The study and use of herbal medicine for humans and animals is a well-documented and time-tested practice that predates Western medicine by centuries.  Oregano is one of the most powerful natural antibiotics ever studied and has been found to be superior to many of the currently used antibiotics. The oil is more potent than the fresh or dried herb, but in any form, its hard to deny the power of oregano.  

 
Why not grow some herbs for your chickens. (Oregano, thyme, lavender and mint are especially beneficial as well as fragrant.)  Toss the fresh leaves into your coop and nesting box and let your chickens decide.  They'll eat some of the herbs, lay their eggs on some and ignore some, letting those dry and scent the coop.  It's a win-win for you and for your chickens.

  

“Chickens have become the new black,” I often joke with the people in my chicken workshops. What I mean by that is that having backyard chickens has, all of the sudden, become very trendy. It seems that everyone is interested in getting a flock started.

While I applaud the desire to raise clean unadulterated food (eggs and meat), I want the students in my classes to understand the benefits of chickens, I also want them to clearly understand the often not so attractive side of having chickens.

Chickens need daily care – oh sure, it’s not much care once they become old enough to live in a hen house but they do require fresh water, and food every day.  And don’t forget mucking. That hen house will need to be mucked on a regular basis. It’s not the most glamorous job but it has to be done.

Eggs need to be collected – You’ll need to check for eggs throughout the day.  An egg left in the nest can be an egg that gets pecked and as many of us chicken owners know, once an egg-eater, almost always an egg-eater. Even though egg production goes down in the winter, the hens will still lay. An egg not gathered in freezing weather will frequently burst turning it into nothing more than a waste.

Chickens poop – A lot. Many chickens will poop every 30 to 40 minutes. I’ve also seen estimates that a flock of 3 chickens can create up to 5 pounds of waste a week. That’s a lot of poop. Chickens will poop all over your yard, your driveway, and maybe even your porch. It’s one of those things that you’ll just have to accept and learn to deal with.

Chickens curtail vacation plans -  Although it doesn’t take much work to care for an established flock, they still need to be released, fed, watered, have eggs collected, and be locked in their coop at night. Since we’ve gotten our chickens, our vacation plans have changed from overnight stays to local day trips with our kids. It is possible to get “chicken sitters” who will do a fine job but just know that a certain amount of vacation spontaneity disappears when you have a flock.

Chickens get sick – Chickens scratch in the dirt, they eat basically anything that is not nailed down.  As a result chickens can get sick and they can get parasites and bacterial infections. Chickens can also get injuries and have egg laying problems. You need to know how to monitor your flock by checking poop, chicken bums, and behavior. If a chicken is found to be ill, it is your obligation as the owner to do your best to help it. Sometimes this means medication and injury care, and sometimes it means making the decision to put the bird down.

Chickens die - There is a trend right now to name chickens and give chickens human characteristics (I’m guilty of it myself with some of my favorites.) The truth though is that chickens are livestock, they were never intended to be domestic pets. This past winter was particularly harsh and we ended up losing 4 from our flock. There was nothing we could do about it. One day they were alive and the next they weren’t.

Chickens also get eaten – And sometimes it’s not by the owner. If you are going to free-range your chickens, you are going to lose a few from predators.

Chickens (thankfully) also live – A well maintained chicken can live for a good 4 – 7 years.  This means that if you decide to get chickens, you’ll be involved in their care and management for some time. Raising chickens requires a long term commitment. Please don’t even consider getting them if you are one of those people who wants a flock simply because it’s a current trend.

You might not know what to do with your birds next year when llamas become the next big “thing.”

***

I write about lessons learned living with children and chickens in New Hampshire. You can follow our family's stories at my blog: Lessons Learned From the Flock.  

Now that the wheels have been set into motion with my self-reliant food plans, I am more confident that this can be a reality. My plans this year were to get chickens (both egg and meat) and a coop, couple butchering pigs, bees, large raised-bed vegetable garden, berry patch, mini-vinyard, gourd/melon garden, plant a wind-break, plant several fruit trees, and of course plant some pretty gardens. Phew. I'm exhausted from just talking about it :) Actually it is all so exciting to see how a 'homestead' can start developing and forming.

So far, I have started my seeds that need to start indoors including tomatoes, onions, peppers, marjoram, sage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and eggplant. In addition, started my petunias, cupids dart, ornamental blue grass, forget me nots, baby's breath, and marigolds. I have also received my welsummer, buff orphington, and rhode island red chickens. They are 3 weeks old now and feathering out! I plan to add some mature wheat maran chickens that are already laying to ramp up my production and provide for the two farmer's markets I plan to attend this year. Wheat marans are a french breed that lay a very dark, beautiful egg. Lastly, I have called and talked with several bee keepers about well, beekeeping and the equipment I will need. I have reserved one bee colony and one hive- but feel I am going to up that to two colonies. We LOVE honey and I have several people that have asked me for it when it comes available. After researching a bit on honey and the different tastes you can get, apparently basswood is highly sought after and I have several basswood trees on my propoerty. Woo hoo for me!

Now that things are moving forward on Modern Roots Homestead, the remaining important items for April include building my chicken coop out of free pallets (this includes getting a land-use permit), building my garden shed (again out of free pallets), getting my bees set up, fencing in and creating a 1.5 acre pasture, building a pig shelter, purchasing 2-3 piglets, making raised beds and getting them into my vegetable garden, tilling a new gourd/melon garden, and continuing to plant my indoor seeds. April is going to be busy... when this snow finally goes away.

For more details on plant & animal varieties, pictures, tutorial videos and all my other crazy in between visit modernroots.org and 'like' on facebook for recipes and updates at facebook.com/modernroots.org

Part 2 of our coop building adventure: 

The next weekend, it took the entire weekend to finish framing out the doorway and build the roof framing.  No matter how much I dislike my desk job, I’m really glad I don’t have to frame roofing for a living!  We also put in the linoleum flooring.  Now those who do that for a living have fancy equipment, but let me tell you, installing that flooring by hand is also not for the faint at heart!  We also installed half of the OSB roof decking.

During the week, we managed to get some work done a couple of evenings.  Monday’s attempts were hampered by 50 mph winds.  Work on the roof…no thanks.  By Wednesday night we had the rest of the OSB on the roof and OSB on two walls.  The third weekend, we got the rest of the osb on the walls and all the siding up.  The partition wall inside was framed and covered in hex cloth (chicken wire), the screen door was installed with a handle and a latch and the front door was installed.  The windows and ventilation openings were all covered in sturdy hardware cloth.  Finally, the coop our blog friend Wendy, from Unpaved Roads, dubbed the “chicken mansion” was at least completely roughed in and predator tight.  We piled in the wood shavings, set up their feeders and two new larger waterers.  I bought some galvanized shallow pans (like oil pans) and put a brick in the middle of them to help support the waterer, then covered them with hardware cloth.  (By the way, this has worked great to keep the coop dry with the ducks in there!  They are messy, messy, messy.)

 
Late in the afternoon, we were ready to move all the feathered kids in!  (The door was installed after this pic by the way.)  We transported them in their brooder boxes and of course they squawked about being picked up out of them.  Once loose in the coop, they all huddled in a far corner, squirming and vying for the spot farthest in the corner.  After seeing a picture of them like that, my father in law advised us to put some cans of food in those corners so that one of them didn’t get accidentally smothered by being trapped in the corner.  Finally they started to relax and mill about, checking out their new house.  The ducks were being a little bossy towards the chicks.  They had been in brooder boxes “next door” to each other, but hadn’t been in the same space for several weeks.  I reminded the ducks that while they were quite a bit larger now because they grow so quickly, soon they would all be close to the same size and the ducks would be FAR outnumbered.  They seem to have all settled in together.  And the ducks are less bossy now.  We can tell the ducks’ legs are getting stronger now that they have room to move around.  We can’t wait to let them out into the yard to rummage around.  We’re almost done with their enclosed yard, but we’re thinking of sectioning off a smaller area around the coop for their first forays outside.  The ducks are getting their feathers.  We took them a shallow tote with about an inch of water and filled it with chopped fresh spinach.  Boy howdy…you don’t want to get in the way of that!  They had a glorious time eating the spinach and splashing in the water for the first time.

 
Still lots of work to do.  We need to build their roosts (which will have a poop "deck" below them), nest boxes, a little more work on the door, some shelving for the storage area, the permanent roof, paint the outside, and a permanent bird entrance door. But it's getting there.  They really needed the extra space - especially the ducks - and they seem to have grown super fast since they moved in. 

Until next time, worms rock and bees rule.

Visit us at www.facebook.com/KCFarms or www.pasturedeficitdisorder.com 

In my last post, I shared the story of building the little "tractor" coop for Bob, our first chicken (who also happens to be our first rooster).  Well in February, we decided to get Bob's extended family going.  We got twelve baby chicks - six production reds, three plymouth barred rocks and three golden laced wyandottes.  Oh... and three cayuga ducklings!

That next weekend, we embarked on our endeavor to build our permanent chicken coop for all our “little tinys” that were living in brooder boxes (aka large totes) in our extra bedroom.  With twelve chicks in one brooder and three ducklings in another, they were going to get big fast.  In fact, in a few short weeks, the ducks had just plain outgrown their brooder box and were about to start bumping their heads on their “ceiling”.  Plus, they didn’t get to move around very much because there just wasn’t enough room for them to do some little duckling calisthenics.  We were worried about their little legs not getting very strong.  Not to mention that every single thing in the extra bedroom was coated with a thick layer of dust.  Ugh!

We had a three day weekend and were gung-ho to get started.  Oh, but first we had to take two cats and two dogs to the vet for a scheduled appointment.  God bless Dr. Dana for having Saturday appointments.  But there went the morning.  When we got our three-ring circus back home, we borrowed the neighbors’ truck and made a supply run to our brand new local McCoy’s building supplies - always glad to do business locally.

We got home and got everything unloaded and started laying out the foundation blocks (concrete Dek-blocks).  The ground looked relatively level in our chosen spot.  But of course it was not.  And it was just enough off to make us stop and completely rethink our strategy.

So now we’re on day two.  We thought through and tried some other ideas for getting the foundation started.  Anyone who has ever built anything knows that if you don’t get the foundation right, the whole thing is totally jacked up.  And small mistakes usually grow exponentially the further along you get.  After several more stops and starts, nothing was working.  Once we finally figured out the route to go, we had to stop and go get more supplies.  Double Ugh!   We finally got going on the right track and were making some progress when it got dark.

 
 So, on day three of our three day weekend, we were finally, really rolling.  Not only did we finish the foundation (and it was square and level – Yee Haw!), we also got three walls up.  So we braced that puppy and went to bed that night full of satisfaction.  Imagine what we could have done had we not had two days of false starts.   

We got home from work the next night and finished the fourth wall.
 
Stay tuned for Part 2...

I know, I know.  You can hardly contain yourself.  But for a couple of kids and a new homestead, this is big stuff!  :D

And by the way, Bob's really finding his voice and doing great in his coop in the back yard!

I’ve killed a chicken. Well, actually, I haven’t done the killing, I stood by while my husband and son did the deed but I was there to read the instructions out loud, watch, and to record the event.

You see, I teach local workshops on starting and maintaining backyard chicken flocks. And there are three reasons why I decided to include a section on culling a chicken in my workshops.

1.       Although I don’t raise my chickens for meat, I acknowledge that there are people who do eat their birds. And good for them, it’s a healthier option than eating some of the meat that can be found in grocery stores. (Heck, my mom tells me stories of going to the backyard and picking out the bird that would be used for Sunday dinner.)

I realize how silly it is to have good birds with clean meat living in our backyard while I go to the grocery store to buy a pre-packaged chicken. My goal is to eventually eat one of our flock, it’s not something that going to happen today and probably not even tomorrow, but perhaps it will someday.

2.       One word roosters. When you have a backyard flock, no matter how careful you are, roosters are bound to get in the mix. Sometimes they come in as wrongly identified pullets. Sometimes, they arrive through an incubation hatch. Sometimes people get roosters mistakenly thinking that they “can’t be that bad” with regard to noise. And then there are those who think that you need a rooster in order to get eggs (don’t laugh, I get asked about that at *every* workshop.)

Although a self-sustaining flock needs roosters for protection and to perpetuate the flock (you need a rooster to get chicks, the eggs will come regardless) a backyard flock does not need a rooster. Especially if you have neighbors nearby.  

Roosters are loud. They don’t just crow at the crack of dawn like the ones in the cartoons, they crow incessantly during the day and night. A rooster’s job is to alert the flock of danger and it doesn’t matter to them when they sense that danger. If it’s 2am then so be it, that bad boy is going to crow for all he is worth.  While the flock may appreciate this behavior, trust me on this one, your neighbors won’t.

Not everyone can re-home a pesky rooster (and besides being loud, some of them can also be very violent) and so I teach people how to humanely cull roosters. I’d rather teach people that skill then see roosters set free to fend for themselves or drowned in our local river.

3.       Lastly, chickens can get ill. They can come down with diseases and they can get sometimes fatal conditions. Although I keep a first-aid box with supplies handy and have a basic understanding of flock medical management. I’m not sure, I could justify bringing a chicken to the vets.  I’ve heard some incredible stories of people paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars to save a bird and all I can say is that if they have the resources to do that, then God bless you. I am not in that situation.

 With respect to sick birds, I’m certainly not suggesting that culling a bird be your first option but you should know how to put an animal out of its misery, if you’ve done everything you could and your bird is still suffering.

For these reasons, I not only learned how to kill a bird, but I took detailed notes on the procedure, so I could teach others who wish to keep a backyard flock.

In another post, I’ll report the specific procedure I teach to humanely cull a chicken.

***

I write about lessons learned living with children and chickens in New Hampshire. You can follow our family's stories at my blog: Lessons Learned From the Flock.  

Recently, we were finally able to finish up the temporary chicken coop/future brooder.  Bess was getting very anxious to get our of her (huge) plastic tote in the extra bedroom, with no regard for how nicely the daybed was decorated.  Go figure.  And by the way, Gracie the cat is SO glad to have "her" room and bed back - she actually didn't hiss at the puppy for once after sleeping in there again for a couple of hours.

Anyway, I digress.  I loaded Bess up in the pet carrier to move her out to the coop. Once I set the carrier inside the coop yard and opened the gate, she wouldn't come out.  I tried to tip it a little and she wasn't having any part of it.  Dried meal worms wouldn't even entice her out.  (Should have tried oatmeal - that girl will do ANYTHING for oatmeal.) Funny girl, thought you wanted out of the tote...  So here's where we discovered that I can crawl right through the coop yard gate and sit down inside quite comfortably.  HA!  I had to take her out of the carrier and she immediately perched on my arm for a good 15 minutes before finally deciding that the grass wasn't going to eat her.  Poor chick. Then she promptly crawled up into my lap to sit for a spell.  Despite all my attempts to get her used to being held when we first got her, Miss Independence did not like being held at all.  And yet now she curled up in my lap.  Eventually, she started checking the place out and nabbed those meal worms.  I had a string of Christmas lights on for her the first night because it was so incredibly dark (she had nightlights in the house) and all new.  At some point, she finally went inside her house and settled down.

Last night, way after dark, she was still milling around the yard.  I was stressing because it was dark, and she was supposed to be in bed by now.  Doesn't she know that's what chickens are supposed to do?  Observing her for a little while, I noticed her trying to jump up at the lights.  So I went and turned them off.  Guess what?  She went right to bed.  Okay... Bess 1, Chicken Mom - 0.  Guess she knows more about being a chicken than I gave her credit for and certainly more than I do.  She definitely needs some friends. Down the road, with a radiant heater, I think our little coop is going to make a fabulous brooder.  Now to get that chicken/duck yard fencing finished so we can build a full sized coop...Bess needs lots of friends!

 
 Putting on the finishing touches.                           Bess checking out her new digs.

The lap chicken! 

Just a little postscript...Bess is trying to crow!  Of course, I think she sounded a lot like a turkey gobbling before too.  Maybe she's multilingual.  In the meantime, hubby has started call her "Bob".  Time will tell I guess.  All the rest of our animals are nuts...why not the chicken?! ;D

Post script to the post script…Bess is most definitely Bob!  He is getting a stronger voice every day and has the telltale long fountain feathers at the top of his tail…oh boy!

~ Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/KCFarms or our brand new website:  www.pasturedeficitdisorder.com 

Welcome to the mud pit. Please bring rain boots if you plan to visit us. Seriously. I need to make a warning sign. We have mud. Lots of mud and guess what's on the forecast for today? Yep, rain. Ugh. 

On the bright side, our pond is full and our ducks are loving it!

Last Saturday, we had to move our pasture coop. We needed to get it to drier land in order to use it to quarantine some new chickens we were getting. We knew it would be hard to move with the mud, so we took my Tahoe into the pasture to pull it. Of course we got the Tahoe stuck. Then we took the truck into the pasture.   

I just knew that we were going to end up with both vehicles stuck, but Eric had just enough solid ground to pull the Tahoe out, move the coop and get the truck back out the gate (without releasing the cow.) This was not without slinging a bunch of mud though. Check out our gate!

After it was all over, it was very difficult for me not to say "I told you so" as, in fact, I had said the night before that if we took the vehicles into the pasture they would get stuck.  After awhile I casually said "you knew they would get stuck" to which Eric replied "Yeah, I know. That was fun!" Weirdo. 

After that, we drove up to Fort Payne to pick up some new bantam Barred Rock chickens. We got seven pullets and one rooster (in case we decide to breed these.) They are super cute and they don't eat that much compared to our other birds. They should start laying in a couple of months! 

  

On Sunday, we avoided the mud for the most part. We trimmed the goats hooves, and shaved Beulah Belle's udder. In other news, I used Eric's beard trimmer, so if he starts looking like one of the guys from Duck Dynasty, you'll know why!   

Homesteading has become the "in" thing to do these days. I see lots of companies capitalizing on that. But their definition of homesteading isn't the same as mine.  

A $1300 chicken coop. Really? Do the chickens lay more eggs? Is it self-cleaning?

Solar systems costing upwards of $20,000. How is that ever going to pencil out as saving on electricity? Sure, you're off the grid, but you're still dependent on expensive equipment that has to be supplied and serviced by someone.  

How sustainable is your garden if you are purchasing all kinds of fancy soil amendments?

To me, homesteading is living more simply and sustainably. It means using what you have on hand. It means thinking outside the box instead of running to the store every time you need something. I am not against modern conveniences. My car gives me freedom. My washer and dryer save me time and pain. The internet enables me to work wherever I can connect, and my computer and Kindle carry tons of paperwork and books electronically for me. In fact, hey, if somebodywants to spend $1300 on a chicken coop, that's fine with me. I might even admire its "purtyness". But I don't call it homesteading.  

So how do I define "homesteading"?

In the city:  keep some chickens, if allowed. Mix the eggshells, chicken poop and fruit and veggie scraps from the kitchen into the garden soil to amend it. Grow what you can and eat it. Go hunting or fishing on the weekend. Make a camping trip of it and bring home your catch. Can, dry or freeze your extra food and eat it. Conserve water. Do dishes in a dish pan and throw the water on the garden. Buy your clothes from yard sales or thrift stores and embellish and alter them on the sewing machine. Save your recyclables and turn in what you don't re-use for cash at the local recycling center.

On the road:  Whether you live in an RV or just travel a lot, there are a number of things you can do to homestead on the road. In an RV:  drive slower to increase gas mileage. Cook from scratch. Learn to recognize a few wild foods you can gather and eat, like dandelion greens (great in salad or sauteed), mint (wonderful tea), crab apples, pinon nuts and fish. Choose dispersed camping or inexpensive campsites instead of always pulling in to hook up. 

In a car:  If you are on the road a lot for business, children's activities, or other reasons, pack a cooler and a snack bag or box. The cooler will have water, fruits and veggies and sandwich stuff or other perishables for the day/weekend. The snack bag will have dry goods (snacks, raisins, coffee, tea, etc.), dishes and utensils. For hot meals pack a small camp stove and fuel. You can set up at a rest area, park, or large parking lot to cook your meal or heat your water. Sandwiches are easily assembled on top of the cooler.

At the homestead:  Here in Northern Arizona it is very dry, so we conserve and reuse every possible drop of water. Dishwater goes on the garden, rinse water and bath water go into the washing machine or flush the toilets. Cooking water is cooled and put on the garden. We grow what we can and eat what we grow. We preserve any extra and eat it later.  The milk from the goats and cow is made into butter and cheese. The whey is used for cooking or fed back to the chickens. The shells from the chicken eggs are crushed and fed back to them for extra calcium and grit. We fish and eat what we catch. We eat the cows and goats and chickens. Bones get made into nutritious soup broth, then the bones are fed to the dogs. Meat scraps get fed to the dogs. Bread scraps go to the chickens. Fruit and veggie scraps go in the compost heap, thence to the garden. Need I say it? The animal poop goes on the garden.

Our gym is the wood pile, the hay bales, the garden, the repairs that need done. Our entertainment is the dark night sky with billions of stars, watching the critters play, taking a walk around the property or playing with the critters.

Old milk jugs become feeders, planters, grain scoops and watering cans. Old buckets are used for kindling, water, toolboxes and planters. Old clothes and linens are used for cleaning rags, then oil rags, then sometimes even compost. We make do, rarely buy new, frequently do without. Not because we have to, because we have found that living more simply is simply more living.

For more of Mrs. D's Homesteading adventures, stop by the website and blog:  www.mrsdshomestead.com Around The Homestead.

Don't throw away the grease leftover from cooking burgers, steaks, meatloaf or bacon!  You can use it to make homemade suet blocks for your chickens or the wild birds. They will love it and during the winter, they really can use the energy that the fat provides.

Here's what you'll need:

Grease/fat (i.e. from cooking meatloaf, burgers, steak or bacon)
Unsalted nuts
Raisins
Cayenne pepper
Heat/freezer safe container
Suet cage

Here's what I do:


Chop some assorted nuts (peanuts are especially nutritious and a good source of unsaturated fat). Be sure to use only UNsalted nuts. Arrange them in your freezer safe dish and then sprinkle some raisins on top along with a healthy shake of cayenne pepper. The cayenne helps to heat the body naturally and also stimulates the hens' circulatory system. This is extremely beneficial during the cold winter months.

When you cook meat, save and drain your grease. (Use bacon fat sparingly since it does contain salt and nitrates that should be avoided for the most part.) Let the grease cool just a bit and then pour carefully over the nut mixture.


Stir to blend and then put the dish into the freezer. You can continue to add 'layers' to your container each time you have leftover grease, adding more nuts, raisins and cayenne as needed. You can also add other dried fruits or seeds.

I store the suet in the freezer until winter and then start doling it out on cold days. Since I don't render the fat or process it in any way, it will go rancid if left out, so when you do 'serve' your suet, only serve small amounts that will be eaten quickly.


To serve, remove the container from the freezer and run a butter knife along the outer edge. Turn the container upside down and gently tap on the counter. Your suet block should pop right out. 

I use mini stoneware casserole dishes so the suet blocks fit right in a bird suet feeder, which is perfect to keep them out of the dirt and off the ground, but you can also use a cake pan or larger casserole and just cut the suet into pieces.

I feel good knowing that I am not only helping our chickens deal with the cold, but also making good use of grease that I would otherwise throw out.

Another fun thing to do for your flock in the winter is to make a Nut & Scratch Wreath for your chickens to peck at. It's a great boredom buster and they will love it. Read how HERE.

Join me on Facebook and my Blog for more tips, tricks and advice to raise happy, healthy hens.

 by Lisa at Fresh Eggs Daily 

We don't eat a lot of chicken at our house. Since we started raising our own flock, eating one of them is out of the question. I don't care if you name an animal or not, you're still interacting with it every day, feeding it,caring for it and much as I would LOVE to be able to raise meat birds and animals, it just isn't in me. I applaud those who do because you know the animals are humanely treated until the very end and you are eating meat that has been raised naturally without antibiotics, hormones or chemicals.  I'm sure it tastes better than anything you could buy, just as our fresh eggs do.  Maybe one day...but for now, chicken isn't on the menu very often.

But this pot pie is just SO darn good that my husband requests one a couple times a year. So I trudge to the grocery store and usually buy one of those pre-cooked rotisserie chickens  to minimize my handling of the whole bird that reminds me of our 'girls'!

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can also omit the chicken all together and make a wonderful Vegetable Pot Pie - just add a few more vegetables to what is called for below.  

 

One of the other things I really love about this recipe is the herbed crust. I mix some fresh or dried parsley and thyme in to the dough as I'm making it. Not only is it pretty but it adds another layer of flavor to your finished pie.

Here's my recipe. It's easy and really hits the spot on a cold winter evening. It's also a great way to use up leftover vegetables. Feel free to substitute what you have available or vegetables you prefer.

Chicken Pot Pie with Herbed Crust

Crust:2-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
Generous pinch of fresh or dried parsley and thyme
2 sticks cold butter
1/2 cup ice water

Combine flour, salt, herbs and 2 sticks butter in food processor. Slowly add ice water until dough holds together. Flatten into two discs between plastic wrap. Chill for at least an hour.

Pie:1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
1-1/2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups water
Shredded rottiserrie or roasted chicken
2 sliced carrots, cooked until soft
1 medium potato, diced and cooked until soft
1/2 chopped onion, cooked until soft
1/2 cup green beans (fresh, frozen or canned)
1/2 cup peas (fresh, frozen or canned)
1/2 cup corn (fresh, frozen or canned)
Parsley, thyme, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Melt butter in saucepan then slowly whisk in flour. Add milk and water and simmer until thickened, stirring constantly. Season with salt, pepper, parsley and thyme.

Roll out bottom crust and generously fill with chicken and vegetables. Pour liquid over top and cover with top crust. Vent crust, brush with milk and bake 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

Join me on Facebook at Fresh Eggs Daily and my BLOG for more tips, tricks and advice to raising naturally healthy chickens, as well as recipes, DIY and craft projects.

When you live in a rainforest, it rains.  (Right about now you're probably thinking, "No kidding [or insert expletive here], Sherlock.")

Stay with me here.

Are you ready for another ridiculously obvious statement? (I'm on a roll!)  Lots of rain means lots of mud. 

So What's the Problem, Lady? Are You Scared of Getting Mud on Your Shoes?

Before you think I'm whining about the rain or scared of getting dirty, it's not about me. If I was scared of mud, I'd still be living in a townhouse.

Here's the deal - when you live in a rainforest, and it rains all winter, and you have 20 chickens that need to keep their skin and feathers healthy, and you can't let them free range very often because your property is surrounded by hungry coyotes and hawks, you have a problem.

Something I didn't think about when we got chickens originally was how we'd create spaces for them dust baths if they couldn't free range, because the plan was for them to free range.  When the coyotes arrived, that plan got shelved pretty quickly.  The birds still get out every couple of days for an hour or so to access their 'under the porch spa', but it's not enough to keep them healthy in the 'bathing' department.  So what's a person with chickens confined to a coop and run to do when the ground is either muddy - or conversely, frozen - when it comes to creating opportunities for their birds to do what chickens are supposed to do naturally: bathe in dust?

Why is Dust Bathing Important?

Bottom line - chickens don't bathe like we (or many other animals) do.  Counter to what intuition might tell you, they get clean by getting dirty.  Naturally (i.e., in the wild or when free ranging), they'll dig a shallow pit in suitable soil (the dustier the better), loosen it all up with their claws, and then roll around in it, fluffing it through to cover every possible spec of skin and feather.  Why would they do this?  It keeps parasites such as mites and lice from taking hold, and weirdly, even cleans their feathers to some degree.  Case in point - these are our young ones and rooster last summer:

The Family That Dust-Baths Together... Doesn't Get Mites! from Victoria Gazeley on Vimeo.

So as you can see, if your chickens are confined to a coop and run, and the ground is muddy and/or frozen, you really need to provide them with an alternate way to do their thing.

Some Ideas from Us... and from Readers

Now that our chickens have to spend most of their time in the run, I needed to come up with a new way for them to bathe.  Here's one idea I came across:

Place a box, rubber feed bin or (and this was the best idea I read) a Rubbermaid bin or cat litter box with a lid you can put on when it rains, on the floor of the coop/run (basically, somewhere it will stay dry) and fill it with about 6" or so of a dusting powder made from: 1 part fireplace ashes, 1 part sand and 1 part diatomaceous earth (it also called for road dust, but I'm thinking I don't want my 'organic' birds covering themselves with dust that's laced with vehicle exhaust remains, oil, and other unmentionables. 

Important Tip: If you use diatomaceous earth, make sure it's the 'food grade' version, not the industrial/pool grade, and be careful not to breath it in.  Some readers won't use it because it is a lung irritant, but many, many more use it regularly, apparently with no ill effects if appropriate precautions are taken.  It falls to earth fairly quickly and doesn't hang in the air like dust, but still.  Guess what I'm saying is 'use at your own risk'!  Very effective for mites and lice, etc., though.

Others have expressed concerns about fireplace ash, in that when it gets wet, it becomes quite caustic and will burn the birds' skin.  I asked the people who use ash regularly in dust baths for their birds and they say they've never had an issue with skin burns or other maladies.  Worth trying, I think - but it should go without saying that you should only use ash from wood fires, and not from any garbage burns.  But I'm hoping you aren't burning your garbage.  If you are, stop it!  Please!

Now some other ideas for creating artificial dust baths for your chickens from our friends on our Facebook page:

• "I put the bottom of a litter box with dirt inside for them to roll around in. They enjoy it very much." - Nancy 
• "We use the ashes from our burnt wood and toss it in their pen!" - Robin 
• "Our barn has a packed-dirt floor. Our chickens found a few spots where the dirt was loose and scratched up enough dirt to dust-bathe in. I've heard of people using cat litter pans full of dirt and sand in their coops though." - Cheryl 
• "Some people use a big wash tub or kiddie pool. Put sand in it mixed with dirt and ash. One thing for sure though, add all your wood ash to their bathing area. You will never have mites if they bathe in the ash and they know it." - Lisa 
• "A shoe box with sand and a shoe box with dirt. They love it." - Sharon 
• "Diatomacious earth in a kiddie pool or shallow bin in the coop." - Michelle 

So there you have it - some easy, inexpensive ways to give your coop and run-bound birds the opportunity to carry on some of their natural behaviour when they can't get out to make their own dust baths.  I'll be creating one this week for our girls and will update the post once that's done.

I'm sure we'll know pretty quickly if it passes muster or not.

Do you have other ideas on how to create a dust bath for chickens?  If so, let us know in the comments below!  We'd love to hear your tips.

by Lisa from Fresh Eggs Daily 

To kick off the new year, I thought it would be fun to recap the Top Ten Chicken Post on our Blog from 2012. So, without further ado, here are the top ten most-read posts:

#1 Got Flies? DIY Fly Catcher - The most popular post was a tutorial on making your own fly catcher to keep readers' runs fly-free.


#2 Make your own Feed Bag Tote - Empty feed bags re-purposed into tote bags was the second most popular post. Even if you only posses basic sewing skills, my easy tutorial walks you through sewing your own.

#3 Make your own Apple Cider Vinegar - Apple cider vinegar has great health benefits to humans and chickens alike. Readers were very interested in learning how to make their own.


#4 Nesting Box Herbs - Chicken Aromatherapy - One of my very first posts last January, this article on adding herbs to your nesting boxes to calm setting hens and provide health benefits as well as impart a pleasant aroma to your coop was extremely popular.

#5 Orange Peel White Vinegar Coop Cleaner - My recipe for this all natural vinegar-based coop cleaners was extremely popular.

#6 Beating the Heat & A Homemade Electrolyte Recipe - Keeping chickens cool in the summer was of great interest to our readers. My Homemade Electrolyte Recipe provides the recipe for a solution that can be quickly made at home to help combat heat stress.

#7 Pumpkin Soup as a Natural Wormer - Pumpkins contain a substance, cucurbitacin, which is thought to act as a natural wormer for intestinal parasites. This pumpkin soup recipe was another hit with readers who were interested in natural preventatives for their flock.


#8 Deep Litter Method/Coop Cleaning - Keeping your chickens warm in the winter was another popular topic covered not only in this article on using the Deep Litter Method.

#9 Weeds 101 - Learning which weeds are safe for chickens and which aren't was another popular post for free rangers and non-free rangers alike. Weeds are a free and extremely nutritious source of 'treats' that your hens will love.


#10 Breakfast of Champion Layers - I add a mix of supplements to my hens' layer feed to boost their health and immune systems. Readers were interested in learning my secret 'recipe'.

And there you have it. The ten most popular posts of 2012. Be sure to sign up to follow our blog so you don't miss out on any of the upcoming posts for 2013. We've got some great ones in store for you!

2012 turned out to be a big year for us, full of many little victories.  After all the horrible setbacks of 2011 we are mighty grateful!  Words can’t even express how blessed and grateful!

Last year at this time and through February, we were clearing dead trees to create our little home site.  We put planted the garden in March and installed about 300 feet of water lines.  The house was delivered in April and we moved in towards the end of that month.  

In May, we celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary and we also added to our furry pack – a pup from the shelter that we named Cisco.  Gracie the cat still doesn’t like him, even though she has always lived with dogs.  Go figure.  (Cisco weighed 10 pounds when we brought him home, and now, at 9 months, he’s up to 70+ pounds!) About a week later, a lost kitty found her way to our little farm.  We named her Two Socks; she’s the best dog we have.

In June we started fencing a backyard.  We came up with our own design, and now that “phase one” is done, we have to brag just a little – it’s a pretty darn nice looking fence!  

In June we also canned 30 pints of homegrown diced tomatoes and I started making homemade yogurt every week.  We ate tons of zucchini and yellow squash from the garden and put 15 pounds of homegrown tomatillos in the freezer for making green enchilada sauce later.  The backyard fencing project continued all summer.  

In August, our wonderful, sweet, oldest dog Maggie passed away unexpectedly.   Oh how she is missed by all of us!  But her spirit is ever-present in the pasture.  Furry sister Ellie has never quite been the same.  You’ll never convince us that animals don’t grieve! 

In September we celebrated our one year pasture anniversary!  Looking back at pictures, the pasture looked like a moon scape the year before.  But with some tender loving care and some blessed winter rains, it came roaring back to life!  We’re in desperate need of rain still, but hope to start cutting hay this next year.  I also started making all of our own bread in September – we don’t buy it from the store anymore.  

In October, an itty, bitty kitten showed up at the farm.  He couldn’t have been more than 6-8 weeks old, if that.  He started out as Kicking Bird (KB), but he’s so fast, we now call him Dash.  Then a few days later, another kitten, about 3 or 4 months old, showed up.  We named her Nala because we had just seen the Lion King on tv and she kind of looks like Nala.  So now we have barn kitties, but no barn…yet.   In the meantime, Dash has recently decided he likes being a man of leisure and has moved inside and made himself right at home.  It frightens us to think of what they went through to make it to us – especially Dash.  How dangerous it was for them to be on their own out there.  Whatever happened, we’re glad they showed up to be a part of our family.  

We had broccoli and green and purple cabbage in the winter garden.  The wild extremes in our temps killed it all off.  We weren’t prepared this year with a cold frame.  And after days of high 70s and low 80s, who could have predicted it would drop to 18 degrees in 24 hours!   And it’s done that a couple of times.  Unseasonably warm to unusually cold.   But the beauty of mild winters is that there is time to try some cabbage again (I’ll be growing heirloom varieties from seed).  I’m getting the seeds started in the house and will transplant in January.  It should be done producing by the time the spring air starts to warm and spring garden seedlings and are ready to be transplanted.  

On that note, we are already making plans for the spring garden.  We will stick with strictly heirloom varieties like we did last year.  Only this year, we will endeavor to save seeds.  Learned that lesson just this week…one of the tomatoes we liked the most was the Sioux variety.  But the seed company we bought from last year doesn’t have them this year.  I’m sure there are other great varieties, but we will hopefully still have good germination from the seeds we bought last year and will definitely save our own seeds for the future.  

We have also started phase two of our fencing plan, which will include a chicken/duck run and coops.  We were planning to have it all done in time for spring chicks/ducklings.  And we’re making good progress now that it’s not so hot outside!  But everything has been kicking into high gear after receiving a surprise Christmas present of a pair of two-week old chicks!  They are living in the laundry room in a large box for now, but will need outdoor quarters in the very near future!

 
Oh!  I almost forgot...we have some bees ordered for this spring too!  We're excited to try once again and hope to have better luck this time around.  The hives are already built, so we're ready to go. 

Happy New Year to you all!  May your year be filled will health, joy and creativity!

Until next time...worms rock and bees rule. 

Propped up in bed, we howled. My graduate-student-daughter ran in to see what was wrong. 

“We hee hee hee.” Much belly-shaking and eye-tearing. “We’ve been reading about how to kill chickens!” Boisterous, gut-wrenching laughter spilling uncontrollably from our mouths.  

I wiped my mouth and sat up straighter. “We’ve been reading about killing chickens and there is a way where you turn them upside down in a cone and, and” giggling erupts again. Tom finished the sentence. 

“You chop their heads off!” 

We are doubled over by that time. Our daughter looks concerned. “And you think that’s funny?”  

“Why yes!”  

What she didn’t understand was us. Both raised in the city, we wondered how we’d managed to eat chicken all these years, believing them to be skinless, beakless, mounds of flesh instead of actual birds. 

Plus, we didn’t quite know if we’d be able to do the deed. Sure, raising chickens was on our farm plan. But that was imaginary. The article in the magazine contained real pictures. 

Soon after we contracted the farm bug, we ordered the magazine deluge. Tom began to hang pin-ups of chickens. We oohed and aahed at wood chip machines, and drooled over barns.  

Who knew there existed a group of magazines that regularly used the words green manure, and harry vetch, and hoop houses? 

Good-bye Good Housekeeping, hello Grit. 

What books and magazines do you find most helpful? (Besides Grit, of course.)

We try to raise our chickens as naturally as possible and that means no antibiotics or other medications that make their eggs unsafe or unhealthy to eat.  Lots of preventatives go a long way, fortunately. [Read here how to use Diatomaceous Earth, Apple Cider Vinegar and Garlic in natural chicken keeping]  But as careful as you are, or as well as you treat your hens, too often in backyard chicken keeping, injury or illness occurs that needs to be treated quickly. I recommend keeping these 8 first aid kit essentials on hand.

They are all-natural and have no side effects or withdrawal periods (time during which eggs from the treated hen shouldn't be eaten), but between them, you should be equipped to treat nearly anything.


1. Vetericyn - non-toxic, this gel spray kills 99.9% of all bacteria, viruses and fungi without harmful steroids or antibiotics. It speeds healing, cleans wounds and treats infection including bumblefoot.

2. Nutri-Drench - this molasses-based liquid packed with nutrients, helps resistance to disease, boosts immune systems, corrects vitamin deficiencies, helps with heat stress, improves appetites in sick birds and increases the body's response to other treatments. Excellent to give to new chicks to ease the strain of shipping.

3. Blu-Kote - an antibacterial/antifungal spray for wounds, cuts or sores. Has the added bonus of being purple which prevents further picking at injuries from other birds who might be attracted to red blood or raw skin.

4. Kocci-Free - an organic, all natural antibiotic/anti-parasitic that helps boost the immune system and rid the body of the coccidia parasite. Also kills other viruses, bacteria and fungus.

5. Poultry VetRx - a 100% natural alternative to antibiotics, this camphor-based formula cures respiratory ailments, scaly leg and eye worm.

6. Honey - a natural antiseptic with natural healing properties, honey is obviously also non-toxic if inadvertently eaten.

7. Saline Solution - a bottle of regular saline solution is perfect for rinsing dust or dirt out of watery eyes or cleaning a wound.


8. Cornstarch - a fast way to stop bleeding effectively.

These items, along with some gauze pads, tweezers, a small pair of scissors and vet wrap or first aid tape will ensure you are prepared.  It's easy to just administer some antibiotics at the first sign of illness, but not necessary in most cases. These natural products treat many many symptoms effectively.

Find these products and more HERE.  For a complete, more comprehensive list of all the items we keep in our chicken first aid kit, click HERE.

Please come visit my Fresh Eggs Daily BLOG and FACEBOOK PAGE for more tips, tricks and advice to raising happy, healthy chickens as naturally as possible.   

Salmonella is a bacteria that lives in the intestinal tract of humans, chickens and other birds and mammals. Contracted through under-cooked poultry or eggs, it is a common concern to new chicken keepers. But should you be worried about contracting salmonella from your flock?  Here are some facts about the disease and how to prevent a salmonella outbreak in your flock.

Salmonella symptoms in humans include cramps, diarrhea, nausea, chills, fever and/or headaches. The symptoms generally appear within 6-72 hours of eating contaminated food, can last up to a week and can be fatal for the elderly, sick, those with compromised immune systems, pregnant women and children.


Symptoms in chicks or chickens include weak and lethargic birds, loose yellow or green droppings, purplish combs and wattles, a drop in egg production, increased thirst, decreased feed consumption and weight loss. It can be deadly in hens if not treated, and chickens who survive it become carriers, potentially passing the bacteria to their chicks and eggs they lay.

Salmonella is usually spread to chickens through rat or mouse droppings in water, feed, damp soil or bedding/litter. It can then be transmitted to humans who eat improperly cooked meat or eggs from infected birds or by putting your hands in your mouth after touching chickens or eggs that have come in contact with contaminated rodent or chicken feces. Children under five years of age make up a large number of Salmonella cases, most likely from hand to mouth transmission of the bacteria.


Good personal hygiene as well as keeping a clean chicken coop and run are the best ways to prevent salmonella. Backyard biosecurity is critical to keeping Salmonella at bay. Cooking destroys it, so cook eggs properly before eating if you are concerned.

Here are some other tips to preventing the spread of salmonella:
-Buy chicks from reputable sources to lessen the chances they have the disease
-Always wash your hands in warm soapy water for at least 20 seconds after handling chicks, hens or eggs
-Teach children not to put their hands in their mouths, especially when around the chickens
-Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer after being around your chickens
-Discard cracked or extremely dirty eggs
-Don't wash eggs when you collect them. Allow the natural 'bloom' to protect the inside of the egg from bacteria entering [Read more here about egg handling]
-Keep your flock's immune systems strong and your hens as healthy as possible
-Rinse eggs in warm water just prior to cooking them
-Cook eggs to at least 160 degrees so the whites are firm
-Cook poultry to at least 165 degrees so no pink remains and juices run clear
-Keep raw poultry separate from other foods and consider using a cutting board dedicated only to poultry
-Use paper towels to clean kitchen surfaces instead of sponges or dishcloths


Salmonella generally won't live inside an egg. If it has been transferred from an infected hen to the egg, it will be found in the egg white, which is an alkaline environment and doesn't contain the proper nutrients for the bacteria to thrive. However, the longer the egg sits out without being refrigerated or cooked, the greater chance the bacteria will move towards the yolk and eventually penetrate the yolk, who's nutrient-rich environment would allow the bacteria to grow.

The good news is that your backyard eggs, as long as proper precautions are taken, are unlikely to contain or transmit Salmonella to your family. The threat of Salmonella should NOT dissuade you from raising backyard chickens, handling them as often as possible OR cooking with your eggs. 

 

Suggested Reading:
http://www.incredibleegg.org/egg-facts/egg-safety/eggs-and-food-safety
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/salmonella_questions_&_answers/
http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/
http://www.mypetchicken.com/backyard-chickens/chicken-help/Is-Salmonella-a-concern-with-backyard-chickens-H19.aspx?

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Friends of GRIT,
I’m an English teacher, and NPR (National Public Radio) recently held its annual “3-Minute Story” contest, and I had in mind an idea for a story based on an experience I shared with my mother-in-law a few months back… having a hen put to sleep.  I wrote the dark little story about death and choices and family togetherness and prepared to submit it when I noticed the theme was supposed to be about an American president, living or dead.  “Hmm,” I thought.   “Is there a way to work that in to my chicken story?”  Yes, in fact.  My mother-in-law, Kathryn, suggested that the hen be described as a rooster, and that the rooster might be named Abraham Lincoln, and I took it from there.  With just a few changes, I sent the story on.  I haven’t heard from NPR.  However, I know that the deeply sympathetic, intelligent, insightful, and sensitive hen-loving crowd at GRIT will appreciate my story, so here it is.

Depth of Field

Mrs. G and her daughter-in-law entered the veterinarian’s office somberly, the younger Mrs. G carrying a rooster swaddled in a white towel.  The startled looks of other customers shifted to amusement and finally to curiosity. The Mrs. Gs were not in the mood for entertaining this curiosity, and when asked directly about their patient, the daughter-in-law answered simply that the rooster, known as President Lincoln because he was so tall and godlike, was “very sick with a disorder that did not allow him to eat normally.”  She could not bring herself to say that he was, apparently, blind.  She had ascertained that much from observing the rooster’s odd wandering and pecking about for food with little success while his companion hens and another rooster feasted on not only normal feed but delicacies such as cantaloupe and tomatoes.    After speaking with Dr. Beverly, (the vet), the elder Mrs. G recalled a fight between the two roosters a week or so ago.  That was probably the cause, explained Dr. Beverly; roosters will sometimes peck at the eyes of a foe in a barnyard civil war, resulting in blindness.  Ever against cooking up one of her own chickens, Mama G asked if there might be another alternative.  She was advised that the rooster might be separated from the other chickens, kept in a more confined space with readily available food; a lonely life, yes, but one likely to keep him from starving.  The only other choice would be to euthanize him. 

The Mrs. Gs headed home with their cock-of-the-run, drew him into a segregated area with a high fence and plenty of food, and in just a few weeks’ time, he had regained his full masculine figure and began to crow as he had before his wounding. 

Then came a cloudy April evening when, with the two women rocking on the porch and all the chickens clucking and crowing in the happiness of a normal country day, and the rooster strutting around his enclosure and growing fat… something flew out of the darkening sky like a small monsoon, like an illusion, like cruel opportunity, and came down upon the rooster’s back in the blink of an eye.  The hawk tore back the way it had come, claws held fast to President Lincoln, up and up, out of sight, delivering its cry of victory before the astonished kinfolk offstage had the chance to look for grace.

One of my favorite writers, David Sedaris, was once asked if his stories were true.  He replied, cleverly, that they were “mostly true.”  I’ll only go so far as “partly true.”  If you want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I’ll tell you in my next post, where you will find many happy hens and the ghost of dear ole’ Abe around the feeder.

One of our golden hens, we call her Goldie. 

By Lisa at Fresh Eggs Daily 

Twice a year I do a really good, deep chicken coop cleaning. I scrub down the whole coop with a vinegar/water solution once right before the weather turns cold and then again in the spring. I use the Deep Litter Method through the winter. [Read more about doing a deep cleaning here...] 

In between the deep cleanings I do quick interim cleanings as needed. I use my eyes and nose to let me know when it's time -even a hint of any whiff of ammonia smell, it's definitely time, otherwise when the straw starts looking dirty. I always pick a nice warm, sunny day. Here's my down and dirty, quick and easy coop cleaning routine:

In the AM

1. Rake out all the old bedding (I use straw) and spread it in the sun to air out. Sometimes if most of the straw isn't dirty, I'll reuse it. Did you know that UV rays (sunlight) are the BEST way to kill pathogens, mold and bacteria?

2. While you're at it, sweep out the cobwebs.

3. Then sweep out the dirt. (Since this is just a interim cleaning, I don't scrub down the whole floor with the white vinegar/water mixture I would use for a deep clean, I just get it 'broom clean').

4. I use a plastic paint scraper and bucket to scrape any poop off the roosts, nesting box area or other flat surfaces.

5. Spray the roosts and nesting boxes with Orange Peel White Vinegar Coop Cleaner. [Click here for the recipe...] It's an all natural cleaner/insect repellent.

6. Replace the straw in the nesting boxes with fresh clean straw.

7. Open all the doors and windows and leave everything to air out until just before dark.

In the PM

1. Generously sprinkle food-grade Diatomaceous Earth on the floor and in the nesting boxes. [Click here for the benefits of DE...]

2. Replace the straw bedding on the floor either with the aired-out straw or new straw so you have about a 6" layer.

3. Sprinkle fresh (or dried) herbs in the nesting boxes and liberally on the floor. [Read here for the benefits of using herbs in your coop...]

4. Toss in some marigolds if you have them. I plant marigolds specifically for the chickens. Not only are they an excellent natural insect repellent, chickens who eat marigolds lay eggs with vibrant orange yolks.

5. Spritz with Lavender Mint Coop Refresher Spray. [Click here for the recipe...]

6. Let the girls in for the night - and listen to their contented coos over a nice, clean, scented coop!
  

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There comes a time in every backyard chicken keeper's life when you will take a vacation.  It might be just overnight or it might be for a week or longer.  Whatever the length, it can provoke some anxiety.  The first time I left my chickens with the chicken sitter, they were about six months of age.  My heart felt like a parent leaving a child home with the babysitter for the first time. Of course I worried.  Would they be well cared for?  Would they remember to harvest the eggs?  Would predators know we were not home?  What if one became ill?  With some thought, planning and preparation, your flock should do just fine. Most people will want to watch your chickens for the eggs alone.  As you know, there is nothing like a freshly laid egg.

Your chicken sitter should:

Live Nearby

Enjoy backyard chickens

Be Responsible

Chicken sitting for a flock is also a wonderful way for someone who is thinking about getting chickens to experience keeping chickens without the full commitment.

Who would make a good chicken sitter?

Neighbors

Family

Friends

Local Dog walkers/Pet sitters-some will chicken sit if you call and ask

Local 4-H Club members

Don't forget to ask if your local feed store knows of anyone who could help too.

Pre-Trip Planning:

1.  Clean the coop and the nesting boxes a day or two before you leave.  This makes chicken sitting much more pleasurable for your sitter.  When the coop is clean, it is much easier and welcoming.

2.  Be sure you have extra food available.  Always keep extra food, grit, oyster shells on hand just in case.

3.  Label everything and tidy up.  I would strongly encourage you to label even the obvious to you.  Label feed, scratch, grit and the like.  Chicken scratch to a newbie could easily be confused as feed.  Also, tidy things up so that everything they need is visible and they do not have to spend time sifting through a cluttered place of chaos.

4.  Give directions.  In addition to reviewing directions in person, write them down.  This serves as a great reference when you are not available.

5.  Be sure the sitter keeps the routine as close to what you do when you are with the chickens.

6.  Harvest eggs frequently.  This should still be done in the morning, afternoon and evening.  If this is difficult for one person, than perhaps this task could be shared with another friend, such as a neighbor.

7.  Prevent boredom.  Leave some suggestions, such as tossing in a whole cabbage every few days or so.

8.  Leave a phone number of a fellow chicken keeper.  This is so important.  You might not be available when a question or concern pops up.  It helps to have a knowledgeable chicken keeper available to make an on-site visit if necessary.

9.  Keep a chicken first aid kit.

10. Provide a phone number of a local avian vet.

11.  Inspect the coop and run.  Be sure all of your latches function properly.  Be sure all aspects of your coop are in good working condition.  Be sure to inspect your predator proofing.  Make any repairs as necessary.

12.  Predators will know when things are different.  They will notice the absence of the family dog.  If you always lock up your chickens, then the chicken sitter should do the same.  Do not leave the coop pop-up door open if this is not your common practice.  Predators will and do take note. Be extra vigilant.  Utilize motion sensor flood lights.  Keep the porch light on.

13.  Let your neighbors know you will be away.  Encourage other neighbors, friends and family to stop in and visit the flock while you are away.

14.  Leave a thorough, easy reference book that is not intimidating for the chicken sitter.  How could anyone feel intimidated by a copy of Raising Chickens for Dummies?

A day or two before your trip, schedule a quick training with your chicken sitter.

Review all of your planning.

Demonstrate coop locks and have them work them while you are there.

Encourage phone calls to you with flock updates.

Discuss a plan on how to handle an escaped chicken or if one does not return in the evening from free ranging.

Talk about treats including types, amount and frequency.

Alert them to any current issues such as molting, wounds, health concerns, pecking order or egg problems.

General Tips for Smoother Chicken Sitting:

1.  Let the chickens out in the run in the morning.  Once they are all are out of the coop, lock them out into the run and perform your chicken sitting duties.  Refill feeders and waterers.   Check for eggs and do any other necessary housekeeping.  This is less stressful for the chicken sitter and also helps to prevent chickens from inadvertently escaping or distracting the sitter who may not be accustomed to the flock's behavior. Do not forget to re-open the pop door once the daily tasks are complete.

2.  Double up on feeders and waterers just in case something happens during the day that might not get noticed quickly.  This also helps to prevent problems if a feeder or waterer malfunctions.

3.  Keep a few spare egg cartons or an egg basket near your chicken supplies in case your sitter forgets to bring one from home for the eggs.

We have been away a few times and I can honestly say that the flock does very well with a little preparation.  Typically our chicken sitter is my Mother.  She is the only one who has gorgeous blond hair and the chickens, I believe, have come to recognize her for it.  The chickens and she get along very well.  Even when she comes over to visit, they perk up and call to her as soon as they see her get out of the car.  They know her voice and they expect treats!    It is always nice to know that she, the neighbors and friends are there and visit when we are away. The girls are well cared for.  Yet, one of the things that I look forward to when we come home is seeing the chickens giddy with excitement.  They do remember us!  It warms my heart to look into Tilly's eyes and tell her that her chicken Momma has returned, just as promised.

To read more about Tilly, click here.

It's apple season! Local apples are plentiful at farmer's markets, in the grocery store and if you're lucky, on the trees on your property. We feed our horses the apples from our trees when we can and store-bought apples other times of the year, and when we have extras, I like to treat the chickens with fun apple treats. Chickens love apples, and the skins and flesh are nutritious treats. One warning: Apple seeds contain cyanide, so be sure to core or otherwise remove any seeds before feeding apples to your flock.)  Here are some fun ideas for Apple Treats for your Chickens: 

Stuffed Apples - For this fun treat I use three or four apples, 1/2 Cup of natural unsalted peanut butter, 1/2 Cup of unsalted almonds and 1/2 Cup of dried cranberries. You can substitute raisins, sunflower seeds or another nut if you wish.


Wash and core the apples, leaving the bottom intact. Grind the almonds in a coffee grinder or food processor and mix with the remaining ingredients in a small bowl.  Stuff each apple.

  Your chickens will love pecking at the peanut butter and then eating the apple, which ends up being rolled around the run as they fight to get all the peanut butter out. Be sure to provide them plenty of fresh water anytime you feed them something sticky like peanut butter. 
  

  

  

If you've been wondering what you can give to your chickens as healthy treats this winter when they can't get out to forage, and produce isn't plentiful why not sprout some seeds or beans for them? It's inexpensive, easy and gives them much-needed nutrition when they can't forage for grass and weeds. 

 Join me on Facebook at Fresh Eggs Daily and also follow my blog Fresh Eggs Daily for more tips, tricks, advice and information on raising happy, healthy hens - naturally.

Autumn is the season for root vegetables. I love growing things underground because they are the one crop the rabbits don't eat from our garden and they are largely protected from insect damage also. 

It's so exciting to tug gently on the greens and watch as a beautiful vegetable emerges from the warm soil. Of course I plant extra to share with the chickens, now that the summer garden is depleted and their supply of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers has dwindled.

Here are some of my observations regarding feeding root vegetables to our flock:

Beets - YES! Beet greens and stalks are a favorite of both our chickens and ducks and both also like the beet itself. They can eat them raw or cooked.

The ducks have an easier time if you chop or grate raw beets, but the chickens will happily peck away at them as long as I slice them in half.

Beets are extremely nutritious and have blood cleansing properties, so they are a good treat choice for your flock. Just don't panic if you see hot pink or teal poop in the run after a beet-fest!

Carrots - YES! We always have carrots on hand for our horses. We also grow them in our garden. The chickens and ducks love the carrot tops and will also eat carrot peels.

Whole raw carrots should be chopped or grated, especially for the ducks to manage, but cooked carrots are fine for them all to eat in any shape or size.

As an added bonus, the beta-carotene in the carrots will turn their egg yolks a brilliant orange.

I also add carrots to the twice yearly pumpkin seed, garlic natural worm preventative I feed our flock.

Garlic - YES! There is a lot of conflicting information online about feeding garlic to chickens. Although part of the allium family which includes shallots, onions and chives, all of which can be toxic, garlic has natural antibiotic and immune system boosting properties. It also helps repel parasites such as ticks, fleas, mites and lice.

I feed my chicks minced fresh garlic in the brooder. I also add garlic powder to my laying hens daily feed. I have also floated whole garlic cloves in the waterers. In fact, I consider garlic to be one of the foundations of raising a healthy flock. Could garlic be toxic in large quantities? I suppose, but couldn't almost anything?

I can only tell you what works for me and how I choose to raise my flock, and I can tell you unequivocally that small amounts of garlic are not toxic - and are most likely very beneficial.

Onions - NO! Onions contain a toxin that destroys red blood cells. Onions don't have the same health benefits as garlic, so any possible positives gained by feeding onions are far outweighed by the potential for them to be fatal.

Excessive amounts of raw or cooked onion can cause anemia or jaundice in your hens. I never knowingly feed our flock onion, but if they end up eating small amounts, in restaurant leftovers for example, it probably won't kill them.

Bottom line, try to avoid onion in any form but don't worry if they inadvertently eat some.


From our pinterest 'Gardening' board

Parsnips - YES! Parsnips are a nutritious food source for your flock. They are related to carrots and parsley and can be fed raw or cooked. But again, raw parsnips are more easily consumed if they are grated or chopped.

Photo courtesy of 1840 Farm

Potatoes - NO! Potatoes are a member of the nightshade family. The leaves and vines are toxic to chickens. To make matters worse, the skins, especially green skins, contain the toxin solanine. The green color signals higher concentrations of the toxin. The flesh also contains solanine, although in smaller quantities. I feed potatoes very infrequently, if ever, and never any green potatoes, peels, leaves or vines.

Fortunately, solanine is poorly absorbed and rapidly excreted by mammals, so small amounts of potato flesh as long as it isn't green most likely won't be fatal, but potatoes have very little nutritional value anyway, so they aren't an optimal treat. I would recommend refraining from feeding potatoes to your flock, but like onions, if they eat some cooked potato mixed in with leftovers it probably won't kill them.

Photo courtesy of 1840 Farm

Radishes - YES! The chickens will love both radishes and radish leaves. Again, radishes are much easier for the chickens to eat if they are grated or chopped first.

Sweet Potatoes - YES! Oddly enough, sweet potatoes are not a member of the nightshade family like the white potato. They are a member of the morning glory family and do not contain the toxin solanine, so they are perfectly safe to feed to your chickens, along with the leaves.

Sweet potatoes contain loads of vitamins and nutrients. Your chickens will love sweet potato, but like most other hard veggies, cooked or grated is going to be the easiest way for the chickens and ducks to eat them.

Photo courtesy of 1840 Farm

Turnips - YES! Turnips and turnips tops are a great healthy treat, although the chickens have an easier time with them if the turnips are grated or cooked and mashed.

You can also toss a halved turnip in the run and it will keep them busy for quite some time pecking at it or put a whole turnip in a hanging basket for them to nibble on.

As with any new food, your chickens might view these root vegetables with much suspicion and you may have to try offering a particular treat several times before a few brave souls will give it a try. But be persistent and they will eventually dive in!

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I have been so busy canning that when I sleep I actually dream that I am canning. Even now I am waiting up for the chicken broth, dark meat  and bones to cool so I can filter them and start making the chicken soup. I am planning on canning the soup tomorrow morning.  I started off this whole experience with a lug (17 lbs) of peaches, some strawberries, and a few green beans. I went to a pick your own patch in Brookings SD for the strawberries. I came home with 25 lbs. I made 6 pints of jelly, and then froze the rest  rather than heat the house up.  The daily temperatures average 100 degrees and we don’t have air conditioning so I didn’t want to add any heat. By the time I purchased the peaches, we had broken the heat wave and had settled in the 80s. I put up 12 pints of jelly, 24 pints of sliced peaches and 4 pints of spirited peaches. It was fun. I enjoyed working with peaches and plan on finding some more. Peaches don’t grow well here. South Dakotans usually purchase Colorado peaches at road side stands this time of year.  

I have been learning how to pressure can. I have canned with a hot water bath canner before but never a pressure canner.  My husband, Rick, had bought me a 12 qt. pressure canner at a rummage sale several years ago, but I had never enough guts to use a pressure canner. Using one is a little overwhelming at first, the whole possibility of exploding and all. I got brave Monday night and attempted to can chicken. It ended up with the steam escaping out the seal and the chicken in the fridge. I did a little problem solving, purchased a new seal and was off and running again. I tried using again with corn. It worked!! But I lost a little fluid out of the jars. After canning about 30 quarts and 40 pints, I exhausted all my options in what could have been wrong.  I re-read my canner directions and found that my canner did not use the rule of allowing stream to escape for 10 minutes before putting on the selective control petcock I have only had the opportunity to not do the rule twice, once I lot fluid and once not. The first time was a batch of corn and the second was chicken breasts. However, on the second run I had a lid buckle up. Everyone I have asked had never heard of a lid buckling. I was told to contact the Georgia Extension for any canning questions.   

We have been blessed with so many wonderful gifts from friends. Some of the melon growers allow me to glean their fields for feed for my animals. It has reduced our feed bill by 75%. I try to return the favor by dropping off cleaned chickens and peach jelly.  I keep offering supper but have not been called to it yet. Another friend has given us sweet corn. Our own field has been ravaged by the drought and the free range chickens. I set up a husking station on the back deck. I soon attracted the chickens, and  dog. It was quite amusing to watch the dog chase a chicken across the yard, not to catch the chicken but to get the discarded corn cob.  I have canned __ qts and __ pts. Rick brought another 55 gallon barrel full of corn again last night, so I will continue to be busy.   

We butchered the last of our broilers Saturday. Well, all but 1 who it managed to hid out (been calling it Lucky.) A friend brought 25+ roosters to butcher. We did their roosters in the morning and our chickens in the afternoon.  I have been working on canning the 40 chickens. I canned 7 qts each with the breasts of 2 chickens. I then tossed the rest in 2 roasters to cook and that’s why I am waiting up for them to cool so I can filter the meat and bones out so all can cool the broth and remove the fat. I have learned to cook the chickens before I can them for the sake of my sanity, it saves time.  

by Lisa Steele from Fresh Eggs Daily 

We all make mistakes when it comes to raising chickens. Sometimes we just don't know any better, sometimes we forget, sometimes we make a bad judgment call, other times it's just bad timing.  My most recent mistakee was a case of bad timing.

A week or two ago, the chicks I hatched in March were approaching laying age (21-22 weeks old) and had started checking out their options.  Usually a few weeks before they start laying, pullets will start to investigate the nesting boxes, sometimes even sitting in them to get used to the idea.  I found several eyeing the various baskets and boxes in the coop.

So what did I do ? I closed up the old coop and moved everyone into the new coop I had just finished building. 

It has four nesting boxes and two more wooden laying boxes at ground level.  Plenty  of room for everyone...but of course chaos ensued.  The little ones did indeed start laying but none of them used the new boxes.  

I started finding eggs all over the run. Under bushes, behind the bench, in the dirt in front of the old coop. Normally the older layers will show the younger ones where to lay their eggs, but even the older layers were confused and couldn't guide the little ones.  Many of the older hens just flat out stopped laying, which is pretty common any time you disrupt their routine.  But I  still had hens laying their eggs in random locations day after day.  My bad.

So I did what I recommend on my Facebook page Fresh Eggs Daily to new chicken keepers raising their first batch of chickens. I put plastic Easter Eggs in the new nesting boxes.

And sure enough, within three days, the little pullets had caught on and were happily laying their eggs in the new coop.  The older hens soon followed suit.  I think in this case, the older hens actually learned from the younger ones!

 Some people recommend shutting up your flock inside the coop for several days if they aren't laying in the nesting boxes. Not only have I never done that, I don't recommend it. If older hens all of a sudden stop using the boxes, there is usually a reason.  It could be because there are rodents, mites or even snakes living in the coop.  You certainly don't want your hens 'cooped up' in that case!

 In the case of getting used to a new coop or nesting boxes, they do figure it out soon enough anyway and I think shutting them up inside for several days just isn't necessary. They need to be outside getting fresh air and scratching in the dirt.  I would rather search the run for wayward eggs for a day or so and let them enjoy being outside.

I will leave the Easter eggs in the nesting boxes for a few more days until I am sure that all our hens are straight on where they should be laying.

I found these pretty pastel Easter eggs on ebay but you can also use ping pong balls, wooden or ceramic eggs. I have heard some people even use round stones with great success!

The moral of this story is to not move your flock to a new coop just as a batch of pullets is reaching laying age. But if you do... then just fake 'em out! 

For more tip and tricks to raising happy, healthy backyard flocks, join me on Facebook at Fresh Eggs Daily and sign up to follow my Fresh Eggs Daily Blog .

  

2-1/2 ounces beeswax
3/4 cup olive or coconut oil
1/4 teaspoon liquid vitamin E (helps repair damaged skin)
10 drops lavender essential oil (relaxant, pain reliever, antibacterial, anti-fungal)
10 drops lemon essential oil (antibacterial, antiviral)

Grate beeswax and melt with olive or coconut oil over low heat in a double boiler. 

 

If you’re reading this, chances are you have chickens that you consider pets and it’s no secret that we all enjoy spoiling our pets. We get a kick out of seeing them run to greet us at the mere sight of the treat container or the sound of the back door opening. It makes us feel good to see them happy and we are entertained by their antics when they compete for the coveted goodies. But the wrong type of treats and treats in excess can be harmful to their health, stunt growth, shorten their lifespan and interfere with production in egg-layers. So, what can they eat, what shouldn’t they eat and how much is too much?

A good rule of thumb is: if you shouldn’t eat it, your pet chickens shouldn’t either (mealworms, insects and dirt notwithstanding). Common sense should be the guide in treat selection.The types of foods we require to maximize our own health are the foods we
should consider when spoiling our chickens: high protein, whole grains, low salt, low sugar, fruits and vegetables. Love your chickens, but not to death. Milk products are an exception to this general rule because birds are not equipped with the enzymes necessary to properly digest milk sugars. Think about it: mother birds do not nurse their young. Some yogurt on occasion is fine and does contain beneficial cultures, but too much can cause digestive upset and diarrhea. 

How Young?   Every new chicken-keeper wants to know how soon fluffy babies can eat treats. The answer is: any time BUT, if they are fed anything besides starter feed, they will need grit (tiny bits of sand/dirt) to aid in digestion. Starter feed is digested by saliva but other foods require grit for grinding in the gizzard (they’re a little short on teeth).

Given their tiny size and amount of food intake, a very small amount of treats can interfere with a chick’s nutritional balance, even if they're healthy choices. A chick’s growth, development and ability to defend against illness can be negatively affected by too many
treats. I am pretty conservative with baby chicks and snacks. It is fun to spoil baby chicks, but I feel that the potential harm outweighs any feel-good benefit. While not a treat, it bears mentioning that oyster shell should never be given to chicks or non-laying chickens as it can interfere with bone development and cause organ damage. 

What’s the problem with excess treats?  When chickens eat treats, they’re not eating feed, which is their primary source of nutrition even for free-range birds. Commercially prepared feed is very carefully and scientifically prepared to ensure that a chicken’s daily vitamin, mineral and protein requirements are met. Supplemental foods (treats/snacks) replace a portion of those essential dietary
elements to some degree. Excessive treats, even healthy ones, can cause any of the following: obesity, reduced egg production, malformed eggs, habitual laying of multiple-yolked eggs, vent prolapse, a protein deficiency, feather-picking, fatty liver syndrome, increased risk of heat stroke and heart problems. 

HEALTHY TREATS for CHICKENS  

Proteins: beef, chicken, (I know, it seems wrong), eggs, (cooked only so as not to encourage egg-eating) fish, insects (crickets are
delicious!) pork, worms (earthworms, mealworms), sunflower seeds 

Fruits: apples, peeled bananas, berries, coconut flesh, grapes, melon, peaches, pears, pomegranates, strawberries, raisins 

Vegetables: asparagus, beans (fully cooked if previously dried), beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, corn,
cucumbers, eggplant, greens, (kale, spinach, mustard) peas, peppers, pumpkin, squash 

Whole Grains: bread, cereal, pasta, oatmeal (cooked or not) 

OCCASIONAL TREATS   

avocado flesh

tomatoes (can cause gastric upset in quantity) 

potatoes (not green) 

rice (a neutral treat) 

yogurt (probiotics are a better choice)

 About Scratch. Scratch is affectionately referred to as ‘chicken crack’ for a reason; chickens love it, can’t get enough of it and it’s not the best choice for them. Scratch typically consists of cracked corn and a mixture of grains, which tends to lack an appreciable amount of protein, vitamins and minerals. Scratch should be thought of as chicken candy and only given in small amounts occasionally. *Scratch should not be mixed into the flock’s feed.* 

 NEVER 

moldy foods 

uncooked, dried beans (contain phytohaemagglutinin, which is\e highly toxic to humans and animals) 

MYTHS and FACTS about CHICKEN TREATS   

MYTH : Chickens should not eat avocados. 

FACT: Chickens can eat the flesh of avocado in moderation. However, avocado pits and skin contain persin, which can be toxic
in significant quantities.

MYTH: Chickens should not eat raw potatoes or potato skins. 

FACT: Chickens should not eat GREEN potato skins. The green color indicates the presence of solanine, a toxin that affects the nervous system when consumed in large quantities. However, the average, healthy human would have to eat 4.5 pounds at one sitting to experience any neurological effects. Similarly, a chicken would need to consume large quantities of green potato skins to experience any effects. The leaves and stems of the potato plant DO contain high levels of solanine and are toxic to chickens. The take-home  message? If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t feed it to your chickens. 

MYTH: Chickens should never eat onions.

FACT: Chickens can eat onions, chives and garlic in small quantities, occasionally. Sufficient quantities of onion and garlic can be  harmful to chickens, causing hemolytic anemia, aka: Heinz anemia. “The alkaloid N-propyl disulphide is present in cultivated and wild onions, chives and garlic, and affects the enzyme, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in red blood cells,” which can cause Heinz anemia. You wouldn't eat a bowl of raw onions, chives or garlic, so don't feed them to your chickens as a side dish. 

Further reading:

http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html  

http://www.exoticpetvet.net/avian/onions.html   

http://www.avocado.com/site/fun-facts/avo-info/avocado-toxicity-in-animals-and-pets  

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/213200.htm (salty foods are okay in moderation, occasionally as long as there is plenty of fresh water available, but never salt alone)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytohaemagglutinin    

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/211102.htm   

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=15+1912&aid=2236   

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It is generally good practice to spend time with your flock on a regular basis (as if you don't already!), apart from the regular feeding and cleaning, but really observing them, so that you know what is 'normal' and immediately notice any changes in appearance or behavior.  The faster you can identify a health issue and treat it, the better. Chickens, being the ultimate prey animal, are masters at hiding symptoms and often by the time you notice something is wrong its too late.

Take the time to pick up each chicken and give her a good once-over.  Look for anything out of the ordinary. Also judge how she is acting - calm and content or ruffled, uneasy or even possibly in pain.
 
A thorough 'comb to toe' checkup of each chicken every other week or so can help nip any potential problems in the bud before they become real problems. This will greatly enhance not only the health and happiness of your chickens, but also maximize their productivity and life span.

I just finished my checkup of everyone this past weekend ...they all got a clean bill of health.

Starting at the comb, here's what you are looking for ...

Comb
 

Eyes
  

Swollen, pus-filled or watery eyes, or eyelids that are stuck together can be signs of eye worm.  Sometimes the worms are even visible under the lids, swimming around.  (Sparing you all the gross details, it's basically a worm contracted from cockroaches.)  Your chicken will begin to scratch at its eye with the tip of its wing and could literally scratch her eyeball out.   

Eye worm treatment is easy with VetRx.  Add 1 teaspoon of VetRx to a cup of warm water.  Wet a cotton ball with the mixture and then liberally dab onto the roof of the chicken's mouth, holding the chicken almost upside down, so the pus will drain from the eyes. The water mixture should come out of both sides of the beak also.  Repeat daily until the eye clears up.

Crop
  

In the morning the crop should be empty.  If the crop feels hard and distended or full and mushy you may have a case of sour crop or an impacted crop.  Immediate treatment is necessary.

Breast/Abdomen
 

You should be able to feel the breast bone, but it should not protrude. This is a good check of overall health/weight.  A featherless breast can mean that you have a broody hen or it can signal Breast Blister which occurs in the heavier breeds from rubbing against the roost. Drain the blister, treat with Neosporine and then wrap the roosts with soft cloth to prevent further blistering.

The abdomen should be soft. If it is extended or you feel a hard spot, your hen could be egg bound if she also seems to be straining or her tail is pumping.

Wings
  

Check under the wings for mites, lice, ticks and other parasites.  A soak in a tub of warm water,salt, white vinegar and dish detergent followed by a good  dusting offood-grade Diatomaceous Earth is in order if you see anything creeping around under the wings.  Remove any ticks you find with tweezers and apply some Neosporine.  

Adding fresh garlic to your hens' diet or garlic powder to their feed is thought to help make their blood less palatable to parasites.  You can also spray the areas where you see the mites with a 10% garlic juice/water mixture.

 Also check for raw skin or missing feathers, since an over-zealous rooster will often do damage as will pecking order issues, and the areas under the wings are generally hidden from view.  Any raw areas should be sprayed withBlu-Kote to prevent further pecking or covered with a hen saddle.

Vent
  

The vent should look pink and moist.  A dry, pale vent indicates a non-laying hen.  Any accumulated balls of poop should be removed with some warm water - or trimmed in extreme cases.  Adding probiotic powder to the feed can help alleviate future accumulations of feces.

Bloody stool and ruffled feathers can signal Coccidia, a serious parasitic disease of the intestine, which can be treated with amprolium/antibiotics or a holistic remedy called Kocci Free. 

Internal parasites (worms) can often be seen in the stool.  Natural worming treatments can be used twice yearly as preventatives and remedies.

Again, a quick check for external parasites is important in the vent area. If you do see any parasites on any of your chickens, it is also imperative to do a thorough coop cleaning and dust the coop floor, roosts and nesting boxes with  food-grade DE before adding new bedding.

Legs
 

Legs should be smooth and brightly colored (except on the black- and slate-colored leg breeds).  Flaking or raised scales can mean scaly leg mites. Slathering the legs with vaseline will smother scaly leg mites and kill them.

Pale legs and feet usually indicates a good layer since all the xanthophyll that is in the corn, alfalfa and other foods they eat is being deposited in the egg yolk instead of stored in their beaks, legs and feet.  Adding corn, marigold or alfalfa to their diet can help.

Feet
  

Obviously any limping should be further explored, but if not caused by a cut or other visible injury to the foot, is most likely due to a hard landing off a roost and will go away in a few days.  Puffy or warm foot pads can mean a splinter in the bottom of the foot that will need to be removed with tweezers.  

A black spot on the underside of the foot pad indicates a potentially fatal staph infection called Bumblefoot that needs to be treated immediately.

Overall
  

Here is an easy recipe for a DIY Antiseptic Ointment to apply to a wound or cut in a pinch.

1-1/2 ounces beeswax
1 cup olive or coconut oil
1/4 teaspoon liquid vitamin E (helps repair damaged skin)
1/2 teaspoon tea tree oil (antibiotic, antibacterial, anti-fungal)
10 drops lavender essential oil (relaxant, pain reliever, antibacterial, anti-fungal)
10 drops lemon essential oil (antibacterial, antiviral)

Grate beeswax and melt with olive or coconut oil over low heat in a double boiler. Remove from heat and stir in the Vitamin E an essential oils.  Pour into a small glass jar and cool.  Store in a cool, dark place.
____________________________

By taking a few minutes to examine each chicken comb to toe every few weeks, you ensure that they stay in tip-top shape.  Of course, as Ben Franklin said 'an ounce of prevention is worth a  pound of cure' and keeping your chickens healthy with strong immune systems is well worth your time and effort. 

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There is no telling when a sick or injured chicken is going to need immediate, medical attention, so it is best to prepare for emergencies. Knowing the types of supplies to have on hand is as important as having a safe, quiet space in which they can recover. I use my infirmary space for multiple purposes, including: a broody den for hatching chicks, a time-out space for aggressive or problem chickens, a broody-breaker crate and as a grow-out space for teenagers being integrated into the flock.

FIRST-AID KIT  

I always keep a basic first-aid kit handy and stocked with: Vetericyn, vitamins & electrolytes, epsom salt, non-stick gauze pads, Vetwrap, gloves, Epsom salt, sterile scalpels, tweezers, scissors and Duramycin, antibiotic ointment, Nutri-Drench and povodine-iodine. During an urgent, medical situation, acquiring supplies should not be the priority.

CAUTION: It is very important that the antibiotic ointment used on chickens NOT contain a PAIN KILLER. Any ingredient ending in “caine” or “cane” (eg: benzocaine, lidocaine) can be harmful, if not fatal to chickens.

Some other items you may wish to keep in a more extensive medical kit for your chickens are:

• a hen saddle  
• a chicken diaper 
• a flashlight
• dog nail clippers
• styptic powder 
• Popsicle sticks
• Preparation-H cream 
• Superglue 
• Old towels

SICK BAY FOR CHICKENS  

The following photos illustrate some of the arrangements that I have used over the years to house sick or injured chickens. They work equally well for segregating broody mother hens.

The hen below had just weathered a difficult and stressful bumblefoot surgery. She needed to rest and this was the only way to get her to do that. She has vitamins and electrolytes in her water due to the amount of blood loss, which was unusual. 

Injured chickens should be kept apart from the rest of the flock, in a safe, quiet living space, until they are fully recovered to protect them from being bullied or pecked to death. 

It is wise to know how and where a sick-bay will be set up in advance, before it becomes necessary. The basic requirements of a sick-bay are that it is safe, is spacious enough for the chicken to move around in, is accessible for cleaning and there's a place for food and water in it. It helps if it's in a dark, quiet place that is approximately the same temperature that the chicken was used to in the coop. There are countless options for a sick-bay. These are a few I use, depending on the time of year and nature of the injury.

A small dog crate surrounded by a chicken wire corral in the basement.

A small crate underneath the droppings board in my 4' x 6' coop kept this chicken in and her nosy neighbors out.

This hen is modeling the rabbit hutch in my garage.

Temporary cage inside my 8' x 8' coop, which works well for many purposes, including integrating new flock members. 

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Winter has finally decided to leave and spring has pretty much hit the ground running!  It seems like everything has happened all at once.  Memorial Day has passed and another school year is in the books for the girls.  We have been keeping busy and loving every minute of it.  There’s so much to tell, I might as well get started.

The move to the new coop was awesome to say the least.  They love it. I think if they could talk they would have been singing a chorus of Hallelujah!!  It took them a little bit to figure out the roosts but eventually there was a constant battle to sit on the top roost.  They have settled down now and share nicely, at least while we are there.  I can also report that Harv is a Harv and not Harvina.  He is Chad’s absolute favorite and has a lifetime interest in the coop.  In addition to Harv we managed to get 4 roosters out of the barred rocks that were to be hens.  Then gentleman that I purchase my chickens from may have sale for them instead of having to butcher them when they get older.  As much as I like chicken in my freezer I would like to see them find a home.  In anticipation of the exit of these 4 guys, I bought 4 pullets that are 18 weeks old.  When we introduced them to our chickens I thought we were going to have a fight on our hands but Harv put everyone in their place (I think the pep talks that Chad gives him about being in charge have helped).  These mature ladies enjoy roosting above the window though and on the top of the door and scared the living daylights out of me when I went in one evening after their bedtime.  Bedtime is 7:30 pm on the dot.  Everything has to be done before then or Harv gets bent out of shape.  He doesn’t get aggressive he just follows your every move. There again if they could talk, I would imagine that he would be saying “you’re late, let’s move, move, move.”  Needless to say we love our chickens.  I’m even taking a Speckled Sussex hen to pet day for Rory’s class!

Butchering day also arrived.  Chad spent 2 evenings watching YouTube videos trying to find the best way to kill the chicken without it being traumatic to them or us.  Everything went off without a hitch and we are planning our next B-day at the end of June.  The girls were very helpful and didn’t mind plucking feathers.  I think the vote is unanimous though that my ingenious husband searches the web a little bit and builds a chicken plucker!!  We are also going to get the cones or make something similar to put the chickens in when they are being killed.  I held them so that they wouldn’t flap around and break their wings but believe me, they are strong.  My arms hurt for a couple days.  It was worth every minute of work nevertheless.  The meat is delicious and it is incredibly satisfying knowing what we fed our broilers and how they were treated.

We picked up our pigs and managed to find 2 more just a few days after bringing the first set home.  Even though everyone voiced their concern that they would fight everything was good.  The little ones (7 weeks) are actually the instigators.  The older ones (9 weeks) tolerate them well.  They are hilarious to watch and they too have their habits.  I’m not sure why bedtime is such a big deal on our little homestead but the pigs take about 20 minutes to settle down and everyone has to be in a certain spot but their spots are right on top of each other.  As with everything, this too has been a learning experience.  I’ve never given a shot to anyone or anything in my life.  I learned quickly on what to do with the pigs.  Thankfully the antibiotic is an extended release so we only had to do it one time for each.  We also started out with a pan for water.  It was cute to watch them blow bubbles in the water but it wasn’t fun to have to go out to the barn pretty much every hour to clean the pan and give them clean water.  We wised up quickly, and installed the watering nipple.  That was quite a riot as well.  The older ones had no problem and knew exactly what to do.  The little ones took a little longer to figure it out.  At first they would wait until one of the older ones took a drink and stood there trying to catch the drips!!  Everyone is happily drinking cold, fresh water at their own convenience now.

Since Chad had a few days off for the holiday we also got the garden planted.  We have a Brinkley plow that fits a John Deere that we have but haven’t gotten restored yet so Chad rigged it up to one of our Cub Cadets.  Note I said one.  We love our Cubs.  I’ll elaborate further down.  After much trial and error and me being thrown off the plow, he managed to get the ground turned over.  Chad said it was the funniest yet scariest thing he had ever seen.   Luckily I’m pretty resilient.  We don’t have a tiller so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.  Chad went through everything with the mattock, I pulled out the sod, and after a few hours we had an amazing looking garden ready to plant.  The tiller would have rocked though!!  I’m not sure what got into Aurora but she turned into this crazy-wild rock picking child.  We didn’t even have to ask her.  It was a huge help.  The three of them took turns helping their dad plant.  We have tomatoes, peppers, onions, peas, beans, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, and squash.  Chad built a planter in front of the chicken coop also and we put more onions, beets, turnips, & carrots in it.  We are patiently awaiting the sprouts to emerge from the ground.  As excited as the girls are about the entire garden they have their eyes on the turnips.  In our old garden they never made it to the kitchen.  Chad would pull them, clean them, and they would eat them right there.  We are truly blessed by their uniqueness. 

Cub Cadets.  Chad saw garden tractor pulls one day and thought that would be fun for the girls.  We built Liza’s first and it was a pure addiction from that point forward.  Her tractor is a Cub Cadet 102, probably around a 1967.  In the beginning it was stock and now it’s not so much a stock tractor.  Rory and Jorja also have 102’s.  Rory’s is the same as Liza’s as far as what has been done performance wise but Jorja’s is still stock because of her age.  The older girls run a 12 HP Kohler that have had some work done to them.  Their gears have also been switched out in the transmissions and the tractors have been lightened as much as possible.  With no weights added they are about 680 pounds.  Liza also runs a class with the adults in which she has to wear a fire suit.  She has a second tractor in the works for that class with a 16 HP Kohler but it had to be put on the back burner for a while.  Same as with politics, I won’t harp on the fact that we have been hit hard by the current administration but it’s the truth and sometimes the truth hurts.  We had to make some difficult decisions, and her tractor and pulling in general are 2 of them.  We will pull locally but had to drop the point circuit this year.  Regardless it is a wonderful family sport that everyone can be involved with.  But anyway, back to the point of “one of our Cub Cadets.”  After working with the girls tractors we have come to really appreciate the craftsmanship that went into these tractors when they were built by International Harvester.  They are incredible machines that were well built and can truly withstand the test of time.  We have a 128 that Chad uses for things like plowing , hauling manure, and blowing snow.  We also have a 1200 and a 1650 that we mow with.  We also have a 100 which is from the early 60’s that will be restored at some point in time and a 582 that was modeled after International’s 86 series tractors that will also be restored.    

So as spring rolls along and summer quickly approaches we will continue on with our daily chores and add in plenty of hay making, helping on Chad’s cousin’s farm, fishing, sitting around fire, making smores and hopefully a few tractor pulls.  I’m hoping that the heat wave we have had lately isn’t a precursor for what is in store this summer.  It has been HOT!  I am also in search of a fail proof way to get rid of or catch flies without using chemicals.  If anyone has any sure fire ways please share, I would greatly appreciate it!!  Until next time!!

Recycled egg shells crushed and ready for the chickens  

Eggshells are entirely compostable. However, instead of throwing them into the compost bin, why not feed them back to your chickens? Chickens of egg laying age not only require layer feed but also require an additional source of calcium.  Many people supplement their chickens’ diets with oyster shells.  Yet, with a little bit of effort, you can recycle the shells from their eggs you have used for your family.  This provides your chickens with a great source of calcium.  Plus, you can't beat the price-free.

When you recycle your flock’s eggshells back to your flock, it is imperative that they do not resemble eggs.  This is important because you do not want your flock to begin to eat their eggs.  Once this behavior starts, it can be very difficult to break your chickens of this habit.

Start by leaving the larger cracked egg shells intact and drying them completely on low heat (200 degrees F.) in your oven on a baking sheet for about 1 hour. Once completely dried, place them on newspaper. Then use a rolling pin to crush them into bite size pieces for your chickens. Crushing them ensures that your chickens will no longer recognize them as eggs.

No need to worry if you only eat a few eggs at a time. A great place to save those egg shells is in a metal pie tin on top of your toaster oven. Over the course of a few days, your egg shells will not only collect but dry as you use the toaster oven.

Anyone who free ranges their flock even some of the time knows that chickens will eat pretty much anything you have planted, so why not choose some nutritious flowers that they will enjoy when you're planning your gardens in the spring ?
(As an added bonus, all ten of these flowers are also edible for humans.)

 Here are my choices for
The Top Ten Flowers your Chickens Will Love: 

1. Nasturtium not only attract bugs that eat the dreaded squash beetle larvae, the leaves and flowers are also edible for humans and make wonderful salad garnish.   Your chickens will love eating both the loeaves and the flowers, which are thought to be a natural wormer and also have antibiotic properties.

2. Squash blossoms are tasty stuffed with a sausage/ricotta mixture then fried, but the chickens love them also fresh off the vine.  The blossom is a good source of calcium, iron and Vitamin A, so let them indulge from time to time.

3. Violets make beautiful edible garnishes for cakes, cupcakes and ice cream, and also help with circulation and stop inflammation of the arteries. Your chickens will enjoy munching on them too.

4. Marigolds not only ward off insects in your garden, but they are also an antioxidant and promote the growth of new skin tissue.  As an added bonus, chickens who eat marigolds lay eggs with bright yellow yolks.

5. Bee Balm  is a wonderful flower whose leaves can be made into a healthful tea with antibacterial properties that is also used to clear respiratory problems in humans and chickens.  It of course also attracts bees which help pollinate your flowers and fruit trees. Your chickens will enjoy both the flower and leaves.

6. Dandelions  are a nice addition to salads. I guess technically a weed, instead of spraying them why not pick some for your chickens.  They are a natural detoxifier and one of the most nutritious plants in your yard, with lots of iron, calcium and Vitamin A.

7. Roses and rose hips cleanse blood toxins and act as antiseptics and antibacterial agents for both humans and chickens. Roses are also a classic as well as a beautiful way to decorate a cake with an edible garnish.
  

8.  Sunflower seeds are obviously a favorite among the feathered crowd, and also very nutritious, providing protein and essential oils to both humans and hens. The leaves are edible as well and your chickens will enjoy stripping the stalks of them.

 
9. Clover Blossoms are considered to be the most nutritious weed in your yard.  Both a blood purifier and an antioxidant, clover provides calcium, iron, magnesium and Vitamins A, B-12 and E as well as respiratory benefits. 

 
10. Echinacea (or coneflower) flowers and seeds are excellent for improving respiratory health. Chickens are extremely susceptible to respiratory illnesses, so planting some echinacea will benefit them greatly.

Flowers to Steer Clear Of:
For the most part, chickens will avoid those flowers that are harmful to them, but to be on the safe side, it's best to AVOID planting the following potentially toxic plants in areas your chickens can access:
azalea, black nightshade, buttercup, castor bean, clematis, corn cockle, foxglove, henbane, honeysuckle, irises, lily of the valley, oleander, privet, rhubarb leaves, rhododendron, St. John's Wort, sweet pea, trumpet vine, vetch, yew

There are many, many more potentially harmful flowers and plants....but if you stick to the ten safe AND nutritious flowers above, your chickens will thank you ! 

We raise Pekin ducks on our farm here in Virginia, right alongside our chickens.  We have four ducks, Penelope, Sasha, Sonia and Brigid and one drake, Gregory, and collect between 3 and 4 eggs every day, right through the winter. In fact, the ducks out laid our chickens this past winter!

The ducks are a lot of fun to raise, but what we love best about them is their eggs.  I had never eaten a duck egg before our ducks started laying them for us, so I didn't know what to expect.

Turns out, they are pretty similar to chicken eggs.  Of course the duck eggs are larger - about 30% larger to be precise.  Our duck eggs usually weigh in right around 3 ounces, which is considerably heavier than even jumbo chicken eggs. 

Duck eggs contain slightly less water and more fat which makes them superior for baking.  They make cakes and breads rise better. On the flip side, overcooking them makes them rubbery, so they aren't best used for frying or scrambling, although we do eat them both ways with care taken not to overcook them.  I find the eggs do have a bit stronger 'egg' taste than chicken eggs which makes them stand up better to strong cheese such as Swiss or sharp cheddar, say in an omelet.

I always use our duck eggs in a one-to-one ratio in recipes that call for chicken eggs (I try and use the smallest for baking), but since a large chicken egg contains roughly 3 Tablespoons, you can also lightly whisk the duck eggs and then measure out 3 Tablespoon amounts to equal the number of eggs the recipe calls for.

Duck eggs stay fresher longer than chicken eggs due to having thicker shells.  Their whites are firmer, and ounce for ounce they contain more calcium, Vitamin B-12, Vitamin A, and Vitamin D than chicken eggs. They contain less Vitamin E and about the same amount of protein as a chicken egg, and one duck egg delivers almost a full day's serving of cholesterol.   Neither duck or chicken eggs contain any Vitamin C.  One duck egg contains about 130 calories, half of which are fat calories.

Their larger size and thicker shells make blown duck eggs very much coveted among the pysanky crowd to hand paint or otherwise decorate.

Overall, the large, rich duck eggs make a nice contrast in color, size, taste and composition to our chicken eggs and  I feel blessed to have both provided by our backyard flock.

Like any good chicken or duck 'mother', I pride myself in thinking I understand for the most part what our chickens and ducks are trying to tell me by the different clucks, growls, shrieks and quacks they use.  If you spend enough time around them, you will come to recognize a low throaty cluck of a broody hen, the sort of growling sound when they spy a hawk, the high-pitched chirp-chirp of a lost chick, and the Morse code-like chatter of the ducks when they're excited.

While I would never claim to be able to communicate with them on every level, their body language also helps convey their message and between the sounds they make and their expression, we seem to be able to get our messages across to each other at least most of the time.

So when Gregory, our Pekin drake, came over this morning while I was filling the ducks' pool and started chattering away, I assumed he was just excited about having a clean pool, so we 'chatted' about it for awhile with him getting more and more worked up by the minute....well, imagine my surprise when I glanced over my shoulder to see the run gate had swung partway open and all the chickens were escaping!

As I ran to get them back into the run, I swear Gregory waddled away, completely disgusted by my failure to communicate with him.  And yet again, I was humbled and reminded how much I still have to learn about our backyard flock.

Last week I showed you some new plant life around our farm. Today we’ll put some cute critters on display.

Though our goal with livestock is mostly to produce food for our extended family, we do enjoy the animals while they’re here. We give them a good life and appreciate their contribution to our tables.

Our grandkids know what the livestock is for, but they still like to give the critters names. Some, like the docile chickens, are cuddled, held, and carried about day after day. Others, such as the squirmy piglets, are admired from a distance.

Life on the farm has taught the grandkids a lot about the cycle of life—the wonder of eggs hatching, the sadness of loss, the enjoyment of animal personalities. And the grandkids all relish the eggs and meat they help produce.

Prior to moving here, our livestock experience was limited to beef cattle and horses. Two years ago we started out with hatchery chicks, raising up laying hens and meat birds. Now that we have the chicken raising down pat, we’re adding pork production to the farm.

ONE LITTLE, TWO LITTLE PIGGIES
 

Last month we brought home these two adorable little piglets; next week we’ll pick up four more. We promptly named them Bacon and Sausage so we won’t be distracted by their cuteness and forget their purpose.

We decided to start them out in a brushy area and see if they really are “pigatillers” as some call them. They’ve already made noticeable progress! We have them in portable electric netting, which is great for rotational grazing of any type of livestock. When they’ve chomped up all the plants in this area, we’ll just move them on to the next section.

The vegetation is really just snack food for the piggies--they eat lots of hog feed too. But we’re told that consumption of plants makes the meat taste better. The fresh grass and weeds will increase its nutritional value as well.

Piglets grow quickly—these two are rounder and taller than when they arrived. For shelter we started them out in a chicken tractor that’s just 24” tall, but they’ll need some new digs soon. For the first week or so they were hiding out in the tractor or in tall brush most of the time. But lately they’ve been brave enough to come up and watch us from behind the fence.
 

HERE A CHICK, THERE A CHICK, EVERYWHERE A CHICK CHICK

We really don't have any chicks yet, but three of our mamas are giving us hope! Last year we had our first “farm births” when we hatched chicks in an incubator and a couple of hens did it the old-fashioned way. This year we’re trying both methods again.

These two banties are team brooding—snuggled together and jointly covering five eggs. They are hoping to hear some peeping from their nest before long. Hedwig (a white Silkie) and Pigwidgeon (a Dark Brahma) have both sat on eggs independently before, but this is the first time I’ve seen a pair brood together like this! Hedwig hatched one chick last year; Piggy has tried unsuccessfully three times.

The pair started out in the coop nesting box, which is 36” above the floor. That’s fine for setting, but once baby chicks start moving around it could be dangerous. It would be a long fall for a little chick that can’t fly. So as their “due date” approached I moved the hens into a little nest box of their own that sits on the floor of the coop.

We use dog crates of three sizes for chickens—for giving mamas privacy, brooding hatchery chicks, isolating ill or injured birds, and hauling broilers to the processing area. This medium size crate is just right for two mamas “attached at the wing.”

This trio totally surprised me on a recent visit to the chicken coop.  

April, the colored broiler hen in the middle, is broody, sitting on a clutch of eggs. Her two Buff Orpington friends, Yolk and Kelly, were just stopping by for their daily visit. The three of them just barely fit in the nest box. After Yolk and Kelly left, April the broody scooped their eggs under her tummy.

Unlike the “team broodies” who were in a nest box used by only a few other hens, April was in a well-frequented community nest. From the start I marked the eggs April is brooding so I can remove the other eggs. Every time I checked she was sitting on a clutch of eggs but some were off to the side. More than once, one or two of her original eggs was in with the newly laid eggs.

April is just one year old, and this is her first brooding experience. I think she was confused about how to handle her eggs when it’s so tempting to add the other hens’ eggs. I thought she’d do better in a private nest so no one else will lay eggs nearby.

So April moved to a dog crate tucked inside a small chicken tractor in one of the outdoor runs. She will have a private nursery when the chicks hatch. For now she can go stretch her legs in the run on her daily break. The other hens are excluded from this run to give April privacy, but they can visit through the fences.

Here you can see the maternity suite as Mama takes her daily stroll. 

So this summer we will be raising both chickens and pigs. Next year? Hopefully some beef cows will grace our pastures. We keep learning and trying new things. It’s good exercise for our minds and our bodies.

And did I mention that we love this rural life? At our family's blog Rural Living Today we encourage others who want to give it a try. 

I firmly believe in an ounce of prevention.  In fact, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' ?  He was a smart man - and I bet he wasn't even talking about chickens when he said that!

But he was right, it's far easier (and cheaper) to keep your chickens' immune systems strong and healthy and give them the best chance at fighting off illness and infections themselves than to try and treat something after they have contracted it.  Being the ultimate prey animal and being part of a pecking order that preys on the weaker members of the flock, chickens work very hard to hide signs of any illness or injury, so often by the time you see any symptoms, it is too late to treat whatever is wrong.

Because of this, in addition to the layer feed mix  I give to our chickens, I also supplement their diet with what I call the 'Holistic Trinity' of healthy chickens: Apple Cider Vinegar, Garlic and Diatomaceous Earth. 

First in the Trinity is APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. 

It's great for their immune systems, guards against bad bacteria and maintains digestive health in the intestines by lowering the pH levels and is an overal health booster.  It increases calcium absorption so your chickens will get more 'bang for the buck' from the eggshells or oyster shell you provide them.  ACV aso acts as an antiseptic by killing the germs that cause respiratory problems - which chickens are extremely susceptible to - in the throat.

Add apple cider vinegar (raw,organic ACV with the 'mother' is best, Bragg's brand for example) to your waterer a few times a week, or alternatively one straight week every month. The ratio is 1 Tablespoon per gallon of water.  The ACV will also help keep your chickens' water free of harmful bacteria and algae.  Be sure and use a plastic or stoneware waterer tho. The ACV will rust the metal and galvanized waterers.

I have also started using the generic store brand ACV to rinse and clean the waterers instead of bleach or another commercial cleaner.  I just mix it with water in a spray bottle or pour some into a pail of water.

Second in the Trinity is GARLIC.   Garlic boosts immune systems and it is also thought that mites, lice, ticks and other parasites are not as attracted to the blood of animals who eat alot of garlic. Garlic is also a natural wormer.

Garlic can be added to your chickens' diet in a couple of different ways.  You can float whole cloves in your waterer (mashed up a bit), replacing them every few days.  You can offer crushed fresh cloves in a small dish free-choice. Or you can add garlic powder to their feed.  I have tried all three and find it easiest to just add the powder to their feed (2% ratio), but every once in awhile I also give them a bowl of the fresh garlic.

Small chicks should also be offered crushed fresh garlic, free-choice, early on so they develop a taste for it.   A splash of apple cider vinegar in their water is also a great health booster for chicks. 

The third in the Trinity is DIATOMACEOUS EARTH (DE).  DE is an all natural silica-based crushed fossil that kills hard-shelled insects.  It kills fleas, ticks, flies, aphids and digestive worms while being completely safe for chickens.   Only food-grade DE should be used around the chickens, because they will inevitably end up eating some.  I  add DE to their feed in a 2% radio.

DE does also kill good bugs and can cause lung aggravation if the dust is inhaled, so take care where and how you sprinkle it.   You can wear a dust mask while sprinkling your coop floor, nesting boxes, around the feeders, in the dust bath area, etc.  

I find that one good way to disperse the DE is from a plastic shaker bottle, like the kind Parmesan cheese comes in.  I keep a full bottle in the run and sprinkle it liberally, especially in the summer when the flies get bad.

Bonus health tips !  Plain yogurt with live cultures and black strap molasses are also good to give your chickens on occasion as both have health benefits for your flock.  A weekly serving of yogurt will help keep the good bacteria levels high in your chickens' digestive systems and molasses contains lots of minerals including iron and copper, manganese and potassium, as well as calcium.  Molasses helps flush toxins out of the chickens' systems. 

Yogurt can cause diarrhea so it should only be given in small amounts and conversely, probiotic powder can be added to their feed in place of the yogurt to help boost the good bacteria in their intestines.

And there you have your Holistic Trinity plus something for intestinal health.  The holistic secrets to raising healthy chickens.

~Follow Fresh Eggs Daily on Facebook and also check out our blog: fresh-eggs-daily.blogspot.com for more great blog posts~ 

The Welsummer breed is fairly new to the United States, only having been admitted to the American Poultry Association in 1991, so it is ironic that they are what that average person thinks of when they picture the typical 'barnyard chicken'.  Even more ironic is that a Welsummer rooster, Cornelius, is the guy who graces the Kellogg's cornflake box, instead of an American breed like a Buckeye or a Rhode Island Red.  But no matter where they originated or when, there's no denying they are a gorgeous breed of chicken.    

Welsummers were developed in the eastern Netherlands, in a small Dutch town named Welsum sometime in the early 1900's and were imported throughout Europe, arriving in England in 1928, but not in the United States until much later.  Active and good foragers, they quickly grew in popularity however as a dual-purpose breed, laying nearly 160 terracotta-colored speckled eggs a year on average.

 My first experience with the breed came this past March, when I hatched two Welsummer eggs.  

Knowing the Kellogg's connection, and because these were the last two eggs to hatch, our Facebook fans named our two chicks Cornflake and Late Nate.   At a week old, the two chicks already had subtle differences in size and coloring....  

 and by three weeks old, Late Nate was clearly larger than Cornflake.  It seemed that, prophetically, Nate was a rooster.  By a month old, Nate's comb was much larger and brighter red and his tail was longer than Cornflake's.  

 By five weeks, Nate clearly had wattles forming, although he doesn't have the thicker legs or spurs that some breed roos grow early on.  Nate and Cornflake are six weeks old now and I'm figuring we'll be hearing some crowing from Nate in the next two weeks or  so. 

 He's the cutest thing tho, a miniature rooster, sitting and watching over the rest of the chicks. 

We'll keep Nate until he starts to crow and is big enough to be introduced to a friend's flock, where he'll rule the roost at her farm.  As for Cornflake, she will join our flock with the rest of our hens and lay us some of these beautiful terracotta speckled eggs !  

This is a follow-up to my post on spring cleaning the chicken coop (which I’m happy to say has been crossed off our to-do list!).

A friend of ours just picked up her chicks and is so excited…keeping chickens has really caught on! She’s asked me to share our how-to’s for keeping our little flock happy. Some of the tasks we do daily, some less often, but before you know it, they’ll all become second nature.

Each day…

1. Make sure the run is secure (no predator digging in the night), then let the hens out for the day.

2. Rake the bedding to freshen it up.

3. Refill feeder and waterer (rinsing out if needed), check level of grit…does it need refilled?

4. Gather eggs.

5. In summer: throughout the day, see if waterer needs refilled with cool water. In winter: check to see if the water has evaporated from a heated waterer, or has frozen.

6. Look hens over…do they appear healthy?

7. Once hens have settled in to roost at night, secure doors and nest boxes, close windows and ramp.

Each week...

1.  Clean roost (we find a wire brush works well).

2. Remove soiled bedding under roost; replace with fresh bedding.

3. Thoroughly clean waterer and feeder; refill.

4. Check supplies of feed and grit…purchase both if needed.

Each month…

1. Closely inspect run, roosts, doors, ramp, and windows…do they need repaired?

2. Are locks on doors and nest boxes secure and working?

3. Are pine shavings/straw heavily soiled?  If so, remove all bedding, then add fresh to the coop floor, as well as in nest boxes.

Once a year…

1. Let the hens in the run; close their entrance door to the coop to begin a thorough cleaning.

2. Open all windows to let in fresh air; remove feeders, waterers, and gather eggs.

3. Remove all bedding material, empty nest boxes, and clean the roost with a wire brush.

4. Once bedding is removed, broom out any cobwebs, dust, or remaining shavings from the corners. Haul used bedding to a compost bin or till into your garden.

5. Disinfect coop surfaces with a mixture of 1:10 bleach and water (one cup of bleach for every 10 cups of water). A spray bottle makes it easy to apply this mixture to all surfaces. Wipe the interior down, and let dry completely.

6. Examine coop for any roof leaks or drafts, then double-check all D-clamps and square lock pins on nest boxes and doors to make sure they are secure.

7. See that the windows are in working order, and if the roost needs repaired.

8. Remove vinyl flooring for cleaning. We placed a vinyl flooring remnant over our coop’s wooden floor…it keeps the wood underneath dry and makes cleaning much easier. I simply pull out the flooring, scrub with a 1:10 bleach/water mixture, rinse, and let it dry completely. (Note: vinyl flooring is for adult hens only and not a good choice for chicks as they can easily slip on it.)

9. Once everything is thoroughly dry, replace the vinyl flooring, top with fresh bedding, and fill nest boxes.

10. Feeders and waterers are then scrubbed clean, and then reattached to S-hooks on chains that are hanging from the ceiling (both should hang level to the hens’ backs).

11. Give the run a once-over and look for any signs of outside digging, bent or broken wire, and general wear and tear. Make repairs where needed.

I hope sharing our to-do list is helpful as you start your own list. Once you get in the habit of caring for your hens, you’ll discover what works best for you. There are a lot of different checklists available for keeping your hens happy in their home…this is just what works best for us. You can always combine different lists to come up with one that's just right for you!

Some things are second nature…for example, I look over the run each morning and would certainly make any repairs then, not waiting until it comes up on my monthly to-do list. However, having a handy checklist that’s broken down like this one, means even if I get busy, I’ve taken care of the important things that need doing.

Feel free to comment and share your own checklist ideas...there's always something new we can learn! 

Mary is a Midwest farmgirl who enjoys the simple pleasures of living in the country. "For us, living where there is plenty of room for gardens, animals, and for kids to play and explore is the best kind of life." You can visit Windy Meadows Farm at www.windymeadowsfarm.blogspot.com .

Fresh and dried herbs have amazing health and well-being benefits...and also provide a bit of aromatherapy for your chickens.
 

Freshly laid eggs in a nesting box full of herbs 

My coop never smelled so good until I started adding an herbal blend that includes mint, basil, lemon balm, lavender and rose petals in the nesting boxes.  The first time I put the herbs into the nesting baskets, one of my hens actually fell asleep after laying her egg. Now that's one relaxed hen !

Buff Grace sitting in the nesting box 

Fresh or dried herbs in your nesting boxes not only work as insecticides, but also have anti-bacterial properties, and can act as natural wormers, anti-parasitics, insecticides, rodent control, stress relievers and laying stimulants.  They will help a laying hen feel safe and relaxed while she is sitting, and calm a broody hen, as well as repel rodents, flies and other parasites. Plus they look so pretty !

Nesting boxes filled with fresh herbs 

They will also benefit newly hatched chicks.  Research has shown that wild birds will line their nests with fresh herbs and flowers, especially those that contain essential oils. The newly hatched baby birds benefit by rubbing against these herbs in the first few days of life.  Same applies to baby chicks. The chicks will also eat some of the herbs, thereby garnering even more health benefits from them.

Baby chick in a nesting box filled with herbs 

Here is a partial list of common herbs and flowers and their beneficial properties:

Basil - antibacterial, mucus membrane health
Catnip - sedative, insecticide
Cilantro - antioxidant, fungicide, builds strong bones, high in Vitamin A for vision and Vitamin K for blood clotting
Dill - antioxidant, relaxant, respiratory health
Fennel -laying stimulant
Garlic - laying stimulant
Lavender - stress reliever, increases blood circulation, highly aromatic, insecticide
Lemon Balm - stress reliever, antibacterial, highly aromatic, rodent repellent
Marigold - laying stimulant
Marjoram - lay stimulant
Mint (all kinds) - insecticide and rodent repellent
Nasturtium - laying stimulant, antiseptic, antibiotic, insecticide, wormer
Oregano - combats coccidia, salmonella, infectious bronchitis, avian flu, blackhead and e-coli
Parsley - high in vitamins, aids in blood vessel development, laying stimulant
Peppermint - anti-parasitic, insecticide
Pineapple Sage - aids nervous system, highly aromatic
Rose Petals - highly aromatic, high in Vitamin C
Rosemary - pain relief, respiratory health, insecticide
Sage - antioxidant, anti-parasitic
Spearmint - antiseptic, insecticide, stimulates nerve, brain and blood functions
Tarragon - antioxidant
Thyme - respiratory health, antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-parasitic

Basket of freshly cut herbs 

Toss a few handfuls of mixed cut herbs into your nesting boxes and refresh them as needed.  Your chickens will benefit from them and you will enjoy how nice your coop smells.  

Mint and herbs in the garden 

I plant various different types of herbs each spring because of their many uses. In addition to using the herbs for teas and in the nesting boxes, I also enjoy cooking with fresh herbs.

Fresh basil growing in the garden 

There's nothing like going out to the garden and picking a handful of fresh basil for pesto, oregano for homemade pizza or mint to garnish a slice of cheesecake.

 Freshly cut herbs from the garden 

Herbs are easy to grow, do well in most areas of the country and can even be grown on your kitchen windowsill in the winter.

Jars full of dried herbs 

I also dry excess herbs at the end of the summer to use in the nesting boxes during the winter.

I hope this has given you some ideas for raising happy, healthy hens....Happy Growing !

Watering nasturtium flowers in the garden 

Remember I said that Mother Nature just couldn’t quite make up her mind?  Well this week she took it to a whole new level.  Wednesday was quite interesting. In the morning there was a light snow covering then it melted, and then it snowed like crazy, and then melted.  This went on all day.  Finally today there was no snow only a few remnants but it was only 38 degrees.  Who knows tomorrow it might be 70 degrees!!  Hopefully our little winter replay didn’t do much damage to the buds that have already emerged.

We had a wonderful Easter holiday.  Chad & the girls dyed the eggs, unsupervised!  I always know something is up when they are all huddled around him giggling like crazy and checking to see if I’m looking while making breakfast.  When I walked over they were mixing colors and making some of the funkiest looking eggs I’ve ever seen. I’m glad they had fun!   I did come across an awesome recipe for French toast like at Denny’s restaurant over the weekend.  I’ll put it at the bottom of the blog so you all can try it too.  It is delicious!!  A thought did cross my mind while eating all the delicious food over Easter.  I need to get my hands on some small eggs; I’m assuming Bantee eggs would be a good choice.  I think they would make awesome pickled eggs.  I imagine there is someone out there that does this all the time. I’d like to hear from you.   

A combination of the coldness and Chad going back to work has put a slight hold on the coop progress.  We haul coal and things have been a bit slow.  I’m not going to blast any political views in my blog but I must say that I am a coal and timber girl through and through and I’m not afraid to shout it from the roof tops.  Anyway back to the coop.  The walls are on we just need to get the strips tacked on to cover any gaps between the boards and the roof.  I think we are going to put one piece of the translucent sheeting in to create a skylight.  One more, non-freezing day and we’ll be ready to do the inside.  I can’t wait to get the ladies and the broilers into their new home. 

I have been having a little bit of trouble with the broilers spilling there feed. I did have the round Mason jar feeder that obviously was too small now that they are getting so big.  I picked up one of the long feeders but their heads got stuck once the food level got too low. I took the top off which made it even worse.  Everyone thought they had to stand in it to eat but not everyone could fit so they would stand back and make a run for it and knock the other ones out of the way.  I should start videoing them.  Luckily Chad came to my rescue this evening.  He attached the feeder to a thin slab and cut out the dividers on the top to make the openings bigger. The extra stability helps keep things grounded since they are a bit overzealous when it comes to their food and we don’t have to worry about any heads being stuck.  Problem solved.  He’s my hero!!

The only other thing that has been on my mind of late is the whole chicks and rabbits as Easter presents thing.  A friend of mine posted this image on Facebook.  She’s a vet tech so I can’t even imagine some of the stuff she sees.

I normally would just glance over it and scroll onto the next news feed item.  This though, made me stop and think. It actually made me pretty sad.  I even saw an ad in our local online classifieds stating that they would take unwanted Easter ducks, chicks, and bunnies.  I can understand a child wanting one and not fully understanding the time, effort, and expense that goes into their care but an adult should know better, especially with the amount of information available.  I guess the most important thing we (our family and yours) can do is be a resource and do our best to educate people so that they can make the right choices.

Hopefully my next post will have a finished coop, the addition of pigs, and a picture of one of the girls with a nice spring gobbler since junior hunt day is tomorrow.  Until next time!!

The parents of little girls know that one difficult day their babies will become young women and the inevitable will happen: gentleman callers will sudden appear on your doorstep. This is not a conversation I anticipated having about chickens.

As many who enjoy a rural lifestyle do, I awoke to the sound of a rooster crowing this morning. At 3 AM. And I don't have any roosters. Apparently the temptation of a yard full of food and a harem of hens was too much for two stray roosters that have decided to call my yard home. Make that my yard, my porch, and the roof of my new car. Little known fact: two bantam roosters can poop three times their own body weight a day! Or maybe it just seems that way when you're washing it off your windshield and out of your shoes.

Poop disaster aside, the little buggers are insufferably arrogant. Strutting and crowing all day long is part of the job description, but they're bullying one of my barred rock girls and have forced her out of her little flock. She now sulks on the back porch instead of happily eating bugs with her sisters. So how do you get rid of them? Nobody claims them, and the neighbors are complaining about the noise. Plan A is to coop the girls and keep their food and water away from their new beaux.  Plan B is chicken soup.

That said, any advice about feral roosters would be greatly appreciated!

Once upon a time, I dreamed of owning chickens ... then, last spring, the dream came true! As our girls (Henrietta, Cinnamon, Hermione, Spottie, Hershey, and Alex) get ready to celebrate their first birthday on the farm, I thought I'd share their story.

A visit to our local feed store began with the usual excitement of spring fever. We looked over seed and vegetable packets, reviewed the spring magazines, and thumbed through the newest books. The kids wanted their own gardens to tend this year, so we were all excited about the idea of getting started. That's when it happened ... an unmistakable "peep" was heard from somewhere in the back of the feed store.Off the kids ran, and soon they spied them ... dozens of adorable, fluffy, one-day-old chicks. Immediately we were smitten!

Owning a small flock of chickens had been on my wish list for quite a while, but now the opportunity was really in front of us. What would we need? A coop, run, feeder, waterer, brooder lamp ... my mind was working overtime. And yet, my thoughts were cautious because my husband wasn't with us. This had to be a family decision.

Soon my daughter found the smallest chick in the bunch ... she even gave her a name. It broke my heart, but I had to say no. We needed to talk this over as family .. .bringing them into our lives wasn't something to do lightly. And so the littlest chick rejoined the rest of her flock.

Shortly after leaving the store, we joined my husband and in-laws for dinner, and, of course, the excitement of the day was shared. My husband agreed ...  if the chick had been named, well then, it had to come home with us. Oh the squeals that followed! However, the minimum purchase was six ... and so, after dinner, we found ourselves back at the feed store. The littlest chick, Cinnamon, was still there, and she, along with five others, were gently placed into a box and rode home on my daughter's lap under her and her brother's watchful eyes.

The kids slept right beside the chicks the first few nights, and before long the chicks outgrew their box and were ready to make the move to a coop. As moving day came closer, a design was decided on, and I sketched out an attached run for added security. In our part of the Midwest, foxes and raccoons are often seen, and coyotes sometimes heard in the woods. I read everything I could get my hands on to make sure we were prepared. We settled on square lock pins to secure the doors and D clamps for the nest boxes. The run was made with a heavy gauge wire roof to keep the falcons out, and my husband spent many hours pounding rebar into the ground along the outer edges of the run and coop to discourage digging animals.

We then cut a vinyl flooring remnant to fit the coop floor. This keeps the wood floors underneath dry, and clean up is a breeze. When it's coop cleaning time, I simply sweep the pine shavings into a wheel barrow and toss them into the compost bin, remove the vinyl flooring, mop and disinfect it, then let it dry thoroughly before replacing it in the coop. We added 14-gauge wire to the windows, which is kept in place with deck screws and fender washers. This allows me to easily open the windows on hot days (and nights) and still feel the hens are safe and secure.

The coop was soon ready, and moving day came. After a bit of exploring and stretching their legs, the hens began what we call "chicken races," or nonstop back and forth running along the length of the run!

When the hens were 18 weeks old, we discovered our first eggs ... we were thrilled! From then on, it's been a race to see who can make it to the coop first for a "chicken and egg check."

The past year has been a time of teaching our children how to care for their little flock, but also a time of having some old-fashioned fun. In a day filled with so many electronic distractions, it's been sweet to see them enjoy this simple country pleasure.

Mary is a Midwest farmgirl who enjoys the simple pleasures of living in the country. "For us, living where there is plenty of room for gardens, animals, and for kids to play and explore is the best kind of life." You can visit Windy Meadows Farm at www.windymeadowsfarm.blogspot.com. 

I want to go on record as saying that my chicken addiction is my mother’s fault. She started sharing Backyard Poultry magazine with me, even though she had absolutely no desire to own chickens. I lived in a city. I didn’t want chickens either. I still have no idea why she started getting that magazine. But somehow, reading the articles and peeping at pictures of pampered poultry, the idea started to grow on me. After all, I’ve always liked birds, and chickens are MUCH cheaper than parrots. 

Then we moved to the farm, and lo and behold, it had a coop. Old and dilapidated, yes, but still a coop. I put the matter out of my mind until I took the kids to TSC one day to get horse feed.  Wouldn’t you know it, it was chick week. Sure enough, they had straight run bantams, and some of them looked like Silkies  (a breed known for their docility and fur-like feathers). The kiddos started clamoring for “their own pets.” How could I resist at $1.50 each? Scott said OK but told me to also get some that laid eggs.  Why, I’ll never know, since he won’t eat eggs. 

Naming the banties was an event. Each kid got to pick one and name their own. Caitlin called her Silkie pullet “Beautiful Sweet.” Arthur, being a boy, named his Bantam Cochin pullet “Spiderman.” Scott was reluctant to name his. “You WILL name this chicken,” I intoned. Thus, Murphy the rooster was christened. The kids started carrying on about when we were going to get a cow since we live on a farm now. I pointed to the remaining chicken and said “Voila! Now we have a Cow!” Yes, a rooster named Cow. I warned you that I was crazy.  (and, in my defense, I only learned which was which after a few months.)

I picked up some traditional layers from the “pullet” tanks. After they matured, I discovered that we had ended up with five roosters and 8 hens (counting the bantams). EEK. A few months followed while I caged them at night, but moved some chicken pen with screens on top (to keep the hawks and cats out) around the yard so they could range during the day. We fixed the floor in the coop. We fenced a run. I bought a nifty new nestbox arrangement. Finally we were ready.  I even gave Murphy to a new home.

For those of you who have never met a chicken, they poop.  A LOT. I kept them cleaned up while confined (good compost, you know) but it seemed like the poo increased in proportion to the available space. WOW. Thank goodness for Harvey Ussery’s deep litter idea. Deep litter is laying down at least 8 inches of loose litter (like leaves, grass clippings, chopped hay, etc) in your coop and run to absorb the nitrogen and ammonia from the poo without having to clean your coop every week. The material then starts composting and you can scrape it out once or twice a year. Sounded good to me!

He also mentioned ventilation. Mind you, I’d been feeling bad because I just hadn’t gotten around to fixing the coop windows. The theory is that enough ventilation will prevent harmful fumes from harming the chickens’ lungs, while keeping the air dry and eliminating frostbite. This sounded better and better to me, since I don’t have
electricity out to the coop and can’t heat it. So I left the windows open.  I have noticed that now, even after 7 months, my coop doesn’t stink and my chickens are all still healthy.

The first night it got down into the teens, I couldn’t sleep. I was convinced that I’d go out to the coop and find them all frozen, or Stewie’s magnificent comb frostbitten. It
was a bit of an anticlimax the next morning, but everything was fine. Sure, the water was frozen, but I’d brought extra. Nobody had frostbite. I would have done the happy dance, but none of the hens would have laid for a month afterwards. My happy dance is a little scary.

Fast forward to this year.  Few human women have planned for their babies as I’ve planned for my new chickens in the last few months. The perfect breeds, the necessary equipment, the places to keep them through their stages of development . . . my brain is still spinning happily along. I can’t wait to see how my carefully selected new babies will work out. I can’t wait for my first dozen “rainbow” eggs later this summer.

In the meantime, I had fallen in love with the longtails - I wanted an Onagadori (sometimes their tails get up to 30 feet long and that's not a typo!) but you can't get them in the US, at least not without selling your firstborn child.  So, next best was the Phoenixes and Yokohamas (their tails can get up to 5 feet long).  I managed to get a mixed pair AND another coop, but that's another story!

Finally, here came the mail.  I had ordered some of the rarer breeds from My Pet Chicken - a Jersey Giant, a Barnevelder, a Welsummer, a Black Copper Marans, and two Silver Laced Wyandottes.  I wanted to get some Ameracaunas to go with them (for blue/green eggs).  I thought my order at Orscheln fell through, so I found another source (and ended up with a blue Silkie to boot).  Then Orscheln called to let me know that they were still holding my 4 (that I thought they didn't have).  My ever so patient husband let me get them too.

I thought I wanted to raise my own meat birds too - I even found someone local who's willing to teach me to slaughter.  Off I went to the feed store again, planning to get 6 Cornish Cross meat birds.  Well, they had some older ones and I picked them up at a steal for 50 cents each.  Sure, it was 18 instead of 6.  No big deal, right?

Let's not even mention the 8 more that are coming in late April.  Speckled Sussexes, Anconas, and Salmon Faverolles.  I'm really going to hit the rainbow egg idea hard!

I'll post the story of Banzai the Phoenix chick soon - it's funny enough that it deserves its very own blog.

Sure, it can be a pain venturing out in the cold to collect eggs or carry unfrozen water 4 times a day. Sure, it looks odd to throw frozen veggies into the pen and put out frozen water bottles in summer.  I’m sure people driving by have laughed at that crazy lady on the side of the road pulling up weeds in the dead of winter. But just one afternoon spent surrounded by feathery bodies clucking contentedly is worth it. Those perfect eggs are WAY worth it. And I can’t wait to see what that compost will
do for our garden.  So, from city girl to farmer.  I think it's funny that people around here are starting to come to me for advice on chickens.  Still, I'm happy to share what I know!

You can see pics of what my flock will look like at http://fearlessfarmfrau.blogspot.com/2012/02/chicken-fever.html.  Catch chicken fever with me!

They're heeeeeeere!   Eleven new cluckers, including a Black Copper Marans, a Barnevelder, a Welsummer, a Jersey Giant, 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 4 Ameracaunas, and one "stray" blue Silkie.  Later this year, another batch of Speckled Sussex, Anconas, and Salmon Faverolles will arrive.  As soon as they're old enough, they'll join my laying flock of Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons.  I'll tell you the story of how I got hooked on chickens soon.  After all, before my little fluffy lovelies got here, I was up to 13 chickens (including 4 roosters).  My very patient husband even let me get some ornamental birds--Maki and Sushi the Yokohama/Phoenix crosses.  It's only going to get better!

I've been planning for them since January. I thought it'd be easy to just go to Tractor Supply and grab a few Ameracaunas. Apparently they're a popular breed this year, and even the Orscheln nearby that was supposed to have them this week didn't.

Enter my new friend Keena. I'm not the ultimate authority on chickens, but she calls me for clucker advice. Hopefully I haven't steered her wrong! Well, after the deal at Orscheln fell through, I posted madly on the poultry swap site that I was in dire need of Ameracaunas or Easter Eggers. I mean, I've planned for rainbow eggs . . .what's a rainbow without blue or green? Keena came through. She called a friend of hers at her local Orscheln, went in first thing this morning as soon as the chicks came in, and grabbed the 4 that I wanted. She also picked up a cage that another friend was holding onto for me.

While Keena was getting my chicks, I was getting hers. She had arranged to buy some Silkies from a lady who lives just up the road from me.  We met halfway between our towns (and had a nice chat too!). I picked up and paid for Keena's chicks, then headed out for our next rendezvous point to "do the deal."

It turns out that Keena owed me $5. I (half) jokingly suggested that instead of getting change for a $10 bill, I'd take a Silkie. Well, bless her, she said yes. So, my "stray" blue Silkie came home. My daughter thinks I should name her Blueberry. Well, at least that's a fairly non-gender-specific name just in case it happens to be a rooster.

So these little balls of fluff are jetting around the brooder like waterbugs. They're eating and drinking like there's no tomorrow. I guess I would too if I'd spent 2/3 of my life at the mercy of the postal system, living off my yolk sac. Every now and then, one will nod off a little bit, or just fall over asleep. I forgot since last year that they do that--this morning, the one I'm pretty sure is the Barnevelder (her name will be Barnie) just flopped over. OH MY GAWD DON'T DIE!!!! YOU WERE EXPENSIVE!!! When I started breathing again, I noticed that she was too, and in about a minute popped up and zoomed for the food again. They also seem to need some time to get their "land legs." Every so often, one will trip over her own feet and go rolling. You should see them flap their little tiny wings. ADORABLE!

And yes, I have begun to name them. Not only do we have Blueberry the Blue Silkie, we have Wy and Dot the Wyandottes (say it out loud, you'll get it), Barnie the Barnevelder, Ginger the Welsummer, Juliet the Marans, and Hawkeye the lightest Ameracauna. I expect that I'll name the rest of the Amers one of the following (you've got to say these out loud too!) Miss Teak, Miss Steak, Miss Demeanor, Miss Information, or, my favorite, Miss Cellaneous.

Who am I kidding? I'm in love.  I can't wait to see the EGGS!

Toluma Farms has many layers to it besides just goats. They include enterprises like pasture management, growing oat hay, giving lots of public tours and raising beef cattle. One of the Farms most profitable layers quite literally lay a variety of beautiful eggs. Here is a look at the fowl of Toluma Farms and the valuable little nuggets they produce.

  Buff Orpington rooster - no eggs from him.

  Welsummer hen - lay the beautiful brown speckled eggs (my favorite).

 Black Sex Link hen - lay brown eggs.

  Golden Laced Wyandotte hen - lay brown eggs.

 Rhode Island Red hen - lay brown eggs.

 Barred Rock hen - lay brown eggs.

 Light Brahma rooster and hens - hens lay brown eggs.

 Ameraucana hen - lay the green eggs.

 Ancona hen - lay the white eggs.

 And while our resident peacock is not much of an egg layer, he sure is a stunner ... too bad the goats don't really appreciate his display! 

Hi there. Pleased to meet you. I’m the Fearless Farm Frau (AKA the Crazy Chicken Lady), and it’s been quite a journey to get here. I’d shake your hand, but I’m not at your computer, and asking you to shake your computer sounds like quite an imposition. However, if you were to offer me a virtual cup of coffee, I wouldn’t turn it down.

I grew up in a small German town here in Kansas. Both sides of my family grew up farming, but moved to town. As most kids do, I moved to the big city as quickly as I could. While cities have their pluses (sushi, delivery pizza, etc), I just didn’t ever feel comfortable. For a while, with an ex-husband, I lived in deep South Texas. At least there I could indulge my love of horses and meet some great folks. Alas, that deal went even farther south, and I found myself back in Kansas.

Lots of people knock Kansas. I still think it’s one of the best places to be. Open space, good land, lower cost of living, and just plain nice folks. After meeting and marrying my husband (our first date was making chainmaille — the armor, not the pesky letters), we formed a 5-year plan to get a place out in the country and get away from the constant traffic noise and sirens, plus getting our (then) future kids into good schools. Well, the 5-year plan turned into a 10-year plan.

So here we are. We bought our dream farm. (Hubby’s aunt and uncle had lived here, and we fell in love with the place.) It’s been maintained as organic for at least the last 30 years, plus being certified as a tree farm. We were so excited when we found out it was on the market. There’s such a peaceful feeling here that seems to include everyone who comes. Yes, we had quite a time selling our city house, and that’s another story. But here we are. Organic farmers at last.

I’ll be happy to regale you with more stories (mostly funny) as we get to know each other. It’s certainly been a learning experience for me, and I’ve still got lots more to learn. Hopefully stories about kids, chickens, horses, dogs, cats, and cutting and heating with wood won’t bore you. If they do, feel free to tell me so. I’ll take it as another learning experience. I’m not bored out here, and hopefully you won’t be either. Buckle in and saddle up. It’s going to be a great ride. 

I want to answer Chris, who emailed the site to say that he wanted perhaps to milk a small herd. We can help in this endeavour and would most definitely like to talk through the finances with him.

We had (a co-director and I) a very interesting meeting with Tim Jackson – the Principal of Sparsholt College of Agriculture (Hampshire ), who wanted to talk through the microdairying business model. For us it may mean an immediate ‘link’ to the student population with training, experience in small scale dairy farming, and the hope of encouraging many more self-employed farmers to get going.

The processing room – the ‘dairy’ – is the super-clean room in which we shall pasteurize, separate and bottle the fresh milk prior to sale on the doorstep. This week we have ordered the materials and equipment to lay the floor screed. The room within the timber barn is 6 metres by 6 metres. Down the centre of the room we shall cut the concrete and insert a floor drain with removable parts for washing at intervals. Then we shall set the floor levels to allow the screed (50mm thick) to drain into the central gulley. The surface of the sand and cement screed (grit sand ) will be carefully trowelled and left to dry. The final ‘hygiene‘ coat will be a gritty, (for traction) Epoxy resin covering laid on  with a trowel to 4mm thickness. 

Meanwhile, we can start the studwork walls which will be covered in Dairy Board (PVC sheets 2400x1200 and 3mm thick). The dairy board comes with clever jointers and cover strips which ensure seamless cleanliness throughout. Prices for the room will follow and will include labour to fix. I have met an ingenious refrigerator man who will help us with the walk-in cool room and who will direct us while we try to construct our own ‘clunky’ fridge doors. The savings are enormous. Details to follow.  

One of the cows has developed a scratched teat from the sharp teeth of the calf. I shall have to deal with this, as when we switch to machine milking through the new milking bail she may, with reason, kick up merry hell. What about the switch over from purely calf rearing to full-on milking husbandry – how will it go? So much to learn. I need to talk to Sue Cole in the New Forest, who is a deft expert in such matters, and I have Caroline Moody (www.moodycow.com) to provide training. Mentor Ian Crouch (source of the Jersey cows) is selling ‘raw’ milk to customers – how good is that? You can now buy fresh, raw (unpasteurized) milk at the Bowerchalke Market every Saturday. 

I think things are really moving. I think more and more people wonder about where milk comes from and who produces it.

Read, at once, The Untold Story of Milk  by Ron Schmid ND (with an excellent ‘forward’ by Sally Fallon, President of the Weston.A. Price Foundation).

And there is no better person to grapple with on this subject than Graham Harvey. Start with his The Killing of the Countryside, and move on to The Carbon Fields, and then all his other work. 

I want to give credit where credit is due. The Prince’s Countryside Fund have been full of support and encouragement and have introduced me to Mark Allen, CEO of Dairycrest, and Paul Whitehead, Director of Operations- Dairycrest, who are constantly on hand to advise us with this new venture.

The Plunkett Foundation provided Jane Ryall as an adviser with whom to talk through our early ideas and financial budgets. She was terrific (a dairy farmer’s daughter) in helping me to form the company and in providing a solid look at the figures with nothing left out or overlooked. Plunkett  is devoted to encouraging all aspects of local agriculture and employment and was founded in the 1930’s.

Notes on the Side:

This addition to the blog allows me to stray ‘off’ track and comment on other things in the village and on the small holding.

I have started a flock of meat chickens along the lines laid out by Joe Salatan in the USA. They live in a fox-proof contraption which is moved every day onto fresh grass.The idea is that they should follow the cow herd and gobble up intestinal parasites before they can even think of completing their grizzly life-cycle!

Next Time:  A look over the County border at Wilcox Milk

History – a talk with Rex Paterson’s grandson – the great milking bail pioneer of the 1940’s.

Our first year of the “real” farm life here has proven to be quit humorous at times. Andrew and I have been amazed by some of the questions people have asked. At times, those funny questions and comments have triggered funny memories from the past. Recently though we shared some of these bits of humor with our family when a realization hit us. While the situations were funny at the time, when you really think a moment it isn’t so funny. Why? Read on and see for yourself as we share a few different scenarios.

  I sure hope my mother will forgive me, but this one is to good not to share! My Dad told me this story one time of when he and my mother were just married. Mom was only 18 at the time, a young girl from a small town and not at all familiar with farms or livestock. While out on a drive one day they spotted a scenic hillside dotted with grazing cattle. Dad pointed them out to Mom and said, “look there at them hill cows!” The hill was quit steep, and Dad went on to tell Mom how those cows had two legs shorter than the others so they wouldn’t fall down the hill. He said those poor cows have to keep grazing around the hill because they will fall down if they turn around. Mom actually believed him up until he burst out in laughter.

 2.Brown Cows Make Chocolate Milk. 

While I am telling on my family we’ll add this one! Several years ago my young cousin got in trouble at school. Their class was discussing where food comes from. She was only 7 at the time when the topic of cows and milk came up. Danielle was so completely convinced that brown cows make chocolate milk, and white cows make white milk that she argued with her teacher. Not even her mother could make her believe that evening that all milk starts out white, regardless of the color of the cow!

3. “Them roosters lay eggs?” 

At the end of last summer, we found ourselves with a bakers dozen of mature roosters and about that many extra week old chicks. I advertised them locally on an online sales page. The ad specified that we had six month old roosters and one week old straight run chicks. The following was perhaps one of my most memorable phone calls ever!

Me: Hello?

Man: Yes, ma’am. I saw your ad and was calling about your chickens. You still got them?

Me: Yes we do.

Man: Are any of them laying eggs?

Me: All we have are mature roosters and chicks, we don’t have any hens left for sale.

Man: Them roosters aren’t laying eggs yet?

Me: Excuse me?

Man: Are the roosters not old enough to lay eggs yet?

Me: Well, roosters don’t lay eggs. They’re boys. Only the hens lay eggs.

Man: Oh, well are the chicks laying any eggs?

Me: They are only one week old.

Man: Well when will they lay eggs?

Me: Some of these may be roosters, but the ones that are hens should lay when they’re about 5-6 months old.

Man: So what do you use roosters for if they don’t lay eggs?

Me: We use some of them for breeding stock, and the extras that don’t sell we put in the freezer.

Man: Why do you do that?

Me: So we can eat them.

Man: You EAT roosters?! What do they taste like?

Me: They taste like chicken.

Man: Well I haven’t ever had chickens before and thought me and my wife could get us a few to get some eggs.

Me: I’m sorry, but we don’t have anything for sale that is laying right now.

Man: Well I don’t want no birds that can’t lay eggs. We don’t eat roosters, just them roasters from the store. You don’t have any egg chickens for sale?

Well, as you can imagine, we didn’t make a sale that day!

 4. White Rocks aren’t Jersey Giants. 

  Sometimes, no matter how hard you try there is just pleasing some people. Nor can you change their mind when they whole-heartedly believe something to be true. Not long ago we sold a small flock of five white rock hens with one white rock rooster. He went home thrilled, and e-mailed us at least twice a week for three weeks telling us so. He went on to place an advanced order for some spring chicks this year, as well as some fertile turkey eggs. We thought that was a successful sale, until three weeks later…

  Then we get an e-mail from this man accusing us of cheating him by selling him “mixed up birds” and not Jersey Giants, something he claimed to have just discovered that weekend when his six month old birds did not reach over 10 pounds. He said that we knew they weren’t Jersey Giants, and cheated him on purpose. I told him I knew they were not Jersey Giants, that we had never owned Jersey Giants. Our ad had said White Rocks, he bought White Rocks, and we delivered White Rocks. I told him all we had in that pasture was White Rocks and Barred Rocks and I sent him a description of both breeds of birds with pictures of our flock. He responded that we must be lying, because according to him I sent him pictures of Jersey Giants and Dominique’s. There was simply no convincing him otherwise, even when I gave him the name and number of the certified poultry hatchery we bought all of our foundation breeding stock from.

5. “You have any meat sheep?” 

For the last year we have raised hair sheep. We started with some Barbados, and now raise mostly registered katahdin with a few Barbados and painted deserts. This past fall we advertised a pair of hair sheep for sale. We had more than one phone call asking us if we had any meat sheep available. I was amazed at the number of people who were confused about this. Many thought that wool sheep make wool, hair sheep make hair, and meat sheep make meat. They seemed shocked that you could eat both wool sheep and hair sheep, and that a “meat sheep” was simply one or the other of those. Then we also had people call and ask what do you do with a hair sheep, which my typical reply is we raise ewe’s for breeding and send most of the rams to slaughter. I lost count of how many times I heard “people EAT sheep?!” Apparently many believe that “lamb chops” and “rack of lamb” are just names, and not actual descriptions of the meat!

6. “I don’t want any White Chickens.”  

While advertising hens for sale this past summer, I encountered one woman who was quit comical in her animated description of exactly what she was looking for in a chicken. We were at the farmers market one weekend selling chicks and she had asked about hens. I told her I had a few white rock hens for sale. She proceeded to tell me that she did not want any of those white birds, she wanted brown eggs. Well, this was what triggered the brown cow/white milk memory!

I explained to this woman that we had white hens that laid brown eggs. She looked at me in surprise, shook her head and said “what will they think of next!” Then she asked if I was joking her. I told her no, that I was quit serious. Every bird in our flock lays brown eggs, although many of them at the time were solid white and some were solid red and others were black and white. She took my phone number, but never called back. I truly believe she left still thinking I was joking her.

7. “How can you tell if it’s fertile?”  

Recently we had a farm visit with a couple interested in raising sheep. While they were here we went on a tour and they got a big thrill out of collecting the eggs from the nesting boxes. When we came inside, they saw our incubator set up with this seasons first run of eggs. This brought a whole round of questions.

Woman: What’s in that?

Me: Chicken eggs, and a few turkey eggs.

Woman: What’s it for?

Me: We put fertile eggs inside, and it hatches chicks.

Woman: Where do you get fertile eggs?

Me: You just did. We use our own eggs from the barn.

Woman: How do you know they are fertile?

Me: We have six roosters.

Woman: How do they get fertile?

Me: Um, well the roosters breed the hens.

Woman: Are they ok to eat?

Me: Yes. Nearly all of our eggs are fertile, but we only hatch in the spring and summer time.

Woman: What does a fertile egg taste like?

Me: Well, it just tastes like an egg.

8. Bacon isn’t Hickory Smoked. 

During another recent conversation with a potential customer we were discussing cuts of pork. She had never had a pig butchered before and was wanting to know about the different cuts available. I asked what she usually liked purchasing from the store and as she gave me her list she mentioned how much her family likes hickory smoked bacon. I told her that she could get bacon cut with her purchase, but it wouldn’t be flavored. She expressed concern that our pigs had a different flavor, and thought that maybe she should look for another one that would have that hickory taste. I explained that no pig naturally makes hickory smoked bacon, that this is something that is done after slaughter. She had no idea that the taste of store bought bacon was not how it naturally comes straight from the hog.

We have heard similar stories from others involved in agriculture. Not only in regards to animals, but produce as well. One woman recently commented on our facebook that she knew some children who wouldn’t eat “dirty vegetables” from the garden. They only eat those clean vegetables from the store. Now while this and the chocolate milk episode above can be attributed to children who simply don’t know any better, what about the rest of those? All other above scenarios were grown adults ranging in age from mid-twenties to past retirement age. Some were college educated teachers, business women, and even a doctor. Is it really funny that these grown adults do not know more about their food supply?

Andrew and I were joking at first about these things, but as we thought more about it we were struck by how little the general non-farming public knows. Remember those Hill Cows? While my poor mother may have given my Dad a good laugh those many years ago, she evidently wasn’t the only one to fall for that line. At www.urbandictionary.com you can actually find the definition of a Hill Cow. Hill Cow: “A species of cow that live on hills. The legs on one side are shorter, so they can never turn around or they will roll down the hill.” Wow.

Our oldest children are only six and four years old, yet they can tell you which animal what kinds of meat come from. They know that chicks come from chicken eggs, roosters don’t lay eggs, and white chickens can lay brown eggs. While they may not know the breeds of all the animals we have here, they can tell you everything else about them from their eating habits to how many babies they have at a time. How sad it is to think that our culture today does not teach these lessons to all of our nations youth! To many children now think that food simply comes from the grocery store. Then those children grow into oblivious adults totally out of touch with the reality of what they eat. Seems like our country may need a lesson in Barn Yard 101.

Yesterday was a really exciting day for us here at ANS Farms. It was our first official “sheep visit” since we began raising katahdin last summer. We had a wonderful time with a very nice older couple interested in raising a few sheep of their own. During our conversation, the question was asked “How many animals do you have here?” Hmm… well, we had to sit and think on that awhile!

We don’t just do one thing here, but a little bit of just about everything. Which reminds me, I have been asked “Why Confessions of a Cracked Egg?” Apparently, I have never explained the origins of our blog title. Last year we needed to build our poultry flock. We started here with just 7 hens, not even a rooster. So in March we purchased a pure bred barred rock rooster and six more hens. Then we purchased some Narragansett turkeys. By April we were continuously running the incubator, doing as many as 108 eggs at a time of both chicken and turkey. Our friends thought we were crazy, our family just laughed. One day a Facebook friend posted a quote on my page that just about summed me up. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”- Bernard Meltzer. This made me laugh, and just seemed a perfect fit for our blog!

So lets do a run down of exactly what all we have here these days. I’ll start with our family. One year ago when we were just starting our farming adventure there was myself, my husband Andrew, our oldest daughter Macey, and our son William. In October, our third child Cierra was born. Here they all are in their first group photo. Macey is now 6, William will be 5 next month, and Cierra is almost 3 months old.

So as I think you can guess I have a fondness for poultry. Our original hens were all cinnamon queens. Now, the majority of our chicken flock is barred rock. We still have those cinnamon queens today, with a few of their barred rock cross offspring which hatched out white. Our chicken total today is 23 hens, 7 roosters. Here are our original “Golden Girls” and the barred rock rooster.

  .

Besides the chickens, we also have 7 guineas. These were purchased to eat the potato bugs off our plants last year, and they did so quit efficiently! I was impressed by how well they ate all the bugs in the garden without damaging the plants. We have 5 royal purple guineas and 2 lavenders. The lavenders are by far my favorite, the royal purple remind me to much of a vulture. I would like to eventually replace the purples with more of the lavenders.

In the fall of 2010 GRIT featured a beautiful turkey on the front of their magazine. I was struck by the beauty of that bird, and began investigating different heritage breeds of turkey. Andrew and I decided to try the Narragansett turkey first. Our first purchase was supposed to be 3 hens and a tom. However as they grew we discovered we had 2 of each. They just became old enough to breed this past month, and we have their first eggs in our incubator now! Unfortunately, last week one of our hens wandered to close to our Poland China boar Boss. Boss Hog had himself a 30 pound snack before dinner. Hopefully some of these eggs will be hens! Last summer we found a local man advertising fertile turkey eggs. He raised Bourbon Reds, another heritage breed and the second breed we were interested in raising. We ended up with 108 eggs, and only had 11 hatch from that run. Of those 11, only 1 bird lived to maturity. Not the success we were hoping for! So today we have 3 Narragansett turkeys and one lonely Bourbon Red. Since the death of our other hen, both turkey toms have decided to compete for the attention of the remaining girl. Here they are having a gobbling match.

When we went last year to purchase our barred rock flock from a poultry hatchery we took both kids along. They saw some baby crested ducks, and just had to have a pair. We brought home Donald and Daisy that evening. Six months later, we discovered Donald and Daisy were really Donald and Daffy. These boys were hilarious, and pretty sweet creatures. Unfortunately, Daffy was killed by a hawk just a few weeks ago, leaving us with one pretty lonely Donald Duck.

So that makes a total of 42 total birds we have here now. We are hoping to double our number of laying hens and turkeys this year. I’m also looking for a female companion for poor Donald.

As for the four-legged farm critters we have plenty of those as well! Our largest stock here are Momma and Baby donkey. Momma and Baby are livestock guardians who purchased from a cattle and goat operation. They are both very sweet with humans, and deadly to dogs! We have seen them many times charge fence rows and make a huge commotion when neighborhood dogs have attempted to run the fence row. Last month Momma Donkey bent a twenty foot section of fence nearly in half after a pack of five dogs began digging and barking at the fence. While we weren’t very happy to have to repair the fence, we were thankful that the dogs did not get in to the birds, their obvious target after finding one dead bird outside the fence. Momma and Baby are both bred to deliver this summer. We bred them to a nice gaited donkey stud that belongs to a neighbor.

That is Momma and Eeyore visiting for the first time. Not long after this we had to put up hay in the barn that sits in their pasture. We discovered that donkeys REALLY like jelly beans. Only when you run out, they try to come through the window for more!

Our main livestock operation here is sheep. We started with a few different kinds of hair sheep. Of those, we have three left. Barbie is a full blooded Barbados ewe. Her daughter Annie (born on our Anniversary) is a Barbados and katahdin cross. Then there is Paint, she is a full blooded painted desert sheep. In late summer of last year we added a registered herd of katahdin hair sheep to the flock. We have 7 ewe’s and 1 stud. Our favorite in this flock is Lil’ Red, our only red katahdin. Red John, our stud and Old Lady (the oldest in the flock) are also characters. All of our katahdin have been pretty easy keepers so far, not to difficult to catch or handle and seemingly resistant to the foot rot problems we were having with the other breeds. All but two of our girls are bred to deliver in the next 30 days. We can’t wait to have a pasture full of babies! This is our first year lambing, and we are all pretty excited. Our current sheep total is 11 head.

These girls are either pregnant, or they each swallowed a barrel!

This past fall we added a few pigs to the farm in an effort to clear our garden areas in a productive and environmentally friendly way. We currently have 2 Poland x Chester cross slaughter pigs we are growing out, 2 registered Poland China breeding pigs, and 2 Poland x York cross females for breeding. Our first piglets should be born sometime in March. That’s another first for us! We don’t know much about pigs yet, and are doing a lot of learning as we go so this should be quit the experience! Here are our two newest sows, Daisy Duke and Ellie May right after arriving here in October.

Besides livestock we also have three dogs. Two of our dogs are registered redbone coonhounds. Both are show and hunt dogs. Andrew used to raise and train dogs for show and hunt. Since moving here though we have sold his other dogs just keeping these two, our favorites. Sweets is our young female, and Digit our male. Digit is the kids favorite hound ever. He’s pretty easy to handle, and William has been able to show him since he was three years old. Here he is at a show when he was three with “his” dog Digit.

Then there is Tucker. Tucker is a Brittany and Springer Spaniel crossed house dog we got in May. When we moved here, we had a Wheaton Terrier female named Lucy. Lucy was our family mascot, the kids best friend, and a joy to our household. She was a very talented dog that was able to climb six foot ladders, go down ten foot slides, sled in the snow, and do many other tricks. Shortly after moving here our new neighbors son shot and killed Lucy for running across their yard one day. She had never been over there before, and we did not realize she had wandered off until it was to late. The kids were devastated, and we were all upset over the loss. Tucker was a gift from Andrew’s mother to the kids, an attempt to give something back to them that they had lost. While he will never be Lucy, Tucker is a sweet pup.. Most of the time!

So back to the question of how many of what we have here on the farm. Looks like we are currently at 3 kids, 30 chickens, 4 turkeys, 7 guineas, 1 duck, 2 donkeys, 11 sheep, 6 pigs and 3 dogs. For now. Can’t wait to do an end of summer inventory in a few months! We are expecting February lambs, March piglets, June and July donkeys, and chicks all spring and summer long. The kids have also asked Daddy for two kittens, which he promised they can have now that we have two barns built. Who knows what else will make it's way onto the farm this year. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Real farmers know it is best not to anthropomorphize, in other words to assign human characteristics to the animals in their care. The animals are only livestock and should be treated as such; real farmers don’t need to put a lot of thought into animal behavior. Real farmers are able to go about their day uninterrupted and accomplish their tasks in an expedient manner. I am not a real farmer. I know this because when I come across certain scenes in the barnyard I have to stop, scratch my head and ponder what on earth is going on.

Do you suppose she is in time-out? Or maybe they were all playing hide and seek and she’s about to yell out, “Ready or not here I come!”

Real farmers don’t form unnatural relationships with their livestock. They don’t have a favorite hen that will sit in their lap to be petted and discuss religion, politics or relationships at great length. I consider it chicken therapy.

Real farmers never see their livestock as children. They don’t get involved in the interpersonal relationships; they only worry about things like providing food, water and healthcare. I, on the other hand, seem to get dragged into it often.   

 "Peter won't let me in the barn again," said Frankie.

"Why won't you let Frankie in the barn, Peter?" I asked.

"Because he won't say the secret password," he replied. 

"Well there you have it, Frankie. Say the secret password."

"But I don't want to. It's stupid."

"Just humor him, Frankie."

"Okay fine. Little pig, little pig, let me in." 

"Nope. Not by the hair of my chiny, chin, chin." 

"See! I told you!" 

"Stop being a jerk and let me in."

No, I am certainly not a real farmer. And you know what? I'm glad. I have to believe being a real farmer would be awfully boring.

Christine Byrne lives on a small farm in rural Indiana where she takes care of chickens, sheep, alpacas, llamas and whatever else meanders through. You can read more about her farming adventures at www.frontporchindiana.blogspot.com .  

Today, I'm supposed to be at class number four of the Central Illinois Farm Beginnings program. But I'm not. I'm at my kitchen table, writing this blog, and feeling surprisingly OK about it.

The combination of a wonderful but demanding promotion that caused work to bleed into my weekends and my dire lack of knowledge about farming led me to the conclusion that I need to step back, reassess, and rethink the order in which I'm doing things. So the farm class is on hold. I'm not really a drop-out, I've just deferred continuing until next year, but "drop-out" made a better headline. 

I have this tendency to run headlong into things. Once my mind is made up, it's like the starting gun has been fired and I GO! This has served me well so far. After three months of dating, my husband and I decided to get married, and we did so just three months later. Next fall, we'll celebrate our 25th anniversary. When I decided it was time to move from our last house, we had our property on the market and sold in about two weeks, and bought a new house just a week after that. So when I decided that it was time to learn more about farming, I didn't hesitate to plunge into a class aimed at starting a farm business. I thought I was ready. But I'm not. Or maybe I was just on the wrong track.

I am ready, however, to get my hands dirty, and that is exactly the place I need to start. I need a season of planting something in my backyard patch of clay, of learning to make and use compost, of building a coop and getting a few hens. I have to start somewhere, and I've recognized that the place to do it is on this suburban plot I call Half-Acre Farm. Now I need to dig in. 

After my first day in class, I wrote about the irony of learning to farm in a windowless classroom—the very environment I'm seeking to escape. I still think there's a place for what I was learning there, I just think I need to earn a place in that classroom first. As a wise farmer friend said to me, "Courses are great fun and very helpful, but learning by jumping in is exhilarating." It's funny—I was thinking that by taking a class in the business of farming, I was jumping in—but maybe I was jumping around the fact that no matter how much I learn about farming, there's only one way to become a farmer, and that's to do it. So, deep breath! Time to plunge in.

The goal now? Chickens. I've been talking about it forever. Time to do. Time to GO! Let's see if this time, I'm on the right track.
 

I hate chickens. I love to eat them, and I love their eggs, but that’s as far as the love reaches.  

As a junior in college I was required to do an internship for class credit. My job was working at an interpretive center near Mount Saint Helens in Washington. The center was privately owned and I was provided company housing not far from a little wide spot in the road called Toutle. One of my co-workers was also my housemate.  

The house we lived in was old state highway department house. It had that 1930s look. It was located about two hundred feet upslope from the highway. Below the house was the shop that had been used for the highway equipment. There was a group of  bear grass pickers that I’m pretty sure lived in the shop and there was an additional home next to the shop. 

The house was a two story affair. You walked into the back door where you went downstairs to the unfinished, daylight basement or turned left and up two steps into the kitchen. The upstairs, where we lived was a decent sized two-bedroom house. There were about five hundred windows in the house only two of which opened and there were no curtains. So we lived in a fish bowl with no air flow. 

For some reason unknown to me the director of the visitor center where we worked had baby chicks in a fish tank in the “hands on” portion of the center. To be clear the center was all about forestry and the effect that the 1980 blast had on the surrounding private forest – not chickens. 

My roommate was a student at Berkley and like me was working at the center for the summer. She took to the baby chicks and when one became sick she tried to nurse it back to health. When it died she was nearly inconsolable. I was raised on a farm but had absolutely zero experience with chicks. Everything I “knew” about chickens came as hearsay and second hand information. What I did know was that I wanted nothing to do with them.  

But as chicks do, they grew bigger and not as cute. The director of the center decided that they would have to go. My roommate was in love with them by this time and she decided that they were coming home with us. I tried to convince her otherwise but she would not be swayed. So it was with much dismay that I came home one evening to find my roommate building a chicken coop in the basement.  

When I use the word “chicken coop” it’s a loose translation of the word. What she had built was a corral out of chairs, cardboard and an old screen door. Then she put newspaper on the floor and called it good. She then proceeded to lay the fifty pound bag of food inside the corral and slit open the bag for the chicks to free feed. There was no heat lamp. As the days went on the dust and smell was something awful. Everyday when I came home the smell assaulted me at the door. They got bigger and started jumping out of their pen and wandering all over the basement making a mess. I told my roommate that they needed to go outside. 

On her next day off she built a new “coop” for them outside. Again the term “coop” is generous. Because the house was built on a slope, the front porch was a full story off the ground. The front stairs made one wall of the coop. The old screen door made another and she found some old rotten boards and debris to make up the other two walls. It had no top, so of course the birds got out.  

The house was surrounded by woods and blackberries. My inclination would have been to let them run free, fend for themselves and either they’d get smart about where they roosted or they would die. My roommate did not share my sentiments. 

One day I came home from work to find my roommate running down the driveway at me chasing a fluffy little lap dog screaming obscenities and bawling. Quite a welcome home, I’ll tell you what. In the middle of the driveway was one dead chicken and two others that were badly mangled but still alive. It was apparent to me what needed to be done with the poor chickens. My roommate was convinced that they could be saved. 

It took me awhile to talk her into the fact that they should just be put out of their misery. She finally agreed and went in the house. That left me with two chickens to kill. I had no experience killing chickens, I’d read about chopping their heads off, but we didn’t have an ax. I remembered Dad taking a shovel to an opossum once, but we didn’t have a shovel either. We had absolutely no heavy tools or even light ones for that matter. 

I stood in the driveway contemplating how to kill those chickens for a half hour. Then somewhere in the recesses of my brain I remembered a story from high school. One of my friends and his brother used to make a game out of killing pigeons in the barn. They’d take tennis rackets and knock them out of the air. Then they’d take them by the head and swing them and snap their necks. It seemed rather too hands-on for me. But that was the only tool I had. I remembered my friend saying there was a technique to snapping the wrist just right. 

It took me another half hour to work up my nerve to attempt to kill the chickens with my bare hands. I picked up the first one by its head and swung it around. Its feet kicked and its wings flapped and it squawked something fierce. I could feel its vertebrae going around and around, just as if they were meant to do that very thing. It wasn’t working. I tried flicking my wrist and the chicken grabbed on to my shirt with its feet. I was sure that I was traumatizing the chicken more than the dog attack had. I finally gave up, let it go and worked up my nerve to try the other chicken. 

I decided I needed to be more forceful, that in trying to be gentle I was causing more harm. I picked up the chicken with conviction, swung it around three times, snapped my wrist and I felt its head detach from the backbone. That is the grossest, most disturbing feeling I’ve ever had. But at least the chicken was dead, and now I knew how to do it. I swiftly dispatched the other chicken, threw them both in the blackberries for the wild critters to eat and I went in the house.  

My roommate was still bawling. I couldn’t help her. I was so mad that she had kept the stupid chickens against my advice and then made me deal with them because she didn’t have the slightest idea of how to take care of them. 

I really hate chickens. Never mind the fact that we raised fifty of them this spring to butcher for the freezer. My father-in-law cut their heads off for me. After that was done I could deal with them. They’re quite tasty in fact. But my new dilemma is that three of my five layers have quit laying. I am a practical woman. If you can’t do your job, I’m not going to feed you. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got the guts to kill you either. So what I’m wondering is if there’s anyone out there who’s looking for three non-laying layers. I’ll give them to you, because I hate chickens!

I apologize for the delay in announcing the winner of the note cards. I've been having some issues with my eyes, but I'm happy to announce the winner is Cindy. Please contact letters@grit.com. to claim your prize.

Mountain Man and I were having a conversation the other evening.

"Seems like there are lots of birds around. Everywhere I walk, there's birds under foot." I was referring to our assorted poultry.

"I noticed." Leave it to Mountain Man to convey so much feeling in so few words.

It didn't seem as though we had that many birds this summer when they were locked up in their Poultry Palace (a half acre run Mountain Man built) due to a fox who decided to make her home on the edge of our pasture and conduct raids. But the fox moved on and now that the birds are once again out free ranging, it's hard not to notice them.

The other day I was sitting in our bedroom and I heard "knock, knock, knock." The dogs started raising a racket and I went to answer the door but no one was there. As soon as I sat down again, the knocking started. This time, I looked out the bathroom window and what did I find? Seven naughty Sebastopol geese pecking at the basement window. I do believe they were captivated by their reflection in the glass. Now, I can always find them around the back porch, eating the grass, admiring their reflections as they chomp away.

Walk a few steps from the house and instead of geese, I run into a group of chickens hanging out in one of Mountain Man's firewood crates.

In the field by Mountain Man's log splitting station, turkeys and guineas roam. When I look at them I feel a sense of accomplishment knowing they are my very own hatchlings. I've learned so much this past spring about nesting hens, turkeys and guineas and the care of newborns.

But I don't think Mountain Man would be too thrilled to see my guineas taking over the wood splitting station he just built.

Lift the branches of any shrub and you'll find my Cochin chickens. These birds are HUGE. They actually come up to my knees. Another thing I've learned about Cochins is that they are a tight knit group. You'll always find them together and they wouldn't be caught dead with the other chickens.

There also like to lounge in the shade of the pines.

Some birds still like to stay in the Poultry Palace. Here's 2 Naked Neck chickens and a Speckled Sussex.

The hens are maturing and starting to lay eggs. We're definitely going to have a surplus of eggs to share.

One of my favorite birds is my peacock. Peacocks are incredibly friendly and inquisitive.

And when I rattle the treat jar (dried worms), he comes running.

I could go on showing you more pictures of birds all over the place and really, it's kind of incredible seeing these birds out enjoying life and interacting with them. All the breeds you see here were chosen for a specific reason; either their ability to withstand cold temperatures or their ability to thrive free ranging. And I consider the birds an integral part of our farm. They fertilize the soil, control weeds, eat grass, dine on bugs and provide us with delicious eggs.

And I've learned at dusk, no matter how far they have roamed, they all head to the barn.

Are you wondering what Mountain Man thinks about my feathered friends? When he takes Lilly, our German Shepherd, out with him to do farm chores, he always tells her "Don't bother the birds. They are your Mother's birds. They're part of the family now."

Thanks one and all for visiting us.

Mountain Man, Mountain Woman and the zoo can be found at Red Pine Mountain.

In his first book, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An all natural approach to raising chickens and other fowl for home and market growers (Chelsea Green 2011), modern-day homesteader, Harvey Ussery has created an encyclopedic and engaging work that may well be the most important poultry book published in past 75 years or more. Ussery has a keen awareness of fowl behaviors and an uncanny ability to nurture those behaviors to significant benefit for both bird and homesteader. To say that The Small-Scale Poultry Flock inspires only begins to peck at the true value of the wisdom contained within its pages. 

I've followed Harvey Ussery's creative homesteading work for years through his articles in Mother Earth News and other back-to-the-land and poultry periodicals I regularly devour. And I've tried and modified many of his methods in my own endeavors with poultry. Quite simply, his ideas are good ideas that help create an intricate network of ecological cycles that leave the homestead soil more healthy and the homesteader more healthy and satisfied - all while honoring the animals that help make it work. Harvey is most definitely an animal husband and his methods make for a good life for the birds involved.

When I met Harvey for the first time at the most recent Mother Earth Fair in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, let's just say that I was thrilled. I eagerly put my money down on a signed copy of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock and felt lucky to get one as they were pretty much unavailable by the second day of the fair.  

Within the pages of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An all natural approach to raising chickens and other fowl for home and market growers, you will find everything you need to know about choosing breeds, housing, health, feed, processing, and even putting together business plans. However, unlike so many dry, technical manuals, or so-called how-to books authored by the obviously less-experienced, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is written in Harvey's experienced voice with an encouraging style that will surely inspire poultry enthusiasts of every experience level. This book is as valuable for folks just getting started with poultry as it is for experienced flock managers looking for an edge or a new approach. For example, some of Harvey's ideas on using chickens to make compost or to process green manure can be used by commercial operators to profitable advantage.  

The book's section on Working Partners is my absolute favorite because it explains how to give the animals a wonderful life, while reducing some of the pesky yard and garden chores such as tilling, composting yard, garden and kitchen waste, bug control and much more. Additionally, sections on geese, turkeys, guineas and other types of fowl are as informative as they are engaging and even entertaining. Have you ever thought about using worms to compost your vegetable scraps? But what if you don't like to do that much fishing? A composting worm farm might be just what you need to provide high quality protein for your birds, while processing waste into valuable nutrients. Ussery shows you how to do this and so very much more in The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.   

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is a must read for anyone interested in or currently raising poultry. The book should be required reading for anyone in a poultry science program, if for no other reason than to understand that chickens are not merely cogs in some factory machine, nor some organism that's so well understood that it doesn't need an outlet for its most basic of instincts - such as scratching the earth in search of morsels of food. The book is my top pick of the decade for poultry farmers of all kinds, backyard bird enthusiasts, homesteaders, and virtually anyone with some level of curiosity for the domestic animals that have so helped shape humanity. I don't care whether you are vegan, vegetarian, omnivorous, raw, paleo, organic, no-till, minimum-till, conventional, biodynamic - Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock will give you an insight into the fascinating lives of domesticated fowl that is enlightening, heartening and that cuts to the heart of ecological cycles on the homestead. 

Ah, reality. At this weekend’s Central Illinois Farm Beginnings class, it made a strong appearance.

In the previous two weeks, I’d spent time pondering the vision and mission for my business, with the help of worksheets provided by Purdue Extension. It was time well spent.

I clarified my overall goals and values, deducing that I want to connect people to their food in a meaningful way and create a unique, engaging, and educational experience around my farm. My “farm enterprise,” I’ve been calling it, because it has taken on dimensions beyond farming.

What I envision is not just land that I farm, but plots that I rent to people interested in growing their own food but who might not have access their own land, and who would enjoy learning to farm within a community of like-minded people. The enterprise will include raising livestock for meat and dairy. We’ll have a commercial kitchen for baking, canning, and cheese-making, and a climate-controlled room for aging cheese and sausages. We’ll have a retail shop on premises to sell all that we produce. And, since my husband is an artist, we’ll also have an art gallery—and since he has trained as a barista, maybe even a coffee shop! 

But wait, there’s more! We’ll bring in young chefs to give cooking lessons. Once a month, we’ll host fabulous dinners featuring food from our farm or other local farms. It will be a destination, a magical place that makes visitors feel warm, welcome, and part of a terrific community. 

Don’t you wish you were there right now?

Excited about having this big picture in place, and buoyed by the fact that there is a couple successfully combining farming and art at the Wormfarm Institute in Wisconsin, I headed off to class feeling good that I know what I want to do. The topic of the day was doing a SWOT analysis, identifying the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to our farm business ideas.

Strengths came first. I had a list of about 20 or so, from having strong communication skills and marketing experience to knowing when to ask for help.

Then came weaknesses. A much shorter list, but the items on it revealed serious issues: No farm. No farming experience. No experience with livestock. No money to buy a farm in the near future. Debt.

Then came the assignment: Have a proposal for our farm business ready to share with farmers for evaluation in two weeks. Two weeks!  

The proposal should include our vision, mission, and personal goals; a map of our proposed farm; rough estimates for one or two enterprises (such as selling eggs and/or selling chickens for meat); and a rough plan of how we will market our products.

Ah, reality. Hello. 

On the drive home, I couldn’t decide if I felt like a deer in headlights or a deer who can’t stop herself from leaping onto the road and into the side of semi. Either way the fate of my dream seemed bleak, mirrored in the long, dark-red streaks I kept seeing on the highway.

Lucky for me, my list of strengths also includes determination, not afraid of hard work, and embracing creative problem solving.

I thought over my lists again, and moved one of my listed weaknesses to my strengths: the half-acre lot we live on. It’s mostly wooded, shady, and half of it slopes sharply down to a creek, but work with what you’ve got, I told myself. Figure out how to turn this far-from-ideal-for-farming suburban plot into a mini-business, and scale it up to farm-size when the time is right.

So.  

Welcome to Half-Acre Farm. 

I’m now researching what might grow in this space, starting with the 12-by-24-foot garden that gets maybe four to six hours of sunlight. (Skip the fruit-bearing vegetables like tomatoes and squash, I’ve already learned, but greens, herbs, and root vegetables might do OK.) 

I had already planted winter rye in an attempt to improve the soil (clay fill that was packed in—and I mean packed in—after the in-ground swimming pool was destroyed last summer.)  

The rye will grow through the winter, and I’ll cut it down and till it in come spring. I’ve also started composting, creating a bin for us and one for our neighbors, who are happy to contribute.

I need to plan for chickens next. Where this shed is located seems like a perfect spot for a coop that I could keep fairly secure from raccoons, coyotes, and foxes.  

But as I learned today from John Franzese, who provides the most excellent Fran’s Farm Fresh Eggs to our South Suburban Food Co-op, it’s not enough to have a secure coop. I need to consider, too, how to protect chickens from hawks, which are in abundance in these woods. He keeps a couple turkeys as deterrent, although he said owls are not afraid to take those bigger birds down—and we’ve got lots of owls, too!

I’ve also started looking into mushrooms, since this environment seems like a natural (wild varieties are always popping up in the yard.)

Suddenly, what seemed like the easier solution—working with what I’ve got rather than creating a hypothetical, non-existent situation—is seeming not so easy at all. Which is good. (My optimism is out of control.) I believe that if I can work this out and actually create a feasible, profitable business, no matter how miniscule that profit may be, I’ll be better prepared for full-time farming than had I worked with an imaginary, idealistic setting.

Reality, bring it on! I'm ready for the challenge.

I think. 

I hope. 

Can I do it?

I’ll keep you posted. 

Andrew and I were both raised with chickens. We each were used to the “standard” backyard operation. There was a wooden shed-like coop which housed nesting boxes, roost, feeder and waterer. This coop was located not far from the house and was surrounded by a small chicken yard made of wood posts and chicken wire. Both of our families kept on average of 1-2 dozen birds being mostly hens with a single rooster. I’ve always loved poultry of all kinds, and Andrew also likes birds but is an even bigger fan of eggs! So we always planned on having chickens. However, the first 6 of our 8 married years found us renting homes with land, but inside the city limits where poultry aren’t well thought of.

Two years ago we moved a doublewide onto a small corner portion of my parents land. This gave us time and the ability to save money to purchase our own land, which was our main goal. It also gave us a whole 1/3 of an acre with no restrictions! Well, no restrictions as long as my parents approved that is. Since we were not planning on living there long and my parents already had chickens in their barn, we did not need to build a permanent chicken enclosure. After a few months we found ourselves with an empty 10 x 12 foot chain link dog kennel. The idea struck us that this kennel could be turned into a portable coop for a few hens. So Andrew got to work modifying the dog pen into a chicken pen. By adding tarps to the top, an empty igloo dog house on “stilts” made of concrete blocks, a ladder for them to climb into it, and a few well placed boards running along the top to support the hanging feeder and waterer, we were ready to go! We headed to a neighboring counties poultry breeder and came home with 8 young hens around 6 weeks old. These hens were $5.50 each. Seven were a commercial egg-laying cross called a Cinnamon Queen, and the other was one Macey just had to have called an Americana. We were told these Cinnamon Queens would begin laying by five months of age, and would lay at least 6 eggs a week! Well, we were doubtful about that but wanted to give them a try. A few weeks after purchasing them, Andrew built a covered two nest nesting box on short legs to sit inside the coop. This was the perfect size and design for such a small number of girls in a tight space! Much to our surprise, by 4 ½ months old every one of the Cinnamon Queens were laying big beautiful brown eggs! Something that still continues 15 months later.

In December of 2010, we moved our home and family onto our own farm. Instead of that 1/3 acre lot, we now found ourselves with 24 vacant acres! We knew we wanted to switch to pasture raised poultry, and went about devising a way to do so in a manner that would compliment our other plans. This spring Andrew completed the first stage of our land improvements by fencing 2 acres in field fence and building a small barn. Inside this barn, was one large stall for sheep and another smaller stall for our chickens. This stall is assessable to our birds, but not to the sheep or guard donkey.

To do this, we simply installed a 4 foot gate across the entry way, and build a wooden rail across the remainder of the opening with space between the rails large enough for our birds to come in and out but not the sheep. So far, this has worked very well for us! Inside we keep a 50 gallon barrel for feed (with a secure lid of coarse!), roosts, 4 nesting boxes, and a large hanging feeder and waterer. Now we had a nice set up, but only 8 hens! So we headed back down to the poultry breeder and picked up an adult barred rock rooster and 6 barred rock young hens. Rocky, the rooster, is still my favorite bird in the field!

So now we had 14 laying hens and one rooster. By this time, several of our friends knew we had chickens and therefore, eggs. With everyone wanting eggs and needing enough to feed our own family we just didn’t have enough birds. Buying them was getting expensive though. So we went to my parents house and pulled out the incubator and egg turner I had purchased for a project in high school. This 40 egg capacity incubator was all we needed for what we had planned! We headed home and spent the next few days collecting well formed, large sized, clean eggs. 23 days later, our first run of chicks hatched! It was only April, so we kept them inside for two weeks before looking for a draft free location to move them outside. While these young ones were growing, we started another run of 28 eggs in the incubator. We eventually decided to move the young birds into our storage shed in the back yard. Since it was still very cool, we put a single heat lamp over them.

Lesson #1 learned the hard way: Don’t put chicks in a location where you can not completely control the environment if it is enclosed. For the first 5 days our 8 little chicks were fine. On day 6, we were all away from home. This day the high went into the upper 70’s instead of the 60’s we had been at. I had closed the shed doors when we left to prevent any predator from having an easy meal. When we came home three hours later, every bird was dead. The temperature inside the closed shed, under the heat lamp, in their cardboard box read 108 on the thermometer. I had unknowingly killed our entire run of chicks!

Two weeks later our second run of chicks hatched. This time we had started with many more than our first run, out of the 28 eggs we started 23 hatched! Now commercial hatcheries usually have around a 70% hatch rate. Our second attempt yielded an 82% rate!

This time, I was leaving nothing to chance! We purchased large plastic totes and new digital thermometers. These chicks stayed inside for two weeks also, starting all together in one tote and then moving into two totes as they grew larger. We gradually raised the heat lamps farther from the containers to lower the temperature. Then we removed one completely and left the other partially heating both containers. After 20 days of being inside, we headed outdoors to that trusty dog pen turned chicken pen. With some modifications, it became the perfect summertime nursery for baby birds! We put new tarps on the top, bracing on top to secure the tarp as well as to hang heat lamps and feeders from, and then put mobile home flashing around all of the lower inside portion to keep all their little heads from poking outside the pen (we were having dog issues at the time).

After a few weeks outside we only lost 1 of our 23 original hatches. The end of April and early May were unseasonably warm. However, in mid May we found ourselves facing a 38 degree day with young birds in an open pen! At this time we not only had baby chicks outside, but had also added 7 guineas, 5 turkeys, and 2 ducks to our baby nursery. That’s a total of 36 babies in need of a warm nights rest! Luckily, Andrew had some extra thick plastic laying around, and our “chick totes’ were clean and in the shed. Much to my city friends horror, and our country friends amusement, we moved all the birds into our master bathroom!

We lined the bathtub with thick plastic, then a layer of cardboard, and topped it with shavings. Doing it this way made for a mess free, very quick clean up! All of the chicks moved into the tub. The turkeys, ducks, and guineas were a little bit younger. They all went into the totes and shared a heat lamp. Two days later, they were all able to return to the great outdoors. We didn’t loose a single bird!

After several more weeks in the “nursery” pen, all our babies were ready to join the adults out at the barn. We moved all of the young stock (chicks, turkey, guinea, and ducks) into the barn right before dark. Placing them up on the roosts well before the adult hens and rooster came in for the night. Many of them immediately jumped off and ran outside to explore. The timid ones however chose to stay up on the roost!

Lesson #2 learned the hard way: chicks don’t swim! The next morning Andrew headed out to the barn to do a head count. He came up one short, and during our search for the missing bird we found her floating in the top of the sheep stock tank. Apparently, chickens don’t swim! The dilemma here is they must share this field, the sheep obviously can not drink out of a chicken waterer. And the chickens can not be kept away from the tanks. This is just one of those things you have to consider when deciding where to raise your birds. For us, the benefits of having them free range on grass out-weighed the risk of an occasional incident. So all the birds stayed where they were, the stock tanks stay full, and we have not lost another bird in this way since.

Now I have heard all sorts of things regarding keeping turkeys and chickens together. While I’m sure there are occasional problems and the threat of black head may be higher in some areas rather than others, we have not yet had any issues with keeping mixed poultry together. Our turkeys pretty much wander around together as do the chickens. The ducks mingle well with the turkeys, but pretty much avoid the chickens. Now the guineas are a little different. Some days they stay by themselves, others it seems they make it a game to chase the chickens. Since the turkeys hit the 20 lb. mark though the guineas have left them alone!

By August we had gotten pretty good at the chicken hatching/raising thing! After our second run, we started a run of turkeys and then another run of chicks. This last run of chicks yielded a 93% hatch rate! When the county fair rolled around, we decided to enter some eggs and see how ours stacked up compared to others in the county. Andrew and I disagreed over which eggs were more attractive, browns or blues. So he entered a ½ dozen blue eggs against my ½ dozen browns. Well, his blue eggs got 2^nd and my brown eggs got 3^rd.

We decided in August it was time to put up the incubators. Our last run of chicks was in the nursery pen, and all our others were out at the barn. In the 3^rd and last hatch, we had 23 chicks. At 8 weeks old we learned another lesson.

Lesson #3 learned the hard way: Raccoons CAN climb between tarps and support poles. One morning we went out to check everyone and found 3 dead chicks in our nursery pen. Andrew had already caught a raccoon in the corn field that same week in a live trap. We were pretty sure our culprit was a coon. The second night, we lost another 5 chicks. Well, that was the end of that. Andrew moved his oldest coonhound into the adjoining dog pen (which had recently been vacated by the run of turkeys we hatched). We have not had a predator loss in the nursery pens since.

Lesson #4 learned the hard way: Turkeys look for ways to die. We lost 3 of our young turkey poults during the first raccoon raid, but not from the coon. After the first killing of 3 chicks the turkeys were still in the neighboring dog pen. Andrew placed live traps around the outside of the dog pens. Well, turkeys are not to bright. Several of the turkey poults flew out of the top of their pen during the night, walked into the coon trap triggering the closing door, and died somehow before we checked the trap the next day. We moved the other turkeys out to the barn that evening before moving the hound into the pen. Another turkey breeder told us that turkeys just look for an excuse to die, and I’m leaning towards agreeing with him!

So here we are in October with 25 laying hens, 4 roosters, 7 guineas, 4 Narragansett turkeys, 1 bourbon red turkey, 2 Crested ducks, and 13 young chickens. Over the coarse of this years poultry production we have sold 3 roosters, 8 hens, and put 11 roosters in the freezer. We lost 18 chicks and 3 turkeys that we hatched this year and gave 8 to my parents. Our oldest hatch is now 6 months old and laying. We kept a barred rock crossed rooster from this hatch. Not as pretty as his daddy, but still a nice little boy!

By hatching our own poultry this year we have literally saved hundreds of dollars. It has also produced “extra” birds which we have used both to sell and buy feed, as well as to feed our family. We have had several people ask if we would recommend they hatch their own or buy birds. Our answer would have to be, it depends on your purpose!

Assuming you are only wanting a few hens to provide eggs for your family you would be better off buying young hens from another breeder. I would not suggest young chicks, unless you are willing to spend a good bit more on the necessary equipment to raise them. However, I also don’t recommend that you buy laying hens from anyone unless you know them or they are highly recommended by a knowledgeable person. Many people will sell off their “old” stock that are at the end of their egg laying years to others. Often times these hens are $10-15 each and will only lay a few eggs a week for a while, and then they taper off. Instead, I would suggest finding a reputable farmer or a certified poultry breeder and start with young hens around 2-4 months old. While they are not as cheap as chicks, and you will have to wait a few months for them to lay you will be better off in the long run. The money you will save by not buying heating lamps, containers, chick feed, and such will more than cover the additional fee for buying older birds. And the laying life span of hens this age will more than compensate you for the few months you have to wait on them versus buying older “worn out” birds.

Another question we usually get is do you have to have a rooster? For the above person who is only interested in owning a few hens for family egg production the answer is no. A hen will lay eggs regardless of whether a rooster is present or not. However, those eggs will only be good for eating. The eggs from hens raised without a rooster will be no different in nutritional value, size, or frequency than those from hens with a rooster.

Now you may want to start a good sized flock and provide eggs for not only yourself but for friends and family as well. In this case you would be much better off investing in a few “foundation” birds (again, looking at 2-4 month old birds) and then hatching your own. How many birds you start with really depends on the breed. For us, our Cinnamon Queens lay 6-7 eggs a week. At that rate, you can quickly fill up a 40 egg incubator. Other breeds may only lay 2-3 eggs a week. So you would need more foundation hens to fill up that incubator quickly. Another alternative is to simply buy fertile eggs from another farmer. This sometimes yields mixed results, as you have no way of knowing how old the eggs are or if they have been handled properly for hatching. This is a good method though for those wanting a more diverse flock of several breeds of birds.

The internet gives many different opinions on how long eggs are viable, how to store the eggs, and whither to wash them or not. We have found that collecting fresh, clean eggs and storing them in egg cartons at room temperature for no more than 5-6 days yields the best results. Place your eggs in the carton and simply rotate ¼ turn each day until you are ready to start the incubator. We do not wash our eggs before incubating, but are careful to select only clean eggs for hatching. Turning is very important, as failure to do so will make the yolk stick to the side of the shell and result in dead or crippled chicks. Only select large well-formed eggs, not those that are excessively large or small.

So after you decide what breed is right for you, purchase your foundation stock, and raise them to laying age you need to be looking for your equipment. There really aren’t many necessary items required for hatching eggs. Of coarse you need an incubator. There are many, many different sizes, shapes, and brands on the market. Regardless of which you choose I would highly recommend spending a few dollars more on a forced air (circulating) incubator. Still air incubators do not have as high of a hatch rate. We use a simple Little Giant brand forced air incubator with egg turner. Egg turners must be purchased separately, and often cost as much as the incubator itself. But trust me, it is worth the extra expense if you plan on raising more than just an occasional run of birds! We spent a total of $90 on our incubator and egg turner. Many incubators come with a mercury thermometer. We have found these to be virtually useless. We switched to a digital thermometer and had around a 72% hatch rate. We then switched to a kitchen meat thermometer which we stuck into one of the vent holes in the top of our incubator. The thermometer cost $3, and increased our hatch rate to 93%! Humidity is very important and crucial for a successful hatch. Be sure to locate the water reservoirs in your incubator and keep them full during incubation. Avoid frequently opening the lid, as this lowers both the temperature and humidity. In fact, do not open the lid at all the last 48 hours before hatching. If you do purchase the egg turner, don’t forget to turn it off 3 days before your expected hatch date. Typically, chicken eggs will hatch 23 days after incubation. It isn’t unusual for some early hatchers to appear a day early, or late bloomers a day late. We leave our incubator running for two full days after our expected hatch date just in case.

Once your chicks hatch, you need a draft free place of consistent temperature to keep them for at least two weeks. We use large Rubbermaid containers ($11 at Wal-Mart) and keep them in a bathroom. Basements, heated and cooled garages, or utility rooms work great if you have them! You will need shavings, a chick feeder, chick waterer, and heat lamp for each container. Red bulbs are better than clear ones, even though they may be a little more expensive. They don’t seem to be as hard on the chicks eyes, and the chicks are better able to relax and sleep while it’s turned on. Chicks require special chick food, which you can purchase at any co-op, Tractor Supply, or other farm supply store. After those first two weeks, if it is warm outside you can relocate them outdoors. Just remember our storage shed experience, and our 38 degree day in May! A heat lamp or two may be required even outdoors. Large fluctuations in temperatures can result in dead or sick chicks so keep your eye on the weather and your birds. They will tell you if they are to cold or hot!

It may sound quit complicated, but hatching and raising your own birds is actually pretty easy with the right equipment and an attentive eye. It is also much more rewarding! You may find yourself, as I did, so happy with hatching chicks that you decide to try a few other birds such as turkeys or ducks. For those wishing to have large flocks, there really is no cheaper way of acquiring your birds.

 

Until we got our chickens, I have to say that I really didn’t ‘get it’.

Sure, I stopped buying factory farmed eggs back in the early 1990s, switched to raw dairy a few years ago, and have basically embraced a much more holistic lifestyle.  But when it came time to add chickens (our first ‘livestock’) to our little modern homestead, I just assumed what they told you to do in the books would work.

The verdict?  We’ve been at this for almost 5 months – just a blink in farmer years, but even in that short amount of time, we’ve learned that while the standard operating procedure of a coop and run, and even a chicken tractor, does work, there are better options, especially from the chickens’ perspective. 

Why Should We Care?

Let me start by saying that this article by Paul Wheaton pretty much rocked my newbie farmer world.  If you’re planning on getting chickens, or know anyone who is, this should be required reading.  It’s controversial, and it has rubbed some traditional chicken-raisers the wrong way, but the man has a point (and a way with words – it’s a good read). 

Basically, without anthropomorphizing too much, it turns out that there is such a thing as a ‘happy’ chicken.

Like many other animals we keep for our own use, chickens still carry a good chunk of their forest-dwelling instincts.   Uncle Larry may make snide remarks about how stupid chickens are, but let’s be honest:  Uncle Larry would look pretty dumb trying to survive in the jungle with his TV remote.  Chickens are only as capable as the environs we stick them in (same goes for Uncle Larry).  When allowed to roam around in dense undergrowth, these birds are actually pretty wily – ours have escaped a couple of coyote ambushes I believe because they’ve been outside with wildlife and, well, just ‘know’.  They don’t just stand there and fall over from fright…

So what does this have to do with ‘happy chickens’?  Turns out, everything. 

Chickens that have all of their basic needs taken care of, have lots of room to run and explore, and are attended to in a conscious way overall have less disease, fewer behaviour challenges, and, at least in my opinion, provide us with healthier food.  Sick, stressed, bedraggled animals can’t help but give up sick, stressed and bedraggled food.  It makes sense to me.  Then there’s the whole energetic component, but that’s fodder for another article.

What Chickens Need to be ‘Happy’

Whether you’re raising chickens for eggs, meat or both, there are a few things they need to be truly in their element and to provide us with the healthiest food possible. 

Good Eats

Garbage in, garbage out – and I don’t mean kitchen scraps (which, of course, can be high on chickens’ list of gourmet items).  Basically, to be ultimately healthy, I believe they need a varied diet beyond their laying mash or protein-packed feed.  Chickens are omnivores (as this video so graphically demonstrates), not vegetarians. When you see the term ‘Grain Fed’ on your box of eggs, it just tells you that overall, the commercial egg industry really can not provide you with the healthiest product.  How could they?  Organic eggs would be $15 a dozen if they were actually able to give the birds anything close to an outdoor life.  Bottom line?  Given the choice, a chicken will take a housefly over a bowl of grain any day – though they love the grain too…  The point is that, like us, they need a little bit of everything for optimum health: bugs, grain, vegetables, fruit, greens, even meat scraps and ground egg shells.  And the more they can get on their own within the safety of your yard or property (assuming you or your neighbours aren’t spraying your properties or using any toxic substances anywhere), the less commercial feed (preferably certified organic) they will consume.  It’s really win-win all around.

Clean Water

Chickens can mess up a water supply pretty quickly with all the flinging of bedding, dust and poop.  I’ve seen coops where it looks like the water hasn’t been changed in days – all full of scunge and stinky.  Yuck.  Would you drink water like that?  Of course not – and neither should your chickens.  I’m still working on our watering system, but essentially, it gets changed out every morning, and tended to again in the evening.  There are systems that make this daily ritual unnecessary, but it’s critical to make sure your birds have access to fresh water, always. 

Access to Pasture

Here’s where things get controversial.  If you read Paul Wheaton’s article, he talks about visiting coop after coop full of chickens standing spur deep in their own waste, and that somehow their keepers thought this was OK.  After all, they’re ‘only chickens’.  Would you want to stand around in your own crap all day?  I’m thinking the answer is probably ‘no’ – and neither should they. 

So what else is possible? 

There are a few ways of doing it, and of course each comes with a list of pros and cons.  Each of these could be an article in itself, so I’ll just briefly touch on the highlights:

• Chicken Tractor – A small, somewhat secure pen (depending on what sort of predators you have in your neck of the woods) that is portable enough to move around the yard, allowing your chickens access to greens, bugs and a bit of variety, one small space at a time.  Made popular by the permaculture movement, it’s often used in areas where the landowner wants to prepare the soil for planting something the following season, as the chickens not only do the weeding and de-bugging, but fertilize the plot as well.  Once all the greens are gone, the tractor is moved to a new plot.  We have one of these, but it’s a bit difficult for me to move on my own so it only gets used if it’s a decent day and the birds need to be secured while I’m away from the house for a short period and I want them to have more variety than sitting in their coop run.
• Poultry Pen – Essentially, a larger version of the tractor, often with secure housing built in.  As with the chicken tractor, it’s meant to be moved regularly to allow for access to greens and the spreading of fertilizer.
• Chicken Paddock – This looks very much like a moveable yard surrounding a portable coop.  You set up a secure house for the birds, and around it you place a portable fence that you move every once in awhile.  The benefit is that you don’t have to move it as often as a tractor or poultry pen, as the ‘yard’ is bigger, and the birds have more room to roam and do what birds do.  What I still haven’t quite figured out about this method is how the birds are protected from predators (it’s said you can leave them for days, but I’m not sure I could do that here with our plethora of weasels, raccoons and coyotes).  An electric fence would do the trick, but it would also fry the birds – if it wouldn’t fry the birds, it wouldn’t be strong enough to keep out most predators.  I need to do more research on this one.
• Free Range – This is what most people think of when they think of backyard chickens – birds running free around the yard, scratching and clucking, with room to fly if they feel the need.  The benefits are many: more varied nutrition for your birds, more physical activity, more potentially detrimental bugs eaten, and of course, the joy of seeing chickens being chickens (they are pretty darned entertaining).  There are some cons, of course, namely that they’ll dig up any unfenced garden beds and they’ll poop on pretty much everything – and I mean everything.   Then of course there’s the predator factor – when they’re out and about, they’re easier targets, which is why I would never have them ranging when I’m away from the cabin.  We’ve been lucky so far, and I believe that the more time they spend ranging, the more their instincts to be wary of predators stay intact and grow.  That’s my theory, anyway… I’ll keep you posted as to how that works out!

The Wrap-up

Any animal we take under our care deserves to be treated well, and with respect.  And if you can provide them with environments and activities that attempt to replicate what they would have experienced in the wild, to satisfy some of their intact instinctual behaviours, all the better.  You’ll have healthier, happier animals which can only mean healthier food for you.  Sure it takes more effort, but if you’re not willing to put in the time, you have to ask yourself what it is you’re really trying to accomplish.  Anyone can throw a couple of hens in a tiny tractor in their backyard for eggs, but to raise truly healthy animals, and therefore healthy food, they need all of the things mentioned above.

In Part II, we’ll be discussing the other things chickens need to be ‘happy’.

What do you think?  We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s article.  Do you agree, or do you think chickens are just dumb birds, dang it, and enough with all this mumbo jumbo – just give me my eggs!  Let us know in the comments below…

Chicken enthusiasts across the country have the chance to win a heritage flock of chickens from P. Allen Smith’s farm, a free coop from Horizon Structures and a year’s supply of Purina® Layena® Plus Omega feed in the Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes sponsored by Purina and P. Allen Smith with “Chicken Chat” and the Heritage Poultry Conservancy.

Beginning July 18, 2011, contestants can enter to win a grand prize of a Horizon Structures coop to accommodate a heritage flock of 10 hens and two roosters from P. Allen Smith’s farm, and a year’s supply of Purina’s new feed Purina® Layena® Plus Omega, or three first place prizes that include a signed copy of P. Allen Smith’s book, “Seasonal Recipes from the Garden,” and a free bag of Purina® Layena® Plus Omega-3. All entries will receive a $3 off coupon for Purina® Layena® Plus Omega-3. Contestants can enter the Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes by visiting www.facebook.com/PurinaPoultry and by “liking” Purina Poultry and Chicken Chat on Facebook and filling out an entry form.

“Chickens, especially the heritage breeds, are a huge passion for me and also a great source of fresh food,” said P. Allen Smith, food and gardening expert and founder of the Heritage Poultry Conservancy. “What they eat is important not only for their health but also for the eggs they produce. That’s why I feed my flock Purina® Layena® Plus Omega-3. With the Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes, we’re excited to help someone else start raising poultry or give their flock a makeover, so they too, can begin experiencing fresh, healthier eggs.”

Purina’s newest chicken feed, Purina® Layena® Plus Omega-3 helps address the lack of Omega-3 in American’s diets. Omega-3 is an essential fatty acid for proper heart and brain function, growth and development. Purina® Layena® Plus Omega-3 is formulated to produce more than 200mg Omega-3 per large egg* and has a natural vegetarian formula with added vitamins, minerals, and trace nutrients and without added antibiotics or hormones. Like all Purina SunFresh® Recipe Poultry Feeds, Layena® Plus Omega-3 contains marigold extract for rich golden yolks, key levels of calcium and manganese for strong shells with fewer cracks and an optimized level of Vitamin E to support a healthy immune system.

The flock that the Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes winner will receive will consist of Heritage breeds of chickens. For more information on Heritage chickens visit the Heritage Poultry Conservancy’s website, www.heritagepoultry.org. The Heritage Poultry Conservancy, founded by Smith in 2009, is a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and support of all threatened breeds and strains of domestic poultry.

The Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes ends September 18, 2011, and prizes will be awarded by September 30, 2011. The Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes is open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are at least 13 years old at the time of entry. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Sweepstakes ends 09/18/11. For Official Rules, prize description and odds disclosure, please visit www.facebook.com/PurinaPoultry. Purina® Rule the Roost Sweepstakes is jointly sponsored by Purina Mills, LLC and P. Allen Smith with “Chicken Chat” and the Heritage Poultry Conservancy.

*When fed a diet of Layena® Plus Omega exclusively for at least 3 weeks. Based on large egg (50g). Results may vary with factors such as total diet and hen health. Typical egg contains 65mg of Omega 3 fatty acids. 

This press release is presented without editing for your information. GRIT does not recommend, approve or endorse the products and/or services offered. You should use your own judgment and evaluate products and services carefully before deciding to purchase.

I've always liked that phrase. And, at our place, on our 40 acres, it fits.

Our daily company is growing ... and the word is out that we are kind to creatures who show up at our door. Like the wild turkeys. Meleagris gallopavo. 

You can set your watch by them. Knowing we begin feeding exactly at 4:00 p.m., (which is actually 3:00 p.m. as we don't change our clocks...) they arrive, one by one.

At first, they stuck out like a sore thumb.

And our roosters were leary ... wondering if they would woo our hens.

But after the first day, they fit in and came and left with little fanfare.

That was months ago.

Now, the beautiful birds are here to stay. Considering us home.

And why not ... they are God's creature. Beautiful. And wonderfully made.

Right down to the tail feathers.

So for now, the fowl are not calling foul.

Although I still haven't figured out how they all know to gobble at precisely the same second.

Even with the gobble, all is well with our roosters.

And their bigger, loftier cousin.

Until tomorrow, as always, God willing.

Last time I wrote about my moveable chicken pen.   It works great, and the chickens are happy, but with so many grasshoppers just waiting to be eaten, it was hard for me to say no to free food.  Long story short is I let some of the chickens out to wander around picking up bugs.  I own quite a few dogs (partly because I'm a stray magnet), but since they were all in pens, I didn't think much about it.  Fast forward a few days and I come home to find dead chickens all over the yard.  What had happened?  A beagle that had never shown any interest of escaping her pen did just that and decided she wanted a snack, say around eight half-grown birds.

So that brings me to my warning.  Dogs are probably the number one cost on most small farms.  It costs money to feed them, house them, and don't even get me started about vet bills.  Sadly it's been my lot in life to love animals, and I can't say no to a dog, even with all of these expenses.  What's so ironic is that most dogs around a farm are supposed to be used to help, not hurt.  Pyrenees and other sheppards are used to protect the herd.  Australian Sheppards and Collies herd the livestock from one place to another.  Pointers, hounds, and terriers hunt for food, and even Labradors retrieve it when it's been shot. 

I'm here to tell you, all dogs, even livestock guardian dogs are prone to eating chickens.  Everything goes fine for months, so you let your guard down a little, and in just a few minutes time, your flock has been reduced to a pair of jittery, terrified looking pullets.  Now I'm not saying all dogs do this.  I own a Pyrenees that loves chickens, for dinner that is.  My in-laws, on the other hand, have an unrelated Pyrenees that has no interest in chickens, and even lets them pick up the leftovers once he's done with his dog food.  The strange thing is, even with my Pyrenees' affinity for fast food (Yes... That was an attempt at humor.), he fiercely protects my goats from any stray dogs, coyotes, and sometimes even from the neighbors cows (which is strange because there are calves in the field with him.  Maybe he thinks they are jumbo goats.).  Yet, as I said, he feels no loyalty in protecting a chicken.  That is unless another dog is trying to take his meal away from him.

So how do you know if you're dog is a chicken killer?  It's hard to say for sure.  I've tried walking dogs next to my chicken pen, and some known chicken killer's act as though there isn't anything there.  Suffice to say you'll know that you have a chicken killer when it's too late.  But for those of us that don't want to shoot their dog, how do we break them of this?  I honestly don't have any surefire ways.  One method that's been used for generations is to tie the dead chicken around the neck of the dog.  The smell of the decaying bird is supposed to make them sick of chickens.  For the most part it works (I've heard), although I know more than one farmer that's said it doesn't.

I suppose the point to all my rambling is this.  Think twice before getting a dog.  They are wonderful little creatures, but consider what you may be dealing with when they're grown, not just what they're like when they're puppies.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying don't get a dog, but realize the possible problems associated with dogs on a farm.  On the flipside, scientific evidence has proven what most "pet people" have known for centuries.  Dogs make your life better in so many ways.  Nursing homes come alive when a well-trained canine enters.  Dogs have been known to save humans, detect seizures, find drugs and blood trails, and they are in fact man's best friend.  You know how I know?  Lock your spouse and your dog in the trunk of a car.  An hour later let them out and see which one is happy to see you. 

I don't care whether you feed your chickens in pan-style chicken feeders, large range-tank chicken feeders, small barrel-type chicken feeders or open trough chicken feeders – at the end of the day you lose feed to the weather, wild birds and rodents. If you raise lots of birds, you will waste pounds of feed very week with unsealed chicken feeders – unless you use the new to North America, Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder.

The Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder consists of a beautifully constructed metal container with a lever-operated weather-tight lid that controls access to the feed. You might be wondering just how a lidded chicken feeder can allow your flock to feed, while keeping mice, rats, sparrows, starlings and the weather out. The magic is coiled up in the spring-loaded lid, which is opened when your chickens step up to the platform-like perch. That’s right, the weight of even one Bantam hen on the perch is sufficient to lift the feeder’s lid, which gives her access to the clean feed inside.

Because of its unique design, the Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders deny access to wild birds and rodents up to about 13-ounces (that’s a pretty good sized adult rat) with the smaller model and 31 ounces with the larger unit. Obviously, these feeders are not designed for use with small chicks, but they work very well with adolescent and adult birds. Because of their storage capacity, you can fill your Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder and forget it for more than a week (depending on how many hens you have).

When introducing the Grandpa’s Feeders to your birds, you will want to give them a bit of a training session. You can prop the lid open initially and/or sprinkle a little feed on the perch platform (step plate) and lid. You will be surprised at how quickly the birds learn the trick. Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders are not goat-proof or sheep-proof so if you allow your hens to range with larger grazing animals you will need to find a way to isolate the chicken feeder. Portable electric fence (conductor high enough to allow chickens to pass) or any manner of portable creep pen can be used to keep your Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder safe from marauding lambs and kids.

Though they aren’t cheap to buy, the Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders are built to last. No more UV rotted plastic or corroded metal troughs – with Grandpa’s Feeders you will save money on feeder repair and replacement and you will save money on feed. Your hens will thank you too because they won’t need to sort through the rat droppings for morsels of grain, or make due with rain-soaked moldy or fermented feed.

Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders have been in continuous use for nearly 15 years in New Zealand with most original feeders still in place. Grandpa’s Feeders entered the Australian market in 2007 and they’re now available in North America. I have fed my share of mice, rats and starlings over the years, using all manner of chicken feeders. All that waste is now a thing of the past.

I have been staring at this empty block for almost a half hour now. My only company the sound of the overhead fan in my 5th-wheel office. I don't like to write depressing things. I don't like to add too much of the world's reality into my own life or writing. But today I can't seem to help it.

I turn to food for comfort. These past two months I have gained probably 10-12 pounds. What could I possibly be stressed about? Beyond the transition of a new job, a growing homestead, Pan and I trying to start a family, and the influx of media I am forced to swallow each day, I guess nothing. But each day I wake up, down a cup of coffee and a little pick-me-up (usually fruit or a bowl of mueslix) and flip on the news. I am not specific in which channel or news team. Delivery is delivery no matter how much Splenda you might put in it. BP. Wall Street. A failing presidential office. War. Sex Trafficking. Terrorism. Obesity. Obsession. It is all a bit much over what should be "the best part of waking up." After about 15 minutes though I cut it off and join the sun as it rises into the sky.

My first stop is at the herb boxes. I love to smell them and wonder just what recipe they will end up "completing" or how Pan will dry them for tea or shaker spices. I then ramble on towards the corn. We try to water it every other day, and when I say water I mean for a few hours. Because of the position of the field it gets pummeled with afternoon sun and needs every drop of liquid it can get. It is usually at this point that I can't help but checking on the chickens. I can hear them so they are pretty hard to ignore. And now with the new chicks ... well, who doesn't want to see new chicks fumble around and play what looks like a game of poultry rugby?

And then it is on to the main garden. I can't step into it without being washed over by its miracle. At the risk of sounding emotionally drippy, this garden is so much more to me than probably to most. It represents new life in its most raw form. It is my church. It is where I was baptized a second time, changing from the consumptive person I thought I deserved to be in life to the humbled man I am now. I typically reach down and poke my finger in the dirt. Most mornings it is moist with dew; a reminder that each day is a new one and everyone deserves to be cleaned and refreshed. And then? Well, then I park it. I sit on a bench made of old granite curbing that we recycled from a downtown renovation project. I stare at the plants thinking about how Pan and I have poured hours into it hoping for a harvest that will last us well into fall and early winter. I think about how we tithe the first of the harvest and give thanks to God for what he has blessed us with on Odom's Idle Acres. I think about how a tiny seed turns into a huge plant that bears food. Think about that for a moment.

What starts out as a seed ... well, perhaps Robert Schuller (yes, the televangelist ... so sue me) said it best, "Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed." How amazing is that. And as I stare at that garden – what it once was, what it is now, and what it will be in a month – I find my hunger being satiated. No, I am not talking about a twinkie I hid amongst the okra but rather a satisfying bite of relief; freedom from the very stresses that one hour ago gripped me tight like a boa constrictor on his prey. And it is at that moment the world makes sense again. It began in a garden. A garden shall sustain us. And if I have my druthers, it will all end in a garden.

Fox and his Friends can say what they want, but when the world gets extra hairy and Uncle Sam reaches out his hand one last time, I am headed to the garden. And there I will find new life, new hope, and a new understanding of what we are here for.

Image of the garden on March 25, 2010, and then again on May 27, 2010.

Our first batch of 18 chicks is over a month old now. They have most of their baby fuzz gone and were very ready for a larger home. Besides that, we were expecting 95 new babies from McMurray Hatchery.

Since we are raising the birds for our friends Dick and Tracy, we wanted to be sure they had enough hens for a good laying flock. With our less than 50 percent hatch ratio the first time around, we encouraged them to order day old chicks for us to raise.

When Tracy’s friend heard about a farmer willing to raise “day-olds” up to a few months old, they wanted in on that deal. On top of that, Andy and I really wanted to take the opportunity to get our hands on a breed of laying hen that we’d been researching for more than a year. More on that later.

Finally, there were 42 Americauna eggs approaching day 21 in the incubator and we needed to get the kiddy pool ready once again for a host of tiny fluff balls.

So, out with the old chicks and in with the new.

Andy spent a couple days working in our brooder house to get it up to temperature. He arranged some bales of straw as walls and used some old plywood to make a ceiling. He drilled holes in the plywood to allow for two heat lamps to drop in and provide the crucial heat the birds needed. Finally, he covered the floor with cedar wood shavings and placed in a larger feeder and waterer. Once the area was up to about 80 degrees we moved the month old chicks to their new home.

They are doing well!

The next day we got an excited call from Tracy that she was on her way to the Post Office in Oshkosh to pick up the chicks. We finalized the kiddie pool in anticipation of 95 new babies and awaited her arrival. We knew she was at the door before she even knocked; we could hear the chicks from inside the house!

Andy and Tracy sat down and proceeded to hydrate the babies one by one. This involves “introducing” the chick to the waterer by dipping their beak into it. They usually get a bit of water in their mouths and swallow it down. Then they work on that phenomenon because it’s the first time they’ve drank anything before!

It’s important, though, for the chick’s survival as they come straight from the hatchery without any food or water. We start them on plain newspaper instead of bedding so that they can scratch and find their first meal much easier.

The chicks looked good. We had 36 Rhode Island Reds (RIR), 36 Black Australorps (BA) and 25 Delawares, all baby hens. The RIRs are for Tracy, the BAs for her friend and Delawares are for us. We wanted to get Delawares last summer, you might recall. McMurray was out of them, and most breeds, until August, and that would have been too late to raise chicks. So we got our Sunnyside Blacks instead (a hatchery hybrid). We are certainly happy with them! They are laying well and excellent foragers, even in winter.

But we are very excited for the Delaware breed. You can learn more about them on ALBC’s website: www.albc-usa.org.

Okay ... where was I? So the next morning I checked on them and saw a dead chick. Very sad, but common with the stress of shipping. A few hours later, there was another. Now I was getting concerned. I checked out the thermometer hanging in pool and it said 90 degrees. The optimal temp should be 95 degrees for the first week, so I turned on a second heat lamp and put the thermometer on the floor of the pool for a more accurate read. About ten minutes later I checked again and the thermometer read 120 degrees! Ok, WAY too much heat. And another chick looked pretty lethargic. All the chicks had been Black Australorps so far. I turned off the second lamp and checked again in 20 minutes. It read over 100 degrees.

Now I was confused. When the thermometer was hanging from the ceiling cover on the kiddie pool, it read only 90 degrees, but on the floor it surpassed 100 degrees. Ahhh, yes! The heating pad we’d placed below the pool. I turned that completely off and removed it. After about an hour, the temp was down to 95 degrees, but the chicks were still visibly overheated. And we lost a RIR in that time.

Then Tracy called me saying McMurray had been trying to get a hold of her for about 12 hours. They wanted to know what the status of the chicks were and if we’d had any issues. At that time, we had already lost 4 chicks:1 RIR and 3 BAs. She said she’d call them and then call me back.

About midday, she called with the news that across the board, McMurray had had a “bad hatch” with the BAs. They didn’t know why, but were calling everyone who ordered them to see how the babies were doing. They wanted a follow up call the next morning and then would credit Tracy’s account accordingly. It was good customer service, despite the fact that crediting her account wouldn’t replace the lives of the chicks.

In the meantime, I still needed to figure out the heat issue. How had we calculated so poorly for these babies? The last time, we had to use the heating pad on high, two heat lamps and surround the kiddie pool with blankets to insulate the heat loss. Then it occurred to me: the first time we had 18 chicks sitting in that kiddie pool. This time we had roughly 95. I switched the heat lamp to a lower watt and opened up the optional hole in the metal ceiling. Suddenly we had happy chicks, covering the pool floor (instead of hiding along the edges) and acting much more energetic. Whew, heat puzzle solved!

Unfortunately, the chicks had had to endure 48 hours of a very stressful environment (between hatching, shipping and a too hot new home) and we lost two more before the next morning. Another BA and a single yellow Delaware. Andy told me not to berate myself, but I couldn’t help but feel directly responsible for their deaths. I realize we are learning as we go, but when that involves losing a living thing just so that I can “do better next time,” I don’t believe the end justifies the means. Still, how do we save more chicks’ lives in the future? Learn now.

We have not lost any more hatchery chicks since the first 48 hours here in the house. :-)

Now, as if all that wasn’t enough, the very day that we got the hatchery chicks, our Americaunas began emerging from their eggs in our incubator. The first one didn’t crack all the way through until late that night, but over the course of the following day and into the next, we got 27 chicks to hatch successfully! As a group would dry off and begin looking thirsty, I’d move them into the kiddie pool with the rest. One chick was born with deformed legs and couldn’t walk. He did not survive. That was hard to see happen, too. Like, the little thing worked so hard to get out of that egg and then for what? Sigh. Part of farming ... or caring for anything ... is learning that life can be very unfair.

But, on a much lighter note, the Americauna chicks are amazingly beautiful! They have a variety of colors and stripes. No two are the same. I’ll be sure to post photos of them specifically soon. As I spent the better part of three days with these chicks, I became very familiar with the different breeds’ personalities.

The Rhode Island Reds are boisterous, energetic and assertive red chicks. They are unafraid to explore something new and are often seen racing each other back and forth in the limited space of the pool.

The Black Australorps are shy and deliberate in their movements. They are spry but tend to huddle with their own kind. Besides the obvious weakness we discovered earlier, the surviving Blacks are steady little chicks. I think they will be a great laying flock for Tracy’s friend.

The Delawares are very curious chicks. Whenever I introduced the freshly hatched Americaunas into the pool, the Delawares were the first chicks to investigate the newcomers. They also like hopping on top of each other. No idea why, but it’s pretty silly looking!

The Americaunas are shy little birds. They stick together and hate being singled out. What this means as adult chickens, I don’t know. Visually, they have fuzzier cheeks than the rest of the breeds. Must be a part of the Aracauna heritage in the Americauna. They are born with a gene that gives them feathered tufts on their cheeks. Like I said, photos forth coming!

Well, it’s super late and I gotta head to bed. Thanks for bearing with me on the status of the chicks. This week we are going to move half of the new chicks into another section of the brooder house. With so many in the kiddie pool, there really isn’t enough room for them to stay in for longer than a week anyway.

*UPDATE: We moved the entire flock of chicks out to the brooder house yesterday morning. They are all doing well in their much expanded new home!

I'm exercising a bit of restraint in the backyard chicken arena this year by resisting the urge to add another thousand or so chicks to our already sufficient flock. Oh, I tempt myself practically every evening by poring over colorfully-illustrated catalogs from some of my favorite commercial hatcheries. But, my laying hens turned up the egg production a few weeks ago and reminded me that I need to grow our egg customer base before I can rationally think about expansion. I will place an order for meat birds later in the year, but for now the backyard flock, as it exists, will have to suffice.

Of course, just as I write that, I am reminded that the backyard chicken flock will grow a little this year because I plan to increase the numbers of purebred, and fairly rare, buff Catalana birds on the farm. We have just a single Catalana rooster and three hens at the moment -- the birds are about 6 months old and have exhibited sufficient signs to indicate that they've passed through puberty. The hens have begun laying eggs -- my plan is to collect a few incubator loads of the eggs later this spring and see whether I can increase the numbers right here on the farm. I'll never give up the motley crew of brown-, speckled-, mauve-, and green-egg laying chickens for purebreds entirely, but it will be fun to add the slightly off white Catalana eggs to our cartons in the future.

For those of you with backyard chickens in the works, or in the plan, now is a good time to book your mail-order chicks, especially if you have your hearts set on any specific breed. And if you don't want to deal with disposing of unwanted roosters, be sure to spring for the pullets, as opposed to straight run birds. Either way, just remember that you need to have a brooder of some sort, feed, feeders and waterers set up before the chicks arrive. You can brood the chicks in something as simple as a cardboard box, plastic tote or a small stock tank -- and all you need is an incandescent light to keep them warm. You can read all about brooding chicks here and how to build a chick brooder for virtually nothing, here.

Even if you don't have a backyard chicken coop worked out yet, you will have plenty of time to build or buy one while the chicks are confined to the brooder. So don't let the lack of a coop keep you from placing your order. If you feel lucky, you can sign up to win a Cadillac of a backyard chicken coop here.

I frankly cannot imagine a life without backyard chickens. Whether it's just sitting in the shade of the huge hackberry tree and watching the big, gentle Barred Rock rooster dance for his ladies, or chuckling at the mostly-white Ameracauna hen who flies the coop every morning to pick through the hog pen and returns to the coop in the evening, or revelling in the daily anticipation of finding fresh, delicious eggs in nests, backyard chickens are good for the soul.

Buff Catalana photo and author photo courtesy Karen Keb.

Get them while they’re hot – off the press that is. Last December, while most folks were dreaming about Christmas and all the days off they were going to enjoy with family and loved ones, the GRIT crew was busy putting together our Guide to Backyard Chickens. This first special issue launches the magazine’s Country Skills Series, which will cover topics that you all help prioritize.

GRIT’s Guide to Backyard Chickens is a one-of-a-kind reference book that contains the latest and greatest information on how to get your backyard flock started and how to keep the eggs and meat coming. If you live in town, no worries, we have sections devoted to keeping smaller flocks inside the city limits and even included step by step instructions on how to approach your municipal government in towns where chicken keeping is not legal. So if you fancy yourself an urban farmer or city farmer, the Guide to Backyard Chickens has you covered. Likewise, if you live out where the pavement ends, and don’t have any legal issues to contend with, our Guide to Backyard Chickens takes you through the steps for incubating fertile eggs, receiving and brooding day old chicks, building chicken coops and so much more.

Worried about bird health and protection from predators? GRIT’s Guide to Backyard Chickens offers expert advice on how to keep diseases out of your flock and provides detailed information on how to keep predators of all kinds from picking off your poultry. If you wonder about how chickens might help control ticks and other pests and help build rich garden soil, then you will definitely want to read GRIT’s Guide to Backyard Chickens. This new book also includes 25 time-tested and delicious recipes covering everything from for using up excess eggs to creating mouthwatering chicken burgers.

GRIT’s Guide to Backyard Chickens goes on sale tomorrow at Tractor Supply stores, Sam’s Club and select bookstores nationwide. If you can’t find the title at your local book seller or newsstand, you can purchase it directly from us – right here.

What on earth is this?

If your answer is a giant Daikon radish you’re only partly right. The answer that I’m looking for is: “It’s evidence.”

Of what, you ask?

It’s evidence that I planted a crop this fall that I a) don’t really like, and b) don’t really know what to do with. Which is why I never harvested it, but let it keep growing, and growing ... after awhile it kind of became a game. How big would it actually get? It got even bigger than it looks. I broke off about eight inches of it trying to pull it up out of the ground.

Enough already.

I’m at the end of my second full year of gardening – I’ve done two spring/summers and two falls – and I think that I’ve moved beyond planting a particular kind of seed just because I know that it’s going to come up. It’s time to get serious. Getting serious means making plans. Making plans means making lists.

We’ve been giving this a lot of thought. We’ve had a lot of conversations about it. What exactly is it that we’re trying to do around here? What do we hope to accomplish? What’s the best way to build upon our 2008 and 2009 successes? Lately we’ve been trying to move beyond our usual broad, sweeping, philosophical statements and write down some discrete, concrete and measurable goals. We’ve argued the virtues of this crop over that one. We’ve observed what we eat a lot of, what we only eat occasionally, and what we don’t eat that much of because for the most part only one of us is eating it. After my recent rye revelation I’ve been reconsidering my position on growing grains. My husband would like to devote some land to growing crops dedicated to experimenting with biofuel. We’ve debated whether or not and how to save seeds. We’ve tried to over-winter plants indoors with varying degrees of success. We’ve dabbled a little bit in an awful lot of things.

Obviously, we need to get organized.

So here it is, our 2010 goals, broken down into the following categories:

1. Our staples – what we want to grow a lot of

2. The mid-list – what we want to grow in moderate amounts

3. The low list – what we want to grow in small amounts

4. What we would like to grow, do or make if we can

5. What we will not try to grow, do or make

Our Staples

1. Potatoes. I had great success with banana fingerlings and Beauregard sweet potatoes this year. In 2010 I want to up the ante a little bit. We’re planning on banana fingerlings (12 plants, same as this past year, to give us new potatoes in early summer); a variety of potato that will supply us in the summer (12 plants); a variety of potatoes suited particularly for storage to keep us in potatoes through the winter (at least 12 plants, possibly more); Beauregard sweet potatoes (24 plants, same as this past year).

2. Tomatoes. I was very happy this year with our variety of heirloom tomato plants. I would like to grow 6 heirloom plants again. But this year I want to grow a lot of red tomatoes too; at least 6 Roma plants and 6 of something else, Beefsteak maybe, since I have seeds. I want to produce enough tomatoes to keep us in sauce, stewed tomatoes, salsa, ketchup, BBQ sauce and enchilada sauce ideally through the following summer. I’ll set some definite canning goals at a later time.

3. Onions. I’m thinking of planting a variety that is particularly suited to storage, and shooting for producing at least 52 onions, one for every week of the year. I don’t know if they’ll keep that long, but we’ll see.

4. Garlic. Same deal on the garlic. I did plant garlic this fall, but I already know it’s nowhere near enough. Next year I want to plant more with plans to dry and store it for use through the year.

5. Peppers. Boy, did we enjoy our peppers this year! We really miss them now. I didn’t really preserve any of them, but I plan to do that next year. We’re shooting for 3 jalapeño plants, 2 Serrano plants, 1 habanero plant, 2 bell plants, 2 Anaheim plants and 2 Carmen plants. And in 2010 I won’t dig them up prematurely in a useless attempt to move them indoors. Seriously. I swear. I lost months of productive time eating wonderful peppers because of that little trick.

6. Carrots. This year I’m going to do succession planting of carrots in the spring and fall, and hope to have plenty for fall storage. I’m still working out the details of how to store fall vegetables…

7. Beans. I want to grow the regular green beans, and maybe some exotic 8-foot long bean, and I’ll throw the peas into this category too. But what I’m really talking about here is beans that can be dried for storage for use during the year. I’m shooting for a total of 12 quarts of dried beans; red, black and white.

8. Broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. These are the main vegetables that my husband will eat. I have had great success two falls in a row with broccoli, but I still don’t have it down. I have never successfully produced a head of cauliflower. The verdict is still out on my first year with the brussels sprouts, but at least one plant out there seems to be trying to make little heads. I’d like to grow all of these in spring and fall in 2010. The past two years I’ve only grown them in fall. I’m aiming for 6 plants of each, each season.

9. Fruit. I’ve had success two summers in a row with melons. I would like to grow a little more variety in melons. This year I also want to get some berry bushes installed. We still haven’t purchased any apple trees for installation this fall ... Our fig tree is still hanging out dormant, but hopefully this coming year we’ll be able to harvest a few figs too. My fruit goal is vague. Whatever I can get to grow and harvest this year works for me. I will also make a greater effort to get to farmer’s markets and buy what I can to preserve to make up for what I’m not producing.

10. Last but not least, the eggs, of course! I have made a deal with a local lady to tack onto her upcoming chick order this spring in March/April. When the chicks arrive I am going to let her keep and brood them for me along with hers, until they’re about 18 weeks old, point of lay. I will then pick them up, pay her what it cost to feed them, and bring them back here to thier new coop. I am excited about this arrangement, because, 1) It’s a good time frame. It gives me until about June or so to get the coop ready, and since we’re under construction around here, and trying to focus on one thing at a time, summer chickens will work out about right; and 2) I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew the first time out, and I was a little concerned about having to raise the chicks. But they will be raised around lots of people, and socialized with people and other chickens, and I'll get to visit them while they're growing up, get to know them, etc. They’re going to be Golden Comets, from Mt. Healthy Hatchery – a “quiet bird” that lays brown eggs. Perfect!

The Mid-List

There are a number of vegetables that we like and eat, but which I wouldn’t call a “staple.” If I dedicate a modest amount of space for these things and do some succession planting, we should have more than enough of all of them. The mid-list veggies are: lettuce, turnips, rutabaga (by the way, bugs LOVE rutabaga. If you don’t get them out of the ground soon enough, the bugs will hollow them out and leave you with a rutabaga shell!), kohlrabi, beets, celery, asparagus, cucumbers, eggplant, spinach, zucchini, cabbage, leeks.

This list represents some real challenges. I’ve never grown celery or leeks but I understand they can be difficult. Asparagus is expensive, and I believe it requires some time to establish a bed before harvesting. I have yet to eat an eggplant off a plant I have grown, and not only because my daughter developed a fondness for plucking off the babies ... I did get spinach to come up from seed this year, but it’s not very prolific. Every summer I have lost my zucchini to vine borers. I also have a huge bug problem with the cabbage. I hope to do some research about how to prevent this for the upcoming year this winter. I think I’m going to have to cover them.

The Low-List

Basically, these are the vegetables that only I eat, or only my husband eats. Also, for the time being, I have put the herbs and other condiment-type things here. The low list consists of kale, collards, chard, radishes, yellow squash, winter squash, corn, peas, ginger, horseradish and herbs.

What We Would Like to Grow, Do or Make

There are a number of things that we would like to do around here, but for the time being we’re not setting any goals to do them in 2010. If we do get them done, that’s great. If we don’t … well, we’ve got enough to do. They are below in no particular order.

1. Keep a sheep for milk and cheese (I think they’re nicer and easier to handle than goats). I also suspect we don't have the proper space or zoning on this piece of property for this, so I doubt it'll happen any time in the immediate future.

2. Build a smokehouse. I'm pretty sure I have a neighbor with a smokehouse.

3. Make cheese and butter. Or at the very least find someone locally around here that makes cheese and butter and get it from them.

4. Make cleaning products.

5. Develop my own recipes for crackers, cereal bars, and croutons (these are practically the only processed foods I still buy).

6. Preserve whatever is in season that I can get my hands on as it becomes available, time permitting.

What We Will Not Try to Grow, Do or Make

We’re energetic and ambitious, but we have to draw the line somewhere. So here it is. We will not be getting involved in any of the following:

1. Growing grains, except for possibly small amounts of specialty things like quinoa, etc.

2. Pasta. I can and occasionally do make pasta from scratch, but I will continue to keep a variety of dried store-bought pastas on hand.

3. Honey. I have no intention of getting into bee-keeping.

4. Yeast. Where does yeast come from? Who knows? I will totally just buy it and not worry about it.

5. Rice. With all the rain we've had around here of late I suspect that I could grow rice outside right now, but I’m not going to try. I buy rice in bulk and keep it in 5-gallon buckets.

6. Popcorn. I’m not thrilled about growing any corn at all. I’m not going to knock myself out over this.

7. Dog food. I have 4 dogs. It is expensive to buy them quality dog food anyway, but more expensive and time consuming to make it myself (though I do make my own dog treats). I will continue to buy dry dog food.

8. Raising animals for meat. I don’t think we have the property for this, and it’s not something I am anxious to get into, especially as I can get good quality naturally-raised meats from a local farm. My Thanksgiving turkey was truly the best I've ever had, and sometime this month I'll be filling up my freezer with hog …

So. There you have it. To sum it all up – in 2010 we’d like to pretty much grow all our own produce.

Obviously, this is going to take some planning, and a heck of a lot of work. I believe we have the space for it. I have drawings from this year detailing where everything was planted in spring and summer so that we can make sure that we’re rotating things properly. Deciding where everything will go, and when it will go in, will be my big winter project. That and reading to try and learn as much as I can during the down time.

But for now, I think I’m going back to bed. Just writing all of this down has exhausted me.

Several times each month I receive letters, emails and phone calls from concerned chicken owners asking how they can keep their roosters quiet. More times than not, they are keeping chickens in urban areas. Many cities around the country ban roosters to prevent nuisance complaints from their citizens, even though there are several ways to keep roosters in urban areas quietly and responsibly. I had kept backyard chickens for two years before my neighborhood homeowner’s association even found out. Why? Because I choose not to keep roosters with my flock. Yes, I have kept roosters in the past due to periodic rooster rescues, but they did not cause any problems because I kept them quietly and responsibly.

In my opinion, roosters have two main purposes, which they do very well: protect and fertilize. In the past seven years, I have only lost three chickens due to predators. One just happened to be my rooster, Kentucky. During a backyard remodel, we temporarily removed the protective netting from atop our three chicken runs. After arriving home, I noticed that all eleven hens were safely inside the coop and Kentucky was in the run, where he had obviously lost a battle with a hawk. We believe that when Kentucky noticed the hawk that he gathered all of his ladies in the coop for their protection and then returned back outside to fight off the predator. Unfortunately, he lost, but all eleven hens were safe. Because of this, I know the value of a rooster when it comes to predator protection, but I still choose not to keep roosters due to the extra responsibilities involved. I do however provide a very secure coop and run for my chickens, and use Nite Guard Solar® lights to protect my flock from predators.

There are many great reasons why people choose to keep backyard chickens in urban areas, but breeding is rarely one of them, so keeping a rooster is not necessary in most cases. If you keep a small backyard flock without a rooster, one hen will generally take the rooster’s role. She will keep an eye out for predators, alert the flock if danger arises, maintain the pecking order and, in rare cases, may even crow.

On the rare occasions when I did have a rooster or two, I would keep them quietly and responsibly. At dusk, I would bring the roosters into my garage. They would be placed into a metal cage with their own food and water. Then the metal cage would be placed into a large breed plastic doghouse. I would then place a heavy blanket over the doghouse to provide an extra sound barrier. If one of the roosters happened to crow early in the morning, none of my neighbors could hear it. In fact, our master bedroom backs up to our garage. If we were sound asleep the crowing would not even wake us up, but if we were already awake then we could hear the rooster crow, but it was faint and hardly noticeable.

Overall, I think roosters get a bad rap, but I understand that they are not for everyone. They are very beautiful birds and have a couple of specific purposes that they do very well. I still hate to see cities completely ban roosters, but it’s a compromise that many urban chicken keepers are willing to make.

For more information about keeping backyard poultry please listen to Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer, a nationally broadcast radio show all about keeping backyard poultry and living a self-sustaining lifestyle. Listen weekdays at 12:00pm EST here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/backyardpoultry

A few weeks ago, Elly and Andy were sitting in the parlour (or sitting room to you young people), and suddenly Andy stood up to stare out the window. He called me over to ask what he was seeing; a smallish animal trotting across the field behind our house. I took a look and together we decided that the dog sized, greyish creature was a fox. Before we could secure the binoculars, he had disappeared into the trenches of our property line drainage ditch and that was that.

I remember remarking something about the fortune of having small carnivores on our premises to take care of rodent problems. It wasn’t until Andy returned from morning chores that we learned why that fox had been bee-lining his way off our land.

Andy found seven dead laying hens out by our mobile coop. A significant loss, considering they are older and producing really low egg numbers for our store (like 2-3 dozen per day out of 160 hens).

But then he dropped the bomb. The fox had taken out Reinhold as well. All that remained were some golden feathers right behind the house! That fox had killed our favorite rooster while we slept peacefully in our beds not 20 feet away. We could scarcely believe it.

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Let me take you back a little bit. In February you may recall that we adopted a little black and white dog named Rio to be our new farm dog. You may also now realize that we haven’t mentioned Rio since that post. Just over a month after we welcomed him to our family, he was tragically hit on our busy road right in front of our eyes. It’s a miserable story to recall and I get misty just thinking about it, which is why we never posted a blog about him. We were too heart-broken to let everyone know what happened and just tried to get on with things at the farm without him.

I truly believe that the wild things in our area make note of what properties have dogs and which do not. All the years that we had a farm dog, we never had squirrels in our trees. The trees just across the road would be all a-twitter with chipmunk and squirrel activity, but they never ventured to our side; not even when our fruit trees teased them with ripe treats or our gardens were overflowing with great veggies.

The same held true for raccoons, skunks and foxes. Even coyotes were held at bay by the viscious barking of a 40-pound farm dog.

But the absence of a dog here on our land has been taken note of, and the wild things are beginning to return. Now, I’m all for an eco-friendly farmstead. It’s what we’re all about. The coyotes and turkeys and opossums and Sandhill cranes all have a place in our fields and woods.

But when they have the boldness to take out a beloved rooster right under our noses ... well that isn’t right. Reinhold was more than a rooster. He was our farm mascot.

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Let me explain ...

When Andy and I first moved onto the farm and began renting the house from my parents, we were still city folk living on the farm. We didn’t work on it, Andy commuted 45 minutes one way to a sales job, and I stuck around the home with a baby Elly. Several months later, our next door neighbor got out of selling eggs and offered us her remaining 6 hens as a backyard flock. We gladly took them and began the joyful trail of chicken husbandry.

That very spring, we noticed that the lead hen, a big black lady named Rocket, was acting very broody over the nest of eggs. My dad suggested we find ourselves a rooster and see if she would hatch some chicks for us.

Within a week, we heard about Reinhold at a farm about 25 minutes away. He was an older boy, head rooster of a similar backyard flock, but was slated for the axe because the farmer no longer wanted to deal with an old rooster. We said we’d take him!

He came to us in the front seat of my sedan after the farmer’s wife and I chased him around and finally hooked him with a chicken catcher (these are long-handled rods with the ends curved around like a tiny shepherd’s hook to swipe under the fleeing chickens’ legs; ideally the hook catches a leg and the chicken is yours for the taking).

We intoduced him to the ladies and he took charge as if he’d always been their Man. Reinhold didn’t come with that name; it was some generic rooster name that I can’t recall. It didn’t fit him anyway. He looked too regal for that. He was pale yellow with a big proud tail and golden flecking on his wings. His crow was lusty and strong. He was alert and attentive to his new hens. He needed something unique.

Reinhold. It just came into my head and we went with it. And he totally lived up to his name by the end.

Rocket was allowed to set on a clutch of eggs and even hatched one! We had a nice fuzzy yellow baby for about two weeks. Then, three hens and the baby were taken out over the course of two nights by a racoon. The third night we caught him and took care of him the way farmers do. It was a devasting loss, and we could tell Rocket gave her life to protect that chick. Capturing the racoon was more satisfying than I ever thought I’d feel about it ... and it gave me pause. We had really grown attached to these chickens!

When we finally decided to free-range the flock of four that next summer, Reinhold took the timid hens out on “hunting” parties. These hens had never been free-ranged, but Reinhold had had the run of his other farm. He knew what to do and showed them all they ever needed to know about scratching out worms, pecking seed heads from grasses and snapping bugs out of the air. He would find a pocket of tasty bugs and dance and cluck until the hens came running. Then he would back up and let them feast.

He watched the perimeter and warned them when they should take cover. He helped them find the best places to sunbathe and dustbathe. They were a really nice group to see wandering around the yards.

Over time, we saw that he had developed an intentional relationship with Goldie, a robust golden hen that had taken Rocket’s place as lead hen. They could be seen foraging together, sunning together and even roosting next to each other at night. It was quite heartwarming.

In October of that year, we purchased 120 more laying hens and 8 roosters. When we introduced our small flock to this large group, Goldie got lost in the mix. We were never able to identify her again. Lady and Henny Penny were a little more unique looking, being Araucanas, so we can still pick them out to this day. Reinhold, however, had a little bit different experience.

While the hens just sort of assimilated into the group, the roosters had to re-establish pecking order. The eight that we got had already figured this out, as they had grown up together. Throwing elderly Reinhold into the bunch really cramped their heirarchy.

We feared for his life, with him being older and not as virile as the younger roosters. We feared this ... until we saw him in action.

Within two days, he had established himself has The Rooster of that chicken house, and all other roosters ran from him! We couldn’t believe it and actually felt a sense of pride seeing him chase off the competition with a ruffling of his golden feathers. He was OUR rooster, distinguishing himself from the crowd once again.

Over the long winter he had to daily establish his supremecy, and it began to wear on him. By the time we moved the chicken trailer to the fields this April, he had been beaten to the lowest ranking rooster and in fact had quit roosting with the group at all. He became an old loner, wandering around the outskirts of the flock and running from the roosters the way they once ran from him.

When we took them the quarter mile down to the cow pastures, Reinhold wandered back home. We returned him to the group twice before realizing that he was really unhappy with the flock. His big proud tail had been pecked away and sometimes he came back with blood on his feathers. We decided to let him stay here, to be our homestead rooster.

As May gave into June, we became accustomed to being awakened at 4 am to his crowing. Well, I did. Andy did not. Some mornings he started at 3:30 and Andy would stumble out of bed, yell a few choice words at Reinhold and slam the windows shut. After a moment or two of blessed silence, we’d hear an even more pointed, though very muffled “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” I’d smile to myself as Andy would stuff pillows over his head.

One evening in late July, we were relaxing on our patio and Reinhold came right up to us and searched around for food. We were amused at our “pet” chicken and happily threw him some of our grilled entrée. From then on, he was unashamed to come around all sorts of folks who came and went from our store. He would hang out in front of the house and crow all day. He snuck strawberries from our ever-bearing patch. He took beak-shaped snips out of our ripening tomatoes. He bedded down like an old man would at about 7 pm in the small cavity under our front porch.

Late in the summer, he began hanging out down the field by the rest of the flock. He’d walk the quarter mile in the early misty morning, crowing as he went. He’d stop at the pastured chick house and banter with the “young-uns” for a spell before making his way to the big chickens. Then we’d see him again, meandering his way back to the farmstead just before noon. Only this time, he wouldn’t be alone! He’d have a pretty young hen accompanying him all the way back to our front yard. They’d spend the day scratching and pecking, dirt bathing and sunning, hunting for bugs or exploring the garden. Then, as the shadows began to grow long, Reinhold and Miss Hen would make the long trek back to the mobile coop. Shortly before dusk, Reinhold would return to our patio, alone, and retire to his porch home for the night.

He was a true old gentleman. In the morning, he’d repeat the process all over again. In these ways, and many more, Reinhold became a beloved animal on our farm. True, we couldn’t hold him and cuddle him. He wasn’t producing anything of monetary worth. He could even be annoying at times! But he was a mainstay and a celebrity of sorts to the friends and family who got to see him trotting across the lawn in that peculiar fashion of his.

So the morning we saw that fox and then found his carnage ... I had to think to myself, did we hear Reinhold this morning? I had become so accustomed to hearing him that I almost didn’t hear him anymore.

We will never forget our first rooster. It’s funny to try to quantify to someone who’s never been close with poultry. Ha, indeed! Until we owned chickens, I wouldn’t have believed that was even possible. But it is. Those funny little birds have a way of scratching a small place into your heart.

Thank you Reinhold, for all the laughs and the joy. You were a wonderful old gent.

My grandson Jeremy (11) is the chicken guy and on vacation – and I have my instructions, which go something like this: “Nana, Jim Bob is very bossy so don’t turn your back on him – if he goes after you, just hold your hand down flat over his head. Or you can just let him get you, it doesn’t really hurt – and he gets tired of it. Party Girl is laying eggs right on top of Lulu who is broody, she only has a couple of eggs under there, but she’s in a bad mood. Michele and Brenda are co-parenting again, they will take care of their babies, you don’t have to do anything. Just make sure they have food and water inside and outside, only feed them once, and try to keep track of how many babies there are.” You would be thinking right about now that it’s cute that he gave all of them names, and I won’t know which ones he is talking about and that is the gist of my story. And then we can laugh all afternoon about one Nana’s cute chicken antics. But no. That’s not it.

I DO know their names, because our whole family watches the flock like it’s the Real Housewives of Honey Brook. Much of our conversation as a family revolves around the drama and pathos of the chicken yard. The chicken’s names were given them because of a characteristic behavior or their social status in the flock, mostly by me.

Our chickens are free range, which sounds like we made a conscious decision based on information regarding humane needs and best practices. In actuality, it means we don’t have and can’t afford a fence that will contain them. Our chickens have been “free range” for twenty five years, never once has one been hit by a car. Occasionally, a rogue hen will refuse the coop they stay in at night. She might start perching in the trees and while we are deciding what and if to do something about that, she usually disappears – owls will pluck her right off the branch as she sleeps. We have had suspicious paw prints in the snow around the coop, and we have found some chicken bodies “cached” in holes around the farm. Bob and Nola, the bulldogs, killed a chicken together when they were puppies, but a few days with the shock collar took care of that. Since we got goats, we don’t see fox foot prints at all, so Ripper thinks that the goats are like watchdogs. It’s a rate of attrition we can live with considering we aren’t very efficient at collecting eggs, so we have piles of babies all the time. I know this manner of chicken keeping flies in the face of all those who want to complicate the simple life, but it works for us.

This morning I can hear them crowing and bumping and rustling as the flock moves around inside the small coop. It’s a little like listening to someone’s stomach growl – you can’t see what’s causing it, but you can definitely hear it. When I open the little door they tumble out, like clowns out of a clown car.

Party Girl (small black and white Banty) is the first one out. She is named Party Girl because ... well, she only dates the dominant rooster, she lays fertile eggs all the time and insists that other hens raise her children. After the really hard work of rearing the babies is done, she will hang out with her own adolescent offspring, which can be identified by their distinctive coloring. Right now she has a pure white teenage rooster and a black and white teenage rooster following her every where, but otherwise, her only socializing is with Jim-Bob. Or with Jeremy. She loves to be picked up and carried around by him. They sit together on the porch and he strokes her feathers and talks to her. She stares at him with the intention of a geisha. She knows how to work it.

Jim-Bob is a pure white incredibly attractive nasty little s.o.b. He has cobalt blue cheeks and a black crusty comb. He is the father of almost all the babies. He and Party Girl have a very Clinton-esque relationship – she tolerates his indiscretions, she is unfailingly loyal to him. I think she thinks he has a job to do. And he does. Not only is he primarily in charge of making sure the flock increases, he watches the skies for predators during the day – like crows and red tails. He also is a caring wonderful father, often helping Michele and Brenda with their huge broods made up of their babies and Party Girl’s. He teaches the babies how to find stuff in the ground, and he breaks up fights with the older kids.

Lulu, Brenda and Michele lay eggs, raise babies, and teach babies to find food. They often stumble around with a dozen or more babies pushed up under their wings, under their legs or chin. As the chicks get older, they take groups of them on trips down into the field, past the dog kennels, and to the manure piles behind the barn. “Cluck cluck,” they seem to say, “follow me, look at this, you can find food here.” They issue warnings, confer with the other Mothers (but not Party Girl) and generally are a miniature theatre production of what goes on, on any playground anywhere. They keep track of all the babies, steal each other’s babies and seem to know whose is whose. Well, that is how it appears.

As I said, the kids are on vacation and I am homesteading solo during a week of horrible thunderstorms. Almost daily, the clouds roll in from the southwest, darkness eating up the day, winds coming out of nowhere. One early evening, I get caught on the lawn, between the car and the house, as curtains of rain drench me. I am so glad to get inside, dripping water on the kitchen floor. It was hot, but now, soaking wet, I am freezing, teeth chattering. I am alone, so I strip down and grab a robe from the peg in the hallway. Then I hear it, over the banging of the shutters and the rain on the metal roof.

Hysterical, persistent chirping. Louder and Louder, more and more frantic. Where are they? They sound like they are right in the house! I can hear branches clashing, torrential sheets of rain crashing across the yard. The tree between the house and the barn is bending and twisting from powerful gusts, causing the motion detecting light to go on and off, almost at the same time as the lightening flashes. Still I hear the chirping. I go out on the porch with the flashlight and yes, I see them. A moving mass of yellow under the chicken house, on an island between coursing run off from the driveway and barn roof. 

Chirping. Yelling for help. About to be swept away, out into the pasture. 

WHERE ARE THEIR MOTHERS?

Throwing a raincoat over the robe, forcing my still wet feet into my barn shoes, I grab an umbrella and head out into the storm to save the babies. This is right up my alley.

I fight my way against the wind to the chicken house and think, I can just reach down and pick them up and put them in through the little door. Except, standing there, I can’t reach them. They are too far under the coop. I realize I am going to have to kneel down in the rain and mud. Well, it would be ideal if it was only mud but it is the yard surrounding a chicken house, where chickens live. Who are not known for their excremental control.

It is impossible to kneel down, reach under the chicken house and hold the umbrella, so the umbrella has to go. It’s not really functioning as any sort of protection anyway: the wind is blowing the rain nearly horizontal. However, I find I can use it to kind of scoop the baby chicks toward me, and I get four or five at a time out and up to where I can reach them. I open the hatch on the nesting box side of the coop and start throwing them in. I can hear the chickens inside protesting against the rain and wind that blows inside, and I can hear Michele and Brenda chirping, “Come here, get under,” to the rescued babies. I repeat the process several times until there are only two babies left, huddled together and chirping.

I call them, I beckon them, I plead with them and finally curse and scream at them. They heed me not. To save them from the cold water now swirling menacingly toward them, I get down on my belly, shimmy under, grab them, and shimmy back out. I can feel their tiny hearts beating through their bony, wet, feathery breasts. They seem more scared of me than the storm. I toss them into the nesting box and slam the lid closed. 

I feel good, standing on the lawn in the storm, so wet and dirty that I realize I am as wet and dirty as I ever could be. There is a freedom to this, as it is no longer necessary to protect myself from anything. I do a little hero dance in the puddles, throw back my head and laugh. It’s all very enervating until a bolt of lightening slamming to the ground in the field across the street sends me tearing for the house. 

I am sure that as the storm rolled in, the hens moved toward the ramp up to the chicken house like they do every day at dusk. I am sure they called to the babies, and I am sure the chicks heard them. As the thunder and rain rolled in and crashed around them, the chicks chirped so loud I could hear them in the house – and I know the hens could hear them, too. At some point, the hens decided to stick it out in the comfort and warmth of the coop and stop worrying. Later, washed and warmed by a shower, I think about what kind of mothers would take such care of their babies in the sunshine, yet leave them to drown in a storm.

It took daughter Alaina and me a while to get to the place where we really felt like eating one of the broiler chickens we processed last week. We finally succumbed to the idea of a succulent, moist, broiler – slow cooked in the oven – on Saturday. Alaina had the presence of mind to put the bird out to thaw early in the morning. By the time I had beaten myself to a tired, sore mass from working around the farm all day, I didn’t have the energy to smoke the bird in the Orion smoker, which was our original plan. We’re both glad now that the smoker never got lit.

I’m a firm believer that awesome food can stand on its own; I find that holds true particularly with clean, healthy, home-raised, free-range meat. I don’t put sauce on my steaks and as much as I like smoked chicken, I love heavy broilers roasted simply too.

Since I was out of steam and fading fast, I took the thawed bird, gave it a quick rinse and patted it dry with a paper towel. I took one fresh lemon, cut it in half and squeezed the juice onto the breast-side of the bird and rubbed it in a bit. I then stuck the lemon halves into the broiler’s body cavity. Normally, I would chop a few cloves of garlic and some rosemary, mix it with olive oil and put it under the broiler’s skin – but I was just too beat to mess with the garlic and we didn’t have any fresh rosemary around so I just skipped that step. Ah, the life of a bachelor – no recipe police in sight.

Even though I knew there wasn’t any rosemary to be found, I cruised the fridge for something green and found a small bundle of almost done cilantro. Yep, I just stuffed that bundle of flavor into the cavity behind the lemon halves. The last seasoning step was to sprinkle a little Kosher salt over the entire broiler. I don’t know why I do that, but I have always done it. Perhaps it’s my way of rebelling against my physician – he’s always brooding about my blood pressure.

I don’t have a proper roasting pan so I set the works into a 12-inch ceramic pie plate (the tail stuck out and made a bit of an oily mess in the oven) and shoved it into a 350-degree oven. And there the broiler sat until the juices ran clear and the meat thermometer that Alaina stuck in the breast said the meat was safe to eat. I can’t report on the actual temperature because it just says chicken on the thermometer’s dial.

Once we let the broiler rest for a spell – while picking and tasting beautifully golden morsels – we served ourselves some generous helpings of the most delicious meat. Light or dark, the broiler’s gift was one of juicy, pleasing sustenance. We managed to eat about half the bird on Saturday night.  It really went well with the squash soup and spinach salad that Alaina made earlier.

On Sunday we cleaned the carcass of the remaining meat and boiled the bones. The meat went into the crockpot with a mess of dried herbs (poultry seasoning, sage, and some other grey-green stuff), a pinch of salt, one yellow onion diced and half-dozen stalks of celery sliced. Next we dumped a cup of long grain rice into the slow cooker and added sufficient chicken broth (from the boiled bones) to cover the works. We set the crockpot to high for a few hours and then to low. We forgot to time it – but it was on low overnight. The rice was a little on the soft side, but it reminded me of chicken dumplings a bit. In any case, the slow-cooked chicken and rice was positively delicious – no doubt because of the broiler and not my slow-cooking prowess.

As I reflect on the entire raising, processing and eating of that broiler chicken, I can only conclude that it was entirely worth it. Alaina and I both agree that home-raised broilers are positively delicious. With food that good, it’s not a chore to use it up, which makes me feel like that creature’s life was well celebrated and not wasted. I know we’ll smoke one of those broilers soon. Stay tuned.

Photo: iStockphoto: adlifemarketing

The GRIT and MOTHER EARTH NEWS Community Chicken project came to closure last Sunday when 8 people gathered at my Osage County Kansas farm to kill and clean the commercial broilers we had been raising on range for the past 12 weeks or so. The event brought together a most unlikely group of editors, spouses, advertising sales people, teacher, librarian and medical intern. Most of these folks had never taken a vertebrate animal's life with their bare hands. Most had never felt the slickness of warm offal. Most had never been that up close and personal with the animals whose lives help sustain us.

MOTHER EARTH NEWS Sr. Associate Editor Troy Griepentrog and I took responsibility for raising the birds and supplemented their diet of bugs and clover with an antibiotic-free grower ration, which is part of the Homestead line offered by Hubbard Feeds. We kept the birds enclosed, and safe from predators with electric net fences and chargers supplied by Kencove and Premiere One. Feeders, knives, fowl catchers, waterers, chicks, hatching eggs and a vacuum sealer were all supplied by the various advertisers listed prominently on the Community Chickens website.

Killing any animal with your bare hands, is never easy – at least when you don’t do it every day. When I demonstrated a humane way to nick the birds’ jugular, using killing cones supplied by Featherman to restrain the birds, there was a hush among the group as folks reflected on what it means to take (and honor) a life and accept the animal’s gift of sustenance. When the blood flowed freely, some people turned away. My daughter, Alaina told me later she thought she was going to cry. To paraphrase Joel Salatin, it isn’t good to kill chickens too often, because you run the risk of becoming desensitized and of taking their lives for granted. That definitely was not the situation at the farm on Sunday.

Once their life blood ceased flowing, we dunked the birds in a beautifully constructed, thermostat-controlled, propane-fired scalder provided by the Featherman Equipment Co. We found that several brief dunks (5 – 15 seconds long depending on bird size) (each followed by a test pluck to see how easily we could remove tough flight or tail feathers) helped us get the scalding just right. From the approximately 150-degree water we placed two birds into the Featherman drum plucker for a 30 second ride that removed the feathers easily and virtually completely. The Featherman drum plucker is nothing short of phenomenal.

The next step in the process was to remove the birds’ feet, crops, heads and oil glands, which was followed by opening the abdominal cavity and removing the viscera. Check GRIT Assistant Editor Caleb Regan’s blog for more on that activity. Alaina kept the fresh water flowing throughout the process and gave the birds a final rinse before we placed them in an ice-water bath for rapid cooling. Beautiful broiling chickens were then packaged in plastic and packed in coolers for the rides home.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues Troy Griepentrog, Caleb Regan, Megan Phelps and Steve Sabran for their participation. I’d also like to thank Troy’s wife Sue and Megan’s husband Nate and my daughter Alaina for taking ownership of the process as well. I know I will kill chickens again next year and I hope that it will be in the company of such thoughtful and careful folks. I also hope to have access to the Featherman cones, scalder and plucker – they definitely made the entire process easier.

Photos courtesy Suzanne Griepentrog.

This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of taking part in a group chicken processing project as part of our Community Chickens venture, and it was a fulfilling experience processing meat that I won’t soon forget, even after I cook and eat the birds I brought home.

I’ve long been a fan of providing my own meat, a process I learned about growing up on a farm where hunting and fishing were encouraged recreational hobbies. This experience was much different though, as it brought together members of GRIT, MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Ogden Publications advertising staff and spouse and offspring, and thrust us all together into the business of killing and cleaning meat birds. We had a great setup at GRIT Editor Hank Will’s Osage County Kansas farm.

Unlike my experiences with pheasant and other game birds, these were chickens just like I’d usually buy at the store – albeit more humanely raised – which I’d never fully processed before, with people whom I’d only had a professional relationship with. It was awesome.

For me, my goal at the outset was to have a hand in every phase to fully be able to process a chicken in the future, which I want to do again someday.

In the kill cones, I took part in the dispatching early on in the day. Next, it was on to the scalding tank, where I dunked a rooster for about a minute, then to the plucker, which worked beautifully. I only had to spend about five minutes at most cleaning the final feathers off the chicken. And then came the evisceration table, and it was here that I spent most of the remainder of the day.

I don’t mind cleaning guts; through hunting I’ve done it numerous times. But unlike a pheasant, we cleaned these broilers so that every bit of the meat was saved. With pheasants, I often try hardest to save the breast and wings. Now it was about cleaning out the entire inner cavity.

Just like cleaning any animal, you don’t want to puncture anything for the cleanest possible process. Most importantly though for saving the quality of the meat is to avoid the gall bladder connected to the liver. As the day went on, I felt more and more comfortable with this and developed my own technique for slowly and carefully pulling out innards (we processed around 30 chickens that day). I wasn’t the only one at the table who jumped when, my hand in the cavity, an air pocket at just the right place resulted in the headless chicken quacking like a duck.

After a little while of just fishing for innards, we started to have a small excess pile of birds that hadn’t had the head and neck parts cut, so a little observation and coaching by MOTHER EARTH NEWS’ Sr. Associate Editor Troy Griepentrog let me get the removal of the crop of the neck as well as the esophagus and windpipe down, as well as cutting off the legs and the oil gland on the rear. Then it was back to making a small cut above the vent and removing innards.

I learned so much about processing chickens, and look forward to being able to do it again one day. To some, it would seem almost barbaric to gather and slaughter meat birds in this way. To me, as always with processing animals, it’s far less barbaric when you observe reverence for the bird by processing it yourself; at least that way you are forced to observe and recognize the gravity of the life-taking moment, paying due respect to the animal itself.

Bottom photo by Suzanne Griepentrog

There are times here that I feel like the black sheep of the GRIT blogging family. The one bad egg in clutch of good eggs. Why? Chickens, of course. I believe I might be the only blogger here that doesn’t keep chickens. I’ve never raised them. Not one itty-bitty chick; not once. Neither have I entertained the idea of keeping them in my backyard, nor do I (gasp!) have a desire to do so. It’s not that I have anything against them; I like a good chicken as much as the next person. I like them grilled, baked, or fricasseed. I don’t dispute the benefits of raising chickens. I know they taste better, are healthier, and there’s a sense of satisfaction in raising something yourself and presenting it to your family. That’s why I vegetable garden. But me raise chickens? No.

The same goes for eggs. I see no need for my family to keep a chicken coop in the backyard to provide us with fresh eggs. A carton of eight eggs can last our family one, two, sometimes three months. We just don’t use that many except for the Easter egg dying tradition, the every-so-often Breakfast for Dinner, and the occasional art project.

I noticed Shelby coming down the stairs the other day headed to the refrigerator with a carton of eggs in her hand. “Uhm, Shelbs ... why did you have eggs up in your bedroom?” Call it Spotlight on Eggs. Her art assignment was to draw a still-life of eggs emphasizing the shadowing techniques they were working on in art class. My following question was how long she’s been working on the project, and more importantly how long have the eggs been up in her room. Three days. Time for them to hit the trash. They expired a month ago anyway.

But I’ll make an attempt to join the flock to put a chicken in every blog, and a coupe in every backyard. Or in the case here, I suppose that should be a “coop” in every backyard.

There I go, mucking up a perfectly good saying again. If I think about it, I may have qualms about killing chickens in my backyard, but I’ve never thought twice about slaughtering English and the idioms and adages that are derived from it. Actually the phrase most everyone knows is “a chicken in every pot, and a car in every garage”, which has been attributed to our country’s various presidents, most often with the credit going to Herbert Hoover. But it wasn’t Hoover who said it. Without Hoover’s approval, a slogan paid for by the Republican National Committee during the 1928 campaign touted the prosperity gained during the party’s administration, claiming to have “put a chicken in every pot. And a car in every backyard, to boot.”

While Hoover himself claimed “the slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage,” he never uttered a thing about chickens or backyards. Henry IV did though, in seventeenth century France. Great guy, that Henry. He reputedly said it was his wish that the each peasant in his kingdom have “a chicken in his pot every Sunday.”

It’d be nice indeed, to have a potful of chicken each Sunday. Oooo, Keith’s homemade chicken soup is to die for. But what about the poor chicken going into the pot? Well, uhm ... she died for it too. A farm animal, such as a hen unable to lay eggs anymore, was considered to have outlived its usefulness, and therefore “went to pot …” and then onto the dinner table. We’ve all seen better days; a chicken in every pot might not be possible in an economy that’s gone to pot (unless you have them handy to pluck from your backyard, of course).

There are many sayings featuring chickens, and a great deal of them are disparaging. With all these negative connotations, it’s a wonder anyone would want to be associated with them, much less keep them in such close proximity as one’s own backyard.

You can “scratch out a living” working for “chicken feed” trying to feather your nest with the end result having built a nice, little nest egg for you and your family.

But don’t count your chickens before they hatch, or put all your eggs in one basket, lest you end up with nothing. And that’s no cock and bull story.

You can be called bird-brained, a dumb cluck, and be mad as a wet hen when someone refers to you as no spring chicken. Your writing can be as indecipherable as chicken scratch. Feeling too hen-pecked lately? Just go ahead and fly the coop then.

Chicken Little cried, “the sky is falling, the sky is falling” as nobody paid attention, while Henny Penny felt she did all the work. They both ended up running around like chickens with their heads cut off ... eventually ... when they went to pot.

You can be taken under someone’s wing, but be wary that the protectiveness does not become too overbearing or you might feel mother-henned to death.

You can be chicken-hearted, chicken-livered, and chicken out when the going gets rough. Being called “chicken,” plain and simple, is often accompanied by hand motions and an audio of bird calls as the name caller flaps his arms, and “bawk, bawk, bawks” in a bad imitation that should leave him tarred and feathered.

Shake your tail feathers and you’ll be proudly strutting like a rooster across the dance floor. Unless it’s a wedding reception, and the obligatory Chicken Dance is played. “I don’t want to be a chicken, I don’t want to be a duck, so I shake my butt.” Clap, clap, clap, clap. (Yes, somewhere along the way, the 1950s oompah accordion song was assigned lyrics.) Then you won’t appear to be a cocky rooster, but rather a certain part of the anatomy of another barnyard animal. This may be compounded after having imbibed in too many cocktails.

Speaking of which ... it was Betsy (or maybe it was Betty?) Flannigan, who owned an inn in Pennsylvania (sometimes it appeared to move to Virginia) who invented the cocktail, or at least the word “cocktail.” Serving drinks to the soldiers of the American Revolution, she used tail feathers of cocks as swizzle sticks. Or she served a soldier a drink mixed with the different colored liquors like that of a cock’s tail. Maybe she stole a rooster from a British supporter, roasted it, and served it up with accompanying drinks decorated with the rooster’s feathers. The Betsy/Betty from Pennsylvania/Virginia stories are but a few of many surrounding the origins of the word “cocktail,” which first appears in print in 1806. More then forty supposed etymologies existed in 1946 surrounding the drink, many of them still making the “rounds” today. Most are as muddled as one’s thoughts might be after slugging back a few of the drinks.

Ah, but does it matter? After putting eggs in your basket and counting them before they’re hatched, scratching out a living, and getting hen-pecked in the process, you must be tired. Sit and relax a spell. Have one of Betsy/Betty’s cocktails. I promise I won’t tell if you perform the Chicken Dance poorly.

And as I run out of bad chicken sayings and analogies, I vaguely wonder if I’ve laid an egg with this blog. Perhaps ruffled some feathers and will end up with egg on my face for displaying chickens in a negative light. They say curses, like chickens, eventually come home to roost. Some one will cry, “Fowl!” and I’ll be politely asked that I quietly leave without putting up a squawk.

Maybe I’ll join you in that cocktail now. While the eggheads of the world run around scrambling to decide which came first, the chicken or the egg, we’ll talk turkey about life’s more important issue: Why did the chicken really cross the road? Let’s ask Betty; maybe she knows.

If not, we can always try Betsy.

Photos courtesy of my fellow GRIT blogger who does raise chickens, the very generous and talented Lori Dunn.

Last night, our modest quest for self-sufficiency took a drastic turn.

I mean, gardening – fine. Making bread from whole grain? Great. I’ve even got my own recipe for homemade dog treats. I almost have to. When you have a pack of dogs and you care as much about what goes into their body as you do about what goes into your own, that can get real expensive, real quick. And OK, I’ll admit it; awhile back I was telling my husband that I thought we should get some chickens for eggs. I was extolling the virtues of chickens. Our neighbor behind us, Mr. F, keeps chickens, I told him. They don’t smell if you take care of them. Mr. F showed me his chickens, and they don’t smell! I’m talking about just three or four chickens!

Repeatedly, he laughed at me, and told me there was no WAY that we were getting chickens. He drew the line at chickens.

And yet, I cannot PRY the Northern Tool and Equipment Catalogue out of his hands. What does that have to do with anything, you wonder? Well, nothing actually, but when you still have one foot in suburbia, and homesteading is something new to you, a mere couple of chickens don’t seem to be such a tremendous leap from wanting to buy a tractor.

That Mom might want chickens (and a goat for milk) has become something of a family joke. When I ordered six chickens from a local farmer, I can’t tell you how many times my husband said, “These chickens will be dead, right? These are dead chickens that you’re getting, right?” Honestly, I wanted to thump him on the head with one of those dead chickens by the time I got them home.

The farmer offered to bring me over a few in a cage in the bed of his pickup truck just to mess with him.

But I declined.

I mean, I wanted to convert my husband. Not antagonize him.

And then last night, he threw the gauntlet down.

He said, and I quote, “If you want to get chickens, that’s O.K. Go ahead and order them.”

Gulp.

The last time my husband came to me with this kind of life-altering pronouncement, eleven months later we were bringing home a baby.

Um…WHAT?

I mean, I’ve thought about it. I’ve talked about it. It seems perfect IN THE ABSTRACT. Philosophically speaking. But to actually do it?

Okay. It’s confession time. It may be – I’m not positive, but it MAY be – that that one foot of mine that’s still in suburbia is stuck fast in some recently poured concrete.

Still. Suddenly chickens are on the table (no pun intended).

So I pulled out my copy of The Backyard Homestead, a book that I love, and turned to the section on raising chickens; a section that I had given only a cursory reading up till now. And I know I have a GRIT issue around here somewhere that talks about chicken coops or raising chickens, or something about chickens … and I’m going to read every blog post about raising chickens because I know there’s a wealth of demystifying information right here at my fingertips and because quite frankly – I’m a little bit scared.

But I’m also kind of excited.

It seems that on the ladder of self-sufficiency, “Can you feed yourself?” may be the first rung. I mean, I’m sure it’s cheaper to poke seeds in the dirt and raise chickens than it is to install windmills or solar panels or to build your own home from the lumber on your property (if you even have any).

So. What the heck. I’m game.

I shared with him what little I did know about raising chickens for eggs – and the part that most concerns me about the prospect. It’s not the poop. Are you kidding me? We’ll have our own fertilizer! It’s not that I might occasionally get my hand pecked. It’s not that having chickens requires a twice a day commitment between the cleaning, the feeding and the gathering of eggs. It’s that they really only lay well for a year and two, and that after that, apparently, the best place for them is in the stew pot.

And around here, we tend to get attached to things. How else would I have ended up with four dogs? Quite frankly, having had a few litters of puppies around here over the years, it’s a wonder we don’t have twenty.

But the fact remains that we do eat meat; that the chickens we bought from the local farmer lived for about six or seven weeks before their trip to the butcher; and that they almost certainly had a better six or seven weeks of life than anything I might pick up out of most grocery store coolers.

And then my husband said something both surprising and interesting to me, something along the lines of how having to raise and care for and eventually eat our chickens was likely to reawaken our spiritual sides.

I couldn’t agree more.

I began gardening with gusto because of a perpetual concern about what I’m putting in my family’s bodies, and because of a distrust of the gargantuan pharma-medica-food monster that otherwise runs every aspect of our modern lives. What I didn’t expect from the experience was to be thinking about faith; about what it means to believe in something that you cannot see – like that little seed unfolding some fraction of an inch below the soil line – and upon which you are dependent. I didn’t expect that I would feel so closely dependent both on the earth and on my own efforts, and that this dependency would become tinged with reverence. I didn’t expect to feel a responsibility for every seedling I started, and for every transplant I purchased. And I sure didn’t expect to feel guilt and shame over all of the ones that I allowed – through neglect, or ignorance, and sometimes I suspect through no fault of my own – to die. That is, the ones that died for no good reason; the ones that were not able to fulfill their natural life cycle and end up on my table. I didn’t expect to have an increased awareness of and respect for nature; or a heightened awareness of the cycle of life, and the fact that we, too, are in that cycle, and that life doesn’t last forever, and isn’t supposed to.

So if we do this chicken thing, we’re not going to do it in ignorance. Because one day we’re going to have to look a living creature in the eye, and say, “Thank you” for an upcoming meal. And when we do have that last conversation, I’d like to think that they might also be thinking, “Thank you” to me.

That is both a radical and a sobering thought.

And one we ought to be having more often, I suspect.

So, chickens are on the table, and we have a lot of learning to do. We also have a lot of other, more pressing things to do in the meantime, like solve my compost problem that I just keep putting off, and reading the Root Cellaring book that arrived yesterday, and finding the right storage place for my eight million sweet potatoes. Oh, and finishing the addition we’re putting on the house. Hopefully by Christmas. So, if we can do all of that, and educate ourselves, and my husband builds the coop (no problem there), we may try a few hens this coming spring. So stay tuned.

Oh, and by the way. He’s also on board about the goat. But we’re going to have to work our way up to that.

My daughter and I entered the county fair again this year, I entered some dried herbs, jam, and photos that I had taken, and she entered some photos and a elephant she had crochet. We were there bright and early before church Sunday morning to hand the entries in to the judges, with the judging starting that afternoon.

We would have loved to go back out to the fair on Monday, because the suspense was killing us, but things kept getting in the way. It was finally Wednesday that we got a chance to get back out to the County Fair and see how we did. Trying to act calm as we went to each table, we found that I had won third place in the dried herb department and my daughter received second place for her crochet work. Not too bad for the first time I’ve dried herbs and her first year of learning how to crochet. We are pretty happy – next year well have fun and do it again, after we take some photography classes.

What’s a fair of course without rides, elephant ears, a crocodile man, and then there are the exhibit barns. The gardening exhibit is real a good one of course, the cows are neat, the minature horses are so cute, oh but the chickens they are the best. I wish I could have chickens here at home but the ordinaces here say no. I guess I have chicken fever cause I look at them all the time and I found the one I would raise if I had the chance. My husband, Bat, just shakes his head.

I believe that every decade or so I should really look at my life. That’s usually because I have spent the previous ten years making a mess of it. So, on the day I turned 30, I was standing in the grocery store looking at a pack of chicken. I was figuring out, as it lay there with the plastic wrap snuggly clinging to its pinky, salmonella-infested moistness, that it just didn’t look that tasty. It also did not look like an animal. Because I am not one of those blessed with a mind that can take such information and just move on, and because it was my 30th birthday and I wasn’t feeling particularily moved by anything else about the day, I set myself a year long goal of really figuring out whether I was: A) an insatiable omnivore opportunity eater who just grazed my way mindlessly through life, or B) a Conscious Consumer who thoughtfully chose what she put in her body as a statement of her political, ethical, moral and spiritual beliefs.

It was the 80s. Most people remember the 80s as a-ha and Air Supply on the radio and the slow return of conspicuous consumption. For me, it was a decade of soul searching manifesting itself in an odd melange Joan Collins suits, Princess Diana beige hair and huge glasses. Casual wear was a denim jumper and sensible shoes – a uniform made necessary by our recent move to the farm. Looking bad, I was dowdy before my time.

Back to the chicken. I bought it, but every time I took it out of the freezer to cook, I would find myself staring at it, turning it this way and that. I had to wonder why I wasn’t looking at it and saying, “Yum, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into that.” I had to wonder why I was wondering at all. Bright light fills my head. It’s because I don’t see a connection between this hunk of frozen frankenchicken and an actual chicken.

I spent weeks walking around trying to discuss this conflict with friends and colleaques. Many would say, “I couldn’t eat it if it did look like a chicken!” Then they would relate some story of a grandfather or mother who would chop the head of a hen and let it run around the yard, or a cousin who hunts for all their meat. Maybe they would tell me about some duck or something they got for Easter and gave a cute name only to have it end up in a cassolette. Then, sometimes, something more insidious would happen – someone would tell me about a crazy college kid who gave up eating everything with a face.

So, I started obsessing about this issue and finally one day got tired of obsessing and decided to set myself about solving it once and for all.

I challenged myself: If I can raise a chicken, butcher it and eat it, I will remain a omnivore. If not, I will never eat anything with a face again.

As I said, it was the 80s.

I went about researching where to buy chicks, what to feed chicks and what accessories they might require. I bought little feeders and big feeders, waterers, automatic waterers and a twelve hole nesting box. I decided on a management method and sought out the chicken expert at the local Farm and Tractor Store.

One very exciting day, a big box of cheeping peeps arrived at the post office and My Husband brought it home. The twelve White Cornish Cross chicks lived for several weeks on the table in the middle of the kitchen, in a cage with a towel over it and a heat lamp hanging above. I was the only woman I knew raising chickens. And I was damn proud of it.

When they were large enough (and frankly, too stinky for the kitchen) I moved them outside. C and I had collaborated on a chicken house – but no run – these would be Free Range Chickens. This was a concept that was considered forward thinking and philosophically superior by those who could afford fencing but decided against it. It was not a concept at all, merely where your chickens were, if you couldn’t.

I think these chickens got to be large enough to butcher in about seven weeks. It was astounding – they became huge, stumbling baby huey chickens over night. I recall that as the time came for the butchering and they got bigger, I decided I did not want to do the actual killing myself. It wasn’t that I was afraid, it wasn’t that I was too fond of them. I very simply was concerned that I hadn’t done it before and I might botch it and cause unnecessary suffering. I had developed, rather than an affection, more of a respect for them.

I found a Mennonite Butchering Guy, boxed them up one fine afternoon, and within half an hour Mennonite Butchering Guy’s wife and daughters were asking me if I wanted them whole or quartered.

They came home in the back of the truck in black plastic trashbags stuck in buckets. They were incredibly heavy, even without their feathers and their innards. I dragged the bags of chicken into the house and piled them up on the kitchen floor. At that time I had four dogs and they came in to the kitchen and sat in a row, with a demeanor of idle curiosity. They had no interest in the chicken. It had almost no odor.

Shocking Self Realization: I had been eating fetid, germy, bacteria laden smelly chicken my whole life. This was the first clean meat I would experience. I was revolted at what I must have ingested without even thinking for decades. This completely out distanced any anthropomorphic fantasies I had about the souls of the chickens.

I had no problem eating these chickens. I even relished these chickens. I invited terribly good friends over for dinner and we were blown away by the taste. It did taste different! I remember someone thought I should bring their wings cooked in sauce to some kind of function. I would not waste this AMBROSIA on drunk people at a party.

Okay. So, I had accomplished what I set out to do. I had defined myself as a person who was not a hypocrite. I could raise something and eat it. I could not only remain an Opportunity Eater but I was also a Conscious Consumer who chose what she put in her body as a statement of her political, ethical, moral and spiritual beliefs. One step closer to Nirvana!!!

The meat chickens were such a success – and were giving me such great things to talk about with people that I moved on to egg laying chickens, ducks, guinea hens and turkeys. (The turkeys spawned dozens of Domestic Episodes.)

Now before the rescue lady lived next door, her house was occupied by a real gem of a neighbor who enjoyed making my life miserable. Her pool was about 200 feet from my barn. So the progression from the low impact meat and egg production of the birds to installing a pigpen in plain view and smell of her pool house was pretty easy.

I had Chester Whites. This is a special breed of pig genetically designed to have a huge behind. I think I was too, but no one ever gave me a special name because of it.

Pigs are not smart, cute or clean, and they are not friendly, even to each other. They want one thing out of life. They want to feed that huge rear. They will eat anything, in any quantity that can be supplied or stolen. They are such efficient eating machines that they convert almost everything they eat into future meals for people. Smart opportunity eaters down through the ages have capitalized on this by learning to make tasty entrees out of everything but the squeak. They are also very strong and can destroy almost any enclosure, so you have to keep them on concrete with rigid fencing buried in it. If they can get their nose into a crack, they can tear that up. I have seen a pig put his nose down at the edge of an asphalt drive way and plow a trench through it 10 inches deep. There were no truffles under that driveway. Believe me, I looked.

Once, I let the pigs out on the lawn because I thought that would be a kind thing to do. (I don’t go to the zoo any more, because of these overwhelming urges.) After they had wandered around for a while, I thought I better put them back. I had no plan for this. I tried wiggling a bucket of food at them, but that was of no interest because to them, everything is food. I tried putting a lead around the neck of one, but it slid right over his head when I pulled on it. I did finally chase them back in, but not until after one of them had bitten me on the hand, swallowing a chunk out of my knuckle that exposed the bone. No worries, I bit him later.

I was running a piggy version of a Day Spa. It takes about six months to bring a pig up to butchering weight – you do the math. You get them at about a month old and they weigh about 40 pounds. In five months they will have gained about 200 pounds, at a rate of about 1.3 pounds a day. Since the average pig needs to eat between 4 and 6 pounds of quality feed each day to gain 1.3 pounds, and you have 4 pigs ... you will carry aproximately 3100 pounds of food out to the pen. They will also create aproximately half that weight in poopie. Which stinks. They drink about 3 gallons of water a day. I had what is called a Pig Nipple for their drinking pleasure – a hose with something very similar to what people keep in hamster cages. I also provided them with sun-brellas and sunscreen, and I gave them daily showers. All in all, it was not bad to be Rodeo’s pig.

They were all named Spam, at least the ones I didn’t call Freezer Meat.

I can’t say that I ever used the USDA’s recommended proceedure for estimating the weight of my pigs (take a tape measure and measure their girth directly behind the front legs and multiply by some number). I just got damn tired of all this feeding and sunscreening and called the butcher. There was just one little detail that we hadn’t thought out. How do we get them there?

It never occured to us to hire a professional pig mover. Why would it? We had a standard Ford F150 4-wheel-drive pick-up. My husband built sides for this and rigged up an old barn door as a ramp. We backed it up next to the pigpen, opened the gate and put the ramp inside and waited for them to get curious and climb in.

And waited and waited. Pigs glanced casually at the ramp. Pigs sniffed the ramp and walked to the opposite side of the pen. Pigs walked to the very bottom of the ramp and pooped. But no pig actually got in the truck.

We called a local expert named Dougie. He said, Pigs don’t walk up ramps. Pigs can't walk up ramps. You are going to have to help them up.

Uh-huh.

We tied a lead around the neck of one, Charles pulled, and I pushed, and we did get the pig up the ramp. THE 250-POUND SMEARED WITH PIG FECAL MATTER PIG.

The second one struggled a little more, but eventually Spam 2 was in the truck. Pigs are very verbal. Spam 1 and 2 were shouting advice to Freezermeat 1 and Freezermeat 2 down in the pen. It was earsplitting and annoying. Freezermeat 1 ended up with a bucket pushed on his head walking up the ramp backwards. I don’t have any idea who thought that was necessary.

All this pig tonnage walking up and down the ramp had shifted things a bit and C wanted to make sure that Freezermeat 2 would go in easy so he adjusted it a bit. Enough so that Freezermeat 2 was able to slip between the ramp and the fence and head for the lawn.

And it started to rain.

I was wearing my denim jumper and a pair of muckboots. Charles was wearing overalls and no shirt. We were wearing matching smears of pig poopie. All over. Places you wouldn’t want your own poopie.

We chased that loose pig for an hour. He had amazing stamina for a short, round 250-pound animal. I bet people say that about me, occasionally.

Years later, while looking through the family album, my son remarked that I must have been drunk a lot when he was a kid. Despite unimpeachable evidence to the contrary presented by his beloved Grandmother, he cited incidents like what follows to make his point.

Just as, pig manure smeared and soaking wet, Charles and I sheparded Freezermeat 2 around the corner of the house, My Son, (Now Ripper’s Husband) was dropped off with two of his friends. He took one look at his parents, shook his head and went into the house. His friends (afterall we weren’t their parents) joined us and soon all four of us were wearing that pig down.

The two boys and Charles got the pig to go up a small incline. I was at the bottom. Someone screamed, “BLOCK HIM!” I bent at the waist , flexed my knees and prepared to block. A 250-pound pig running at about 20 miles an hour down a hill.

He caught me square at my flexed knees. The force of the impact knocked my glasses off and parted my knees as he was propelled forward. As though we had practiced for months, I slid over his pointy, wet head to a perfect, although backwards, seat on his back and was carried off across the lawn.

My first thought was: I can’t see where I am going.

Second thought was: OH MY GOD I AM RIDING A PIG, AND I AM GOING TO DIE!

Third thought: I am only 18 inches off the ground. No way am I going to die.

Fourth thought: Well, I am just going to sit here until this pig gets really tired and falls over.

Which is what he did.

It took the four of us to push/drag him up the ramp into the truck with his buddies and soon, slightly cleaned up, we were on our way to drop them off at the butcher.

Getting them out was much easier – they go down ramps fairly easily. The stall where we were putting them had a single lamp in it, and at one point I heard Charles saying gently, “Go into the light…”

I let him handle the details like labeling the pigs with spray paint so the butcher knew who owned them.

The next day I got a call from the butcher. He says, “Your pigs are clean and lean, Rodeo.”

I beam. I say, “So you had no trouble telling which ones were ours?”

He pauses. “Well, yours were the only ones labeled ‘PIG.’”

Oh, Charles. You goofball.

Forget Dr. Phil, I can hypnotize a chicken! So, myth be told, there is a legend chickens can be hypnotized. Riiiiiight!!! And I am the Duchess Of York.

First of all, who cares? Second of all, I need to try now, and third of all, WHY? Why can a chicken be hypnotized?

Ingredients needed for hypnotism – sounds very new-agey and weird, but you need stuff.

            1 – daughter
            1 – niece
            1 – camera
            5 – chickens
            1 – place to roll around on the ground laughing – where you won’t hurt the chickens that are in their trance.

My daughter and niece proceed to go into the backyard and round up the chickens. Once in hand, they flip them over on their back, rub their chest, place them on the ground, make a mark / gesture with your finger around their heads and viola! El Chickoni is in La La Land …

Serves: As many people as you can round up.

The remarks from the event goers are everything from hysteria to drooling. Statements like “NO WAY,” “WHY?” “How long will they lay there?” “Ewww they’re dirty now,” and “You’ve got to be kidding me?” flowed like my hair on a speedboat – ummm OK, flowed like water through a dam. This experiment turned into a circus, and once the Dancing Bears got there, we were set. It also got me thinking. WHY? Who discovered this? When? Is there some science to this? I know sharks, if tipped on their back are basically puppy dogs, so what of chickens on their backs? Are they feigning what they look like on a platter? Are their brains little valves, that if tipped one direction they lose motor control and all other functions? So, I began my quest to know. I talked about it on my blog www.lecoopdujour.blogspot.com. I asked about on backyardchickens.com and began searching the annals of the web. What I found was shocking. There is very little in terms of straight up science, but a lot of historical references … so here goes.

In 1646, chicken hypnotizing was referenced in a book called Mirabile Experimentum de Imaginatione Gallinae by Athanasius Kircher. The web seems to parrot this regardless of the site you visit. Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit Priest and based on what I can ascertain his writings focused on a myriad of subjects – all of which I don’t understand. I am still working on the TV remote for Pete’s sake. At some point in his book he talks of hypnotizing chickens, and I can only surmise from his body of work and study that hypnotics, mysticism and other mind-gadgetry were studied. Further references indicate H.B. Gibson wrote about it in a book called Hypnosis – Its Nature and Therapeutic Uses and noted a record 3 hours and 47 minutes of chicken hypnosis. Seriously, who would have the patience to sit and time a chicken in this state without getting hungry and beginnning to imagine the little chicken with a little honey BBQ sauce on it? Someone did it, and I am sure the time ended because the chicken was eaten. So it probably wasn’t a fair test.

The overriding use for hypnotizing a chicken has been for terminating their life for meat, but that can’t be the only physiological reason. Regardless, people other than me have talked about this, so I feel a little off the back, and while the over-riding reason is to put them in a trance to off them, others have found it, as I have, to be unbelievably funny. And since it seems to do no physical harm, and chickens are such a novelty as a pet, this provides endless hours of fun!

I found a few other chicken hypnotizers:

• Friedrich Nietzsche, renowned 19th-century German philosopher, in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra used a philosophical metaphor referring to the hypnosis of the chicken. It is in Chapter 6, “The Pale Criminal”, and reads as follows: “The streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched his weak reason. Madness AFTER the deed, I call this.”
• DC Comics hero The Vigilante hypnotizes a menacing rooster to protect himself and Stuff the Chinatown Kid, in the story “The Little Men who Were There” (Action Comics #69, 1944).
• Werner Herzog’s 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser features a scene in which a chicken is hypnotized by a line drawn by chalk.
• Federico Fellini’s 1984 And the Ship Sails On features a scene in which a male opera singer hypnotises a chicken in the mess hall.
• Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” includes the line “I’ve been hurting since I bought the gimmick/About something called love ... Well, that’s like hypnotizing chickens.”
• Ernest Hemingway briefly describes the process in The Dangerous Summer, comparing it to the hypnotic effect of a bullfighters’ cape.
• In E. Nesbit’s book The House of Arden an old woman says that she has left a chicken in this state.
• Criss Angel in his show Criss Angel Mindfreak hypnotized a chicken as a magic trick in the episode “Burning Man.” I think someone needs to hypnotize this dude and send him to military school. He is a wing-nut.

Anywho… In The 1985 Old Farmer’s Alamanac, Linda Riggins has the following to say on hypnotized birds:

“A bird will stay hypnotized for a couple of seconds, minutes, or hours,” says White, although in her demonstrations they’re “out” for only minutes. Regardless of the method used, a sudden movement or loud noise will bring the chicken out of the hypnotic trance.

White adds, “Pheasants go out faster than any other bird. Wild pheasants are very nervous and high-strung, and usually very easy to hypnotize.” In her demonstrations, she is protective of pheasants, because after they come out of hypnosis, they are likely to hurt themselves unless they are carefully monitored. Noting that domestic birds are more difficult to hypnotize than wild ones, she suggests that one reason may be wild birds are using a survival skill when they submit to hypnosis.

White has reported the results of her experiments at several New Jersey science conferences and fairs. In one of her studies of 11 birds, the heart and respiration rates, when measured five minutes after hypnosis, were significantly lower than in the pre-hypnotic state. For example, in a Bantam White Cochin cock, the heart rate before hypnosis was 457 beats per minute and after hypnosis 372. The rates for this bird’s respiration were 22 and 20 breaths per minute, respectively. The temperatures of nine of these birds went down or were unchanged in the posthypnotic state.

Here’s to someone dropping me on my back, drawing a line on the ground and letting me lay there … just don’t eat me! Otherwise, the real science is probably buried in some obscure university’s laboratory file room, like my transcripts.

I have had rat problems off and on for the past 15 years that I’ve lived here. This year, the rat population seems to have exploded! It is purely anecdotal, but this is also the first year I’ve had chickens! These are not roof rats, but rather fruit rats ... much smaller, which in all candor, make them more difficult to catch. They are really too big to be caught in a smaller mouse trap and too small for the rat trap. Plus they seem to be Mensa Rats, because they are smarter than years past. Which makes them smarter than me. So, we are now in for a battle and a HUGE conundrum. So, let’s hit the launchpad.

I am by nature/up-bringing conservative, but I have have a strong bent towards proper stewardship of the our planet and balance between man and beast. Rats, for me, are the tipping point of environmental consciousness and militant insanity. And, now with the wonderful movie, glorifying the incredible humor, love and culinary abilities of rats in Ratatouille, killing them has become a little tougher. I see Remy in all of them.

I go to my local hardware store looking for rodent control . My mind races between the simplicity of a snap trap and devising new, yet invented, robot rodent killing machines. I have even jumped on Raytheon’s website in hopes they have a some military grade laser rat destroyer, maybe something they’ve used in Iraq ... hmmmm? Or maybe a mutant cat, that I can stuff into my crawl space and seal it up. Listen for the tussel and then coax the cat back down with some catnip. Anyway, my mind races between joy and guilt ... as I stand there I juggle “green/humane” option or utter mayhem. If you’ve seen Ratatouille you saw what the grandma (assuming she is a grandma) did to the ceiling of her house with the shotgun – yep that’s me.

With a nod to “green” I begin with sticky/glue traps. I put my finger on it to test and it is like a tractor beam. I can barely get my finger out of it. I nearly grab the trap with my other hand only to catch a glimpse of myself in the future, with both hands stuck together as I struggle to release myself from it, only to fail and die of starvation. Irony? I proceed to nail them to the tops of fences where I know these germ infested creatures are making their midnight dashes. I put out a scooch of peanut butter to draw them in, and with anticipation I go to sleep. I awaken with an extra jump in my step to see the peanut butter gone and no rat, nothing, not even a mark in the glue trap. Are you kidding me? I barely get away with my life, and these rats dance across it like it was a parquet floor.

Fine, let’s try this again. Repeat the same steps with more peanut butter, and push it into the glue a little deeper. Awaken the next morning and shame on me … peanut butter is gone and not a tarred rat in site. Honestly, how can they sell this stuff? If rats dance across it, how can Rat Glue Inc. or whoever it is … still be in business? You know, I think when stuff doesn’t work, most of us move on. You know, just “Oh well, it was only $4.99, it didn’t work,” and move on to Plan B. I think this is wrong … however, I didn’t complain.

I now elevate my quest to – snap traps and these stooooopid “plug-in” electronic emitters, which are suppose to attract them and then make them nuts and drive them away. I get two rat traps, which take super-human strength and dexterity to set and of course nerves of steel to take your hand away while the spring of death is “loaded.” Hoping beyond hope that that hook is making full contact with the clip. I put peanut butter on the trap – organic of course ... want to make sure their last meal is healthy, and plug in the emitters. Keep in mind the rats are in our crawlspace and are keeping my kids up and freaking them out (me too). They truly sound like they are acting out a scene from Bonanza with stagecoaches and horses galloping through the attic. Guns are firing and horses are snarling. I hear one yell, “Pa! Get Hoss!”

I set the traps and come out the next morning only to see the peanut eaten down to the clip and no rats. You’ve got to be kidding me! Are these “zero-point gravity” rats? I can’t breath on the trap without it springing, and these things are eating off it? Argh!

I leave well enough alone and decide to set the traps that evening. As I lay my head on the pillow I remember, “set the traps.” All snuggly, wuggly in bed, I get out, slip on some flip flops and a t-shirt, go to the kitchen to get the peanut butter. Walk out to the fence, stand on a log, where I pull the snap back, slip off the log and the snap gets my left index finger spot on the knuckle. I think my cursing scared the rats away that night. My knuckle swells up like a balloon.

I set the traps and again, the next morning bait is gone, and so are the rats. Let me explain something. These things are powerful and have been known to slice these rodents in half. I am thankful my finger did not suffer the same fate, but hang-on … “Idiot alert!” I tried to load this thing in flip flops while balancing on a pine log. Brilliant … utterly brilliant. I think my wife was hoping I would get caught!

Now, the internal struggle begins – these rats are not going away, not getting caught in the glue, not tripping the traps and not put-off by the Waste ‘O Money noise emitters. Noise emitters, letting out hypersonic sound to drive them away. Right, they are little plug-ins of the Rolling Stones and The Police … I am surprised there aren’t 1000 rats sitting on beach chairs and barbecueing garbage while holding up a lighter in my yard.

On top of all this, they have my entire family sleeping in different rooms because of the cacophony of noise they are making. I am beginning to become militant. This is where the eco-friendly, semi-pacifist leaves and the rat killing, camo-wearing mercenary appears.

I have had to resort to guns and poison ... and while I hate it! I know it works. I proceed to nail the poison to the tops of the fence so pets don’t get it. I would normally remove it in the morning so not to kill squirrels and birds, but I don’t have to, cause every piece of bait is gone! I repeat the process the next night – again, every piece of bait is gone. For five nights I do this and each morning all the poison is gone. I have rats, and not Weight-Watcher rats, I have “All You Can Eat, Heavy Footed Rats” Finally, on Saturday, I see a rat, which is “in process” of dieing. My biggest fear is unraveling in front of me ... I believe in instant death of these creatures, not a lingering death ... I know ... it is a rat, but ugh, I hate to see this. My Dad always said, “get it over with” when referring to homework or dinner or buffing is shoes ... So I applied adage to rat-extermination as well. As humanely as possible, I would kill it so to not have it suffer unduly.

The problem was; my pellet gun was out of pellets, and the rat was crawling up a drain pipe to safety – on my roof. I quickly grabbed the hose and stuffed in the other end of the drain pipe. The rat comes flying out of the other end trying to get air. He pops up and having run to Big 5 Sports for pellets and ready for him, I fire and it appears I’ve quickly accomplished my goal, yet the rat continues to crawl. Uh oh – I have a the Cyberdyne Model T-1000 on my hands and I am going to need to pump more rounds into this rat. I fire … fire … fire ... fire.... The rat keeps crawling and crawling. I am freaking.… My heart is raising and my imagination has run amuck, this rat is going to launch itself onto my throat and kill me! I scramble only to have my daughter tell me that each of pellets have fallen out of the end of the rifle. I was putting .171 into a .22. I knew it looked wrong, but tried anyway – I was not going to drive back to Big 5 to have a discussion over the caliber of pellets. The rat crawls in to the catch-basin and drowns. Good grief – this is how it ends? A slip and fall into water? There are still more in the crawl space.

More poison is going to get placed in the crawl space. The gun is getting put away, my head is hanging low – I am afraid if I lived in the time of my forefathers I would be living in the field, and the rats would live in the house.

I want to begin by heaving an enormous sigh and taking in a deep breath of rainy atmosphere.

It’s been a bumpy and amazing ride these last two months. I feel like I am just resurfacing for air after a dive to the deep end of the public pool: I can see the wavy light above me, but my lungs are burning for the oxygen promised on the other side.

Whew. It tastes good. Since I last wrote about what was happening here at the farm, we had just remodeled our old pump house into the small, but functional farm store. We have since added some little bits of home to make it comfy and welcoming and overall, our customers like it very much. Since then, we have been really slammed with work here and since we have so many new endeavors this year, everything that happens is like an emergency and must take center stage. To say the least, we have been stressed out.

However, I have uploaded a bunch of photos from the beginning of June until just a few days ago in order to help me keep the days straight. We’ve had so much going on that I need these visuals as much as you do! Here we go ...

Gardens

Below, you see our back field that held the pumpkins/chickens/sheep last year. We have since converted it into a fully functioning garden. Well, about half of it at least. Here, Bret and his mother Rita spent an entire day planting and tilling and planting and watering. We got our garden in super late this year, but I am thankful we have a garden at all. You see Rita and her husband Gale and family of eight kids have pledged time to come out and work the gardens throughout the season in order to have food for both our families. It works out great! Andy and I had high hopes for a pretty large garden this year, but when everything hit with the dairy, we just had no time to devote to it. Enter Rita and her two oldest kids, Bret and Cortnie. We have the two of them nearly five days a week now in the summer, sometimes all day and they help with weeding, watering and eventually, harvesting.

And of course, other chores as well. It’s a great blessing to have them here as they can often take over simple duties of feeding chickens, watering animals, picking eggs and my favorite: babysitting! :-)

Lawnmowers

Here you see our rams eating our front lawn. There’s a book called Food Not Lawns (have not read it, but I get the premise) that talks about getting rid of the lawn mower and turning your yard into a garden. Well, we’re a few years down the road from that. However, I had this hair-brained idea to have the sheep graze the lawn way back in February. This June, I got to see it come to fruition. One thing I did not count on was having to “let it go” for such a long time that when the rams were finally let onto it, the area didn’t look like a front yard at all. I was happy to have satisfied my interest in “green lawn mowing,” but I think we need to retool a little bit before we do this again. The front yard now has a bunch of SUPER green circles that stick out like polka dots on a housewife’s dress. Not exactly the sort of lawn you want new customers to see.

But it was fun while it lasted! And with the wonders of temp fencing, it’s like we never had sheep there at all!

Raising Chicks

We got brand new baby chicks in about June 12th. We had these high hopes of helping a heritage breed chicken increase its numbers and showing off our geniune “old fashioned” hens. But apparently, everyone else in this down economy was thinking: I’m gonna lose my job, I better raise chickens to be safe. So the Delaware chickens we had been so carefully researching over the winter did not get ordered in time to beat the rush. We would not have gotten our chicks until this week had we waited! Since half of them would be raised to replace our old, old laying hens, and it takes 5 months to get a pullet to lay a single egg, we needed something a little faster.

So we went to a local hatchery in Beaver Dam and ordered their generic Blacks. 100 straight run chicks for 87¢ each. That beat the Delaware price of $2.09 each, but they certainly lacked the street cred that a genuine, critically endangered animal would have carried! Right?

Boy were they cute!!! As soon as they came, I could care less about their pedigree. These chicks were awesome. Small enough to hold two in one hand and 100 fit easily into Elly’s kiddie pool. This was our makeshift incubator for the first week to ensure they would stay warm and cozy and not get lost. We only lost three from shipping and that was it!

Once you are past the first week, chicks are so easy! Above, the chicks at a week old. Now that they are nearly two months old, we’ve had them free-ranging for several weeks. They are naturals! The little cockerels have turned white and black spotted and the pullets remain pure black. This week or next we will separate them and begin an intensive pastured poultry operation. In the meantime, they enjoy their brooder house home behind our large field garden. (See our posts about getting that brooder house up to standard last fall!) We are going to order more females this winter and raise them to be layers for ourselves and another farmer next May. We might even invest in an incubator ourselves and just take our own eggs when we get the right varieties here on the farm. But I digress...

Shearing

Below is a bunch of our woolly ewes and their lambs. Can you even tell the difference?? They are only a month old here, mid-June, and already over half the size of their mommas. The one in the middle facing away from us was the subject of much curiosity. In the field, he looks like a fox hopping over the grass. We’ve never seen a sheep with this sort of coloration before. He has begun to lighten in color, but still has this tawny, shaggy hide that must be a combination of some serious recessive genes. As you can see, the ewes all have their wool yet and we had already hit the heat of summer. It was just another one of those things that didn’t get dealt with until it was an emergency. We went about three weeks straight with the sheep out every single day.

They were some of the most stressful days we had encountered and we strengthened the fences and gave them fresher grass and checked for shorts and it didn’t matter. They would lift the high-tensile wire with their fully wooled necks and run right through. So we called around and found a sheep shearer about an hour away who would be able to come within two weeks. It was the longest two weeks we’d ever waited! But with a lot of prayer and fence diligence, we made it through with only a few break-outs.

When Courtney arrived, he had this excellent equipment and 30 years of sheep knowledge under his belt. We set up a shearing area and he just dove right in. The follow shots give you a little idea of how smoothly it went. He was shearing the next sheep before the last one was back in the pen. It was amazing and he was a very genuine guy. We had him stay for a country lunch as a sort of tip for his time.

To keep the wools clean, we laid down an old wagon side. You can see this ewe’s lamb watching in the cattle chute. When she was done, we’d lead her to the pen behind the red gravity box and dump the lamb(s) in with her.

Courtney knew just where the pressure points were on the sheep in order to hold them relatively still. They folded and flopped into place just like little sheep rag dolls. We were in awe. Below, my mom Judy holds up a shorn coat. We placed the fully white wool into one bag and the black or mixed colored wool into a separate bag.

The holding pen for the freshly shorn ewes. Now it was even harder to tell the full grown sheep from the lambs! We will never make the mistake again of letting our flock out to pasture with 4 inches of wool around their little bodies. No fun for anyone involved!

The Little Peckers

Not to forget about our chickens, they have been rangin about our sheep and cattle fields since early April. We were moving them about once every two weeks, but found that some sort of varmint was getting the late hens at dusk. We finally set out some traps and moved the trailer about 30 feet and even set up some night vision motion senser cameras to see if we could find what was killing our hens.

All we saw were beautiful shots of the farm during the day and cryptic shots of Andy closing the chickens in at night. :-)

I laugh at the one above. I love Andy’s sense of humor! But we lost about 25 laying hens in two weeks and then the raids stopped. We haven’t had a problem since.

A direct consequence of the stress the rest of the flock felt was a reduction in egg numbers. Couple that with a summer molt, old hens, hot weather, inconsistent watering/feeding and our huge flock was down to about 3 dozen eggs per day. 36 eggs from 180 hens! So we smartened up our feeding schedule, moved them to a short grass, thick clover field and move them nearly every single day to thwart the predators. We are now back up to seven to eight dozen eggs per day and boy do we need it! The egg demand has gone through the roof! For about three weeks at the end of June, we couldn’t keep a dozen in that store for longer than 12 hours. Above, can you find the ranging hens? This is one of our north fields that face the permanent pasture and the ancient oak trees. It’s a lovely sight to behold!

Mornings

Speaking of sights to behold, the shot below is sunrise over the sheep paddock about a week ago. The freshly shorn ewes have a new found respect for electric fencing and we rest easy at night again. Andy goes out about 5:30am and moves all the animal fencing before rounding up the milking herd. He lets the chickens out, moves the sheep, opens up new paddock for the beef/heifer herd and lets the milking herd into fresh grass. I have often asked him to take the camera to capture early morning life on the farm. On this day, he did!

Moo-calves

Below, some of our scamps nose up to Andy. We have eight young calves now, a direct result of nine cows milking in our barn. Our first cow Charlotte had still-born twins back in April, but the rest of the cows each had one healthy calf. Then our seventh cow, Isabelle, had twin bulls which we named Imis and Ignatio. The last cow to have her calf, just last week, had difficulties in labor and lost the calf to stress. But thankfully she is doing well. Below, from left to right: Tess out of Tilly, Imis out of Isabelle, Alex out of Anna and Barbie out of Bea. Not shown is Midnight out of Mabel, Leeloo out of Leche, Ignatio and Ghost out of Gretta. Ghost is pretty cool. I’ll have to get a shot of him sometime; he’s like a tan/grey Holstein looking little guy. Never seen a calf that color before.

Gardens Again

Back to the gardens, they are growing strong. This shot below shows what has grown in a month in the back garden. My dad Dave takes the disk and kills the weeds in the other area not being used. We are raising everything organically, so weed control is a daily task. Bret and Cortnie step up to the job as well as they can, but there’s only so much work a 12 and 14 year old want to do in a given day. They aren’t here to be slaves, so we don’t push them. I get out there when I can to assess the plants and pull a hand full of weeds or two. We have had serious run-ins with cucumber beetles on our cucumbers and flea beetles on our lettuces. Now we are dealing with cabbage loopers on our cauliflowers and cabbages. I have made some homemade tinctures of garlic and dish soap with limited success. However, the beetles and looper remain. I am going to look into Bt as an option. I need to learn more about this spray to see if it’s right for us. We have a sort of mini CSA going on with two friends of ours and one of the big selling points for them is the organic aspect of the garden. It can be bug eaten but not pesticide ridden. So we’ll see.

On the Dairy

On July 2nd, we got our dairy barn “whitewashed.” This is a process by which barn lime is mixed with water and sprayed over the entire interior of the barn, coating it a pristine white and also creating a natural anti-bacterial shield over all surfaces. In order to ship commercially, this needs to be done once per year. Here I took a before picture (FINALLY!) and below is the same alley after. It’s amazing, isn’t it?!

Our quest to ship our milk with Weyawega Star Dairy, a local cheese plant, is still in the future. We had to get our 100 year old well shocked with chlorine in order to clear out some common bacteria, and we are waiting on a follow-up water test. In the meantime, we feed the milk to the calves and collect cream and dump the skim to the chickens or on the gardens. We don’t like dumping milk at all, but at least the excess is being reused in a good way.

Feeling Patriotic

Independence Day came like a breath of fresh air for us. We got chores done early and headed into my hometown of Omro for the highly anticipated festivities. My mother Judy organizes the annual Lion’s Club art fair and this year she participated after a 6 year hiatus. Here is her booth with Andy and Ethan in the corner. My mother does a lot of oil painting, crafting, furniture reclaiming and sowing. She also paints birdhouse gourds and full scale murals. She’s quite the little artist in her spare time! There was also a large parade, in which our little church won Best Of the Parade for all the floats involved! There was a rubber duck race and bands playing and a pie and ice cream social at our Historic Society. (Andy and I are card carrying members, by the way!) At night, the fireworks came, but our little troop went into melt down about 15 minutes before the start, so I’ll have to wait until next year to see the big show.

Here, Elly is being hugged by our friends’ son Haiden. In true Elly form, she simply tolerates it. But the photo was cute, so I had to post it! We spent the afternoon at Haiden’s grandmother’s house for a cookout and games. It was a welcome break from the farm. For reasons completely unrelated, Independence Day is my favorite holiday of the whole year!

The next day, here is Elly and Ethan on the way back from collecting eggs. The walk is about a quarter mile and they enjoy the wagon ride. At the parade, Elly managed to fall THROUGH a park bench and bust open her chin. That is the mar you see on her little face. She came through like a champ, though.

Family Time!

A week after Independence Day, my family from Colorado Springs came to visit us for a few days. You may recall, we drove to Colorado over Thankgiving to see them and others before Ethan was born. (See: We Went on Vacation.) The next several photos detail our trips to parks and back yards and family time. It was another blessed respite from the intense work on the farm.

Elly hamming it up!

Daddy and Ethan enjoying a beer...well, just Daddy.

Dan and Krista took their girls Silvie (3), Josie (2) and Madaline (1) to the park. Me, Elly and Ethan tagged along and Grandma Judy came for support. It was a lot of fun ... Elly on the dinosaur. She looks so big there!

Ethan really liked the baby swing!

So did Elle-belle.

Then all too soon they had to go back home. Elly sure loves her cousins and can’t wait until they move closer to play more often.

Our Life

Back in the real world, Ethan has begun his journey down solid food lane. He took to it like a champ! He just turned five months last week; what a big boy! Normally foods can be started a lot earlier, but with everything going on, I just didn’t get to it. He’s not hurting for lack of solids; he just nurses all the time. So, it’s time to get him on to other things as well as me! Also, Elly has been successfully potty trained since June and Ethan is now exclusively in cloth diapers. It’s a small way we can contribute less to the landfills.

Gardens AGAIN

Back to the gardens, these next photos were taken just a few days ago, showing the progress from a couple weeks ago. Here is our front garden, mostly populated with peppers and tomatoes. (And Ellys!)

We let the sunflowers come up on their own and love the splashes of gold and yellow that they add to the sea of green.

Here is an example of companion planting. The basil in front aids bug protection to the tomato plant behind. For extra security, we stuck an onion in between because no bugs like the smell of onions!

Hollyhocks also volunteered their beauty this year and we have allowed a few to adorn the perimeter of the garden.

This is the back garden again, looking back at the house. Here are our cabbages, desperately needing help from those blasted loopers. Gotta look into that!

My favorite row of crops so far: our lettuces. Aren’t they so pretty? We enjoy the “cut and come again” aspect of greens and have been able to share organic, graden fresh greens with some folks who have never ventured outside the world of Iceburg! It’s been wonderful to see the response and interest generated. Yes, there is life outside the grocery store!

Old is New

Another side project has been getting an antique cream separator up and running. Hank, you will be interested to know that it is a DeLaval Model #18 hand crank stand separator. We got Gale in on the action because he is very knowledgeable and gifted in machinery technology. We got all the parts sorted and clean and realized we were missing one part, a very important bowl separator. I looked online, but am having major difficulty in locating anything resembling a parts shop for something this obsolete. Can any of you help??

Closing Thoughts

Finally, we are up to date. Now we can post non–novel-length blogs in order to keep you up to date on our comings and goings. A parting shot: taken in June, this is one of our eggs cooked just right, broken open on my homemade bread with some salt and pepper. Have you seen a yolk that dark before? We were shocked and had to capture it on film. I’ll never order an egg in a restaurant again! I am ruined!

Thank you all for your support and we’ll flesh out what’s been going on with the marketing side of things in a future post.

Blessings,

Becky

We Texans may be babies when it comes to cold, but we know how to handle heat. Well, usually we do.

This year has been a brutal summer with little relief in sight. We are in extreme drought conditions. We already have had triple digit Fahrenheit temperatures for 26 days – and summer is just getting started. We may get some possible relief from La Niña, but that is not likely until late fall.

At least most Texans can escape the heat in air conditioning in their cars, in stores, or at home. But what about the chickens?

It’s been quite sad to see the recent surge in chicken obits posted on the backyard poultry forums in my area. It has been indiscriminating as to the forum poster – some seasoned chicken owners, others new.

I had been concerned about my flock and had already tried some serious measures. If I could have A/C, I thought, I wanted them to, as well. I started bringing my flock in and putting them in large dog crates in our sun room. Between the chickens, dogs, and cat, not to mention the turkey poults from babysitting, the room looked – and honestly, smelled – a bit like an indoor barnyard. Further, cleaning the crates regularly was a bit impractical for my schedule. I quickly realized this wasn’t going to be a practical longer-term solution, so I started thinking about what else I could do to keep my chickens cool.

My birds free-range, but they do go to their coop for laying eggs, eating, and roosting in the evening. Here are my steps for a cooler coop:

1) Secure the coop shade cloth but made sure it allowed air through the wire.

2) Remove any heat-retaining litter such as hay. Cool down soil with water to allow the chickens to dig down for relief.

3) Purchase and attach small clip-on fans to the inside of the coop. For $10, the fans have been quite handy and durable, with strong clips and adjustable heads. I can also point these fans toward the roost in the evening to give them an extra breeze.

4) Keep the water cool by keeping it out of direct sun and occasionally adding ice cubes.

In the daytime, the chickens are able to get under my house deck very easily. They prefer to hang out there during the peak heat hours, so I’ve set up a day camp to help out.

1) Prepare daily ice jugs from Ziploc quart cylinders and any recyclables around. I scatter these under the deck so that the chickens can stand by or lay on them.

2) Spray down the ground around mid-morning. With the full shade, the ground stays wet throughout the critical hours.

3) Turn on a large vortex fan. The chickens, and even the guineas, love to get in front of it to cool down.

4) Supply additional waterers with iced water under the deck. The birds love sipping on this throughout the day. It seems to pep them up.

The birds have looked better overall. They still pant at times, but they forage and seem to find relief in this setup.

For those of you who do have the room and inclination to bring your flock inside during the hottest time of the day, here is a creative solution. Again, this is a short-term setup to keep the birds cool for a few hours, not a permanent coop. Special thanks to Lori Bausman from Austin for the following idea that is lightweight, and offers easy cleanup and storage.

Supplies

• 1 small 3 foot diameter dog/baby pool (Petsmart, $9)
• 10 feet of 24 inch high poultry wire (HomeDepot $7, you'll have a little extra)
•  Zip ties and a hula hoop that we had on hand

Instructions:

1. Bend the poultry wire into a circle that fits inside the pool and zip tied together.

2. Wedge the hula hoop inside the wire circle for stability. The high sides of the pool provide a little extra protection for the bathroom floor - and the pool is easy to rinse out at the end of the day. So, the pool is the floor, the wire is the walls with a hula hoop for stability, and you can put the chickens in and out through the open top.

3. Place a plastic top that goes to a large bin on top in case the chickens decide to fly out. You could also use a 2nd pool as a lid.

Hope you and your birds stay cool this summer!

Although I haven’t seen any official results from the Chicken Choosin’ event at Ayrshire Farm on Monday, I did remember to bring my notes and scorecard to the office today … so I can tell you how the people voted. Celebrity judges scored their favorites separately, and I am not sure how the final results will be tallied. However, I can report on what the event invitees voted for … in the top three slots that is.

As I reported on Tuesday, the top tasting heritage chicken was the Dorking. This bird is known for its fine-textured, very white meat. It is also known to be docile, calm and adaptable. They are good foragers and would make a fine addition to most backyard or farmstead flocks. I actually gave the Dorking second place – by a mere quill to the Buckeye, which didn’t do well overall.

Second place honors were awarded to the Rhode Island Red and the commercial Cornish X Rock broiler cross. My second place choice was the Dorking. The CornRocks were raised with access to pasture the same way the other birds were … they were slaughtered at a younger age though because they wouldn’t have been able to survive much beyond 12 weeks of age. Rhode Island Reds are one of the most successful dual-purpose fowl out there. They are known for their hardiness and an uncanny ability to thrive and produce eggs in less than ideal conditions. They make excellent farmstead and backyard birds. The CornRock fowl were bred to gain weight quickly – even their intestinal lining is thinner and more permeable – all the better to absorb nutrients. They have leg tendon difficulties, may die of heart attacks, thinner feathering and difficulty getting around. CornRocks are not the best birds for a sustainable flock but they are pretty efficient at making meat.

Third place was also a tie – this time to the Dominique and the Buckeye. My third place choice was the Favorelle. The Buckeye has the honor of being the only American chicken breed created entirely by a woman. This dual purpose bird is cold hardy and shows very little fear of humans and is very committed to chasing down mice. The Dominique is recognized as America’s first chicken breed. Although it is used as a dual purpose breed it performs very well as an egg layer – hens typically produce from 230 to 275 medium-sized brown eggs a year.

Other heritage chicken breeds put to the test included Orpington, Plymouth Rock, Sussex and Delaware.

I can attest to the fact that all the fowl were tasty, due in part because of the way they were raised and processed, but also just because they are all chickens. But I now know that to say that something tastes like chicken really has little meaning, because not all chicken tastes the same.

The Chicken Choosin’ was sponsored by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Humane Farm Animal Care, Slow Food U.S.A, Chefs Collaborative and Ayrshire Farm. If you care about good food check these folks out.

I just returned from an excellent couple of days exploring the innovative agricultural and marketing practices associated with Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, Virginia. I’ll have plenty to say about Ayrshire’s practices and gracious staff in another post, but today I want to report on the Chicken Choosin’ heritage chicken tasting event that was held there yesterday. I was among the privileged to receive an invitation and believe me, I feel privileged.

Sponsored by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Humane Farm Animal Care, Slow Food U.S.A, Chefs Collaborative and Ayrshire Farm, this first-ever heritage Chicken Choosin’ was designed to highlight the culinary value of the chickens less processed in this country. And the people’s choice was hands down the Americanized version of the English Dorking, a chicken that’s historically associated with some of the best eating there is in Britain.

I found the organically raised Dorking to be lovely to look at with sumptuous flavor in both the light and dark meat. I also thought it had some of best textured breast and thigh muscling in the entire Chicken Choosin’ taste test. I selected the Dorking as my second choice, by only half a point behind … bird number 9.

Stay tuned as I unravel the rest of the Chicken Choosin’ in a future post and for much more about my Ayrshire Farm experience.

Many cities across the country are changing their laws to become more backyard chicken friendly, or so it appears. Many of the headlines read, "City votes to allow backyard chickens" or "City is now chicken friendly," but when you actually read the article you find out that the city is anything but chicken friendly. The headlines tend to be a little deceiving to say the least.

Because of the increased popularity of keeping backyard chickens across America, cities have been forced to look at their current laws to determine what exactly they say about keeping backyard chickens. Many laws are written to restrict commercial chicken farms, but mention nothing about keeping a small backyard flock. Many refer to livestock, but say nothing about poultry. Some are just plain vague. This puts both the city and property owner in uncharted waters.

In many cases when a city finds out that a resident is keeping backyard chickens they just presume that it must be against the law, because who would keep chickens in the city? Little do they know that hundreds or even thousands of residents in their city are already keeping backyard chickens and have for years! Then, the city does what it does best and sends the resident a citation. Yes, even if backyard chickens are allowed the resident still receives a citation that the chickens must go. Unfortunately, many will take the city’s word for it and remove their chickens from the property even though there is no law stating they have to do so. This could go on forever until a resident takes the time to do a little research and challenge the city.

Some cities are treading very lightly and offering a trial period by issuing a limited number of permits to residents who want to keep backyard chickens. Other cities however are claiming to be backyard chicken friendly, but then knowingly write the laws so strict that it eliminates most of their residents from keeping backyard chickens. This is what happened where we live. When we first started our backyard flock we lived in an unincorporated part of the county. The law stated that chickens had to be 25 feet away from any neighbor’s occupied dwelling. About two years ago we became a city and when the new government found out that some residents kept backyard chickens they went to work rewriting the law. The new city council voted to increase the footage requirements so now the chickens must be 100 feet away from any neighbor’s occupied dwelling. One would have to think they did this knowing good and well that it would eliminate most residents in the city from keeping backyard chickens. Instead of just flat out banning backyard chickens and looking like the bad guy, they just made the law so strict that practically no one could keep backyard chickens in the city. This way they can make claims that they allow backyard chickens, residents just have to abide by certain parameters.

As stated above, there is a city that is only going to allow a total of 12 permits to residents interested in keeping backyard chickens. They also are requiring the residents to do something you only hear about in grade school. They are requiring the residents to get signed permission slips from each neighbor stating that it’s ok for them to keep backyard chickens. Another city is requiring that the lot be 5000 square feet and is only allowing 4 chickens. If you wanted more chickens you must have an additional 2000 square feet per chicken. This means that if you have 8 chickens your lot must be at least 13,000 square feet, even if your chicken coop is just 12’x12’ or 144 square feet. Does your home have 2000 square feet per person?

I understand that keeping backyard chickens is not for everybody. Some people are dog lovers, some people are cat lovers, and some people are chicken lovers. However, it amazes me how far some people will go to do whatever they can to ban backyard chickens in their city when they have such little knowledge on the subject.

Keeping backyard chickens can be a fun and rewarding experience. If you would like to learn more about keeping backyard chickens I invite you to listen to the Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer radio show.

Monday through Friday at 12:00pm EST here: www.blogtalkradio.com/backyardpoultry

Saturday at 9:00am EST here: www.americaswebradio.com

You can also follow the Chicken Whisperer on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/backyardpoultry

As we worked to teach our foster children simple living skills and boost their level of awareness, we found ourselves stumbling upon frightening tidbits of information that sent us first shivering, weeping, and thumb-sucking in the corners but then angrily protesting like marchers in a PETA parade (except we are clothed and omnivorous).

The following video contains disturbing footage and facts.  It may not be suitable for all audiences.  Please keep that in mind before watching.

Modern egg production practices seemed very Brave New World to me ... only less humane. At least in Brave New World the lower castes were periodically hosed with soma-gas to get high and thus forget how horrible their lives really were. No such luck for the factory-farmed egg laying hens.

But how do we keep from supporting these industries?  Labels?

Labels are so comforting, you know?  I feel instantly validated when I’m pushing a cart full of products plastered with labels declaring my support of free-range and organic animal products.  Labels are my friend, and I am guilty of trusting them.  Oh, and I should feel guilty because behind those labels lies a sad truth.

The only way to ensure that you are not actively supporting horrifying industrialized farming is to look for a local supplier.  Search for “pasture-raised” chicken eggs.  If you find eggs sold locally, ask to see the chickens and facility – they should welcome you with open arms.  Here’s the scoop:

• Cage free. No legal meaning, but some egg farmers think the term is less misleading than “free range” (see below), which suggests happy hens pecking for grubs in the barnyard. If the barnyard is in Minnesota and it’s January, that ain’t gonna happen.
• Free range, free roaming. Here’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture definition of these terms in its entirety: “Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.” In other words, there has to be a door, and it has to be open at least part of the time. The chickens don’t necessarily have to take advantage, and they often don’t. UK researchers studying commercial poultry farms say only 15 percent of chickens who have the opportunity ever leave the henhouse. The secret, they say, is to plant shade trees in the barnyard, under which the chickens can shelter. (Supposedly this reminds them of their ancestral forests. Whatever.) Others say, let’s not make this too complicated–if you want the chickens to go outside the henhouse, put their food outside the henhouse. Not that “outside” is necessarily any Garden of Eden. In January 2003, Consumer Reports noted, “When we visited one free-range chicken farm a few years ago, we found a penned, 10-by-30-foot patch of dirt topped with chicken manure and grass.” The USDA hasn’t established criteria for the size of the “range” or the amount of space per bird, so things can get nearly as crowded outside as inside. Free-range chickens are typically debeaked, just like the caged kind, and the males are killed as chicks, since they don’t lay eggs.
• Nutrient-enhanced. Claim to have higher levels of an omega-3 fatty acid, vitamin E, or protein because of ingredients added to feed. (Omega-3 content is boosted by adding flax, marine algae, or fish oils.)
• Pasteurized. Eggs are placed in warm water to kill bacteria, then shells are waxed to prevent cross-contamination.  Such eggs are sometimes used in hospitals and nursing homes and are suitable for recipes that call for raw eggs.
• White vs. brown. Color comes from the hen’s breed. In general, white hens with white earlobes lay white eggs, while hens with darker feathers and red earlobes lay brown eggs. Brown hens tend to be larger and need more feed, which can mean a slightly higher egg price. There’s no difference in flavor.
• Organic. Laid by hens whose feed is made with minimal use of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and commercial fertilizers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture sets the standards. All eggs, organic or not, are free of hormones, and there’s no nutritional edge to organic.  This in no way implies that the chickens were not kept in concentrated confinement (read: battery cages).
• Vegetarian. The laying hens were not given food containing animal proteins.  This also has nothing to do with the humane treatment of these beautiful animals (who are, naturally, omnivorous).
• Pasture-raised. Hens eat feed from pastures but don’t always roam free.  They may be kept in pens that are moved around pastures or are free to roam the pasture within the fenced areas.  Backyard chickens often fall into this category (like our chickens, who roam around our back yard freely but are owned by non-commercial folks who won’t pay to have them certified as “free farmed” though they certainly qualify).
• Free farmed. This term, which has been trademarked by the American Humane Association, means that a farm complies with AHA standards to ensure that its animals are free of hunger, unnecessary fear and pain, etc. Earning the “free farmed” label involves an initial inspection and annual recertification. It’s the most rigorous program I’ve found, but unless you visit the farms yourself you’re still basically taking things on faith.

Labels to look for when searching for eggs from pasture-raised or "Free Farmed" poultry:

• Certified Humane  – This label is not easily obtained and by watching this video you will see why I am such a great fan of this certification.
• American Humane Certified – “Free Farmed” label – with the understanding that all animals should be treated with care and respect… one of the first organizations to become an advocate for the rights of those who have no voice
• Locally raised, farm fresh, beyond organic, chemical-free – Write down the information and contact them.  Request a tour and ask for their website.  If they don’t offer tours (which they may not do because they are swamped with work), conduct a drive-by investigation during the day.  Are there chickens hopping around an open field?  Do the chickens appear to be healthy and fluffy?  Is there adequate shelter, shade, and water provided

A recent article in Mother Earth News revealed the benefits of eating pasture-raised chicken eggs.  The numbers are staggering.  This is not the label on an overpriced GNC supplement — these are nutrition facts comparing eggs from pasture-roaming, bug-eating, dust-bathing, happy chickens to eggs from factory-farmed chickens.  Get ready:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• Two times more omega-3 fatty acids
• Three times more vitamin E
• Seven times more beta carotene
• Three-to-six times more vitamin D

This is HUGE.  HUGE, I tell you!  If this is not the “ah-ha” moment where you thunk yourself in the head and go… “I have a yard, perhaps I should keep my own chickens” or “I should find me some pasture-raised chicken eggs” then I don’t know what else to say except to reach through the computer screen and thunk you on the head myself.  Don’t think I wouldn’t do it, too.  :)

Or if we lived closer to one another, I would force you to take a dozen eggs home to simply taste the difference.  It’s truly remarkable.  The eggs our chickens produce are phenomenal.  The flavor, texture, and color of the yolks… *sigh* I want to write a love poem just thinking about it.

Of course, as a GRIT reader, you have joined a rare and wonderful network of people who genuinely care about animals and land.  A quick scan through the reader blogs on this site and it is blaringly obvious that GRIT readers and staff wish to be good stewards of the earth.  We are the caretakers of creation... not simply farmers, hobbyists, gardeners, growers, or enthusiasts. 

http://www.razorfamilyfarms.com

Things have been very busy here in our neck of the woods!

My little darlings, as I like to call them, are now permanent residents outside. Of course I am referring to the three baby squirrels that we rescued earlier this year when I found them fallen from their nest. They are looking for food on their own, but we still spoil them with corn and sunflower seeds.

On some days they greet us on the porch in the morning, and will still come running up my leg, or jump onto my shoulder. My husband, Jim, built a couple more squirrel boxes and hung them in trees near our house. The babies are all staying in one of those boxes overnight. They have been a great success, and it is a joy to have them around!

Our garden is growing beautifully! I have already picked sugar peas three times, and I have gotten quite a few Eight Ball zucchinis!

Our green beans are in blossom, and our potatoes just started to blossom.

Our cabbages seem to put size on every day, and my carrot tops are beautifully frilly!

The onions are big enough to start harvesting some to eat, and there are little green tomatoes hanging from the vine!

My peppers haven’t started to blossom yet, but I was a bit late getting them in the ground this year.

My flowers are starting to bloom beautiful too.

My Delphinium are opening, one of my favorite.

I’m a sucker for the cottage garden look!

On the fauna side of things, I have had lots of broody hens in the past month!

We now have four mother hens with peeps running around, and another that is still sitting, but not on chicken eggs! Our neighbor over the hill is a farmer, and farms the fields right next to ours. He came to our house a couple of Saturdays ago. He was mowing his field when he came across a turkey hen sitting on a nest. The hen took off without being hurt, and he just missed the eggs with the mower! He gathered up the clutch of eggs and came to our house. He knew we had chickens, and wondered if we had any broody hens we could stick the eggs under? It just so happens that we had a Welsummer hen that had just gone broody. It’s funny how things work out sometimes! So that hen is now sitting on ten turkey eggs. We don’t know how long it will take them to hatch, because we don’t know how long the turkey hen was sitting on them before she was disturbed. We also don’t know how they will do if they hatch. I know wild turkeys are very touchy. It is an experiment, and we’ll figure it out as we go! Our goal is to get them big enough to let them loose.

It is fun to watch all these mothers with their babies, and as they get bigger, we will start culling some of the older chickens from the flock and put them in the freezer. The first four babies that Mamma hatched for us back in December are now laying beautiful darker brown eggs.

Another change with our chicken flock is they are now in a very large fenced area. I prefer them roaming free, but we couldn’t let them roam and have a nice garden and flower beds! They thought they had to remove all my flowers and replace them with large dusting holes for themselves! We bought 300 foot of chicken fence and made a large enclosure. We hope to add another 300 feet very soon. That fence also gives us a little more peace of mind as far as predators are concerned.

My husband and I just took a vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in May.

The beach there is so nice. It is never crowded, and is within walking distance from the house we rented!

What a way to relax! We had a great time! As I said at the start … life is good!

Time and time again I hear people complaining about the problems they think backyard chickens will bring if allowed into the backyards of their city. Some of the more common complaints that I hear are noise, smell, rodents, disease and property value. I would like to address each and every one of these complaints one by one.

I don’t think I've ever been to a meeting about keeping backyard chickens where the noise issue has not been brought up at least once. I often hear people complaining about the potential early morning crow of a nearby rooster. This is a very valid point, and I too would be complaining if a rooster were waking me up every morning at 4:30am, especially if I did not have to wake up until 7:00am or later. There are many advantages of keeping backyard chickens, but most urban chicken keepers want to keep backyard chickens for the benefits of having an endless supply of farm fresh eggs. Solution? You do not need a rooster to enjoy farm fresh eggs every morning. In fact, hens will lay better if there is no rooster around to disturb their routine. Roosters primarily have two jobs, which they do very well. They protect and fertilize. You only need a rooster if you want baby chicks running around in the backyard. I still hate to see cities ban roosters all together because there are ways to keep roosters in an urban area quietly and responsibly. I plan to share how this can be done at a later date.

Smell is another complaint that is often brought up when discussing chickens. Yes, chickens can smell just like dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils and even people, if not taken care of properly. We are not talking about a 300-foot commercial chicken house with 30,000 chickens next door. We are talking about six to twelve laying hens in a backyard setting. There are many ways to reduce the smell of your chicken coop and I will share how this can be done at a later date.

If you don’t think that you have mice and rats outside your home right now, you are living in a fantasy world. Many claim that keeping chickens will attract mice and rats and think they don’t exist until the chickens arrive. One client of mine who is entertaining the idea of getting some backyard chickens lives in the most affluent city in Georgia. She told me that her cat leaves her little "presents" at the back door almost every day. These "presents" just happen to be mice and rats. She also said that she has seen mice and rats run across her backyard and up a honeysuckle vine to get over the fence and into her neighbor’s yard. Yes, if you have chickens there will be another food source in your backyard, but there are ways to keep the chicken feed put away in mice and rat proof containers. I will share how this can be done at a later date.

About three years ago many were asking questions about the risks of avian influenza and keeping backyard chickens. I would always refer them to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website where it addresses this issue. On the Q&A page the following is posted. Question: We have a small flock of chickens. Is it safe to keep them? Answer: In the United States there is no need at present to remove a flock of chickens because of concerns regarding avian influenza. The U.S. Department of Agriculture monitors potential infection of poultry and poultry products by avian influenza viruses and other infectious disease agents. Enough said!

Many people who oppose the keeping of backyard chickens often sound off during meetings about decreased property values if the city allows the keeping of backyard chickens. All I can say is show me the proof. No one has ever shown up at a backyard chicken meeting that I have ever attended with any valid proof that someone got $10,000 less for their home because a resident in their city keeps backyard chickens.

To put backyard chickens into perspective I often tell people the following. On any given day I have more dog poop in my front yard from other neighbor’s dogs then they have chicken poop in their front yard from my chickens. I have more cat prints on my car from other neighbor’s cats then they have chicken prints on their car from my chickens. And I’m awakened at 2:00am more from other neighbor’s dogs barking then they have ever been awakened at 2:00am from my sleeping hens.

Keeping backyard chickens can be a fun and rewarding experience. If you would like to learn more about keeping backyard poultry I invite you to listen to the Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer radio show Monday through Friday at 12:00pm Eastern at www.blogtalkradio.com/backyardpoultry and on Saturday at 9:00am EST at www.americaswebradio.com.

Since Baby Ezra came along, we've been busy with more babies on the homestead. We acquired three little white pullets (baby hens) which are growing nicely. Our two mamma rabbits each produced seven baby bunnies. Of course, they were born the day AFTER Easter. Ah well, we were planning on them for meat, anyway.

The three surviving guineas are full grown, with two of them laying eggs now. We were hoping for one rooster, to hatch out some more babies. Nobody's broody yet, and all three look exactly alike, so it doesn't look good for the guinea hatching project.

I'm not sure if this should be entered under the "Shoulda known better" heading or the "Learn something new every day" column. After removing five of the six roosters from the chicken coop, we finally started getting 8-10 eggs a day. Apparently one rooster is max for up to two dozen hens. Of course, a rooster is not necessary for them to lay eggs, but we were hoping for baby chicks, too. Unfortunately, none of my hens seem to have the motherly instinct, so no new hatchlings. My friend, with whom I ordered the chicks last year, has two broody hens who hatched out six healthy chicks. I guess that's pretty fair odds for hatchery hens.

The other threat to our now bountiful egg supply was the ravens. Bigger than crows, smaller than most eagles, they fly right into the henhouse and steal ALL the eggs right out of the nest boxes. Then just to taunt me, they drop the empty shells right outside the coop.

Realizing that a couple rounds of bird shot, though it would make me feel better, would do nothing to forestall our large local population of ravens from continuing to steal all my eggs, I grabbed a roll of poultry netting and proceeded to throw it across the top of the chicken yard to keep the foul fowl out. Now with the coop completely enclosed, we are enjoying all of our eggs.

Even though our birds are not free ranging right now, due to their small numbers and the large local population of coyotes, they are thriving on a well balanced diet. We're feeding them commercial scratch grain, occasional hay, which also makes good bedding and helps with sanitation in the coop; weeds from the gardens, kitchen scraps, and whey from cheesemaking.

We crush and feed back some of their eggshells and also homemade cheese and yogurt that did not turn out so well. So they're getting plenty of protein, greens and calcium.

It seems with all the bird care going on here, numerous wild birds have been encouraged to take up residence. Nesting in various trees, eaves and bushes around the homestead are pigeons, doves, bluebirds, sparrows, chickadees, robins, hummingbirds and others that come and go – woodpeckers, hawks, kestrels. Morning and evening times are especially delightful with the music of so many different singers. The quarreling guineas, clucking hens and crowing roosters in chorus with the lilting background of the wild songbirds. It doesn't get much better.

When creating trendy outdoor living spaces... don't forget to give the chair rungs some flare.

Break up the monotony of green grass with tasteful lawn ornaments.

Adding accents to flowerbeds keeps spaces interesting and also serve as a great places to hide your spare keys. Dual purpose landscape-design details are always a plus.

A classic country item like a barrel or trough can easily be converted into a fountain. To keep water from becoming stagnant, it is a good idea to install a windmill water pump.

When updating your country kitchen, keep in mind that faucets are one of the most important components of your kitchen area. Select a faucet that is not only functional but also gives your kitchen a customized look especially when matched with a unique and stylish spout.

If you choose to carpet the bedrooms of the house, be sure to select shades to compliment any color or style of furniture.

The garage should be outfitted with workbench and storage. Artwork may be added to define the space. Remember to bring the outdoors in with elements of nature in every room.

Be sure to also visit Lacy over at  Razor Family Farms .

The folks at the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame plan a grand opening for the National Poultry Museum tomorrow at 10 AM.  The National Poultry Museum is located  in Bonner Springs, Kansas on the grounds of the Agricultural Hall of Fame near Kansas City. If you are in the area, you won’t want to miss the grand opening.

The National Poultry Museum is an endeavor more than 15 years in the making.  The initial exhibits of the National Poultry Museum were unveiled in 1994 upon completion of a Hatchery Building within FarmTown USA  -- an early 1900's farm town constructed on the grounds of the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame.  Since 1994, the focus has been on raising the funds necessary for additional exhibits, gathering artifacts and determining how to tell the rich and intriguing story of poultry -- come explore the "Evolution of an Industry."

If you aren’t able to make the National Poultry Museum’s grand opening, plan to stop by for a visit the next time you are passing through Kansas City. And while you are there, you can check out all kinds of antique farm machinery, homestead tools and learn about the many individuals who helped shape and continue to shape agriculture in the United States.

For directions to the National Agricultural Hall of Fame, click here.

If you’re thinking about getting started with backyard poultry you’re not alone. Thousands of people across the country are starting their very own backyard flock and you can too!

There are many advantages of having your very own backyard flock, and you no longer have to live on a farm to enjoy these benefits. Chickens provide families with fresh, nutritious eggs. Chicken manure is a valuable addition to your compost bin and adds needed nutrients to your garden’s soil. Chickens also help reduce your household food waste, because they eat a variety of table scraps. They also eat insects helping to reduce your backyard insect population. While it may be surprising to some, chickens make great pets!  In fact, they are amusing to watch and bring enjoyment to the whole family!

The first thing most people think of when starting a backyard flock is the loud crow of a rooster at daybreak every morning. Well, I have good news for you. You don’t need a rooster to have fresh, nutritious eggs. You only need a rooster if you want little baby chicks running around the backyard.  In fact, the hens may actually lay better if there is no rooster around to disrupt their routine.

The second thing people think of when starting a backyard flock is the odor. Yes, chickens can stink if not properly taken care of, just like any other animal including dogs, cats, rabbits, and hamsters. Proper maintenance can significantly reduce, and even eliminate the odor caused by keeping backyard poultry. It all comes down to responsible pet ownership. Now that we disproved the top two myths regarding the keeping of backyard poultry, let’s get started!

So what’s the first step before you start your journey of keeping backyard poultry? First, you need to check your local laws to see if keeping backyard poultry is allowed. You will not only need to check the county and city laws, but also your neighborhood covenants if you have a homeowners association. Many cities across the country are changing their laws to allow their residents to keep a few hens in their backyard. If backyard poultry is allowed, you then need to spend some time reading and researching what cost and care requirements you should expect when keeping backyard poultry. Then, you need to decide if you’re going to hatch your own baby chicks, purchase them from a local farm or breeder, or order them from one of the many national hatcheries. This will determine what equipment you will need to get started.

Hatching baby chicks from an incubator is fun and educational for the whole family. I highly recommend it for anyone with children. Though hatching eggs from an incubator has its occasional challenges, it’s well worth it.

Just as we try to buy our fresh produce locally, buying your fertilized hatching eggs, or baby chicks locally can become a fun day trip. The wealth of information you can get from the local farmer or breeder can be priceless and may also save you time and money.

Many purchase day old baby chicks from hatcheries all across the nation. They are delivered directly to your local post office for pick up. The baby chicks can survive up to three days from the nutrition they receive while inside the egg before they hatch. This allows shipment to almost all locations across the country. One advantage from ordering your day old baby chicks from a national hatchery is they will sex the baby chicks for you. If you don’t want any roosters, you want to purchase pullets, female chicks, rather than cockerels, male chicks.

Once you have your baby chicks they will need a special home for the first few weeks called a brooder. The main purpose of a brooder is to keep the baby chicks warm and dry. Brooders can easily be made from almost anything. Many use an old cardboard box, while some use their bathtub. I prefer a 45 gallon Rubbermaid bin for the average homeowner, but the GQF Poultry Box Brooder is a gem! Baby chicks also require a heat source in the brooder. A light bulb or heat lamp can provide sufficient heat.  An important note is to allow the baby chicks to self regulate their temperature as needed by providing them with enough space in the brooder to move close to or away from the heat source. There are many choices for brooder bedding, but cedar shavings should NEVER be used.

Depending on the temperature the chicks will be ready to go outside at around six weeks old. This brings us to our next topic, the chicken coop. Just like a brooder, a chicken coop can be as simple or as extravagant as you want it to be. I have kept many chickens using just a large breed plastic dog house. Though coops designed for chickens are more user friendly, the design of the coop should not make much difference in the number of eggs you get from your backyard flock. The coop and run need to provide  a fresh supply of water, dry source of food, shelter, and protection from predators.

Chickens have many predators. I always tell people that there will always be something that will love your chickens more than you do. You will need to protect your chickens from predators that come from above and below. The more common predators you will encounter from above include hawks and owls. Any type of netting across the top of your coop, and run area can solve this problem easily. Predators from ground level or below include raccoons, opossums, weasels, foxes, and even neighborhood dogs and cats. Hardware cloth attached around and below the coop works well for some, but a good strong fence buried about a foot deep is another option to deter digging predators. Some even burry old roofing tin about a foot deep around the chicken pen to keep digging predators out.

Once you have your coop and run established keeping backyard poultry can be fun and rewarding with minimal work. Owner’s responsibilities include keeping a constant supply of feed and water, gathering eggs daily, and cleaning the coop and run as needed.

If you have ever thought about starting a backyard flock of chickens there is no better time than the present to join thousands of others that are enjoying the benefits of keeping a small backyard flock.

Please visit the Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer blog often because I will be starting an educational series called “Chicks are Easy”. This also happens to be the title of my book I hope to release this fall. I just hope the title does not make the book find it’s way into the “Relationships” section of the book store! Thanks for stopping by!

Chicken Whisperer

We just rebedded the whole chicken coop with wood chips from a new arborist friend who had no where to go with all their chips. Free chips! Next up is to move them (the whole coop) out to one of our middle pastures to get them a head start on the grass and bugs. They are out before any of the ruminents because they won't overeat the new growth and don't threaten the tilth of the soil if it rains to hard.

Little did we know that chickens have a homing instinct just as strong as any wild bird. We moved the trailer yesterday about 100 feet from it's spot in the field behind our house. It had been there all winter and when we talked with a farmer friend about moving the flock, he cautioned us that moving too far too fast would result in confused hens. Andy wanted to move the trailer all the way to the high pasture, which is beyond their current roaming range, and fence them in for a few days to get them acclimated. However, having never done this before, we took the advice to do it slowly and in increments.

Last night, when dusk was still holding on, I noticed that about half the flock was running around frantically in the bare earth patch that used to house the trailer. Oh, no. They were heading home to where home used to be, even though that exact same home was in sight not more than 100 feet away. I put Elly down for bed and strapped Ethan into our front carrier and joined Andy in an attempt to lure them back to the trailer. We tried calling them, we tried food, we even tried chasing them. Nothing would dissuade them from their original home base. As night closed in, about 30 or so hens formed a huddle in the middle of the ground and began hiding under one another. I felt so bad for them. They were really scared and confused. I suggested that we take the roll of chicken fence and open it up about 20 feet and form a "U" shape around them. Then, when they were surrounded, we'd "walk" the fence towards the trailer and subsequently walk the hens back home.

That worked only as well as the hens would allow, which wasn't much. After about 20 feet of more or less dragging the mass of feathers and legs across the ground, we decided to let them spend the night in the old brooder house, which was another ten feet away. We got the fence up to the doorway and began pitching hen after hen inside. There is still a perch in there and even one row of nesting boxes. But for every three birds we threw in, one or two would come back out, in search of their old home. Of course, they only got as far as the fence would allow, so we again had a huddling mass on the open ground. While Andy attempted to wrap his arms around 35 hens at once (which was amazingly effective), I searched the perimeter for more lost hens. One by one, I snatched chicken legs and carried them back flapping upside down to the brooder house.

Ethan was not very excited about all this bending and swooping and such, so he was beginning to fuss a bit in the front carrier. Then I noticed that under the sides of the brooder house there were more hens huddled. How many of them had not returned to the trailer?! We later guessed about half the flock, which is roughly 100 hens. Andy crawled around for another ten minutes grabbing hidden hens until we just could not see anymore. We determined that whatever would be, would be for the night. The majority of the flock was safe.

This morning only about ten birds were free ranging, which means we did a pretty good job of triage capturing!

Andy moved the trailer back to it's original spot and we are going to lock them up tight tonight. Then tomorrow, we will move the whole trailer all the way to the high pasture, let the hens out, and FENCE THEM IN until they know where their NEW home is. Word to anyone trying to move a flock of hens: big or small, they return to home and if you can't help them find their way, you may be doing what we will be doing tomorrow:

Moving the chicken coop, take two!

Here I am, smack in the middle of an “I Love Where I Work” moment. At this time of year, I have a lot of those.

This morning a staff member for our sister publication, Mother Earth News, brought in his Barred Rock broody hen to be a foster mom for editor Cheryl Long’s fertilized Welsummer eggs that just arrived in the mail. As I got myself situated in my office, instead of hearing the usual coffee gossip, I heard the peeping of a brand-new chick and the oohs and aahs of co-workers peering into the box to get a glimpse of the mom and babies.

Throughout the day, the chicks have hatched and now we have six new Welsummers, ready to start their lives on Cheryl’s farm (and soon to produce those fabulous, dark-brown speckly eggs for which their breed is so famous.)

It’s like that around here. Every few days, someone in this building brings in a critter – often, these days, it’s Hank and his new puppy, Henry, who stole every heart on this side of the office the day he showed up looking for all the world like a baby hedgehog and not the ferocious Cairn terrier we’re assured he actually is. So far, poor Henry’s four little paws barely touch the ground when Hank brings him in because someone is holding Henry practically the entire day.

This time of year a lot of people are getting chicks and ducklings, so we’ll frequently hear lots of cheeping, since having chicks delivered to the office makes more sense than risking not being home when the USPS guy shows up. This year we have our famous Chicken Project, which Hank will talk about a lot more in his blog, The Daily Commute, and in the magazine, so I expect a whole lotta cheepin’ going on very soon. We’re testing incubators, brooders and, ultimately, for a few of our feathered pals, a plucker (I expect to be away on urgent business that day, thanks).

Puppies, kittens and stray animals of one kind or another are fairly commonplace. One spring, one of the women in Customer Care brought in her Babydoll sheep lamb twins, decked out in little disposable diapers to keep them socially acceptable. So far, we haven’t had any calves or piglets, but around here, you never know. I have threatened to have a metallic sign made for my car, “K.C.’s Roadside Rescue” for the number of stray dogs I pick up from the side of the road.

I do truly love working someplace where feathered and four-legged friends occasionally make up part of the workforce. This probably makes me functionally unemployable at most places on the planet. Good thing I love my job.

Come to think of it, my neighbors are getting some piglets in a few days. Hmmm … I wonder …

Chicken photos courtesy Troy Griepentrog; Henry photo courtesy Gina Souders.

Andy G. Schneider, the national radio personality known as the Chicken Whisperer plans to give away 500 baby chicks on Saturday, April 11^th starting at 8:00 AM at the Greenwoods on Green Street restaurant in Roswell, Georgia, located at 1087 Green Street 30075. The Chicken Whisperer’s plan is to promote the keeping of backyard poultry and to get folks thinking about growing more of their own food with this “Chicken Stimulus Package.”

Schneider, host of the nationally broadcast radio show Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer, and his station manager at Radio Sandy Springs came up with the idea after the city of Roswell went after one of its citizens for keeping pet chickens in his backyard. According to Schneider, the big chicken give away has the support of citizens and former lawmakers alike.

All baby chicks have been donated by hatcheries across America.  Only two chicks will be given away to each family and they will come with a starter bag of feed, care instructions, and a map to North Fulton Feed and Seed in Alpharetta where they can pick up additional supplies. “This is our very own small economic stimulus package for the people of Atlanta,” the Chicken Whisperer says. “In the middle of layoffs, foreclosures, and a poor economy we want to teach people how to become a little more self-sufficient, and keeping backyard pet poultry is a good start.”

 As a huge fan of backyard poultry, I am pleased to see that the Chicken Whisperer has been able to put the chicken feed right where the municipal beak is … so-to-speak. With any luck at all, the Chicken Stimulus Package will stimulate local lawmakers to rethink the whole topic of backyard poultry in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Folks, it’s time to take back your right to produce clean safe food … and to keep chickens as pets, of course.

It seems like a no-brainer and revolutionary grassfarmer Joel Salatin has been saying it for decades … it’s official now though, diversity in the pasture matrix is good for grazing animals.

According to a fantastic article in the current issue of Rangelands, which is published by the Society for Range Management, as higher costs and environmental concerns about fossil fuels push more people to buy locally produced food, demand for livestock raised on pastures and rangelands—rather than in feed lots—is spurring a return to greater reliance on native rangelands and cultivated pastures.

“By focusing on a few species, people transformed the diverse world of plants into a manageable domain that generally meets energy and protein needs and limits  intake of toxins,” writes Frederick D. Provenza and his coauthors in the article, “Value of Plant Diversity for Diet Mixing and Sequencing in Herbivores.”

But this practice limits genetic plant diversity and health benefits to livestock from combinations of available plants nutrients, while threatening ecosystems reliant on biodiversity to avoid catastrophe. The researchers suggest a new alternative for livestock grazing that calls for having animals eat a variety of complementary plants. They suggest that these varied plants would provide a range of primary and secondary nutritional compounds, along with greater health and nutritional benefits. No surprise there, but good for the SRM researchers for taking a stand.

The article, “Value of Plant Diversity for Diet Mixing and Sequencing in Herbivores,” is available in its entirety, here.

Good morning friends, it has certainly been a busy 2009 here on the farm, and we'd like to treat you to a photo update.

This year has been paramount for us. The "farmer downtime" that Becky spoke of in a previous blog has really turned out to be a series of exciting (and sometimes heated) planning sessions.  As you can see, Elly is preparing for the grass season with a quick refresher on our Midwest grasses. She's so savvy. Our biggest obstacle inhibiting us from making some serious decisions was whether or not we would be going ahead with our small dairy.

 

In mid-January, we enlisted the help of an independent consultant. Larry Tranel works with Iowa State University, and he has developed a system that allows people to plug in many of the numbers that they are planning for in a dairy operation and it tells you how profitable you will be. Up to this point, we had desired to have a very small operation. As Larry began putting information into his system it became evident very early on that our plans were not going to hold much weight in traditional models (do they ever?). After several hours of discussion and evaluation, the lights began to turn on one by one; we would not be going forward with a dairy. The biggest reason is that we would have to go into debt for at least $150,000 to build a new facility and that was not an option; Becky and I refuse to incur such a debt-load, it is just not wise.

We talked as a family and came to a conclusion. If we were able to update the existing (though less than ideal) system for less than $10,000 then we would go ahead. We would then take the first few years to save up for the major system and purchase it outright. Dave had an end-of-the-month deadline to contact the proper people to come and evaluate the system and price out the upgrades. So for two weeks, we waited.

During this time Becky and I mapped out two paths for this year and ultimately the next few years. If the dairy was not feasible, we would focus hard on a fruit and vegetable CSA taking on 10 to 15 customers, as well as giving great attention to our grass-fed meat and poultry. This we would then grow to a comfortable size and manage. If the dairy was a possibility then we would scale down to a modest mesclun mix salad green CSA and not focus as heavily on our meats, as we will be spending much time in the dairy.

Late January, a man from a local dairy supply company came and checked us out. We didn't hear anything for about a week. During that time a friend prayed that on Wednesday, February 4th, we would be given our directive, and mid-morning we got the news: Updates would be available for $9,000 to $10,000. We are a go!

This last week we have begun cleaning the milking barn as well as preparing to finalize our '09 plans. If everything goes as planned, we should be able to begin milking in May when we have fresh grass for the cows to graze. Also, we will be purchasing seeds for our Mesclun Salad CSA as well as a few other projects. We are working with several government-sponsored, pro-small-farm organizations from which we should be able to get some grant money and, if everything goes well, be able to have large-scale solar production here as well. Vive la Resistance!

This week, we experienced much warmer than normal temperatures. Elly, Becky and I decided to do our chores as a family (instead of just me, bundled up like an Eskimo). Elly was very interested in the chickens (she does a great rooster call).

The chickens are doing well. We have been able to get them outside much more these last couple of weeks, and they have been grateful. We are using a fence this winter to keep them corralled, as about half of our flock has never been outside before (let alone on fresh grass), and we are fearful that they would not make it back to the coop. Our original free-ranging flock has decided to not be content with its well-intentioned confinement, and they find ways to hop the fence whenever they can. We're not upset, we like having chickens raking around the homestead. It's kind of romantic.

Our egg production is on the rise too due to the longer days. Chickens lay their eggs in rhythm with the amount of sun. In essence, as Becky puts it, they have a "Chicken Downtime" in the winter too, as their production goes down and they settle in. Many operations will augment their chicken house with artificial light that simulates the sun, essentially forcing the chickens to continue laying when they should be recouping for the coming year. We think that isn't right. In January we were averaging about 40 eggs/day and now we are close to 80!

Elly also had a good time with our Jersey calves, Sasha and Sophie.

At one time Sasha tried to suck on her hand and she got a bit scared.

Here is Becky with the sheepies. All pictured are currently all bred and are beginning to plump up (Becky included). We will be expecting lambs in May. If you want to come and see the little ones as they get released onto the pastures, please come, it will be a joyous time.

My mother and I were able to repair a large door in our cattle area. The opening was roughly hewn and the tin was coming off in a few places so the cattle were enjoying it as a scratching post, causing further damage. We were able to clean the edges with a reciprocating saw and screw down the edges firmly using sheet metal screws with neoprene washers. Thanks, Mom!

The heifers are doing well. They are all bred, and we should be selling most of the Holsteins in a couple of months. That will leave us with our Milking Shorthorn heritage breed that we will begin milking in late summer. In order to start milking this spring, we will have to purchase more animals that are ready to calve. This shouldn't be a huge cost as cattle prices are quite low due to low milk prices. Some people think we are crazy for getting into dairying at this low time, but we have hopes that our farm will be able to sustain us through a chaotic market.

Here, you can see Becky's dad, Dave shoveling up feed for the eager girls.

Also, I think we may have mentioned this but Becky has begun baking breads for our customers now. She has tried a traditional white, sourdough and wheat. They have all turned out amazing. We tried to grind our own wheat that we grew but didn't have a grinder. We washed them and dried them and tried to put them in a food processor but the little kernels were far too hard and didn't do much. So, instead, we roasted them and eat them as a great snack. The breads are really good by the way; we go through about three loaves a week, and, at 7 a.m. as I am writing this, Elly has just been woken from slumber by the smell of it baking and mumbled a half-coherent, "bbbreaddd?" (cute, not zombie-like).

Well, I think that's about it. If you would like more information on the many benefits of raw milk, we'd love to talk with you. We hope you all have a blessed and highly productive day!

Andy, Becky, Elly & (coming this weekend we hope!!!) Ethan

In my last post, I talked about getting started with raising backyard chickens. I left off with the little ladies in the brooder box that I had made out of an old Dell computer box, so I'll pick up from that point. 

One of the wonderful things about old boxes is that with the help of a little duct tape and some “outside the box” thinking, you can make just about anything you could need! In this case, as the girls got a little bigger and started needing a little more room, I basically just added an addition to their little home, and what I like to call the "chicken condo" was born. There was enough space with this little setup for the chicks to get old enough that they were nearly all feathered out, and I had enough time to build a better coop. Now I could hang their food and water on one half of the box and their light, which they still needed, on the other. The tower attachment allowed me to control the height and thus the intensity of the lighting that they got. 

You may have noticed that our chicks are still in the house at this point. That's because we ordered them online from IDEAL poultry in early February last year and received them on February 19th. We did this so that while the chicks were young and required additional heat and light anyway, we could keep them in the house and get some growing time on them while the winter was idling by outside. Typical hens won't start laying until sometime around 20 weeks and then will often taper off in egg production through the cold, low, light winter months. We wanted our hens to start "earning their keep" as soon as possible and doing this really helped. By the time the weather was nice, they were ready to go outside and be on their own.

But I digress. My point in explaining their living indoors was to make the greater point that smell and sanitation was very important to us since they were in close proximity. To control odor what I did was make a habit of lightly turning the coarse sawdust bedding every time I fed or watered them. This helped to keep any fresh manure under the bedding and the odors were able to absorb. Every couple of days, I also added a light covering of the sawdust with a layer of new bedding.  I could generally go 1.5 to 2 weeks this way before I had to pull out the bedding and replace it. I have no complaints about this method at all.

As I said in my previous post, raising chickens is not, in my opinion, the hardest thing in the world. There are, however, a few things that need to be watched for and treated immediately if found. One very common problem that young chickens have is called “pasting up”, and can kill them if you’re not careful in watching for it. What it is, is when the vent of the chicken (the vent is the technical term for the part of the chicken where the manure and the eggs come out.) gets essentially clogged up with dried and hardened manure. Here’s a photo of what it looks like.

What happens with the chicks is that when the vent becomes clogged or blocked, the chicken cannot evacuate as it needs to. Because of this the chicken remains “full” and will stop eating or drinking.

The treatment for pasting up isn’t the most fun thing in the world to do, but I found that a clean paper towel soaked in warm water does the trick wonderfully. All you need to do is clean off the blockage, and make sure the chick has access to fresh water all the time. (Basically she needs her bum wiped.)

The chick will protest loudly against this, but it’s for its own good.

Now then, once the chicks are fully feathered out, and no longer need to be kept under lights and given supplemental heat, they’re ready to be moved outside. The chicken condo won’t do for this however. In fact it’s more than likely that it’s going to be barely holding its self up at this point, which means it’s time to build a chicken coop.

Building a coop is a project with so many varied outcomes that it’s hard to pin down just one or two ways to do it. There are certain things though that every coop should have and as long as they’re covered you should be good. For instance, chickens can’t stand having wet feet, at least not for long. Scratching around in the snow or rain puddles for worms is one thing but not having a dry place that’s up off the ground when they need it could mean sickness or death. Also, even if you decide to free range your hens, they’ll need a safe place where they can roost up at night and rest peacefully when most of the predators in nature are out looking for dinner, even in the suburbs. I have a neighbor who was a bit lackadaisical about this and lost all his birds to a neighbor’s dog. 

It’s generally recommended that you allow for at least 4 square feet of space for each bird. This will allow them enough space to spread their wings and will help to keep them from picking at each other. You’ll also need to add a nesting box or two. Generally about one per five hens or so is enough. If you don’t give them proper nesting area, it’s possible that the eggs will get broken or eaten or both. The coop I came up with for my 9 hens allowed for all of this as well as being (relatively) pleasant to look at. That, more than almost any feature of your coop may end up being the biggest part of how well your chickens are received by neighbors if you keep them in a residential area like mine.

Remember, chickens are a great addition to any home. They’re great fun to watch, they’re superb composters and they provide a healthy consistent protein source for your family; all this while providing excellent fertilizing for your garden, too. If you’ve been debating making them an addition to your home, I encourage you to make the leap. Give it careful thought of course, but don’t feel intimidated at all.

All the best to you …

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse 

We’ve got goat troubles … and it’s the chickens’ fault. Maybe it’s a bit unfair to blame the chickens but if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here trying to figure out what to do with an ornery, head-butting pygmy goat named Oscar. So in my angst-ridden state I’m holding them responsible. Okay, partially responsible.

It all started back last October when we finally got around to cleaning years of previous owners’ junk out of the barn. We had a great set-up – a few goat pens, a large horse stall and two areas to keep poultry – but no livestock.

So like many new country folk, we decided to get us some chickens. Because it was fall already, it was too late to place a chick order so I went online to look for some laying hens.

Not long afterwards, I found a lady willing to sell us 10 mature barred rocks, Rhode Island reds and black rock hens.

We brought them home and within days we were collecting tasty, rich and gorgeous eggs from our girls.

(Editor Hank Will and fellow blogger Paul Gardener have both recently written about raising your own chickens here and here. If you’re still thinking about it, I suggest you get off the fence and contact your local hatchery!)

About a week later, the lady who sold us the chickens emailed me to ask I’d be interested in buying a six-month-old male pygmy goat. Although Billy was still intact (as in, a fully capable male goat) she said he was very friendly and not at all aggressive.

I admit it – I’ve always loved goats, especially the little ones. Yes, my only exposure to them before moving to the farm was in petting zoos (there’s my disclaimer, right there), but I’ve always loved their personality. But that’s not a good enough reason to buy one, I reasoned, as we are not ourselves a petting zoo. So I decided to do some research.

I discovered that although pygmy goats are only 16 to 23 inches tall at the withers and does weigh approximately 55 pounds, pygmies can produce as much as four pounds of milk a day (equal to half a gallon) or 600 to 700 pounds a year, quite enough for a homesteading family of four.

Since one of the reasons we moved to the farm was to become more self-reliant, raising goats seemed like a good way to ensure a steady supply of goat milk and cheese. While purebred dairy goats such as Nubians and Saanens produce a much greater quantity of milk (averaging 1600 pounds annually), they are larger, require more space and more feed. Plus, registered proven producers (milkers) would be significantly more expensive.

Because we had absolutely no experience raising goats, we decided to try the economy version first.

But the question remained, should we buy Billy? I know there’s a lot more to selecting an animal for breeding than upbringing – pedigree and conformation are key but again, we’re just getting started here. The sticking point was, did we really want a buck?

While intact male goats start out as lovely little creatures, they quickly mature into bucks with somewhat objectionable habits, smell being the least of them. I mean, once you learn that a buck likes to spray his own beard and forelegs with urine, you may think twice about owning one. I know I did.

Finally, we decided to go ahead with it. We’d buy Billy now and get a doe in the spring and we’d go through one breeding cycle and see how things went.

We weren’t able to get Billy right away so in the meantime, I found another pygmy goat for sale: this one a three-year-old wether, or a castrated male.

I thought that it would be a good idea to get a wether as a companion for Billy. Goats are herd creatures and don’t do great on their own and once Billy matured, he’d be off limits to our future girls.

So on a cold, sunny day in November, my daughter and I brought home Oscar.

I liked Oscar immediately. He was inquisitive and friendly and took to following me around the barnyard like a puppy. While it was endearing at the time, that was probably a sign of things to come. I hadn’t bought livestock – I’d brought home a pet and a pet isn’t what I bargained for.

A few days after arriving at the farm, we tried introducing Oscar to the donkeys (they came after the chickens.)

Already we’d heard the coyotes circling the farm and we wanted to have predator protection in place before adding anyone else to the barnyard. Let’s just say it didn’t go well.

Cinder, the older and more sensible of the two, didn’t much mind Oscar. Lee, the younger and more insecure donkey, laid into Oscar like a fury, sending him cart-wheeling across the barnyard. It was unexpected and truly dreadful. We put the donkeys in the back paddock and tended to Oscar’s bruised ego.

Worried about what we were getting into, we were relieved when the chicken lady decided to keep Billy. That was fine with us because breeding was farthest from our mind at that moment.

But then a few weeks later, along came Lucy and Sam.

We purchased Lucy, another three-year-old pygmy goat, and her two-month-old baby that we named Sam, from a less than scrupulous owner. The idea was that Oscar would now have a companion (he was starting to show signs of stress and anxiety that we assumed was because he was an only goat), and we could keep Sam intact and have our own buck.

While we hoped the addition of Lucy and Sam would reduce Oscar’s growing agitation, it seemed only to heighten it. Although we kept them in adjoining pens for the first few weeks (we’d now moved everyone into the barn, out of the harsh winter weather) he became even more aggressive, not less.

Then the aggression turned on us. All my sources say that wethers were supposed to be docile and friendly but whenever we went into Oscar’s pen to collect his water bowl, he’d growl, head-butt and even once tried to down me. It left me with a nasty bruise and a growing worry that something was wrong. But what should we do about it?

The vet told us to take him to the sales barn. My dad offered to eat him. I even tried to sell him privately. But none of these options seemed to assuage my guilt that we’d failed. If only we’d done something more or differently, if only we weren’t so inexperienced, he wouldn’t have turned on us. (Looking back, he did seem pretty high-strung and codependent for a goat, right from the very beginning.)

So here I am today, learning my first lesson in animal husbandry – what to do with an animal you no longer want. I’m finding it a hard decision to make (now’s probably a good time to disclose that I’m a vegetarian – I’m something of an oddity around here), but it’s the first of many if we decide to continue raising goats or any animal.

If 50 percent of goats born are male, our options are: castrate every one of them and open a petting zoo (not an option), sell them privately (which may be harder to do with animals that are neither registered nor proven), butcher them or sell them to a sale barn (where someone else in turn will probably butcher them.)

It’s not like I didn’t know we’d have to dispose of excess animals even before we got into this goat business. I’m all about paying your own way around here and if you’re not contributing then you’re taking away from making this farm sustainable. I’ve even said it myself that once our chickens are done laying, they’re headed for the soup pot.

It’s just there’s this disconnect: the self-reliant side of me that knows full well that livestock are not pets (repeat after me: livestock are not pets) and that I can’t keep every single one of them; and the other side of me that has a soft-spot for four-legged creatures.

Maybe it’s time to get out of goats, but the barn would sure be empty without them. We’d miss out on our own milk and cheese too. Seems like a pretty high price to pay for my squeamishness.

So if anyone has any perspective or advice to share with this greenhorn, I’d love to hear it. Should I stick to growing vegetables or does culling animals, even the cute furry ones, get easier?

Read more about our early adventures in homesteading at Rowangarth Farm.

It seems that GRIT editor Hank Will and I are “on the same sheet of music” this week. He put up a great post about saving money in 2009 by raising your own chickens on the same day I was planning on putting this one up, so I thought I’d give it a day or so before adding my two cents.

One of the first things that many small scale growers and aspiring “urban pioneers” decide to do after they’ve established their garden plans is to look into obtaining some chickens. I know a lot of the Grit readers probably already have them or have had them in their past so this may be old news to them. I’m guessing though, that with purse strings getting tighter all around the country and concerns over industrial food products in the news so regularly, that there’s probably a good number of folks trying to get a good idea about what it takes to get started with some small scale egg production.

First off, and in my mind foremost, I have to say this; these are not just egg producing fertilizer factories. They’re that too and much more honestly, but they’re also a responsibility as would be any other livestock that any size farmer decides to integrate into their operation. The scale may be smaller but the obligations are no less pressing. That said, I think the most important thing that any aspiring farmer should do, regardless of scale, is to make an honest assessment of what they want to gain vs. what they are willing to give for this addition. The second thing that you’ll need to be aware of, particularly if you’re like we are and you’re in a residential area with close neighbors and often times limiting covenants and restrictions, is whether or not you are even allowed to keep chickens. Take heart if you’ve already learned that they are not currently allowed, however, mine weren’t either when I first decided I wanted them, but with a good dose of persistence and some community involvement, laws can be changed, and anything is possible! And there you go … the caveats are out, chickens are great, but they are a commitment, so then, on with the fun stuff.

There are a lot of websites and good books that can help you to make a decision on what kind of chickens would be the best for you to keep at your home so I’m not going to try and reinvent the wheel here. A couple I recommend would be “My Pet Chicken’s” Breed selector tool and of course GRIT’s Perfect Chickens, a guide to heritage breeds of chickens. Whichever way you decide to go, however, this is another point where you’ll just have to be honest with yourself about what it is that you want from your birds. It won’t do you a lot of good to get a beautiful Bearded Silver Polish hen because you like the way they look if you’re looking to keep a family of five in eggs regularly or to be able to possible sell some at the farmers market. Do your research thoroughly and honestly. You’ll be happier later because of it.

Now, once you’ve decided what it is that you’re looking for and how many of them you will need and can have, it’s time to look into the different ways of getting them. You may have a farm store near you or perhaps you’ve seen the cute little chicks at the pet store. These are both potential ways to get your chicks but you may want to check out some other possibilities. There are a number of excellent hatcheries out there that can provide you with day old chicks of almost any breed. Some have requirements that you order a minimum number of chicks however, so if you have a friend that’s also interested in raising birds, you may be able to split an order like I did with one of my neighbors. It’s a good idea to order 1 more bird than you will ultimately be able to keep as it’s not uncommon for one to get sick and not make it to adulthood. You can also order fertilized eggs that you can incubate and hatch yourself. Either way, you’ll need to set up a brooder for your young chicks.

You can probably find a company that’s willing to sell you some automatic self regulating brooder set-up if you’re so inclined but I’d say most of us are probably the make do with what you have type. I know I am! This is the brooder box that I used last spring to raise my two clutches of hens. I just lined an old computer box from work with some wood shavings and notched a piece of pvc so that it would hang from the top of the box. This allowed me to hang a light from the pvc so that I could elevate the light or lower it as the chicks required. Hank goes into the requirements of the brooders pretty well so I’ll defer to his article at this point.

And that’s the basics of getting started with Chickens in my opinion. It’s not rocket science, but it does take some thought and some planning. There’s a lot more beyond this though as the chicks start to grow; too much to cover in just this post in fact. Check back next week, and we can continue the discussion.

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse.

The other day I stumbled across a wonderful website that’s devoted to helping folks raise chickens in urban and suburban residential environments. The website,  UrbanChickens.org (Albuquerque, NM) is the brainchild of  KT LaBadie and her husband Mark Scully … the couple founded the website in 2007 after KT gave a presentation on the benefits of chickens in urban environments in one of her graduate planning classes. “This presentation sparked a lot of interest from fellow classmates who were unaware of Albuquerque’s chicken friendly ordinances and zoning,” KT says. “This prompted Mark and me to start the Albuquerque Urban Chickens group as a way to educate the local public and teach urban chicken keeping classes.”

From this local start, the chicken-loving couple took their project worldwide with the goal of encouraging and helping folks around the globe to raise chickens in town. The website is a treasure trove of information covering everything from the fundamentals of chicken keeping to navigating murky municipal waters. Although KT and Mark are passionate urban farmers, their advice and wisdom, and that of the many forum contributors, is relevant to virtually any small-scale chicken operation anywhere.

KT and Mark live in Albuquerque with their four chickens Gloria, Switters, Omelet and Buffy. If you fancy fowl, check out the Urban Chickens website … and if you have any insight and experience to share, don’t be shy about doing just that.

Logo and photos courtesy KT LaBadie.

Kate and I have raised our own poultry off and on for more years than I care to count. We have raised both meat birds (broiler chickens, geese and turkeys) and layers. In every case, raising our own poultry helped us save money, while providing endless hours of entertainment and providing higher quality meat and eggs than we could have ever even hoped to buy at the time. Now that we are once again living on the land, raising our own chickens has become a priority.

When it comes to raising chickens, I am a little more conservative than Kate is. She will often go overboard (in my mind anyway) when chick ordering time comes around. I always ask what we will do with all those chickens; she always answers we will enjoy every minute of them. And she is right.

All you need to raise chickens is a little space, a little know how (mostly know to leave them well enough alone) and some desire. If you order day old chicks through the mail, you will need to make a brooder for them. The brooder can be as simple as a heat lamp suspended over a cardboard box (it’s best to staple cardboard across the box’s corners to “round” them … this keeps the chicks from piling up in the corners and suffocating those on the bottom of the heap. You should definitely take a look at our books and articles on raising chicken if you have never done it, but suffice it to say this isn’t rocket science.

As you might imagine, raising your own chickens requires a commitment to care for and nurture the animals. For best success, you need to protect them from predators … including pets and children, and you need to provide food, water and access to shelter throughout their lifetime. During the growing season, much of that food can come in the form of grass, clover, alfalfa, bugs, worms, various garden trimmings and excess fruit and vegetables. The shelter can be a chicken house, barn, shed, old grain bin, you name it.

Some might argue that it isn’t possible to grow your own broiler chickens for less per pound than the limp, bleached out stuff they sell at the grocery store for below a dollar a pound. That might be true. But you can grow chickens yourself for less than the plump nicely colored organic free range chicken that sells for dollars a pound … likewise with homegrown eggs. But, I find that comparison to be lacking, and somewhat anti-intellectual. With chickens, saving money isn’t just about the obvious products they provide.

The fact is, you can raise your own chickens and eggs for less per pound than premium eggs and chicken cuts sell for at the grocery store. If you grow their feed, production costs go down even further. Chickens will also help you save money by keeping insect pests at bay in the garden and yard. Chickens will also help you save money by weeding and tilling your garden. Chickens will also help save you money because they are so entertaining. Once you discover the joys of sitting and watching the chickens peck, you will spend less money on trips to town for a movie … or movie rental. You will spend less money on exercise because your chickens will require daily care … morning and night. And since you and your family will be eating the best, most local food there is, chickens will save you money with physical and mental healthcare to boot.

Kate and I consider raising chickens to be part of our “golf game.” As such, those birds make a huge contribution to our savings account. And that’s a good thing, especially in 2009.

Brewmasters have known about the preservative qualities of hops flowers for centuries and beer drinkers have learned to love the sometimes less than subtle bitter flavors. Now, scientists report that the antimicrobial bitter acids contained in hop flowers might prevent pathogenic bacteria from taking hold in your chickens’ stomachs.

According to a recent ARS report, adding the bitter acid lupulone to the chickens’ drinking water appears to be a viable alternative to lo-level antibiotic doping of their feed. In one study, lupulone therapy was specifically associated with controlling Clostridium populations in the chickens’ intestinal tracts.

Why is this important? I turns out that chicken guts is one of the primary sources for meat contamination by pathogenic organisms … especially when mechanized evisceration methods are employed. Even if you raise chickens for eggs, or carefully dress your own, I suspect that you can keep your flock a bit healthier by adding some fresh or dried hops to their diet. Why not plant a vine or two this year and give it a try?

Check out the USDA’s ARS website for more information on the antimicrobial characteristics of hops.

Photo courtesy ARS.

Since we've had this wonderful downtime in which to recoup and collect ourselves, there have been a lot of ideas floating through my [Becky's] head. This post will try to capture a few.

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We recently finished reading a great book lent to us by a great friend. Thanks, Jill! A free dozen goes out to you! It's called: Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party), by Rod Dreher. Whew, long title. I guess there has been a reprint and the subtitle is changed to: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots.

Whatever. The point is that this book defines just about every viewpoint that Andy and I hold dear. It was amazing to listen to Rod Dreher speak in each chapter because we just kept looking at each other (we read it out loud over the course of a month) and saying, "I KNOW!!" An excerpt from his intro gives a basic analysis of what the book is about:

A Crunchy Con Manifesto

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship – especially of the natural world – is not fundamentally conservative.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

9. We share Russell Kirk's conviction that "the institution most essential to conserve is the family."

If you have the time, check it out from your local library. We highly endorse!

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When we went to Colorado in November, we listened to a book on tape that we'd heard much about and knew a basic premise for. You may be very familiar with Michael Pollan or you may never have heard of him. The book he wrote is called The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. This edified our choice to grow sustainable, organic and slow foods for ourselves and our community. It was eye opening about the modern food industry and how deceived the American public is about what they eat. He carries a relatively objective view, though. We even learned how to capture and grow yeast for bread making! This is another great winter read. Please check it out!

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Back on the farmstead, we are planning our gardens for next season. We have poured over at least a dozen different seed catalogs and have a few more in the mail. We ordered over a hundred dollars of seed last year and I think every seed company in the nation caught wind of it. Haha, joke's on them; they don't know that this year we're poor! (Just kidding ... sort of.) But seriously, we are doing our research about what types of heirloom varieties grow best in our Zone 5/Zone 4 climate. And they don't have to be heirlooms as a rule. We just want varieties that we can save the seed from. That means no hybrids. We'll keep you up to date on what fun tomatoes, peppers, onions and corn we find.

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I've been reading a book called You Can Farm by Joel Salatin (of famed Polyface Farm), and he has a lot of great, sustainable and money-pinching ideas for beginning farmers. One of his ideas has stuck in my head, and I can't shake it. He advocates using animal power in place of people power whenever possible. He's not talking using horses instead of tractors. He speaks about the natural inclinations of animals on the farm and how to utilize that for the farm's (or your) benefit. For example, this year we let the hens roam free in our front and back yard, and they cleaned up a ton of bugs and even dethatched our lawn! A great side effect. But, the more I think about the possibility, the more I just gotta do it! I want to fence in our large back yard/orchard and run our ewes in there once a week to mow, fertilize and clean up the apple orchard and drainage ditch.

Crazy you say? This is what's crazy: Running a riding lawnmower for two hours a day, twice a week (in peak grass season) and burning gas. Then, hand picking and raking up windfall apples, loading them in a wheel-barrow and hauling them to the sheep paddock 400 yards away. Finally, taking a gas powered Brush Hog-type weed whacker and cleaning out all the areas a large mower can't reach (i.e., under pine trees, the drainage ditch and near tree trunks). All in all, a general yard pruning session can run up to four hours! THAT is what I call crazy. Of course, this is not every time we mow, but it must be done every couple weeks in order to keep the appearance of "ship-shape."

Enter the sheep. Naturally built to eat grass down to an inch or two and amazingly agile when eating around objects projecting vertically from the ground (trees, posts, bushes), these guys LOVE fresh grass! They love tart apples and the interesting plants that spring up from ditches. Suddenly, we have a hired crew that can browse picturesque beside the house all afternoon leaving Andy or I two hours to accomplish other projects. Best of all? They don't gripe about overtime and at the end of the day, you've got a freshly fertilized lawn for FREE. No gas expense, just the cost of heating that electric fence for a few hours, then shepherding the ewes back home and shutting it down.

Sounds like the perfect set up to me. Now, if only my parents (who own the yard) will agree to this plan...

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Finally, we are looking into buying some heritage breed hens next spring. Heritage breeds are similar to heirloom species in gardens. Farm animals have been bred for efficiency in factory settings and many breeds are on the verge of extinction. We already have 13 Milking Shorthorn dairy cows, who are on the endangered list (we didn't actually know that at the time of purchase, we just knew that they weren't Holsteins and that was good enough). The hens we currently have are a mix of several common industrial egg farm varieties. That doesn't make them bad hens or that we've bought into the industrial model. We just want to look for a bird that knows how to forage for herself and free-ranges more productively than the ones we have. A heritage hen will probably be multi-purposed in that it can give eggs AND meat. You may not have been aware that modern laying hens leave a lot to be desired in the slow cooker because they've been bred to put all their energy into egg production. They are very thin stewing hens. A multi-purpose breed will give eggs (though certainly not as prolifically) throughout her life and then give a family a nice meal at the end. And we are all about not pushing our hens to the limit ...

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... which reminds me: Our layers have been steadily declining in egg production since we combined flocks in mid-December. We were averaging over 100 eggs a day in late November and now we are in the middle 40s. Andy and I were concerned at first and tried giving them more food, more access to grit (what they need to digest food) and deeper nesting bedding. But as we read about it, we realized that they are in their winter slump. It's amazingly common with layers. As the nights outlast the days, they sort of shut down. (Though they still eat like they were laying!) This is when a lot of folks break out the extra lighting in the coop to give the illusion of daytime and encourage more eggs. We discussed this option, but after reading more of Joel Salatin, we opted against it. Why? Because all animals need a sort of downtime in which to recoup from the previous year's events and production. This gives their bodies a chance to focus on repair and rest, instead of always producing and putting energies into that. "Let's give the hens a break," I said earlier this week. They earned it. Soon it will be lighter later and they'll pick up again. Right now, they are enjoying "Chicken Downtime."

Here we are at the end of a road. Looking back I see many turns and hills but it has been a great journey nevertheless. Today I had the great pleasure of stamping one of the longest running projects for us here on the farm with a big, red COMPLETE. We couldn't me more happy, or relieved.

Even though we knew that it would be there, we were quite surprised when we returned from our trip to Colorado to find the Great Green Behemoth parked rudely in our main drive. Becky looked at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say, "Are we really going to be those people?" Alas, my darling, indeed we are.

We started working on the gargantuan task of converting the trailer to fit our needs. My parents came on Wednesday and we took the entire day just emptying it out. There was a plethora of oddities: paintball supplies, random clothing, advertisements, and even what I think was some sort of printing sheet used in newspapers when the Packers won the Super Bowl.

Thursday we spent more time emptying while Dave and our friend Scott began pulling out cabinets that we would not use. On Friday we called in a pinch hitter. Greg is a childhood friend of Becky's, and, it turns out, he is quite the wood worker and hammer swinger. We spent all of Friday knocking out a wall to the bathroom and gutting it. Saturday Greg built us a large roost and Sunday we rested.

Monday and Tuesday found us with other farm work that demanded our attention (why can't farms adhere to my schedule?), and we were back at it on Wednesday. Greg came back over, and we installed the roost while I spent (too much) time converting what was a counter to a large nesting area. On Saturday, after much work and difficulty, it was time to put on the finishing touches. I had decided that I was going to try something new with the bedding that we would put in. A problem we had in the smaller coop was that the bedding was getting soiled much sooner than we wanted. The frustrating thing was that if you went down two inches, there was perfectly dry bedding that wasn't being touched. So I had an idea.

If you've ever watched a chicken, you will have no doubt seen the adorable little waltz that they do when they are looking for something to munch on. It is a charming 1-2-3 scratch-scratch-peck, 1-2-3 scratch-scratch-peck. I wondered if there was a way to utilize this quirky trait.

Sidenote – this is pretty indicative of one of the most motivating mindset that we have here on the farm. We look at a situation and wonder if there is a way that it can positively affect another aspect of the farm. A good example of this is our chickens following the cows in the summer. The cows graze and spread healthy precomposted soil about the field and the chickens come a few days later and spread it apart so that it decomposes faster, and as a bonus they get to lap up all the fatty grubs that have found residence there. (Also, we didn't invent this one, the glory on this goes to Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms in Virginia, but you get the idea.) Back to the chickies...

So, I took our large feed mixer, which is basically a big bin with a couple of augers that mix stuff, and I dumped in 100 pounds of dried, shelled corn. To that I added a bale of cedar wood chips (cedar, in addition to smelling great, is a natural pest deterrent) and topped the whole mixture off with some fresh wheat straw from this summer's harvest. We took this along side of the trailer and dumped it all in. The key to this mix is the dried shell corn. Hopefully, the hens smell the good food within their bedding and instinctively "hunt and peck" for the stuff. In this way, they till their own bedding and keep it fresher, longer.

Once we had everything in place it was time to move the hens to their new home. We started with our newest flock which we have dubbed the "Amish chickens" due to their former place of residence. One by one I picked them up and held them by their legs. (If this process is new to you, please understand, this is a very humane way to treat chickens in this situation. The blood rushes to their heads and acts to settle them down. Moving chickens in any other way than this can be incredibly stressful for them. Don't ever forget, we love our chickens!)

When I had rounded up 4 or 5 chickens I passed them on to a number of waiting hands. In this case Becky's mother Judy and our friend Scott were helping.

Our helpers then took the chickens to a small chicken transporting cage. We put about 30 chickens in the cage and then placed it on our Bobcat skid steer. Unfortunately, the cage when full tended to be a little tipsy so Judy was kind enough to provide us with a very personalized solution. Dave, with Judy skid-steer-surfing, piloted our flock over to their new home and we plopped them in, one by one until they were all settled. We then moved our original flock. They were close enough that we could just walk them directly over to the new coop.

When everyone was in place we grabbed the waterers from each of the old coops as well as some feeders. We filled everything up and before long it was pitch black (at 4:30?!!? Winter in Wisconsin...), so we headed in. But before we left, I made sure to note that the majority of the flock was doing their little chicken waltz: 1-2-3 scratch scratch, peck. The shell corn worked!

On Sunday I headed out to see what the status was. It is not uncommon for a few of the chickens lowest on the pecking order not to survive these types of moves. I was quite relieved to find everything was in perfect working order. There was some infighting as the two new flocks began to integrate but nothing of note. Unfortunately we only got about 20 eggs that day but that also was expected. It can take up to a week sometimes for the hens to get back into a regular laying routine.

Today I had a few small tasks to accomplish. I bedded the nesting boxes to overflowing (we like the hens to be extra cozy when they're laying, did we mention we love them?) as well as hanging the waterers (we had them balanced on a bale before). I also filled their oyster shell (they munch on this when their calcium is low) and installed a grit dispenser. (Grit is small pieces of stone that sit in the chicken's gizzard to help them digest. Consequently, GRIT is a great farm and country magazine that has been celebrating rural America since 1882.)

We thank you all for accompanying us on this trip. It has been filled with some great experiences. We are always open to new ideas so if you have anything that you think might help us out, we love suggestions. If anyone ever wants to come and visit us, just let us know.

Elly will be watching for you.

Blessing and Joy this Christmas!

Back in November, one of my young Delaware hens decided to go broody. My husband and I were surprised that a hen would want to sit on a nest that late in the season, and this hen was very young, just six months old!

The place she originally chose to sit was not great for the time of year. She was on the ground, and in a place where we couldn’t really keep her warm. We decided to try and move her into a brooder pen. Mama, which is what I named this hen, did not approve of our choice! She would not stay on the nest, so we let her back out. She promptly returned to her original nest place for about a half day. She must have then decided that this wasn’t such a good place after all, and moved herself to a much more suitable location. She was off of the ground, and protected from all the elements, so we left her there.

Mama had five eggs under her. They were not all her eggs; some were from our other chickens. We thought this would be just a nice amount of eggs for a first mother to try, so we left her with that many.

We tried not to get to excited because we weren’t sure that she would hatch the eggs, being so young. It turns out she is a very good mama! The first eggs started hatching on December 7th. The fourth egg to hatch had some problems. The peep started to break out of the shell, but never made it the entire way out, and died. The last egg hatched on the 9th.

As soon as she was finished hatching, I moved her back into the brooder pen in our basement. We now have four healthy, adorable little chicks. I am anxious now to see if we will have more broody hens come spring, and whether they are as good at mothering as Mama is!

Merry Christmas to everyone at GRIT, from my peeps!

Last weekend, the weather in Osage county was balmy enough that I decided to go ahead and stain the Mulefoot pig shelter and the chicken house we built from scraps. Kate had kindly made the trip to town to pick up a gallon each of red Rustoleum, green stain and white stain. The stains are actually heavy latex Behr stains that will cover paint and other stains. Kate had the paint store match the green with the color on a scrap of plywood left over when I made the Mulefoot pig house.

Since it was still cool, and the wind was blowing about 20 miles per hour, I did a quick and dirty job. I would say it is definitely a 20-foot paint job … because it looks pretty good from a distance of 20 feet or more. There’s not much to report on the process. What can you really say about brushes, rollers and roller pans blowing over and dumping their contents in the wind? It was a small enough coloring job that it was fun. And it was all over before the arctic blast hit Sunday afternoon.

I will also admit, now, that I am very fond of Kate’s color scheme. Red roof, green walls and white trim … white trim on the chicken house anyway. The colors work very nicely together. I can’t tell whether the animals enjoy their digs any better than before, but we sure do.

Winter is an excellent time to sit down, click on the computer and surf the internet discovering items of interest and tidbits of knowledge. Of course, I have my stack of books and magazines nearby – most on gardening and country living and I find myself flipping through pages as I envision my future plans.

A grand decision was made recently that came about after reading other GRIT blogs and researching. I came upon the website The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and found a listing of animal breeds and their existence rating ... ranging from critical to recovering. I plan to raise chickens, possibly a few turkeys and ducks and the guinea hogs look quite interesting. I will learn all I can about housing, feeding and where to purchase these different breeds as the winter weather whirls around outside. The poultry can be mail ordered and arrive as early as March.

Last year as we visited the new farm store down south they had a few cages of baby chicks and geese for sale. I only briefly checked them out since I knew if I spent too much time watching them, I would end up purchasing some and I am not quite ready.  I need to be somewhere permanent, not traveling back and forth. ... PLUS, I have to do my research!

So the decision to raise heritage breeds has given my life in the country a new meaning. I will carry on that which our ancestors were about and leave something for the future generations. Many of our heritage animal breeds and rare seeds (heirloom) are disappearing simply because no one is raising or planting them.

There are organizations such as Seed Savers that work on preserving heirloom varieties of seeds; like the heritage animal breeds, some are on the verge of extinction. I find seed saving very therapeutic and have been giving away Free Seeds the last few months from my website.

Recently I sent out an envelope to a high school that just constructed a new greenhouse and will be sending seeds off to a jail in Iowa for their Inmate Agricultural Program. Many individuals have been very appreciative sending sincere thank yous. I have high hopes that all receiving the seeds will enjoy the process, learn and pass the knowledge on.

I have created a Garden Forum that should help with questions and offer advice. I will be concentrating my efforts on heirloom varieties for the coming garden season so these are not lost and forgotten. Of course, I have my seed saving books and sites to help me along the way.

So Heritage Breeds and Heirloom Seeds is on my agenda for research this winter!

[Also check out GRIT's Guides to Animal Breeds, or, if you're like me and like to hold a book in your hands, for breed research, the Grit Staff highly recommends Storey's Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle and Pigs. – Editors]

Raising chickens this time around has certainly turned out to be quite an adventure for my husband and me! We received our adorable little fluff balls back in May. After changing our minds many times, we finally agreed on two different breeds of chickens to try. We got 27 chickens in all, 12 Welsummers, and 15 Delawares. It was very interesting for me to see the different characteristics of each breed as they grew. Although both are friendly, the Delawares are extremely tame, loving human contact.

Over the course of the last six months we have lost two chickens to unknown causes. The first was a Welsummer hen when she was very young. She was smaller than all the rest right from the start, and she seemed stunted. She never grew properly and got very weak, so we pulled her out of the flock. The second was just a few weeks ago, and was a bit harder on us than the first. Our beloved Henny Penny got sick. We don’t know why. We pulled her out from the rest of the chickens, and moved her into a pen in our basement. We tried to save her, and she improved for a while, but then she started to go downhill fast and died.

We also culled four roosters from the flock, and put them in the freezer.

The rest of the chickens are healthy and doing very well. We started getting our first eggs on September 24th. The Delawares were the first to start laying beautiful little medium brown eggs. The longer they lay, the larger their eggs got.

Then the Welsummers started to lay wonderful dark brown eggs! Every time I gather the eggs, it is a thrill to reach in and collect eggs of this color.

We get lots of compliments on the quality of these eggs with their orange yolks. There is such a difference in eggs when the chickens have free range to forage naturally.

Our latest surprise with the chickens happened a few days ago. One of our Delaware hens decided to go broody at only six months old and in the middle of November! We could not believe it! The place she chose to sit was not the best, so we tried to move her into a pen where she would be warmer and more comfortable, but it did not suit her! She wouldn’t stay on the nest, so we let her back out. She went back to the same place for about half a day, and then she moved herself to a better location where she can stay warmer and protected from the elements. She has been sitting on the nest ever since. She has four eggs under her. We are going to let her go and see how she does. If she hatches, we will move her and her peeps into our warm basement with a light. She should hatch sometime around December 8th, if all goes well. I am trying not to have high hopes, as she is so young, and it is so late in the season, but I keep thinking of the great pictures I could get for Christmas cards with baby peeps in a Christmas stocking!

These chickens have been a real pleasure for us to raise, and who knows what surprises they may have for us come Spring!

You all must be getting so bored with chicken talk, but it's so exciting for us. This is our first real enterprise on the farm and God has been blessing it in so many ways. As Andy mentioned before, we have a used job site trailer coming to us for virtually free that will be winter housing for the birds. We have a deal set up for two garbage cans full of bread each week in exchange for four dozen eggs. That cuts down on our feed costs about 25%. We have little advertising besides our roadside Free Range Eggs sign, and yet we can't keep up with demand! We have only lost one hen so far, and she was the unlucky chicken that decided to cross the road (I still don't know the answer to that riddle, because she never made it to the other side). We have been able to give dozens of eggs away to people as barter, gifts or thank yous. I think we have traded about 12 dozen eggs for babysitting time so far! Andy's parents are building a market in their area (about an hour or two away), and we have been able to help out a fellow farmer with his eggs sales. Below, Andy's mother, Julie and I stand behind our egg demo counter at her Curves™ open house. We gave a photo slideshow on computer and had info pamphlets about our farm and the benefits of free range eggs. We even cooked up a bunch and served them to the health-conscious ladies as a little taste of what could be in their own kitchens! We sold out of 23 dozen that day and had orders for 21 dozen more the following week. It was amazing!

As word has spread, people have offered us their left-over meal scraps and egg cartons and all sorts of random food items for our chickens. We accept most things. (We do not feed our chickens eggs or any sort of chicken meat, but most other things are fair game; if they don't eat it, they scratch it into the ground. Chickens are excellent composters!) I think people like getting involved in something local like this. They are happy to take the drive to our farm rather than the store in order to be a part of this happening.

And that's just what we wanted. We want our farm to become our customers' farm. We don't even want to think of them as customers; they are becoming family. It creates a great atmosphere to be able to show them just where their eggs are coming from. Families will park their van and step outside to see chicken-rakes hard at work in the lawn. It's that connection, that sense of what's supposed to be on a farm that makes the experience so rewarding.

But we aren't doing it for that purpose. It is a wonderful by-product and certainly one that we hoped would happen. However, we work hard at our farm appearance and our animals' comfort because we have a sense of God's plan for creatures of the earth. We have accountability for our products and our overall farm health. The open door policy ensures that.

Every egg that leaves our property has been hand-picked by Andy and hand-washed and inspected by me. We eat the cracked ones and the eggs shaped too weird to be sent out. They taste just fine, but we don't want to scare off our customers – I mean family – with odds and ends. I take pride in cleaning and counting each and every egg. I love packing them in the cartons and "delivering" them to the garage. We have our egg business set up in our garage with our produce-traded refrigerator humming quietly.

Knowing that at anytime of day, someone could be here for a dozen or so eggs keeps us on our toes. But more than that, it's the accountability we feel from God himself that spurs us to have such high standards. We want to honor his creation in all that we do, in all that we produce and in all that we send off of this farm. As our business expands and our products diversify, we will strive to uphold the same level of animal husbandry and even raise the bar whenever we can.

This afternoon, Andy came home with another 117 laying hens from an Amish egg farmer in Dalton, Wisconsin. They are mostly Rhode Island Reds, and they are less than two years old. (That is still young for a laying hen.) They have lived in a certified organic, cage-free building their whole lives. This means that while they weren't caged and de-beaked, they had no access to the outdoors, have never free-ranged and did not have roosts on which to perch at night. This evening, when Andy went in the barn to check on them (they are seperated from the current flock), they were all cowering in one corner. He had to physically pick them up and place them on the roosts! He said as soon as they settled onto the bar, they tucked in their little heads and closed their eyes. How precious and sad all at once! We have a lot to teach these little birds about how they were supposed to be living; it's going to be an interesting road. But the point of doubling our flock is to meet demand and exceed it. We haven't been telling many people about our eggs because we don't have enough to go around! Hopefully with these new birds, we can really expand our family and bring the farm-to-consumer mentality to ever more people.

We've had a lot of changes this week and a lot of cold, rainy weather. Photos will be forthcoming when we get a break in the precipitation...

For now, have a great night and think of at least five things you are thankful for. I know I can! – Becky

When I first moved out to the 5-acre homestead (we later acquired another 5 next door) with my 3 pre-teens, ten years ago now, we had high hopes of "living off the land" and pipe dreams of self-sufficiency. In the meantime, we lived on our property in a tent and a camper while we waited and waited for the septic to be dug and a run down trailer to be set.

Oh what joy to finally gain shelter once again within four sturdy walls! We heated our water, which we hauled from the town well in a 400 gallon tank on the back of our pick-up, over a campfire until our propane tank was installed and hooked up. And now new delight – water heating over the gas stove, while we carry buckets from the 2500 gallon storage tank to the bathtub for our weekly baths. Then came the golden day when our electric was hooked up and turned on. Ah the luxury of flipping a switch for light, and the electric pump magically bringing water right into the house with only the turn of a faucet! We were kings and queens! Well, I was the queen, they were the royal children.

It's all a matter of perspective out here. Those children are grown (age-wise anyway) now, and I have a 5-year-old son to share the homestead with. We've come a long way from the rundown trailer next door, which is now my workshop for soapmaking, sewing and other miscellaneous projects. Our full ten acres is finally fenced this year, and our small goat and sheep herds, 2 of our 5 horses, our jersey milk cow Mabel, and our chickens are able to graze contentedly and wander at will.

We're still not "living off the land" as much as we'd like, but we keep plugging away at it. I have come to realize that "self-sufficiency" is never completely self-sufficient. But my dream of country life has come true, and I hope to share its ups and downs with you as I contribute to this blog.

Last week we got a surprise batch of guinea chicks. My friend had ordered them, intending to be ready for them when they got here, but wasn't. So she called and I said "sure," forgetting that I was enjoying time off from the "keeping baby creatures alive" struggle.

Anyway, here they are, set up in my spare bathtub, in a large bucket with some hay, 2 heat lamps and their food and water. At a week old, they are the size of day old baby chickens. They are very delicate at this age. Originating in Africa, they require more heat than the chicks I'm used to brooding. We started out with 31 and 13 have survived.

Yup. Our weather just turned a lot colder, so they really need to be draft free and warm. When they arrived, as with any baby chicks, we dipped their beaks in sugar water, about 3 tablespoons to 1 quart of water, and since the feed store didn't have any chick starter, we put some lay crumble through the food processor to powder it, so that their tiny beaks could handle it. The heat lamps are about 18 inches from the floor of the bucket and are still there. We are cutting back on the sugar in the water, but still feeding crumble that has been powdered. These chicks seem to be fairly hardy now, and the death rate has dropped dramatically (knock on wood). We are hoping to get these through the next few weeks and have them ready for pest control in the spring.

My husband and I decided we were going to start a small flock of chickens. We wanted to be able to raise our own meat and get our own eggs for economic reasons, and also because we like knowing exactly what is in the food we eat. We decided we would choose two different breeds to start this flock. AND SO IT BEGAN!

Foolish people that we are, we figured we would simply page through one of our hatchery catalogs, choose two breeds, and place the order. WRONG! Of course we each liked something different, but we did have a few standards to go by to narrow the search. We wanted to get breeds that were rare, or not as common as some chickens such as Leghorns or Rhode Island Reds. (Not that there is anything wrong with those breeds. In fact, if you are looking for egg production in a chicken, those are some of the best breeds to get.) We wanted something different. We also needed dual purpose birds that would be good for eggs and meat on the table. Medium to dark brown large egg layers was another item on our list, and, of course, we wanted chickens that were friendly and easy to work with.

Now, you would think that this would narrow the field down to just a few choices, and it did narrow it considerably. However, there are still a lot of breeds that meet all of these criteria. We spent days looking through catalogs and visited numerous hatchery and poultry Web sites. Let me just say here that anyone interested in info on chickens should visit Barry Koffler at FeatherSite. I highly recommend this site! He has lots of info on all the different chicken breeds as well as photos and links to numerous hatcheries.

Finally, my husband and I agreed on two breeds. Our choices were Barnevelders, developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Holland for laying dark eggs, and Delawares, developed in 1940 in Delaware.

We wanted to get both breeds from the same hatchery but at the one that both breeds, the Barnevelders were sold out until 2009. Needless to say, we were not willing to wait that long, so we went to our third breed choice which was Welsummer. This breed was also developed in Holland in the 20th century, and they lay dark terracotta brown eggs.

So far, I am very pleased with both breeds. They have been great to work with. The Delawares have been particularly rewarding because they are incredibly friendly and enjoy human contact. I highly recommend them.

I would love to hear about your experiences with any other chicken breeds. If you are thinking about starting your own flock, have fun choosing and be sure to visit FeatherSite and take a look at GRIT's guide to chicken breeds!

– Lori Dunn is a freelance photographer specializing in rural subjects and nature. Contact her at chickadeezl@yahoo.com.