By Katherine Adams
Amanda Blair has always had a heart for birds. Like many people, she’s got bird feeders and watches them through a camera feed. But in 2021, Blair, who is a Trauma Program manager and trauma-certified registered nurse at UTMB in League City, decided to take her love for fowl one step further. She bought a few chickens when she purchased a home on five acres and an old chicken coop in Santa Fe.
Now, the “mother” of 24 chickens, Blair says she doesn’t mind being known as the “crazy chicken lady.”
“I had always wanted farm animals,” Blair said. “My new place in Santa Fe came with a chicken coop but no chickens. I thought chickens would be easy since I already had the coop. It just needed some work, so I redid the coop and started out with a few chickens.”
After doing a lot of research about raising chickens and speaking to others who were raising free-range chickens on their properties as well, she learned plenty of new things about how it all was going to work.
“If you talk to anyone with chickens, they’ll tell you about ‘chicken math,’” Blair said. “You don’t ever just buy one or two chickens. You can tell yourself that you will, but that will not happen. No one only has a couple of chickens.
“It’s kind of like going to Target and you think you’re going to buy one thing but you buy 20 things,” she added. “I started at the end of 2022 with five, and by mid-2024, I had 25. Anyone with chickens will tell you about it.”
Blair bought her first chickens at a place in San Leon, but the remainder are from all over. She had a friend whose chickens needed care, so she adopted them and got three more from another friend’s children who were no longer interested in raising chickens.
“Yes, I’m a chicken adopter,” she said.
Raising chickens comes with its share of funny stories. One of Blair’s adopted hens laid eggs on a trampoline, for example.
The chickens are free to roam about on an acre of land, not confined in a coop. Blair had a trampoline that had been damaged in a storm, which she put it in her carport so her daughter wouldn’t try to jump on it.
“One night, one of my hens was missing,” she said. “I had no idea she was laying eggs on that trampoline. But for people who own chickens, especially free-range chickens, this is not weird. Free range chickens hide their eggs, especially if they’re ‘broody.’”
A broody hen, Blair explained, is one who’s ready to hatch her eggs. Their body temperatures rise, and they pluck out the feathers on their abdomens so they can sit on their eggs for about 21 days. She added that they can get a little mean, protecting their eggs by growling or hissing.
“I thought a hawk had taken this hen,” she continued. “I finally took a flashlight and found her outside on the trampoline. She knew I would take her eggs, so she bit me.”
Blair thought it best to leave the egg with the mama, so she didn’t know how many there were until they hatched.
“Little did I know that hen was sitting on 15 eggs,” she said. “Three weeks later, I didn’t think they’d all hatch. There’s only about a 70% hatch rate. But this hen shot for gold and hatched all 15 them.”
Blair brought the chicks indoors into her home office for eight weeks, feeding and watering them, keeping them warm and making sure they had bedding and perches.
There was plenty of poop, lots of cleaning and lots of noise. Thankfully, Blair said, chicks do sleep at night because they cannot see in the dark—so they stay where they are and go to sleep.
“I had to take them from her because they were on that trampoline,” she said. “I had 10 other chickens, and I was worried they’d attack the babies. Having to separate them worried me, so I decided to raise them myself.”
Blair kept almost all the baby chicks, but she gave away the roosters because the recommendation is to have one rooster to 10 hens—and she already had five roosters. “The chicks are almost a year old now, and when they go broody, I take their eggs from them,” she said. “I get about a dozen and a half eggs a day. I give them away.
“People think that it’s cheaper to have chickens and have your own eggs, but that’s not true,” she cautioned. “Chickens are expensive, and they do require a lot of care.”
But since her job is stressful, Blair enjoys coming home to her feathered brood, who run up to her like dogs meeting her at the door when she pulls up in the evenings. She finds them peaceful and very funny, and she is continually entertained by their noises and antics.
“They always make me laugh on a bad day,” she said. “I could have picked a lot of other animals, but I love chickens because they don’t care and they have no judgement.
“One of my roosters is actually special needs—he’s got neurological problems, but I’m giving him his best life. He does not walk well, but he can eat and drink and live, so I’m there for him. He can do what he needs to do with the hens but not very well. But if another rooster messes with the hens, he’ll blow up and be very protective.”
Blair’s nursing skills have come into play more than once with her brood of chickens. She’s doctored chickens with heatstroke and hurt legs and administered antibiotics. Some have died, despite trying everything possible to save them.
“So, I guess I’m also a chicken vet now,” she said. “I had one chicken with heatstroke, and I sat with her for hours in my bathtub filled with cool water, feeding her watermelon juice and electrolytes from a syringe,” she said. “I had a chicken ICU there for a while. Hurt chickens need to be separated from the others because they’ll harm each other.”
She saved the chicken, who is now clucking and pecking away with the others in her yard.
But despite the never-ending daily care and work— often in triple-digit heat—Blair said it’s completely worth it.
"They are my babies. My daughter has given all the roosters names,” she went on. “One rooster fooled me into thinking he was a hen. I named her Ava at first, and then later found out he was a rooster, but I couldn’t call him anything else. He is still Ava. Then, there’s Rufus, Robbie and my special needs rooster, Beau.”
There’s a sign over her chicken coop that says, “This Area is Monitored by a Crazy Chicken Lady.” She bought the sign herself.
“I’m fine with it. My friends laugh at me, but they are not surprised I would sit in the bathtub with a chicken,” she said. “I’m also an ER nurse. We’re all a little crazy!
“But for anyone else thinking about getting chickens, I’d say, it’s a lot of work, but it’s rewarding,” she said. “They are a lot of fun, and don’t be discouraged about the roosters. They’re fierce protectors. And always prepare for chicken math. You’ll definitely enjoy them, but you’ll always start out thinking you’ll have just a few. You won’t."
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