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 and raw milk, 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! We have expanded our raw milk sales and 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 sell the milk raw (which will not change) and feed it 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 CO 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 Menominee Park in Oshkosh. 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. We have welcomed many new milk members in the last month!

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 not 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 b/c 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 search 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 at Foxwood 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. For those of you who know us, you know that producing safe, clean and super-healthy raw milk is the thing that we are absolutely most passionate about.

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 and championing the benefits of raw milk. (A second link of interest.)

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 Fresh Raw-Milk 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!

The Sells
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 mindsets 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 VA, 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 lbs 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
The Sells

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 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 the Wisconsin Dells 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.