Page 142 - The Hunt - Spring 2022

On a 2.5-acre farm in Landenberg, running. She appears to speak their language, out—the legs were sticking out of his beak.”
Caryn Hetherston and her husband,
Gordon, house 17 chickens and
two roosters. Like the Talleys, the couple had planned for only hens. But when they brought them home from Oxford Feed, the roosters later revealed their identity in the noisiest way possible. One rooster, Hops, had an “aggression problem” that led to an apt name change: Soup.
At Hetherstons’ place, chickens and hens are raised only for eggs. Once they’ve stopped laying them, the birds live out their retirement until something eats them or they die of natural causes. In a world of no predators, a chicken’s life span is about nine or 10 years. Here, only one chick has made it that long.
For a few years, the couple had “a horrible problem” with sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks. “They can’t carry them away, so they eat them in place,” Hetherston says. “If we free-range, we’re going to lose some. That’s just the way it is.”
Today, all the birds cluck and coo in every direction—through bushes, under a shed and behind colorful beehives that sit high on this verdant piece of hillside. When Caryn rattles feed in a cup, they all come
140 THE HUNT MAGAZINE spring 2022
interacting with her flock. Colonel Sanders
is an Americana rooster who’s attractive but “not terribly smart,” and Princess Leia once had such a bad sinus infection her ears swelled up like cinnamon buns. There’s a Dominique chicken, an old breed brought over by
settlers in Plymouth, Mass. Another Spanish chicken is “a bit hysterical.” Hetherston got that one by accident. “They all have different personalities,” she points out. “But only the ones with the biggest personalities get names.”
The Hetherstons paid about $6 per chicken and as high as $12 for more exotic breeds. “They used to be $3, but now chicken farming has gotten huge,” Hetherston says. “I think people were worried about food security during the pandemic.”
Hetherston learned about keeping chickens long ago from a Kennett Square woman she used to get eggs from. “She sold me a couple hens and told me what to do,” she says. “I took to it pretty quickly.”
A benefit of raising free-range birds is the robust diet of diverse bugs the land offers, which reduces the cost of feed. “I saw one eat a frog one time,” Hetherston recalls. “That freaked me
She also shares flock favorites like watermelon and cantaloupe, as well as other cooking scraps. “Once I was experimenting with sourdough and made a fermented mash for them—it’s a good probiotic,” she says.
They enjoy cooked chicken, too. “They’re dinosaurs,” Hetherston says with a smile and a shrug.
The brood heads into their coop at dusk, where they roost until dawn. “The older ones roost first, but the teenagers are reluctant to go in,” says Hetherston.
The birds are let out each morning—unless there’s been predator activity. Then they’re only allowed out after the couple is active in the yard. Hetherston collects over a dozen eggs a day—enough for the metalsmith and teacher at Delaware Art Museum to sell to some to her students.
For anyone interested in keeping their own chickens, the Hetherstons don’t recommend one method over another. But unless you have the stomach for a National Geographic episode unfolding outside your kitchen window, you might want to reconsider letting a flock roam free. TH