For me it was baby chicks. Farmer Boy talked for years about chickens, with great passion, I should add. He remembers his childhood in Thailand, where he had an old rooster as a pet. The rooster was eventually eaten by nuns at the orphanage. It was wartime after all.
In 2003 or 2004 Farmer Boy got pretty chicks from his friend’s mother. She kept them in a tiny box in her tiny apartment. They did look happy after they moved to a big yard. However, they didn’t live through their first year. Two feral dogs got into our yard at night. Farmer Boy went to investigate the noise and ended up face-to-face with two massive dogs, that already tasted blood. It all ended up with two dead dogs, us shaken, and police all over our neighborhood. The chickens were also dead.
The period without chickens didn’t last long. On April 1st, my karate buddy asked if we could free him from 2 noisy hens. Those were two Plymouth Rocks, which started a massive chicken invasion of my back yard. After them Farmer Boy brought home many chickens of regular breeds. However, the normal chickens stopped showing up the moment Farmer Boy discovered chickens of his childhood – Asils (Asil or Aseel).
Right now we have only one Rod Island Red and one Cornish Cross hens. The rest are Asils of different ages.
