Chicken rearing and what nots

I have always been a strong advocate of 'produce what you eat', long before things got worse economically in my country, Nigeria. For those reading my post for the first time, I am a Nigerian, we just changed our president through a democratic election, and he's just announced the removal of fuel subsidies. There are several economic implications to this action, but the bottom line is, prices of foods and other services are about to triple in the coming weeks.

What has this got to do with the topic of this post?

Rearing chicken is one of the ways of 'producing what you eat'. If everyone in my country can produce what they eat, the effects of petrol subsidies removal will not bite too hard. As a popular parlance in my tribe goes, once what to eat can be removed from the equation of life, solving it becomes a piece of cake.

By rearing chicken, one may not need to spend on buying meat or fish again, at worst, there will be a significant reduction in the meat/fish budget. Add this to crop production through home gardening and one is already on his way to becoming self-subsistence in food production.

This mentality is what led me to gardening and chicken rearing. However, the behavioral pattern of the chickens has been exasperating my wife. First, these local chickens have refused to retire into the structure provided for them as a home. They will rather jump from one window of our apartment to another until they find one that is spacious enough for them to sleep. They end up messing up the window and the floor with their dung at the end. A good example is in the images below.

^{My local chickens will rather sleep on the window instead of the space provided for them to retire into. Just look at how they messed up the wall.}

^{My wife has to spend considerable time cleaning up this place every 3 to 4 days.}

So exasperated is my wife that she's suggested that we get rid of these creatures - by killing them and cooking them off, of course. However, I have appealed to her to be more patient with them, with the promise that I will make a cage that will serve as their permanent home. Even if they refuse to retire into the cage every evening, I will make it a point of duty to carry them off the window and into it.

Why the window of all places? There are definitely some logical explanations for this. So I decided to ask ChatGPT and below is the response I got.

Local chickens, like many birds, have an innate instinct to roost or perch on high places during sleep. This behavior can be traced back to their wild ancestors and has several advantages:

Predation avoidance: Sleeping on high places offers chickens a strategic advantage by keeping them out of reach of ground-dwelling predators such as foxes, raccoons, or snakes. Elevated perches provide better visibility, allowing chickens to spot potential threats and escape quickly if needed.

Comfort and safety: Perching on high places provides chickens with a sense of security. It allows them to be above ground level, away from damp or dirty surfaces, and potential disturbances or pecking orders within the flock. By sleeping off the ground, chickens can also avoid pests like fleas, ticks, or mites.

Natural instinct: Chickens are descended from wild jungle fowl, which are tree-dwelling birds. Their natural instinct to seek elevated perches for safety and sleep has been retained through domestication. This behavior is deeply ingrained in their genetic makeup.

Makes perfect sense. Right?

According to the response above, such behaviors can be traced back to the wild ancestors of chickens, basically because they confer some survival advantages in the jungle. As such, the trait has been selected by forces of natural selection and has now become a part and parcel of most local hen breeds. In other words, a lot of work would need to be done in order to make them get used to sleeping in the cage, once I am able to get one.

^{Local chicken eggs.}

Recently, the hens have started laying eggs. Did I forget to mention that my flock consists of two hens and one cock? The 3 chickens are of the same parent. However, the hens seem to have reached reproductive maturity faster than the cock. In other words, in the absence of another cock that could mate with the hens, they have been laying unfertilized eggs.

The implication is that the eggs cannot be incubated to produce young ones. Armed with this information, I have instructed my household to remove the eggs at intervals for consumption. So far, we have picked up to 30 eggs laid by both hens, and they are yet to stop. Lately, I noticed that a mature cock has been visiting them from the neighboring surroundings and that has prompted me to leave a few eggs.

Perhaps they will incubate the eggs and produce young chickens from them.

What do you think?