was Alice trying to leave in the wee hours of the morning and calling to someone on the outside of the door to let her out. Poor Alice.

My sister sent me to get the new "woobie" that they had been saving, as the cats tend to drag them off and hide them. I sat back down on the floor and reached under the desk to Alice who was sitting on the desk chair watching me. I told her I meant her no harm and would like to pet her if she would allow it. I reached out my hand to let Alice smell me, and she allowed me to touch her head after she smelled my hand.

Alice began purring and rubbing her head on my hand, so I picked her up off the chair and settled her in my lap. She became wiggly and I moved her to the floor in front of me. I asked my sister if I could brush her, and when the brush was produced and I began brushing, Alice began purring again.

After a time, I went to rejoin the family and mentioned my luck with Alice. We left her in the bedroom as she had settled in and had no desire to leave. I went back several times to commune with her and each time I entered the bedroom she rejoined me on the floor to visit and be petted and brushed. I had been accepted.

I am under no illusion that I will automatically have that privilege the next time I go to visit, but I will go with a glad heart knowing that Alice might just remember me and not run first.

The Earth Gives Back

I listened to my own advice yesterday and took myself for a short walk to see how high the river is behind us. I wanted to see if the earth had given forth any treasures. I found many things on my wander. There is a meadow (now tilled) between the house and the river and any manner of things will appear on the surface of the ground. 

Items can be brought up by the heaving of the earth due to water melting and freezing in the ground; or by the tilling of the dirt in the field. Even just digging in the right spot can find treasures. A man in Britain using a metal detector in a field found an Anglo-Saxon hoard, many people (myself included) have found arrowheads.

People in past centuries used to bury their refuse in the ground or pile it up in an unused area of their property designated for that purpose. Besides food refuse, papers, magazines, bottles, tin cans, canning jars, plates, silverware, games, bric-a-brac, nails, tools; even wood and metal might be buried. Some people recycled the bottles they had for canning, and would buy a top. The canning jar lids used to be made of zinc with an inner glass liner. The metal from the lids will deteriorate, but the glass does not. I have found these glass liners.

Whatever needed to be gotten rid of was disposed of in this way. People had no notion of what their actions might cause in the future. They just wanted to get rid of junk they didn't want any more and they didn't have recycling or garbage dumps. 

I have even seen several old cars in a field near where I used to live. They had outlived their usefulness and had been towed or dragged there to rust. Cars were even used to strengthen up a part of the road to the south of us and prevent the river from eroding it during flood season.

On my walk I found the skull of a rather large rodent (most likely a rat), a pile of owl pellets and several piles of rabbit and deer scat. The bones, pellets and scat were left where they were. They will add to the soil quality and enrich it as they decompose. I found a ceramic chip from a dish, a candle holder, a glass acorn, an small oil can with a bent spout, an insulator, two pieces of rusting roof tin and several pieces of iron.

The earth gives back in most seasons if you are patient enough to take the time to look. You can even find things in your own suburban back yard. After the installation of a curtain drain at the house where I grew up I found an arrowhead. On other forays I have found square-headed nails, tools without handles, bottles, tin cans, and many pieces of glass and ceramic. 

Many of the glass and ceramic items I have found have been broken. I collect them to dispose of them properly so nothing gets hurt stepping on a broken piece. Some of the other pieces have been kept for their uniqueness and to reuse or re-purpose. 

Even items that may have outlived their usefulness many years ago can be useful when the earth gives back.

The Birds Return

You may have heard about the annual migration of swallows that return yearly to a mission in San Juan Capistrano, California. For me in Minnesota, the birds returning are the true harbingers of Spring. We don't have a parade and a big celebration, as Californians do for the swallows. We quietly smile with the wonder that they have all found they way back to where they began their journey the previous fall. We have many birds that don't leave for the winter: juncos, chickadees, cardinals, several woodpecker species, eagles, nuthatches, crows, owls and blue jays.

There is a small grove on the property and it is full of birds in the spring and summer months, but the birds that stay retreat to the woods and forests around us during the cold, snowy months of winter. While the birds that remain all have voices and talk, it seems to me that only the cardinal tends to "sing" in the wintertime. The others communicate with chitters, chatters, squawks, screams and warnings. They seem too busy with the business of survival to make pleasantries.

Spring brings wonder and delight as our birds return. I've not really given myself the freedom to pay attention to spring and the birds returns before, I just took it for granted. This year, around the 15th of March I heard geese honking one evening as I was letting Skye out for her final perambulations. Several days later they were followed by killdeers. The goats were startled out of their complacency a few days after that by a large flock of blackbirds that gathered in the forest with a cachophany of sound. We are a stop on their migrations, both north and south.

Ducks have returned and can be heard as they fly over the river. The robins are back scolding the cats in the yard having survived one snow storm; and yesterday I was blessed to see two beautiful turkey vultures soaring on the thermals over the woods and meadow to the east. I believe they are youngsters as their heads do not yet have the bright red color of an adult. It will only be a matter of time before the wrens and song sparrows are back for the season. The cardinals will be serenading us daily as the trees gain more leaves and they can safely hide in the leafy greenness and their bright red feathers will not give them away to predators.

So if you get a chance, take a walk outside. Don't have time for a walk? Allow yourself ten minutes, find a place to sit outside and let the sounds of spring wash over you in it's natural song. Even if you can't see them, the birds will let you know they have returned and soon winter, snow and the cold will be a distant memory. I promise.

My Feathered Family Just Got Larger

I am now the proud parent of eight new hens that were adopted for me last night at an auction. I now have had 4 Barred Rock hens, 3 White Leghorns and an orange hen added to my flock of chickens. They are missing their tail feathers and some are missing feathers on their lower backs, but these will grow back in time. My flock is comprised of mostly Banty chickens with a Barred Rock and a Leghorn rooster rounding out the roster population.

We had 7 roosters and 5 hens, and though I was encouraged to butcher or sell off the roosters, I would not do it. I didn't want the roosters to be purchased by unscrupulous persons who wanted to use them for fighting or as bait for other fighting roosters. With the new adoptees we now have 13 hens and 7 roosters and while not perfect it is a better rooster to hen ratio for the flock. I did give away 2 roosters to the people I adopted the goats from earlier this year. Unfortunately one of the roosters I gave away died when a stray dog decimated their flock of chickens.

While I do collect the hens' eggs (unless they go broody and are sitting), I do not butcher any chickens. I do not de-beak any hens or roosters and don't clip the roosters' spurs. I do not believe in the practice of debeaking chickens and consider it barbaric. I had never seen a debeaked chicken until I adopted my first batch of hens. The top beaks were shorter than the bottom beaks and the bottom beaks reminded me of a scoop or shovel. My understanding of the practice is to keep hens from eating their eggs. I believe it makes it harder for the chickens to eat food. I have had chickens for over ten years now and have adopted many hens that have been debeaked. After their beaks grow back they are never clipped again and I  personally have never had a problem with either hens or roosters eating eggs.

Many chicken farmers buy chicks and sell off their older hens the following fall even though they are still capable of laying eggs. A hen will only lay one egg per day and during the winter
months the egg production can slow down. I believe this is due to the colder weather and limited hours of daylight. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the practice of selling off perfectly good egg producers and have no problems adopting them because I know they are still capable of laying healthy eggs.

My oldest hen is an Araucana (appropriately named Cuna) and she lays green eggs. She has lived with my flock for at least 10 years now and if she was a year old when I got her that would make her 11 years old. She still lays eggs, and while she has slowed down and does not lay an egg a day any more; she is still a valuable member of the flock.

The flock is allowed to live as natural a life as they can. During the winter months they are confined to the coop and provided with corn screening, kitchen scraps, egg shells, grit and oyster shells. We provide water in a heated waterer and there is a heat lamp for extra warmth. During the warmer months I still provide kitchen scraps and they are allowed to range free to eat any insects they can catch, weed seeds and plants. They have access to water both inside and outside the coop.

The flock voluntarily returns to the coop at night and they are closed in to keep them safe from the raccoons, fox, coyotes and other predators that would hunt them. We have eagles and red-tailed hawks and I have requested that they leave my flock alone. They have complied thus far to my appreciation, though a farmer about a mile to the north of me lost over 1,000 birds to eagles several years ago.

Earlier this year we did have a raccoon and a vixen that were taking my chickens. While I do not like killing creatures, the raccoon was dealt with for me by someone else. He was getting fat and lazy eating my chickens when he had access to berries nuts and fruits in the woods. The vixen was feeding young and traveling over half a mile to catch my chickens to feed her kits.  The vixen was sneaking up on the chickens by using the corn field as cover and they never saw her coming. I understanding trying to feed your family, but didn't want to provide her with a free lunch as she could have been hunting mice and rats nearer to where she had her kits. I solved the problem by eliminating access to the flock by keeping them in until the corn around us was harvested. They still had access to sunlight and fresh air, but were confined to quarters until the danger had passed.

I keep my flock safe by housing them in a coop. I let them out every morning that the weather is fine and if I have scraps for them they gather eagerly to see what the day's offerings are. I do a head count in the morning when I let them out and another one at night after they are all in the coop to make sure they are all there and healthy.  

I could do as many farmers do and not allow them outside at all. But then they wouldn't have access to all the insects, plants and berries that they love to eat. They would not have the freedom to bask in the sun or feel its warmth on their bodies. They wouldn't be able to play in puddles or take a mud bath. For my consideration in allowing them their freedom, they gift me with their eggs, the beauty of their brightly colored feathers (which I collect), their voices and their companionship.

In this season of giving and receiving blessings, I have received several new blessing early. May you be as blessed as I have been. Bless you and yours, be they two or four-legged.

My "Baby" Brother Turns 50

My "baby" brother turned 50 recently and several of us conspired to surprise him. The last surprise birthday party we had was for his wife last August. At the time, my sisters and I reminded him that his would be the next one coming. He just smiled in his enigmatic way and let the comments go.

I mentioned it again to him earlier this year, and he told me he would not be here for his birthday. I saw that as a challenge and thus the gauntlet was thrown down. It did indeed transpire that he was not in Minnesota for his birthday, he went to Illinois where we grew up. I have several nephews and two nieces and one of my nephews was born on my brother's birthday, interestingly enough twenty five years later.

That however did not stop my sisters and I, our mom and dad, his wife, kids and extended family members from conspiring to surprise him. I had thought I would not be able to attend, and through the generosity of my sister-in-law and nephew I had the wheels and money to get there. My nephew planned to fly in from California (where he is stationed), and I drove to Illinois with his wife, so they could have a much needed reunion. Another sister-in-law sent along libations and a wheel chair that has been used in previous birthday celebrations. My brother's best friend of 39 years was going to drive up from Texas. The stage was being set.

Originally, my sister that hosted the surprise party was going to devote her energies to my nephew's celebration as it too was a milestone. I am happy to say, she amended her plans and planned a party on the actual birthday anniversary for both her son and my brother. This helped to throw my brother off the track. I should explain that my brother is the hardest person to surprise. His ability to ferret out the truth of a matter from a grain of a sentence or a snippet of information is amazing, so we had our work cut out for us.

There were many phone calls and emails back and forth. One from myself to my sister that my brother answered, threw me for a loop, but I covered by wishing him a happy birthday. When the day of the surprise party finally dawned, my brother was distracted and we all gathered in the hopes that we had actually pulled the wool over the eyes of our own Sherlock Holmes. I am happy to say, we DID pull it off and when we all poured out of the front door of my sister's house, there were several people attending that my brother had no idea would be there.

He was wheeled up the driveway in the wheelchair that I had ferried down to Illinois, to cheers and a confetti cannon. My sister had an original idea to serve my brother's favorite foods, which consisted of pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bridge mix, chocolate covered peanuts, peanut M & M's, date nut bread and frozen cranberry salad. I think I can say a wonderful time was had by all.

The names have been omitted to protect both the innocent and the guilty, though repercussions were threatened if anyone spoke of it. I will take my chances, and I can't wait for the next surprise party when my brother and his best friend celebrate their 50th anniversary of friendship in 2021. I hope I am around to see it. I love you John.