A whole new world: Mechanicsville family embraces poultry farming

Eleven-year-old Brighton Oberbreckling stands in the backyard of his Mechanicsville home, watching the 40-some chickens and roosters run around, still excited to have been just let out of the coop for the day. Three ducks take off on their own, as if wanting to distance themselves from the chicken populace.

Brighton points to a couple of the chickens as they chase each other around the yard, then singles out a bird he took to the Cedar County Fair this year and won a ribbon. He's a bit stunned when he's reminded that all of this started with him, takes a minute, then offers what he can recall from getting the first bird when he was just 4.

'I just wanted another pet,' he said. The family had dogs and cats, but he wanted something different. For whatever reason, he wanted a duck.

'Brighton was obsessed with ducks,' said his mom, Marcy Oberbreckling. 'He just kept talking about wanting a duck. I don't know what it was.'

As fate would have it, one day during a visit to the pediatrician the doctor asked if they knew anyone who would be interested in a duck.

'Our doctor's sister had a duck that was getting bullied by the other ducks, so we took it,' Brighton remembers.

That duck, Hagrid, set in motion a turn of events that would take the Oberbreckling family into a world of chickens and roosters and eggs and coops, of learning more about chickens than Marcy maybe ever really wanted to know, and to becoming active members of the Eastern Iowa Poultry Association.

Marcy now is helping to organize and promote the annual Eastern Iowa Poultry Show, set for Nov. 26 and Nov. 27 at Sharpless Auction Complex in rural Iowa City.

'We had the one duck, and then winter was coming and we didn't want it to be alone so we went and got a drake (male duck),' Marcy said.

That spring, she said, they went to Theisen's — a farm and home store that often sells newborn chicks. 'On a whim,' she said, they came home with four chickens.

'That's how it all started, and it's just blossomed from there,' she said.

Marcy, husband Andrew, Brighton and his sister Emme, 6, are all active in the care of their brood.

'Part of the reason that we started with the chickens — I grew up in the city, so we had dogs and cats, but now we live in a rural community, so I wanted my kids to be able to relate to their peers that live in a rural farming community,' Marcy said. 'Also, I just think it's good for them, and it has been.'

'My husband is not crazy about the chickens, but it does bring us together,' she said. 'We have to clean the coop, and my son can't do a lot of that because he has really bad allergies, but he can give them water and give them food and help in other ways.'

Marcy started learning all she could about chickens. She was working as a veterinary assistant at the time and would question the doctors about information. She scoured the internet.

The she met Trish Duffel.

'I wanted some buckeyes at the time and didn't have any, and another friend put me in touch with Trish,' Marcy said. 'Trish was really my first mentor. She asked me to help with the first show I went to in 2013 and I helped with the junior stuff. That's when I got really introduced to a bunch of different breeds and to the Eastern Iowa Poultry Association.'

Now, she said, the chickens — and the shows — are part of their lives.

'I'm a chicken person, and proud of that,' she said, 'and the kids are, too. Brighton works with the chickens and Emme calls herself the chicken tame — there are some birds that none of us can, but she can.'

The birds aren't just good for the kids, Marcy said. They're good for all of them.

'They are part of our life. I have anxiety, and a lot of times I don't want to get out of the house, I don't want to get up and do anything, but because they have to go out, they're a dependent animal, I have to get out of the house to take care of them — and I'm always happier when I'm out there.'

IF YOU GO

What: Eastern Iowa Poultry Association Poultry Show

Where: Sharpless Auction Complex, 5049 County Road F44, Iowa City

When: Saturday, Nov. 26 and Sunday, Nov. 27

Website: www.eipa.club/