Short Stories - Chicken Run

I grew up on a poultry farm. We had over 200 hens. Every morning, me, my brother, and my father would go out and gather eggs after we had let the chickens loose in the yard. In the evenings, we would round up all the chickens back in the henhouse.

During the day, someone had to stand guard. We had a very large wolf and coyote population. At least once a week, a coyote or a wolf would snatch one of our hens and every week we would do our best to fight back. We would tighten fences, add more barbed wire, and raise more fence, but they still got in. Once we found a tunnel under the fence hidden in the brush.

When I was about 12 years old, we had a bad storm around midnight. The wind blew hard, knocking down trees and uprooting bushes. We did not know it at the time, but during the night, the wind had blown down a tree over our fence, creating a gaping hole. We went about our usual activity and opened up the chicken coop.

While the chickens were mellowing in the yard, we began to clean up after the storm. My brother accidentally dropped a metal shingle on another shingle. The loud noise ringed throughout the yard, bouncing off the chicken coop. The noise scared the chickens half out of their wits. They then made a dash to the newly discovered hole in the fence. We did our best to stop the chickens, but to no avail.

We spent the next few days searching high and low. Those chickens were our bread and butter. If we didn’t find them, we would be in a lot of trouble.

It took a week, but we found most of them. We found a 183 out of 190 that escaped. Life went back to normal, or so we thought.

Our neighbor also raised chickens but on a much higher scale. He had about 300. He and my dad would occasionally talk over the fence about chicken feed, prices, and other farmer-talk. Well, this week, my father was telling him about our “chicken stampede” and to my father’s surprise, our neighbor had the exact same problem. Every single one of our neighbor’s chickens had escaped the same day ours did. The neighbor told us that he had found only a hundred.

My father was mortified. Was it possible we had some of his chickens? We both raised the same breed of chickens, so there was no way to tell. So there we were, back in the woods, only this time with our neighbor. The only difference was, we looked even harder and farther.

On our search, we found about 50 chicken remains, 70 half-dead ones, and 200 live ones. In the end, our neighbor kept the 200 we found and we kept the 183 we found originally.

This type of thing went on for years, but thankfully, not on such a large scale. Many people have the misconception that farm life is dull and lifeless. Every time someone tells me that, I can’t help but laugh!

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A little about me: I’m a film student who loves to entertain and tell stories! I also have a deep appreciation for art. All the photos you see were taken by me. One of my goals in life is to provide family-friendly entertainment that is both fun and inspiring. If you would like to get in touch with me, you can do so on my website! \