Aardman’s first feature-length film and DreamWorks' fourth film, it was directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park from a screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and based on an original story by Lord and Park. That’s possible with one, maybe two, boxes but not with the six I ended up with.Chicken Run is a 2000 stop-motion animated comedy film produced by Pathé and Aardman Animations in partnership with DreamWorks Animation. bus at the side of the road, getting on and off the ferry, and then heading across the road to where my car is parked. You can imagine me trekking down my long driveway, loaded down with boxes of chickens, waiting for the 7 a.m. I take my car on the ferry to work on Monday and bring it back home on Thursday, traveling the rest of the time by local bus. Living on an island means, that for the most part, I have to schlep birds into town. My fear was, in the dark, I’d choose the wrong ones, but apparently I did okay. Armed with my list, which I had carefully honed over the last couple of weeks, I methodically boxed up the birds – an exercise which took 45 minutes. I have electricity in my coop, but I knew if I turned the lights on the flock would be more difficult to deal with. After dinner I packed them up in the dark with a headlamp (which died mid-project) and a flash light.
Last Sunday, I assembled six moving boxes which I had picked up for free at the local recycling centre and filled the bottom with shredded paper I’d brought home from work. I was hoping to sell as many birds as I could to one buyer and I did. I looked at a combination of factors: beautiful birds, interesting features, age, egg shell colour and what genetics were in the mix.
How do you cut that many? Believe me, the decision was difficult. That still left me with chickens and my ultimate goal was 25.
So that came to 16 and that didn’t include the many chicks who went off to new homes in the summer. Two weeks ago, the frizzled cockerel was adopted and three girls went to another home. One of the problems of having a larger flock is having to monitor how each individual is doing and oftentimes illnesses come to light only when a bird is really sick.Īfter having re-homed 14 hens last spring, I dipped my toe in the water by re-homing a few more: one family on Gabriola took four hens and two cockerels two boys went off to Quadra Island and another to Lasqueti Island a single hen found a home in a small flock and two olive eggers went off to an urban keeper looking for retirement hens.
And after having a rough season of a series of health issues in my flock I wanted the opportunity to be able to spend more ‘quality’ time with fewer birds. I vowed not to be a victim of chicken math and take on more work than I wanted to manage. I’ve been saying for weeks, if not months, that I will be downsizing my flock. Knowing you have a problem is the first step to getting a grip on it. At least I recognized I was over my limit. Truthfully, it was sometimes hard to know the exact number because the flock fluctuated as birds were coming and going. When they were in the pen it didn’t seem like many, but when folks asked me how many birds I had I started to say ‘too many’. This summer I was well over that – some of them were chicks I was growing out before re-homing, but even then, I was over capacity. At some point though, we need to ask ourselves how many chickens are enough? Whatever the situation it’s easy to rationalize our ever expanding flocks. I am as susceptible as anyone else to wanting one of every kind of chicken keeping chicks my broodies have hatched taking in rescues or not being able to turn down a good deal. Chicken math sounds more benign than chicken addiction, but in some cases I think they are interchangeable. I often post memes and cartoons on my Facebook page that point out this phenomenon – it may hit close to home, we know that it might apply to us, but shrug it off. I probably don’t have to explain what chicken math is, but for those of you who don’t know it’s the insidious habit of acquiring a few more birds than you had originally intended.