Why My Chickens Need Therapy
Interlude: Health insurance
This post has six sections.
1. From baby chicks to teenage troublemakers
2. Interlude: Health insurance Headaches
3. The chicken Crosses the road
4. Clipping the wings
5. Interlude: Being kind to animals
6. Conclusion and flow chart
1. From baby chicks to teenage troublemakers
A few years ago, my husband and children wanted a new pet.1 I rejected the idea of a cheetah or a bird eating spider, and we settled on chickens as a compromise. Chickens are kosher, they lay eggs, and they eat our leftover food. Day-old chicks can be conveniently delivered by USPS.2 3 We are lucky our neighbors like us, and them.4
Like all pets, the heads of the household end up doing all the work. Our first two chickens were past the age of laying eggs, and we felt ready to raise our own chickens.5
(Please click on the footnotes to read previous posts on the topic.)
Last time I posted about our chickens, we had learned about chicken math. It's like regular math, but chickens are involved, and so they are 90% guaranteed to be female, and five is what you think of as the number four.6 My husband got the supplies, and at first they were teeny fluff balls that squeaked and huddled together in a small red coop. We kept them inside the house.
Rose, our babysitter, informed me immediately that chickens, just like children, need a daily routine. She pronounced their bedtime to be 5:00 PM and enforced it by covering the coop with a towel at that time.
It was like crying it out, but for chickens.7 For the first few days, the chicks cheeped for a while before finally settling down. After that, all you had to do was cover the cage at exactly 5 PM, and if you peeked behind the towel, you’d find a bundle of little chicks snuggled together, sleeping soundly.
During the day, I was the mother hen. Five little chicks followed me everywhere, and despite the annoyance I couldn’t help but enjoy the experience. It felt like I was leading a very cute and small and fluffy parade every time I tried to cook or clean up toys.
Chicks do not stay cute and fluffy for long. Soon, we had to set up a gate to keep them in one spot, and eventually, we had to move them outside. Then, one day, we discovered they had learned to fly. The next few months became a battle of wits, with the ‘adolescent’ chickens finding every possible escape route from our backyard. We tried chicken wire, netting, and finally raised the gates higher.
During this period, neighbors and strangers regularly knocked on our door to inform us that yet another chicken had made a daring escape. In hindsight, I realize I should have been more vigilant.
One particularly traumatic episode involved a chicken crossing the road—quite literally. This was one of the first times it happened. To add to the stress, this happened right after I had finished an exasperating phone call with the health insurance company. Let's talk about that briefly.
Interlude: Health insurance Headaches
If you're here just for the chicken stories, feel free to skip ahead to the picture of the chicken in therapy. But before I talk about the chickens, I need to get something off my chest.
If you have to choose between spending money on food or health insurance, spend it on health insurance. That is what my maternal grandfather believed. His reasoning? If you starve enough, and you have health insurance, they'll feed you in the hospital.8
Speaking of feeding, our new baby requires a specialized formula. The health insurance company approved it immediately, with only one very cute, eight week old problem. The baby.
Who the health insurance company believe was managing his own medical care. I could not seem to convince them otherwise. The following is a real conversation, only slightly edited.
Them: “Is this Abel or his mom?”
Me: “I am his Mom. You guys know his birth date! Do you really think a two month old is going to answer the phone?”
Them: “I don't have kids, how am I supposed to know?” 9
All correspondence was addressed directly to Abel, they asked for Abel by name whenever they called, and they generally seemed puzzled at my involvement. They wanted to know why he wasn't confirming his own information and acknowledging receipt of his formula order.
I felt accused of being overprotective. Why do I keep him so attached to my apron strings? Land the helicopter already! I started to assume his identity and even forged his signature as necessary. No one seemed suspicious at a newborn signing for his own formula delivery.
See this letter from the health insurance company. Only the names have been changed:
Dear Abel,
I would like to introduce myself. I am Sue, your healthcare coordinator. I am here to help you with any health insurance related issues. Please let me know if I can be of assistance in any way.
Sue
I happily fantasized about setting up a Zoom call or maybe an in-person meeting and letting Sue and Abel sort it out between themselves, without my involvement. Preferably during his most colicky hours.10
Back to this episode, I don’t remember the details of the call. Maybe it was about why our children couldn’t bring themselves to appointments, or evaluating eligibility based on whether our pet chickens were receiving therapy as dependents. Perhaps they thought my babies should be consenting to their own vaccinations. Good luck with that.11
The Chicken Crosses the Road
Which brings me back to our topic: the chickens. Optima, our most adventurous chicken, had exited the chicken enclosure.
Rose, ever the vigilant babysitter, said urgently, in Spanish, “Las gallinas están afuera”—there’s chickens outside.
Me, distracted: “There are always chickens outside our house.” (Realization hits) “Oh! You mean outside the gate!”
Sure enough, I looked outside and saw Optima strutting down the sidewalk towards the neighbor’s house. Optima, from Terra Optima farm in Maine, is quick and crafty. She is too fast to catch, even on a hot day, and I have seen her chase a rat. And I have not seen any rats since.
We opened the gate, hoping she’d come back, but Optima ignored us and continued her sidewalk adventure. I had nightmarish visions of ending up on the news as, “JEWISH FAMILY LOSES CHICKEN”. Like in this fake picture:
Would we ever be able to keep chickens again? After finally finding a pet that I actually like and that our babysitters don’t mind having around?
Rose took charge, and by following her instructions, we cornered Optima from both directions, and we managed to herd her back inside. With the disaster averted, I thanked her for her quick thinking.
Me: “How did you know what to do?”
Rose: “My mother had a lot of chickens.”
That explains the expertise with chicken bedtimes.
Clipping The Wings
My husband mentioned that someone claimed to have seen Optima on the other side of the street a couple of days ago. He thought they must have been mistaken. Why did our chicken cross the street? Forgive me for saying so, but she certainly made it back to the other side.
This wasn’t the last time a chicken escaped, and as the chicks grew older and bigger, keeping them contained became a real challenge. They could easily fly over the fence. We found ourselves regularly rushing out to corral runaway chickens. Finally, someone suggested clipping their wings, and it seemed like a good idea.12
Wing clipping is the practice of trimming a chicken's wing feathers to prevent them from flying, ensuring they stay within a safe, enclosed area. It is painless because it involves trimming only the flight feathers, which have no nerves, similar to cutting hair or nails.
Chickens have been domesticated for so long that they have no safety instincts at all. They need human protection from predators, busy roads, and other dangers. Wing clipping is a painless, kind, and caring way to keep chickens safe.13
Interlude: be kind to animals
This is a good opportunity to mention the Jewish law known as "Tzaar Baalei Chaim", which literally means "the suffering of living creatures". Basically, Jewish law prohibits causing unnecessary pain or suffering to animals. While animals are to be used for human needs, their welfare must always be considered and their pain minimized.14
The story of Bilaam, a non-Jewish prophet in the Torah, teaches an important lesson about kindness to animals. Bilaam is known for hitting his donkey when it refused to move, and he even said that if he had a sword, he would have killed it. In Jewish teachings, this story is used to highlight the prohibition against causing unnecessary pain to living creatures, a principle called "tzaar ba’alei chaim." This concept emphasizes that we should treat animals with compassion, and it’s believed that because Bilaam expressed such cruelty, he was eventually punished by being killed with a sword.
The lesson here is clear: our actions, especially those that cause harm to innocent creatures, matter.
Clipping The Wings
We waited until nightfall, which is chicken bedtime. Catching sleeping chickens is supposed to be easy, but now that they had learned from the small humans around them, some put up quite a fight.
However, they were no match for a mom used to wrangling hyperactive children. I decisively caught each one, while my husband held down a wing and trimmed the feathers. They didn't seem to mind.
One of them fell asleep in my arms during the process, so it couldn’t have been too traumatizing. She got mad when I tried to put her back into the coop, but it was impossible to put her back without waking her, and I wasn’t going to hold a sleeping chicken all night.
Conclusion and flow chart
That solved that problem. I made a flow chart for next time.
I did not want a new pet. But the old pet, Happy the hamster, had died after a long and peaceful life.
See footnotes 2 and 3.
This is just an observation, not a judgement. Please don't start mommy wars over this.
Quoting my mother
Yes that is exactly what they said word for word
See above picture of zoom meeting between screaming baby and healthcare coordinator.
There are human rights people who are against vaccinations for this reason.
https://www.raising-happy-chickens.com/clipping-chicken-wings.html
https://www.petmd.com/bird/grooming/how-clip-birds-wings
If you are considering trimming your bird’s wings and are not sure whether it’s best for your bird, or if you are not clear on how to do it, seek the advice of a trained veterinarian, veterinary technician, bird trainer, or breeder to learn how to perform this procedure safely and effectively.
https://ohr.edu/7418
An additional example of a halacha gleaned from the disgraceful actions of Bilaam, and seemingly more apropos, is the prohibition of “tzaar ba’alei chaim”, causing living creatures unnecessary pain. Although the gemara (Bava Metzia 32a-b) debates whether this proscription is Biblical or Rabbinic in nature, according to most authorities “tzaar ba’alei chaim is indeed a Torah prohibition. According to the Midrash Hagadol (Parshat Balak 22, 32), Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim vol. 3, end Ch. 17), and Sefer Chassidim (666) this halacha is gleaned from Bilaam’s actions of hitting his donkey. In fact, they maintain that since Bilaam remarked that if he would have been holding a sword in his hand he would have killed his donkey on the spot, he therefore was eventually slain specifically by the sword!
amazing post, your grandfather was a smart man. Reminds me of someone I interviewed for my book. His father refused to get rid of his coal stove and coal heater because "you can always burn the furniture if you have to."
😆😂😆
Hysterical!!!