Tend your chickens

The idea of homesteading or farmsteading is suddenly very chic. I personally blame bored housewives who were cooped up in 2020. One of the first things that every homesteader should get is a flock of chickens; 5 or 6 hens take up very little space (they really are a lot smaller than you think they are), and you’ll get up to half a dozen eggs a day without a whole lot of effort.

Chickens are a gateway drug to all kinds of other farmsteading activities. They are cheap, easy to find, easy to grow, and they poop out delicious, fresh eggs. Also, they poop a ton of actual poop, so make sure you have some garden beds for all of that free fertilizer.

What does this have to do with running a solo practice business? Not much, to be honest. But maybe a little more than you’d think. Raising chickens seems to go on autopilot. They strut around, making their goofy little noises, eating bugs and worms (and mice and snakes). You get a little complacent, comfortably watching them do their thing. Then you find a couple of dead chickens. Then, the next day, a couple more.

In three days, half of your flock got wiped out by Coccidiosis. You only needed to add some Corid to their water and it would have gone away on its own, but you thought it was an anomaly, so you didn’t.

Or that time you decided to hedge your bets that the flock would be okay free-ranging over the weekend while you camped at the lake because you hadn’t seen any signs of predators…only to come back to 22 little piles of feathers.

So, I guess the business-relevant point is this: you can feel like everything is going great with your chickens, your gardens, and your business. But if you aren’t paying attention, you can get blindsided in a second.

Mind your crops, mind your flocks, and mind your business, else they are liable to go sideways when you think things are going just fine.

And yes, I am trying to find some chicken-related affiliates to work with 😎