Chicken Run

After years of living the good life with chooks, sheep, goats and a variety of other animals we’ve been missing our little bit of country since being here! Drew was asking for ages if he could build a chicken coop, and while I was up in Gulu last month (where chooks are cheaper) I finally caved and decided to surprise the kids! Actually it was just out of Gulu on the way home when I saw a multitude of dehydrated looking chickens for sale on the side of the road that the caving really happened. One of those sort of planned, but not really thought completely through moments.

So buying chooks here is done a little different to back in NZ, firstly you don’t really browse and choose which ones you’d like. You get several different sellers putting their chooks in your face and trying to get you to hold them to see how heavy they are – they’re all tied in pairs by the legs and looking rather sorry for themselves. You then repeatedly tell certain sellers you don’t want to buy their chooks, which is why you don’t want to hold them, and you try to explain to other sellers that you don’t want to see the chooks undersides but their faces (after all, one doesn’t want to buy an ugly chook!), and I don’t really need to feel how heavy they are. Once you’ve selected your sun-scorched dehydrated feathered friends, you then start bartering over the price (I actually quite enjoy this bit!). 45 minutes later you leave with purchase for the supposed 5 hr trip home!

sorry for the lack of head in this photo, but the face I was pulling wasn't the most complimentary!

A royal ranger is always prepared (yes, I was a fully fledged Royal Ranger back in the day!), so I had a box in the boot of the van. As you’ll read later, I wasn’t quite as prepared as I should’ve been. I’d been in Gulu with 5 of our team, 1 of our national staff also decided to get a hen and rooster. I got 6 hens. The big happy poultry family were all put in the box and off we went. Two hours and a toilet stop later, I thought it fitting to check on our travelling companions, only to find the rooster was now only good for the pot. Poor thing, lying there looking so ugly and limp. I don’t do dead animals well. Small problem now – the chooks were all tied in pairs by the legs and had gotten quite tangled, resulting in Mr R’s death. Somehow Mr R’s new owner managed to free him from his cellmate and lay him flat in the boot, but not believing his new pet was dead tried to revive him – by blowing on him, pouring water on him and slapping him round the face. It didn’t work. There was to be no resurrected rooster. Meantime, all the other chooks REALLY needed a drink. A few metres away a small group of boda (motorbike taxi) drivers looked on as 2 white girls fed chooks bottled water out of lids while a big Ugandan guy tried to resuscitate a dead rooster! I’m sure they enjoyed the free entertainment!

So on with the trip home, and 1 hour later we find traffic on the main highway at a standstill and backed up half a kilometre or so. Roadworks. Yay. When we realised we wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, we all got out to stretch and check the chooks again. Looking the sorriest they could be without actually being dead, we realised if we wanted them for anything other than eating we’d need to untie them. Small problem was, they were tied so tight, there was no way to untie them. After a thorough vehicle search for sharp objects proved fruitless, I went to plan B. Ask anyone and everyone in the line of traffic if they had a knife. Remember this is Uganda, and not surprisingly most people in the line were Ugandan – so having a white girl come up to you asking if you’ve got a knife might seem just a little strange! Finally I found an Asian guy with a craft knife of all things, so asked if he’d mind me using it to cut my chickens legs free. After he realised I was serious, he stopped laughing well actually I don’t think he did stop laughing, and came to help. I got Mr R’s owner (who was still lying peacefully in the back – Mr R that is, not his owner) to do the cutting, as chicken feet aren’t really my favourite things to touch. Finally free, we then gave them some more bottled water while a crowd of people stretching their legs watched on. We really should’ve charged for the entertainment this time! Nearly an hour later, traffic started moving so we quickly scrambled to get the chooks back into the boot before we held traffic up even longer. Chickens don’t know anything about politely holding onto bowel matter until in an appropriate place to release it, so the rest of the trip was filled with the aroma of chickens (not the roasted type either!). After a 7 hour journey we were home around 10pm - the chooks handed over to very excited new owners, and the adventure officially over!

3 weeks later, we’ve just had our third egg, discovered Lilys one is a rooster so we might try for baby chicks! Given Mr R’s owner a new live rooster, and had several requests to now get a milking cow.