Tips for Raising Happy Chickens, From Minnie Rose Lovgreen

Free range isn't all it's cracked up to be when the grass is too wet from rain.

As the son of a little old Englishwoman who still raises chickens in her backyard, I read with interest the small book left to us by former Bainbridge Islander Minnie Rose Lovgreen, titled Recipe for Raising Chickens, now available in a third edition from NW Trillium Press. 

Subtitled "Simple, economical ways with eggs, chicks, broody hens, laying hens, general chicken care," the bookish pamphlet (or pamphlet-ish book) delivers on all fronts. Attendees of Tilth's annual City Chickens Coop Tour ("Did you know that Seattle has become known as a world-class chicken destination?"), chicken-raising noobs, and even Seattle University students will want to get in on Lovgreen's last words on poultry care.

Like Lao-tzu, Lovgreen saved up her pithy insights--"The main thing is to keep them happy"--until it was almost time for her to depart the earth. In 1975, she was diagnosed with cancer. It was thanks to Nancy Rekow, who tape-recorded interviews with Lovgreen in her hospital room, then edited and hand-lettered the text, that the book exists at all. (Another friend and neighbor, Elizabeth Hutchison, provided the pen-and-ink drawings that illustrate the book.)

Chapters are titled "The Broody Hen And Her Eggs," "Baby Chick Care," "Room And Board For Chickens," "Eggs," and "Virtues Of The Bantam Hen." (Lovgreen rates the bantam hen highly for egg-laying and chick-raising: "A bantam hen can cover as many as 18 to 20 chicks," she notes approvingly, adding, "A good-sized bantam can hatch out about 5 duck eggs, or 2 or 3 goose eggs, or 11 guinea eggs, or 9 turkey eggs. She'll even turn the large goose eggs over every day!")

Probably the most appealing part of this brief manual is Lovgreen's approach, which is neighborly, measured, and warm. I'm sure you could buy a much thicker book filled with jargon and rare diseases, but Lovgreen stays focused on the fundamentals (what to feed chicks and chickens, why it's good to put rocks in a saucer of water) and more likely issues (dysentery, fleas, pecking). Even if you care nothing at all for chickens, you cannot resist sections that go like this:

Funny how they know what they want to eat. I wonder if it's smell. They know when it's a sour apple or a sweet apple. If it's a sour apple, they won't touch it. But if it's one of the Gravensteins coming down, they go for that in a big way. They keep waiting around under my tree.

She also had a terrific eye and ear for chicken behavior, and gives you a short primer on hen vocabulary (soon you too will know the difference between "brrp," "krrrk," and "drrrp"). Anyone who's owned a bantam rooster will know the wisdom of her advice to "swat it with a board" when it jumps you. (As a formerly small child, I can tell you that bantam roosters, while small, have an alarming way of fluffing themselves up, launching themselves about head-height, and aiming their spurs at your eyes.)

Chickens to one side, Lovgreen's life was strangely epic. Born in 1888 in Norfolk County, England, she was the eighth of 19 children. At eleven, she hired herself out as a "mother's helper," and at 24 she and her brother booked passage on...the Titanic. Due to a delay, she ended up on another boat better equipped to avoid icebergs. Rekow also taped Lovgreen's memoir, back in 1975, and is the press is now bringing out Far As I Can Remember: An Immigrant Woman's Story 1888-1975.

Here's Lovgreen on multitasking: "I’d have their baby out there in the buggy and while I was watching the baby I’d stack the wood."

Once the sun comes out, the chicken patrol swings into action.