Pets

We are no longer in California!

This could be subtitled: How I Got From Suburban California to a Chicken Ranch in Arkansas. I was minding my own business one day in February, managing a busy veterinary specialty hospital in the San Francisco Bay area, when I received a phone call from a veterinarian in Arkansas. It seemed like he was on the go-to list for the practice management software program that we use, and this doctor was trying to get information on how we had set up the program and our IT system. After three months of occasional phone calls, I was asked if I would consider moving to Arkansas.

Of course, my knee-jerk reaction was, “Arkansas? I don’t think so!” After all, I was born and raised in California. Why the hell would I want to move to Arkansas? But, you know how things have a way of running in your brain. That night I did some research online. I found that Arkansas was not quite as backwards as it is featured on the Tonight Show, the school system received better scores than the school system my son attended in California, and the cost of living was much lower. I did a quick real estate search and found that I could actually buy a house with land, something I thought I could never afford to do in California.

So, I took a big leap of faith. I went through my resume and mailed it with a cover letter, and booked a flight two weeks in advance. I contacted a real estate agent to schedule some tours while I was there. The ride from the Little Rock airport to Clarksville in the Arkansas River Valley convinced me that this was where I wanted to be, whether or not I got the job in veterinary specialty practice. Two weeks later, they made me an offer, which I accepted. The last week of August, I moved my family (mother, sister, son, and dog) to Arkansas.

It took me three more months of searching, but I finally found the perfect home on 15 acres, about 1/2 wooded and 1/2 grassland; a decent size pond all year round, cross fences and a barn. I had only been there a couple of months when a friend from the vet called and asked if I would like to have some chickens. The doctor’s neighbor owns a Tyson farm, and during the collection, several chickens “escaped.” Once they have been released, Tyson does not want them. So 25 chickens were delivered to my house. Now the biggest experience I had with chickens was trying to raise three silky ones in our backyard in California until the raccoons got them about 3 weeks into the project. Suddenly, I had 25 adult laying hens to take care of. Just for the record, when asked how many I wanted, I said a dozen. Apparently a dozen is considerably more here in Arkansas than in California!

Unfortunately, for my poor chickens, I learned a lot through trial and error in those first few months. But several years later, I have a good size flock, mostly free range. We enjoy farm fresh eggs most of the year. I have successfully hatched and hatched chickens. And while some of my family members still struggle with the idea, I have slaughtered some of the roosters and served them for dinner when my ration of rooster to hen was too high. In future articles, I will discuss specific details about raising backyard chickens and conducting an animal rescue.

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