Page 138 - The Hunt - Spring 2022

At a sprawling country residence Dawn Talley and her husband, Jack. Two want them to be. So they don’t get to stay.”
in Kennett Square, cousins Kennedy and Lake, both 4, race to the backyard chicken
coop—tin cans in hand— hoping to find some fresh eggs laid by the
hens that morning. It’s the late-breakfast hour, and the sun’s been up for some time. Lake lifts the door to the nest box as Kennedy peeks inside. She turns around, beaming.
It’s a routine chore for Kennedy, who’s frequently here to visit her grandparents,
136 THE HUNT MAGAZINE spring 2022
of the couple’s three kids have flown the nest, but they share these bucolic four acres with four dogs, a cat, two rescued miniature horses—and 11 chickens. At one point, they had a dozen, but one turned out to be a rooster. “They’re supposed to be able to sex the chickens so you only get hens, but this happens a lot,” says Talley, who purchases week-old chicks in the springtime from
the local hardware store. “The roosters are beautiful, but they’re noisy when you don’t
Backyard chicken farming has become more popular throughout the pandemic, mostly among folks looking to harvest their own eggs. “This is not a for-profit endeavor. You do it either because you love chickens or because you want the benefit of organic, fresh eggs,” Talley says.
It’s a bit of both for Dawn, a Pennsylvania native who grew up on a farm. Beside a standard coop with nest houses that
she purchased, she has hand-built a