A chicken named Charlotte roosted in the trees by her coop. She had brown and black patterned feathers. Junior Christine Gray, the Sustainable Food Initiative (SFI) chicken coordinator, can remember picking her up. Gray’s sister named another black-feathered chicken Veronica. After that, Gray noticed that Charlotte and Veronica were hanging out next to one another during feeding times; she hadn’t thought that chickens had friends, but she thought those two might have been. A predator killed the first chicken on Nov. 4, 2020.
SFI has a chicken coop by their garden and by the science center. On Feb. 12, they purchased 15 red sex-link chickens. However, from the fall semester to the start of this semester, SFI went from having 20 chickens to having two.
According to Sophomore Grace Harder, Co-President of SFI, there were signs of a raccoon, a cat, and possibly a possum hanging around the chicken coop. Even though Gray found five chicken bodies, Harder said, “Most of the chickens just straight up disappeared.”
Junior Olivia Hazelton, Co-President of SFI, mentioned that things had gone so smoothly until Nov. 4 that they had just let their guard down. From what Gray can remember, there has been only one hawk attack in three years. So, this past fall, no one expected these attacks.
Gray thought it might be an aerial predator at first because the chickens like to roost in the trees. Later, she confirmed it was a ground predator. Her best guess is that it was a possum since there have been sightings of one around the coop. Up until mid-January, Gray said that the back door of the coop had broken hinges. She mentioned that this was the main reason that the chickens were accessible to whatever predator got to them.
Last November, Harder, Hazelton, and Gray all mentioned that the chickens were no longer laying as many eggs as they did before. Gray said this was because, in the winter, the chickens don’t have much access to sunlight. Now, with the coming of the new chickens and spring approaching, there is an increase in the number of eggs.
This means that there will soon be more eggs at the SFI markets. Markets are on Wednesdays at 5 pm.
All three members of SFI take turns letting out the chickens in the morning and giving them grain feed. At night, they shut them into the coop with its now functioning back door so that predators should no longer be an issue.
“[The Chickens] are so fun, and they’re so cute,” Gray said. “They will just let you pick them up and hold them.” She noted that more people could help work with the chickens, and students wouldn’t need any former experience to help. Contact Grace Harder, Olivia Hazelton, or Christine Gray if you are interested. (Should their emails be put here? Also, the last sentence is clunky and I’m not sure if the attribution is clear.)
