Dalia Monterroso: 00:00:00.271
As your foundation, I want you to remember that human beings have been keeping chickens for thousands of years. This is within us. It is a natural experience for us to have. We’re not reinventing the wheel. Here in the Western world, we have a way of kind of complicating things. But if you look at the whole world, you will find people and their chickens everywhere from the poorest people to the richest people. We’re all able to do it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:42.378
Welcome, everyone, to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe, and it is my great pleasure to welcome my friend Dalia. She’s going to talk to you today about chickens. I’ve been waiting for this conversation for months. My husband and I have a whole herd of chickens. In fact, I was saying that he’s on his way to the post office to pick up 26 more because he does need a 12-step program for chickens. But I’m delighted to welcome her today. I’m going to let her introduce herself.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:01:13.604
Oh, well, my name is Dalia, but most people know me as the president of Chickenlandia. I think my biggest platform is my YouTube channel, which is called Welcome to Chickenlandia. I do have a podcast called Bok Talk. And I’m on all the, oh, I have a book. I have a book called Let’s All Keep Chickens and another online course, which is kind of how we got to know each other, Gretchen. And I am a backyard chicken educator. I’ve been doing this for about, gosh, almost 13 years. And it is just my passion to share a love of chickens. I will always say chickens bring– they’ve brought peace and joy into my life. And that’s really the part of it that I love to share.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:05.565
When we first met online– because we’re on opposite coasts, when we first met online, I had the opportunity to get to know you a little bit. And I found your story very compelling. So I wondered if you’d share some of that with our viewers today because I think they’ll see themselves in parts of your story. And I think it’s really cool.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:02:26.451
Yeah, well, I did not grow up with chickens. I grew up in the suburbs. I’m in Gen Xer. I ate TV dinners. Not because that’s what– my mom would make food. My mom made this wonderful food, but I wanted what I saw on television. I wanted whatever was being advertised to me. And I was very disconnected from my food, which I think is a very common experience for a lot of us, especially in our age group. And we may be the first generation to be so disconnected because a lot of us have parents or grandparents that did have chickens or did have a garden or had a farm or were just in some way more connected to their food and to nature. So in my young adult life, I was in Hollywood trying to become the next great American filmmaker. And I was really pursuing that dream. And I met the man who would become my husband. We got married. And then, I had turned 31 and it’s like, okay, reality is starting to kick in because I wanted to have a family. But I really didn’t want to do that in LA and nothing against LA. I mean, I had a great time in LA. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:03.210
I was there this past weekend. So it was awesome. The foliage, the weather was perfect.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:04:09.885
Oh, yeah. Yeah. The traffic is awful.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:12.802
Yeah. [laughter] I will agree with that. [laughter]

Dalia Monterroso: 00:04:16.451
The weather is perfect. The education system if you’re in public education is– it’s got some problems. So I was like, “I just– I don’t think I want us to raise our kids here.” So we decided to move up north. And we’re in Bellingham, Washington now which is like 30 minutes south of the Canadian border.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:39.108
Wow.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:04:41.218
And I thought I was great with that decision. This is what I’m doing now.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:50.066
That’s a huge shift though from that bustling urban area.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:04:58.211
Yes. And not only that, but I had had the dream of being in Hollywood and playing that game from the time I was a little girl. And I realized once we got up here– and I had my first child. I was delighted. He was adorable. I was very happy to be a mother and a wife and all that stuff. But I was really mourning the loss of that dream. And on top of that, I had postpartum depression. And I think what people don’t understand or maybe some people don’t know about postpartum depression is that it can last years. It can be quite serious. And I had postpartum insomnia.

Gretchen Roe: 00:05:45.192
And you know it’s one of the only afflictions where we blame ourselves because we shouldn’t– you shouldn’t feel that way. But I know we have so many moms who will watch our conversation who will see themselves in that. And it’s very hard. And it’s also if people even in your inner circle feel entitled to tell you, “Well, you shouldn’t feel that way.”

Dalia Monterroso: 00:06:15.639
Yeah. And for me at least, nobody knew. And I didn’t know. I didn’t know until I looked back at what was going on.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:25.991
Wow.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:06:27.547
And I certainly didn’t know how serious it was. It was actually quite serious. So I just found myself really wondering what my identity was. I was depressed. And so naturally, I was like, “I’m going to get some chickens.” [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:46.219
That’s not the prescription that everyone would make.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:06:50.240
Well, I want to be very clear and say I am not claiming that chickens cure postpartum depression. That is not what I’m saying. But I really feel like it was some kind of divine intervention because when I brought my first batch of baby chicks home– and I did all the research and stuff, and I brought these baby chicks home. I took them one by one out of the brooder. I’m placing them into the brooder. And I had not even held– I think I had held a baby chick once before that. And they were so– I’m holding them. And they’re so like resilient and fragile at the same time. I really feel in that moment my heart opened and a new dream came in. And it gave me something to really look forward to every day. It got me outside every day. I became passionate about something that– I mean, I was so passionate about it that literally six months later was when I was asked to teach my first class. And that was at the local community college. And in my head, I’m like, I’ve had chickens for six months.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:12.130
Back up for just a second and talk to me a little bit about the research you did beforehand. Because for us, when we got chickens, it was going through a catalog and going, “Well, that one’s pretty. And that one’s pretty.”

Dalia Monterroso: 00:08:27.891
Yeah. And certainly, yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of–

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:30.011
[crosstalk] fly a little bit by the seat of our pants here, so.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:08:33.588
At the time, backyard chicken keeping was really starting to gain momentum. It was like the time really where a lot of educators were getting in there and they were gaining a lot of popularity very quickly. There was a lot of disagreement among the educators, so it was confusing because I would read one thing and they would say, “This is the absolute thing that you must do. And if you don’t do it, you’re doing it wrong.” And then I would read another thing from another educator that I really respected. I respected both of them. And they would be like, “Well, if you don’t do it this way, you’re doing it wrong.” And be very public about their disagreements and stuff. And I was like, this is wild. This is chicken keeping. I always say it’s chicken keeping. It’s not world hunger, it’s chicken keeping, okay? Chill out. But it did get confusing because, naturally, people are consuming a lot of information. It’s very easy to consume lots of information. A lot of that information is conflicting. And then I would join a Facebook group. And back then, it would be there were these online forums. It wasn’t so much on social media, but there were online forums–

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:54.818
Almost like CompuServe and those.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:09:56.954
Yeah, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:57.901

Yeah, yeah.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:09:58.605
And it could get so there was a lot of vitriol, which is like, what is going on? This is my peace and joy. And we’re fighting about it. Why? Why even with chickens are we fighting about that? So from early on, I really had the desire of not taking that route. Because for me, it was like talking to people about chickens. I could talk to someone who was very different from me, but grew up differently, on opposite ends of the political spectrum, different religious philosophy, whatever. And I could talk to them about how I felt so much peace in the chicken yard. And we’d be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:56.059
It’s funny that you should say that. One of my closest friends, we’ve been friends now for eight years, and we became friends because of chickens. A mutual friend said, “You should go talk to her. She has chickens too. You can both be crazy together.” And she’s right. And it was awesome.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:11:21.054
Yeah, I definitely was a certifiably crazy chicken lady. So I understood that. And I think it just came out. It must have just been oozing out of my pores because like I said, I had the community college ask me to teach a class and I taught that class and it was great. And of course, I was very diligent about because I didn’t have a lot of experience, but I just wanted to make sure I was getting the right information out there. And then it was like, well, I’m being asked to do seminars and I’m being asked to rep know a feed company. Stuff just started coming to me. And there’s a quote from Steven Spielberg, and I’m not quoting him directly, but it’s something like the dream of your life is the one that kind of sneaks up behind you. Something like that. And that’s how it was. I mean, I certainly, as a kid, didn’t think, oh, I’m going to be a backyard chicken educator. That wasn’t [laughter] what I thought. I wanted to reach a lot of people. I wanted to help people. I wanted fame. I’m not going to lie. As a kid, I was like, “Oh, I want to be famous.” But I always thought that it would happen through Hollywood or whatever, being a writer–

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:56.567
And the things that you produced there, so yeah.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:13:01.272
I did not know that this was the road that I would take, but I’m very happy to be on this road. It has allowed me to really have more balance in my life like I have, and I do get unbalanced, believe me, but it helps for me to have this thing that I’m really passionate about, but I’m still at home. I can still take care of my kids. I’m still really involved with them. Not saying that moms that work away from home can’t be involved with their kids. They can. But for me, this is what worked really well and it’s just been such a blessing. So yeah, I love it [laughter].

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:45.131
So tell me how you got started. You did all this research. Did you order chickens? Did you go to Tractor Supply? I mean, my husband’s not allowed to go to Tractor Supply [laughter] unaccompanied between March and May [laughter], so.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:14:02.040
I had a friend that worked at a local farm store and he really helped me to order some chicks and to get what I wanted and so I ordered, I mean, it was just crazy. I ordered frizzles and [laughter] I just decided to get every funny little chicken. Now, the advice that I give now is different from that because it’s tougher when you start out with specialty chickens and then you get into winter or you get into summer, it’s really hot and you haven’t really thought about the breeds that you have and whether or not they’re going to do well in the climate that you live in. And then also, there’s the issue of roosters. You can get roosters. If you order bantams, which are like miniature chickens, you are very likely to get roosters and you can even get a rooster if you order all-female chickens, which are called pullets. A pullet is a female chicken that has not gone in to lay yet. They haven’t begun to lay yet. So even then, it’s not foolproof unless they’re feather sexed, which is only certain breeds. It’s not foolproof. You might get a rooster. So I do tell people to have a plan. Know what you’re capable of. There are people that are like, “Well, if I get a rooster, I’m just gonna make some broth. Not everybody can do that, especially new chicken keepers. They might be like, “Oh, I thought I could and I can’t.” So have a contingency plan for those cases. The other thing I really want people to have a contingency plan for is, well, you need to know that hens do not lay the amount of eggs that they lay for the first year or two of their life for for their whole life. And they can live pretty long. Sometimes they can live 10 years. Usually not. Usually a production hen is going to live an average of about four to six years, okay? But you’re taking really good care of them. You’ve got them in this great backyard. You built the Taj Mahal for them. Yeah, they can live a long time, and they don’t lay as much. They’ll never lay as much as they lay that first year of life. Because production breeds were bred just to live that year and lay as many eggs in that year and then be processed for dog food or whatever. So if you were the kind of person that’s like, “Oh, well, that’s fine. When they’re done laying that much, I will make broth.” But you might find after you’ve had them and you have learned their little personalities and they looked you in the eye and you gave them a name, maybe you can’t do that. So are you prepared to keep them through their whole lives? Or do you have–

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:12.149
Right. And it makes a tremendous amount of difference to be able to know what you’re capable of. On our little farm, we had chickens and pigs and bees. And we sent our last two pigs to freezer camp two months ago. And friends said, “Oh, how could you do that?” But we went in knowing that we were raising these pigs, and we were going to raise them holistically and organically. And they were going to have an amazing life. And then they were going to go to the freezer. But I think it’s– you make a really valid point is we have to be honest about our expectations.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:17:53.255
Yeah. And my only request is that it be humane. And by humane, I don’t mean you have to let them– you have to have a retirement home for chickens. But humane means you need to keep in mind that this is a living, breathing being that is under your care and let’s be respectful of that life in front of us. And that might mean that we are going to make soup, but just be humane about it. Because I–

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:26.671
Right. So how many chickens do you have now?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:18:30.739
43.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:33.248
43. Okay.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:18:34.582
43, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:35.292
Right. Okay, I’ll have you beat in about three hours. Yes. Right now you’ve got me beat, so. [laughter] I have to say the thing that I was least prepared for was picking up the chicks from the post office and how loud they were going to be. That ride home was the noisiest ride I’ve ever had. And I have six kids. I just wasn’t expecting that. But man, were they a lot of fun? And you can see personalities in that very first day. Some of them would hop on your hand, and some of them would be like, “Oh, no, no, no. Go away from me, human.”

Dalia Monterroso: 00:19:18.397
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like to say some of them, they just have a little bit of people in them. You just look at them and they’re looking back at you and you’re like, “I feel like we’re getting some kind of connection going on.” And I don’t [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:34.267
And I’m proud right now that my husband says pound for pound, they are the nosiest birds he’s ever seen because no matter what he’s doing outside, they all come running over going, “So what are you doing?” And they’ll hop up on him. I’ve looked out in the backyard and he’s had eight chickens on his back while he’s bended over trying to fix something. And they’re all participatory, which I think is hilarious, so. I have a good question for you. It says, “What breeds do you find the most docile or friendly?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:20:05.317
Well, I get this question a lot. I also get like, what are the most quiet breeds? I want the quietest breeds. I want them to lay the most. I want them to be docile and I want them to be friendly. And what I will tell people always is that every chicken has its own personality. And so it’s important to remember that. There are some breeds that generally they’re just going to be easier for people when they’re starting out, but you can always get one that, “Oh, this is supposed to be quiet chicken.” And they sing the egg song for two hours. And the egg song is the “Bak-bak-bakak”. That is, I laid an egg. And then there’s another song that sounds close to that that is, there’s danger. So it’s interesting that the two sound so alike. But if you’re looking for a large, standard-size breeds, good layers, really like Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, Black Australorp, which is basically the Buff Orpington, but it’s black.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:17.358
Black. Yes.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:21:19.369
The Easter Eggers, otherwise known as Ameraucanas, which there are purebred Ameraucanas, but they’re very– you will not find them from a hatchery. From a hatchery, what you’re getting is Easter Eggers, even if it says Ameraucanas, you’re getting Easter eggers, which is fine.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:35.680
So explain what it– I know what an Easter Egger is, but for somebody who might be watching us, explain what that might be.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:21:43.695
An Easter Egger is– they were made famous by Martha Stewart, actually. They’re a breed that is– they’re not a true breed. They were created from Ameraucanas and Araucanas, I think. And what people love about them is that they could lay green eggs, they could lay blue eggs, they could lay pink eggs, and then they might lay brown eggs. They will lay one color egg for their whole life. They don’t lay different color egg every day. But usually, if you want some color in your basket, then you’ll want some Easter Eggers. And it’s going to be really pretty. So, yeah, and they can come in all different– they come in all different kind of colors and stuff. Very pretty birds with little, especially when they’re babies, they look like little baby owls. They’ve got like a beard. And they’re just super cute.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:44.289
I think they’re very regal.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:22:46.679
[Crosstalk] Puffy cheeks.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:46.679
We don’t have any right now. We’ve always had them. And in fact, that’s what my husband is picking up today. The most variety in the crowd are Easter Eggers because I wanted them again, because I missed that variety of eggs. We have all brown egg layers right now. But we also have the friendliest chickens right now I’ve ever had. And they’re called Red Stars. And they are nosy, but they’re loud. They are talkative. They have opinions. They will come right up to you and talk to you. And they have all sorts of different sounds. And it’s really funny because they are very entertaining.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:23:29.626
Yeah. And that’s a hybrid.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:32.614
Yes.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:23:32.614
So that’s a hybrid breed and they’re definitely guaranteed to get lots of eggs.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:40.137
Yes, we have 25. We started out with 28. We had a hawk who unalived three of them for us before we figured out that if we fed the crows every day at different times of day, so the crows would be around more often, now we don’t have a hawk problem anymore. The crows will sit out on my fence outside my office window and yell like, “Hey, you didn’t bring me peanuts. Where are my [laughter] peanuts?” [laughter]

Dalia Monterroso: 00:24:11.526
Yeah. So–

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:12.416
But we get about 24 eggs a day.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:24:15.615
Oh, good for you. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:17.428
It’s amazing.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:24:18.672
Yeah. But just to finish up with this person’s question, bantams are– there’s some bantams that are going to be really friendly, like bantam Cochins, Silkies. Those are going to be really friendly, funny little chickens. And sometimes, bantams can be a little bit more flighty. But the Cochins and the Silkies– they’re not very flighty. They’re more like to-the-ground [laughter] birds and they can be super friendly, but any chicken– if you want them to be sweet, handle them from the time that they’re baby chicks. And sometimes, they’ll always be skittish, but–

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:00.493
So the next question–?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:01.014
–have some–

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:01.637
–that I have for you is what’s your personal–?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:03.327
–growth.

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:03.327
–favorite breed?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:06.192
Oh, this is so hard. I tell–

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:07.144
Oh, dear.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:07.716
All my chickens–

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:07.980
Is it hard?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:09.173
Yeah [laughter]. I tell all my chickens I love them equally. I think probably Old English game bantams. They’re itty-bitty tiny.

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:19.988
They’re tiny.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:21.018
Yeah. And–

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:21.906
I’ve only seen them in pictures. I’ve never actually seen one live.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:26.171
Yeah, and I love naked neck chickens [laughter], like anything with a naked neck. I have naked dogs. I have hairless dogs. And I don’t know what it is, but– [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:40.865
They definitely are–

Dalia Monterroso: 00:25:41.478
–They show their own–

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:42.060
–very odd looking. And I will say we’ve only had one. The second year that we had chickens, a friend of a friend said– she had to move. She had half a dozen chickens. Would we be willing to take them off her hands? And of course, we said yes. So there were two naked necks and a bantam and three other birds that I now don’t remember. But we inherited these chickens and they were here with us for years. It was really fun.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:26:10.823
They are so funny. I think I can just relate to them being funny-looking. And [laughter] to me, they’re beautiful. I don’t know [laughter], just love it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:24.474
Well, okay. So we had some really terrific questions. And I’d love to turn my attention a little bit to those questions so I don’t forget them. So how much time does it take to care for chickens? And I know I asked you this before we began our conversation today. I know that also, you had some qualifiers there, so I’ll let you go into those.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:26:48.352
Yeah. I mean, it really depends. It depends on your setup. It obviously depends on how many chickens you have. There are certain things that you can do every day that just don’t take that much time that will in the long run help you kind of lower the amount of time that you have to be cleaning and taking care of things and give you more time to just enjoy them. So if you can get out there and scrape the roosts every day. So get yourself like a paint scraper or like a putty knife or something. Get the poop off of the roosts. If there’s any poop in the nesting boxes, get that out. You can even keep a little duster like a Swiffer or like some kind of– like a wool duster or whatever and dust the coop down. And if you do that every day, or every other day, or even three times a week, or whatever, you’re going to have less of a job to do when it comes time for you to really get in there and deep clean. And that should only– really only take like five minutes. Now, a lot of that depends on the user-friendliness of your coop. So if you are just getting into it, you really want to look for a coop that is easy for you. You have access to everything easily. You don’t have to do a lot of bending over. It’s built in a way to make things easier for you. So one thing that will really, really help is if your coop has what’s called a poop tray, so basically under the roosts. If it’s a smaller coop, sometimes there’s a tray that you can just pull out of the back of it. And you can go and just dump that right into your compost pile. A bigger coop, sometimes they’ll have the poop trays built in, or if you can do that, if you find plans, that is like half your battle right there because most of the pooping the chickens do is at night.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:02.477
Correct. Yes. [laughter]

Dalia Monterroso: 00:29:04.180
Yeah, and they do a lot of pooping. And then user-friendly feeders. If you can get a system that you don’t have to check every single day. You want to make sure that it’s rodent-proof and rat-proof. You really don’t want rodents to have access to your feed every night because that will cause an infestation. And then waterers that are easy to deal with to clean out. And that will lower the time that you have to take care of them. I think in general, it’s less time than what most people think.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:44.227
So what kind of bedding do you use in your coop? It depends.
Dalia Monterroso: 00:29:48.086
Right now I’m switching back to hemp bedding, which is really the best. I mean, hemp bedding is the best.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:57.142
Really?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:29:57.956
It’s lower dust. It smells great. It’s really absorbent. It breaks down really well. There is one huge drawback, and that is it’s expensive. Hemp bedding is expensive. But if you’re doing deep litter, which a lot of people will do deep litter– and if you don’t know what that is, you should look up what it is. It sounds completely crazy, but what you’re actually doing is creating a composting system inside your coop. And if you do it right, it can actually be really healthy for the chickens. And it’s hard to do it wrong. So if you’re doing deep litter, hemp is great for deep litter and it won’t cost that much because you have the initial investment of buying the hemp, but then it lasts a long time.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:54.463
Are all 46 of your chickens in the same coop?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:30:58.536
Right now I have some little chickens that are living in an Eglu Cube. I have about eight little chickens that are living in there, and they’re tiny little chickens. And they just are living in there because I put them in there to integrate them with the bigger flock. But at some point, I will lock them out of there because I really do like all my chickens to live in the same spot. And then the ducks also live with the chickens. Now, my coop is huge. It’s huge. I will tell people, “Don’t look at my–” even the cube, because the cube is– it’s expensive. It’s more expensive than a lot of people can afford. Certainly, my big coop is way more expensive than a lot of people can afford. But I don’t have skills like to build things. And a lot of people do have that. I didn’t have time to repurpose materials, which is absolutely a possibility for you. So I don’t want people to look at my setup and say to themselves, “Oh my gosh, I can’t afford that. This is my livelihood. This is Chickenlandia.” So the money that I make, it goes into my chicken yard. And I also get a lot of stuff for free. Most people don’t have that situation, but you absolutely do not have to have a lot of money to have chickens.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:28.763
Our original chicken house was a dog– it was a dog-breeding kennel. So it had multiple runs.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:32:40.096
There you go, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:41.008
Then you can convert that run into one run and converted the interior from kennels into a chicken house. And we do use deep bedding. So that is the way that we choose to go. But I’m laughing, thinking about, “Now we’re going to have to go back.” We have a second coop where it hasn’t been used in a year. We called that the Turkey Taj Mahal. We did turkeys for two years, but no, thank you. They’re entirely different than chicken. [laughter] And I’ll just leave it like that because there’s somebody in our audience who’s going to say, “But I love my turkeys.”

Dalia Monterroso: 00:33:23.169
Turkeys are so sweet. But not a brain cell in the head. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:28.634
Oh, I asked my head. So here’s my–

Dalia Monterroso: 00:33:31.019
I love turkey.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:31.990
The first year that we did turkeys, we got these turkeys that grew. I’m like, “What did you get? Three Mile Island turkeys.” They were enormous. We harvested them eight weeks early, and they were 22, 26, and 28 pounds. They were enormous. So I said to my husband the next year, “Could you maybe find something that grows to maturity that’s not–

Dalia Monterroso: 00:33:57.180
A heritage.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:58.659
–not a pterodactyl.” And he said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” But he didn’t quite read the whole description. So what he got was show turkeys. He got royal palm turkeys.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:34:12.531
Oh, beautiful.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:13.528
And they were just beautiful. But they don’t ever grow. I mean, you’re not going to harvest a royal palm turkey. Because there’s no meat on their bones. They’re just a lot of feathers and no meat.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:34:30.615
Yeah, I love turkeys. I absolutely love them. They’re so personable and sweet. But yeah, when they’re babies, they’re a little bit more fragile than baby chicks.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:46.951
So I have another question for you. And this is actually, you had said something about integrating your little ones with your big ones. And this is along those lines. It says, what is the best way to integrate chicks into the adult flock? We hatched our own chicks with a broody hen and she is now with the adults while we wait for the chicks to get big enough.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:35:07.590
So if you have baby chicks that were not raised with a mother hen within an adult flock, because you can do that. And in that situation, when the mother hand starts to reject the babies, the flock is so used to the babies and they recognize those babies as members of the flock. They will scold those babies, but they won’t hurt them. They won’t kill them. I should say, never say never. But usually, it is so much easier to integrate them with a flock if they’ve grown up with the flock. Because if you went to Kauai and you were walking down the street and there’s all these chickens, you’re going to see Mother Hen with baby chicks and she’s with a flock. So that is part of their dynamics. They understand that there’s baby chicks. And if any older chickens come up to the baby chicks and try to mess with them or whatever, Mama Hen is going to say, “No, we don’t do that here. Leave my babies alone,” unless she’s super low on the pecking order. If you have a hen that’s raising baby chicks, that’s very, very low on the pecking order, you could consider keeping them separate from the flock. Or if you have an especially aggressive flock– every flock has a different personality. So there’s always exceptions to the rule, but usually you can observe them for a few days. You have them separate; you’ve got mother hen with baby chicks. If the flock is pretty much ignoring the babies, and mother hen is protecting the babies well, you can have them all together. And that’s going to make your job so much easier because they’re going to integrate really well with the adults, okay? If, for whatever reason, you have your baby chicks separate from your adult flock, okay? At eight weeks, you can put them outside, but they need to be in a separate area but able to see the flock, so separate, but seeing. So let’s say you have your chicken yard, and within that yard, you’ve got a smaller run. Your baby chicks can go in that run, okay?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:37:29.303
And then they will live in there and they’re outside, and you can bring them in at night or put them– they can have their little space within that run to sleep in at night. But the flock is getting used to them, okay? You never want to, if they’re fully feathered, whatever. You never, ever want to just throw very young chickens in with a big old batch of adult cranky lady hens, okay? They can kill the babies. So yeah, it depends on the personality of your flock, okay? The younger the baby chicks are, the more submissive they will be. You want them to get a little bit of confidence. If they’re the same size, it’s standard to standards, usually at about 12 weeks is when you can open that door and let them intermingle with the flock, okay? But it depends. You may be able to do it a little bit before that. You might have to wait longer. It depends on the personality of your flock. So you need to be out there and kind of looking at them and getting a feel for how they are with each other. If you’re putting little bantams in with adult hens or a mixed flock that’s got big chickens in it, those little bantams really need to be almost adults. An adult bantam hen is going to be a lot more assertive and be able to hold their own. And so it won’t matter as much the size. But if they’re little, if they’re both little and submissive, they could be in danger when you put them in with a bigger flock. So I do have a video on my YouTube channel where I show all of this. It’s a whole process that I show. And for a lot of people, it’s easier to see the process. And I can’t remember what it’s called.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:33.968
So I’m just going to put a plug in here for your YouTube channel because it’s fascinating and it’s amazing. And it will be included in the show notes because I think it’s wonderful for parents to be able to sort of fit themselves in the frame. And your videos are so engaging. The next question actually leads into that a little bit. It says, what resources are available to make getting, raising, and caring for chicks and chickens an integral part of home education? And so the first resource, I’m going plug your book here, because this is amazing. This was so much fun to read. And by the way, if you can’t figure out Dalia’s sense of humor from the cover of this book, [laughter] I need to have a talk with you because it was just so much fun. In fact, when I first read this, I was on a plane to Missouri, and I ended up not getting to read as much of it as I wanted to – this was all the way back in March – because the lady sitting next to me was like, “Well, what about this? And what about this?” And by the time we were done, we had been– we were comparing things in here that you have written about. It was just a blast. It’s a perfect book for a homeschool resource. So it’s called Let’s All Keep Chickens, and it’s amazing.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:40:52.751
Yes. So yeah, I have the book. The way that I kind of got into the homeschooling circuit, I guess, is that– so I have an online course and you can find it on my website, it’s welcometochickenlandia.com. You can find a link to that information. And I created the course for people that wanted to get started with chickens. It’s like, “Okay, I’m going to create this online course.” And then I started getting these messages from homeschoolers, and they’re like, “We’re using your course in our homeschool program.” And I was getting a lot of them. And I was like, “Oh, okay, so people are using my course in their homeschooling program,” which actually was like, “This makes sense.” And that’s when I started doing the homeschooling podcast and stuff like that because I realized there’s this whole demographic out there that can know about this course and take it. So absolutely, my book it’s got everything in it. If you’re looking for something that’s more interactive, you could do the course that has videos and quizzes and stuff. And you can do– it’s all organized and you can ask me questions directly and you can do it at your own time. So I think for a lot of homeschoolers like using that, I think over probably 12 kids can do it on their own, depending on their learning capacity. But then below that, probably you need some– need to kind of help them through it. And then, of course, there’s my YouTube channel, which is absolutely free. The thing about the YouTube channel is it’s not organized. There’s all kinds of videos, there’s different types of videos, there’s more kind of vloggy-style stuff. There’s videos that are more for advanced chicken-keeping and there’s beginner videos. So I think what people like about the course is that it’s all just organized and you have access to it. For as long as the course is online, you will be able to get in. And then you get a little certificate at the end. So there’s that too.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:17.214
Which I think is terrific. And I have to confess, we were well down the road into chicken keeping when I heard about your course. But if I was looking to begin the life of a chicken tender – you’ll forgive the pun – I would definitely engage in the course because I think if just from what I’ve read in the book, the way you’ve organized this and you’ve made it so engaging and readable and fun, it would be an easy place to go to get good information. There’s a question I want to ask you, and this is a little bit hard, but this happens when you have chickens that are pets and friends. And how do you deal with the loss of a chicken? How do you carry that conversation with your children? I know how I would, but I’d really love your insight into what happens when a hawk loves your chicken more than you do.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:44:15.756
Yes, yes. Everybody loves chicken. Everybody loves chicken.

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:18.310
Everybody loves chicken. [laughter]

Dalia Monterroso: 00:44:21.956
I mean, I would certainly bring in whatever philosophy you have in your family, bring that into the conversation. It’s certainly an opportunity to discuss that, to discuss how your family views death. The one thing that I like to focus on– and it’s funny because I get messages from people all the time, and they’re devastated because of something that happened to a chicken. And what I will say to them is that chicken had a better life than most chickens in the world.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:02.366
That’s true.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:45:03.504
Most chickens in the world, they can’t even move. And your chicken got to scratch the earth, got to peck for bugs, got to feel the sun on its back, had an experience that wherever it goes, the next place it goes, it gets to carry that experience and that love with them into the next place. And that is what I say when it happens to me. I’m like, I feel guilty. That’s kind of my default, is what could I have done differently? But I try to remind myself– and really, it’s actually my viewers and followers that will say, “Okay, Dalia, when this happened to me, this is what you told me.” And I’m like, okay, okay, okay. But.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:59.728
Do all your chickens have names?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:46:01.925
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I forget them, and some of them stand out more than others. But yeah, they all have names. And I mean, with production breeds especially, they’re not bred for resilience. And this is really what I want everybody to remember. They are bred to lay a crazy amount of eggs for their first year of life. And usually what happens with production breeds that makes them die before their time is that they have complications having to do with that overactive, reproductive system. So you might even have a vet tell you, oh, well, you fed them too much and they had fatty liver. That, really what that has to do with is, is there overactive ovaries, and it’s causing this kind of metabolic syndrome that they can get. I mean, of course, if you’re giving them donuts and hamburgers and stuff, there’s that, okay? But a lot of the science that even veterinarians will have at their disposal comes through factory farms. So in factory farms, it really is a concern that they don’t even get to move, and they’re just eating, eating, eating. That’s like all they have to do. And so, yes, they get these fatty livers because they can’t move. And then on top of that, there are these production breeds– in a natural setting where your chicken has enough exercise, they’re getting good nutrition, balanced nutrition, they’ve got a good life, they’re not stressed out, it’s usually nothing that you did. It really isn’t.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:55.998
Sometimes they reach the end of their lives and we’re not ready for them to go, and they go anyway. And that’s just hard. It really is. Yeah.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:48:04.318
And as hard as it is for kids, it’s an opportunity for them to have that experience and process through that experience. Because a lot of us, certainly from my generation, we didn’t deal with death until we lost our– a lot of it, a lot of times it’s until we lose one of our parents, right? And then it’s so shocking. The loss and the finality of it is so shocking that it’s harder than it could have been if we had had an opportunity to experience that finality in kind of a gentler way, to kind of ease into that reality.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:50.036
That year that we kept chickens, we had a random dog from down the road come into our run. And he really wasn’t vicious. He just played them all to death. And it was really–

Dalia Monterroso: 00:49:08.154
Yeah, and then they’re like– and then they’re like, oh, I really felt like I needed to do that, but now I don’t know what has happened and they’re whining.

Gretchen Roe: 00:49:14.232
And he was just sitting there shaking, like I know I did something wrong. It was hard. It was awful. But it was also an opportunity to talk to our boys about keep accounts short. No one’s promised tomorrow. Man, I cried. I particularly cried over losing my rooster because he was just– he would follow you around and he was just that social kind of– we’ve never quite had a rooster who is that social again. And despite the fact that we’ll raise them by hand, our current rooster was the bonus in the box from last year when they arrived. And he’s hilarious, but he’s not the brightest crayon in the box either. Just not to be disrespectful or anything, but he’s kind of special. He’ll get himself shut in the coop because he’ll hop out of the yard and go around to the front of the coop. And then he can’t figure out how–

Dalia Monterroso: 00:50:20.800
I know. I know.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:21.842
The coop is where we keep all the feed and everything. And he’s like–

Dalia Monterroso: 00:50:24.340
We did this yesterday.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:25.216
–how am I going to kind of get out?
Dalia Monterroso: 00:50:28.278
Yeah, I had one. His name was Bubble Yum. He went to go live with a friend of mine, but every night he couldn’t figure out how to get in the coop. It’s like you have done this from the time you were a baby chick. You cannot figure out how to get into the coop.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:45.409
Sometimes you kind of wonder. Actually, we have a good question here. So how do you deal with a mean rooster?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:50:53.857
Well, the first thing I like to say is– this is another reason why you’ve got to have a contingency plan. Even if you can have roosters where you are, there are a few things to consider. Number one, you might have too many roosters for the amount of hens you have. So if you can have–

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:19.226
We had talked about this before the session began. Is there an ideal rooster to hen ratio?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:51:25.878
I would say 8 to 10 hens per rooster, but it depends on the rooster and it depends on the hens, okay? Because if you have a flock of really submissive hens, they can get really, really stressed out. If you have hens that are like– who is this? You’re like, not now. Then they’ll be more able to handle it. But yeah, it depends. And then sometimes a rooster can really favor one hen and put her through the wringer. So we don’t want that and for those reasons, you need to have a contingency plan. Now, I don’t like to think of roosters as mean. I understand why people say that. But in their mind, they’re like, “We’re doing our job. We’re protecting our hands.” And honestly, the mean roosters, unless they’re like really awful and being awful to the hens, because sometimes they can be. But if they’re very protective, they’re the ones that are going to protect your chickens from a predator attack. And they will lay down their lives for that. So that’s something to remember. That being said, a full-sized rooster that attacks a person, certainly if that person is small, like a kid, they can really hurt somebody, right? So I will tell people, “It’s not a joke. I hate seeing those videos of little kids being chased.” You don’t know how many adults I have talked to who to this day are afraid of chickens. Because an adult allowed them to get chased by a rooster and they laughed and took out their phone and video of it. It’s like, “Don’t do that.” So you have some options. Make sure that it’s humane. If you’re going to eat him, honor him. The other thing is you can find somebody to rehome to. There are people in this world who will take whatever, your vegan friend, they take whatever. I had a lady who I swear she was like some kind of rooster whisperer. She could take any rooster and make them docile. I have no idea how she did that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:02.792
That’s amazing. We had a rooster once upon a time that hated my rain boots. He was only aggressive if I wore my rain boots in the chicken– he hated them.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:54:14.083
Well, they were obviously a threat.

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:16.645
They were an entirely– it was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I showed up in my rain boots, on a rainy day like today, he was like, “Oh, no, I’m not having this.”

Dalia Monterroso: 00:54:27.902
Not in my cube.

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:28.761
At the time, he was just as nasty as he could be.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:54:33.602
Yeah. So, I mean, there’s a lot of theories where people are like– they’ll pick them up and walk around with them. They’ll pick them up and like turn them backwards and walk around with them. Sometimes that work. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they’ll calm down after the first year and be more manageable because their hormones have kind of calmed down a little bit. If they’re not a danger to you, you can go in and assert yourself. You can go in with a broom not to hit the rooster, because that’ll probably make him worse, but to direct him out of the way. Because you don’t want him to attack you. You don’t want him to get to you and make you run away, because that just–

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:22.024
Reinforces and he said he’s in charge. That’s very true.

Dalia Monterroso: 00:55:26.228
Yeah. So try and pick him up or scoot him out of the way. Just go in there with a lot of confidence. I had a little rooster. His name was Philippe. He attacked me every single day of his life. He was also chronically ill. I cared for him. I spent money on him, all this stuff. And then at the end of his life, he stopped attacking me and I knew that it was his last days. He was a little guy. So it wasn’t that big of a deal. But oh man, I cried when he died.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:02.153
Oh, that’s it’s so hard. It’s hard. We love these things. And, man, sometimes they just don’t live long enough either. It’s the ones that you’re really attached to that you really want to spend time with. So do your chickens come in your house?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:56:24.686
Oh, no. I’ve got dogs that are– first of all, I’ve got a kid and an adult with allergies and asthma, okay? So we have to be very careful. But my dogs do not–

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:39.452
So your dogs are not chicken lovers?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:56:42.390
They cannot meet. They love chicken.
Gretchen Roe: 00:56:47.133

It’s funny. I have three dogs and two of them love the chickens, walk amongst the chickens, don’t care. And the third one is like, “That’s lunch with feathers.” And it’s it’s hard. And I see in chicken forums where people will say, “How do I teach my dog to leave my chickens alone?” And I’m like, “What? Sometimes you can do that [crosstalk].”
Dalia Monterroso: 00:57:15.194
Yeah, it really depends. I mean I’m sure there’s– like with the proper training, you can do it. But if they ever have attacked the chickens, I would never trust that dog again alone with the chickens. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have them. I mean I have them together. I just have to be diligent and keep them separate. And it’s just the dogs’ instincts. I have rescues, so it’s a lot harder for me to train them at this point. But, yeah, if you can work– certainly, working with a dog from puppy would be the easiest.

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:56.476

Yes. Yeah. It’s interesting because one of mine was a puppy raised around the chickens. He’s a pug. He thinks he’s the farm dog. So he thinks he’s large and in charge. And he’ll herd the chickens. If I say, “Luigi, go make those chickens get out from under that bush,” he’ll go chase them out from under the bush. And then I’ll say, “Come back here,” and he’s like, “Okay, I did my job.” And my other dog, “I just loved the chickens.” He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. So he just loves the chickens. He just wants to go sit around the chickens. My third dog definitely thinks they’re lunch on wheels. I can’t believe we’re at the top of the hour. This conversation has been so much fun and it’s gone so fast. What closing words would you have for our listeners who are now energized with your love to begin a journey? What’s the first thing they need to do? What closing advice would you give them?

Dalia Monterroso: 00:58:57.026
Yes. I would tell them, “As your foundation, I want you to remember that human beings have been keeping chickens for thousands of years.” This is within us. It is a natural experience for us to have. We’re not reinventing the wheel. Here in the Western world, we have a way of kind of complicating things. But if you look at the whole world, you will find people and their chickens everywhere from every– from the poorest people to the richest people, we’re all able to do it. So remember that and remember that chickens are very resilient. In general, they don’t need a lot. So just give them some food, give them water, give them shelter, and enjoy them. And always feel like you’re doing something good, not just you’re doing something good for yourself, you’re doing something good for the community and something good, really good for the world, so, yeah, do it.

Gretchen Roe: 01:00:09.168
I thank you so much for this time. This has been an amazing conversation. And I hope Dalia’s love for chickens has come through to all of you because it definitely was evident to me in our first conversation. And then I found my way to her YouTube channel and had a blast. So I encourage you to go check that out. All of those resources will be– including a connection to her course materials will be in our show notes when you review those this week. Thank you so much for this time. It’s been amazing.

Dalia Monterroso: 01:00:42.430
Thank you so much for having me. And thank you to the participants. All the questions were really great.

Gretchen Roe: 01:00:47.180
They were terrific questions. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks so much for joining us today. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really liked it. Take care, and we’ll look forward to coming into your living rooms again soon.

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