The Steady Rolling

Since my last post, I've gotten the pantry more than half full. We made more jam this year- blueberry, blackberry, a tiny bit of raspberry, and peach. I canned a few peaches for treats. Peaches are pretty expensive, as we buy them from a local group who sells peaches from Pennsylvania. I do not think people have much luck growing peaches this far north. With the gray, cool beginning to summer, we really didn't start harvesting tomatoes until well into August, and then the tomatoes have been slow to ripen, as the temperatures began the fall swing at about the same time. This week, we had one morning that was 29 degrees and another day with the high of 91. Everything had a touch of frost damage the one day and looked extremely wilted and tired two days later. I'm just not sure we'll have the same full-to-bursting pantry we had last year.

On the upside, I managed to grow onions this year. They're beautiful. I have them laid out on the bed curing. We've been using leeks for most cooking, so that we can use the onions through the fall and winter. I know we can keep using the leeks and store them even, but the onions are still easier to keep. We also have a fair number of carrots, which is very pleasing, as I have never managed to grow more than a handful. The butternuts also managed to make.

The pumpkins, on the other hand, just never seemed to take hold. I'll do a soil sample within the next week or two, and then I will hopefully learn what I need to do to that soil to help out the pumpkins. At the moment, I am considering just doing a cover crop on that row next year. A little green manure seems like it couldn't hurt anything. I'll keep giving the soil the other amendments even if it's only in a cover crop.

We have the most amazing sunflowers this year, and we're looking forward to having sunflower seeds to munch on through the winter. There are so many that I feel certain there are enough for us and some wild life.

I haven't managed to get enough tomatillos for a batch of salsa yet. I think I'll put them in the hoophouse next year, as the last time I had oodles of them was when they were in the hoophouse. I think the plants look much prettier in the field, and I would only harvest seed from field plants. However, I plant the tomatillos to add some variety to our diet, and if I do not manage to harvest enough for a couple of batches of salsa then I might as well call them ornamental.

We culled the old layers last week. We killed about 15 chickens, leaving roughly 15 hens of laying age and another fifteen who should begin laying this winter. At the moment, we're getting precious few eggs, and it seemed wasteful to be feeding all those hens. If we cannot find a hidden nest, I might kill off more; fifteen is still too many to feed for 3 to 4 eggs a day.

In the coming week, I'll pull everything in the garden that will be killed by a hard frost to prepare for our trip. We have someone staying at the house, but there is too much garden work to expect of a housesitter who is already tending all these animals. We'll dig potatoes and other root crops after we get back; the basement isn't cool enough to consider putting them down there yet, and we just need to be sure to get them out of the ground before it freezes.

We Killed Robert Plant

I really like to have a rooster around, and a rooster who is a little mean is still a rooster. However, Robert Plant had it in for Sylvie. He had attacked each of us, but the older four were able to convince him to leave us alone. Sylvie just got more and more afraid.

We did plan to kill him, but we just never seemed to get around to it. While neither of us particularly minds the job, it is not one we relish either. So, one day last week, I watched Robert Plant chase Sylvie at least 100 yards; it was personal for him. After that, I promised her that Jason and I would kill him within the next 24 hours.

Then, I was coming out of the big garden, and I apparently offended him and he launched himself at me. I whacked him three times with a stick before he gave up. It's a little funny how scary an six pound rooster can be. I always think of the folk tale about how all the other animals were afraid of the rooster because he carried fire on his head.

Anyway, Jason and I killed him that evening. Now, he's in the compost pile. I'm watching Mick Jagger pretty closely, because we just cannot tolerate a really bad rooster.

Late Winter and the Chicken Coop

I sometimes feel frustrated when trying to vet an idea online in that an idea that seems good two days or even a month in might be a total bomb a year later. This post is to help anyone thinking about a permanent chicken coop.

First, in Vermont, chickens are pretty limited in outside time in winter. If they land in deep snow, they just sit there and freeze. Extra ranging space must either be sheltered or at least shoveled. If you have been following the blog, then you know our new cow shed is incomplete and the chickens, Violet, and the twins are sharing the shed that was supposed to be for the chickens only this winter.

There were a few days in January that were so bitter that we made sure Violet could get into the shed/barn all day. That means the chickens were confined to their smaller coop area, because otherwise Violet would get into their coop and eat all their food. Bad for the chickens, bad for Violet.

Now Violet and the calves are confined to the shed. The chickens actually began eating the calves' soft baby hooves the first day, so they were once again relegated to their small coop. This coop was never intended to be the only space for the thirty chickens, and it got smelly after very little time. Even really the cold nights last week did not freeze all the water in there, and the wet is where the main odor is. We've put down hay to trap what we can, but it's not ideal.

We did manage to open their outside door, which had been frozen shut and completely impracticable. With the spring thaw, there was enough clear ground that they could happily range outside. Today and tomorrow, we're supposed to get in the neighborhood of 12" of snow. Again, because the March sun is stronger, this snow will not stick around too long- most likely. But spring in Vermont can be a fickle thing; we could have another foot of snow now and again for at least a couple of weeks.

I still think the permanent coop is easier on the chickens. They are easier to train; it took only a day or so before they learned that we do NOT want them going through the people door, which is the door we had been using for them all winter. They are not picking at each other much, though that sign of stress is evident. The red hens in particular are picking at the brahmas and cochins. All the ladies are still laying in the nest boxes, which is much preferable to having to search for eggs in a dirty coop.

And their coop is dirty. If you already keep chickens, you know how filthy birds are. I can tell this is not an arrangement a bird would make in the wild. I keep a paint scraper in the coop so I can scrape the accumulation of droppings off the top of the nest boxes and roosts. Their water often has poop in it because they perch on the side of the bowl. (We have to use a plastic/rubber bowl in winter to deal with frozen water two to three times a day.) I think we should figure out a different door configuration that would make dealing with the accumulation of bedding easier. The bedding is SUPPOSED to build up in the winter; it actually helps heat the coop a bit. However, the door just gets more difficult to operate, especially now that there's so much cow bedding on the outside of the door. I will also look at ways to give them a little more wind protection without completely destroying circulation. The shed was supposed to be board and batten, but the battens never got put up. I would like to get battens on the whole shed.I would also like to make their outside door different; I would like to be able to open it for ventilation even if there is snow piled outside. I would like it to be arranged such that we COULD tend them from that door if the need ever arose again.

I do NOT like this arrangement for the chickens, but next winter will be different.We can certainly finish the cow shed between now and November, so the chickens can again have this entire sheltered space next winter.

Robert Plant and Mick Jagger

Robert Plant

Mick Jagger

Meet our new roosters!

Jason and I were doing some last minute Christmas shopping and chatting with the woman behind the counter. She jokingly said, "You're not wanting a rooster are you?" Much to her surprise, I gave an unequivocal yes.

Within a week of Elvis' death, one of the red hens had taken over and she was being quite mean to the other hens. Admittedly, a rooster isn't all sweetness and light, but he shouldn't have it in for one particular hen. The main way a rooster "hurts" a hen is that he inevitably pulls the feathers from her head and between her wings when he mates with her. This red hen and begun keeping the lower hens away form the food and drawing blood occasionally.

It turns out this woman and her family had gotten their order of hens late in the summer and included were at least two roosters. They live in the city and could not keep the roosters and she was delighted to find out someone wanted them. She offered to pay me to take them she was so happy. I explained that only one would probably live, but she was inured to that as well.

So, a couple of weeks later she called to say they would be passing through and could they bring four roosters. When they dropped them off, they told me their names and which was the favorite of whom, and then they left. We killed the two Aracauna type roosters the next morning, because we knew we did not want either of them. The other two are a Buff Orpington and a Rhode Island Red. The red is beautiful and seemed dominant, so we planned to keep him and named him Mick Jagger. I was sorry about the Orpington, because he would make a lovely Robert Plant with his flowing golden neck feathers.

Then it seemed like the two of them might be able to get along, so we did not kill either of them. We had wondered whether Elvis was a little overworked with thirty hens to tend, and if the two of them could get along, maybe they would live longer. I'm not sure this was the best choice, and we might have to kill Mick Jagger eventually; he's definitely getting on Robert Plant's nerves and suffering the consequences. They were confined to the smaller coop space during the very cold weather, but now that they can move around a bit more, Mick Jagger hasn't had any more wounds.

FYI- the discoloration at the tips of their combs is frostbite damage.

Elvis Has Left the Building

I've known Elvis, our rooster, has not been feeling well since the first cold snap. Then, he quit going out to scratch with the hens. His comb faded and he quit avoiding us so strenuously. Then, the other day, he just let Jason pick him up.

This morning he was lying in the same spot in the coop, not roosting, that he was yesterday morning. The hens were being kind enough, which for chickens means they were not pecking at him. I figured he was probably happier with them as he shuffled off, so I let him be. This evening when I went to do chores, he was still in the same spot, but the hens were scratching hay over him so that his back half was covered. He was still looking around, and this seemed wrong to me. I tried to get him to move, but he wouldn't, so I gently moved him to another spot. He rolled over on his side, which is not a position chickens mostly choose, and then the hens began to investigate. SO, I moved him again, at which point he went into death throes.

RIP Elvis- you were a good rooster.

What Polite Chickens

We have thirty laying hens and one rooster. We have that many to try to guarantee eggs through the winter when even with a light on them, production goes way down. Last year, we did not get eggs from some time in October until late December. I'll admit, it seemed a little unfair to be feeding all those chickens and getting no eggs. The problem was they all molted at pretty much the same time.

This year, I also noticed a dip in production in September, just about the time I agreed to use eggs for a barter. Still, we kept getting enough eggs, and I watched the flock to see what was going on. It was pretty obvious that three or four chickens were molting. A few weeks later, we suddenly got closer to two dozen eggs again. In under a week, we were getting only five and another batch of hens showed signs of molting. And so it has gone the whole fall. Now, I think the last few have almost finished getting feathers and we should go back to close to two dozen eggs a day.

While it has been a little annoying, we have continued to get eggs daily, unlike last year when we had to buy eggs for more than two months while feeding thirty hens. It seems awfully considerate of them to have gone to the trouble to coordinate their molting this way, and they do look prettier with fresh feathers, as you can see in this picture. That poor buff hen lost those hiny feathers last winter when she didn't properly groom herself, and now she's getting more. Don't you know THAT will make her warmer.

Another Chicken Harvest

We bagged the chickens today, sending most to others' freezers, and tucking twenty into our own. The birds came in at a good weight, averaging 6.5 pounds. The first year, they averaged 6 and last year they were only 4.5.

The first year, we did not kill them until 13 weeks. They did not seem to gain much that last week, so we decided to kill them earlier the following year. Part of the deal is that once they get a certain size, they really eat a lot, so you have to compare what they might gain to the cost of feed.

Last year, we tried a different food that was not specifically formulated for maximizing growth. We also killed them at about 11 weeks. That was one depressing harvest, as we killed chicken after chicken that were so obviously smaller than the year before.

This year, we fed them "grower" food, and we supplemented with all of our waste milk. The past two years, we really didn't have much milk to spare for chickens. Since most of our milk is going into butter this year, and we're not sharing with a calf, that left gallons of skimmed milk for the chickens.

About a month ago, I helped a friend kill his chickens. His were a different variety, one that is more manipulated to grow big and fast, and I knew they would be bigger than ours. Still, I looked at them one week, and we both thought they looked a little small; the next week when we killed them, they averaged 8 pounds. I had a bit of chicken envy, and I upped the amount of milk our birds were getting.

A couple of weeks after that, a friend killed her chickens, which were a breed similar to ours, and hers all came in around 5.5 pounds. Now, maybe that sounds plenty big, but there is another meal on a six pound chicken; that half pound of meat really does make difference. Also, when you're putting 6 pound chickens in the freezer, none of the grain costs seem to matter; whereas when we sold 4.5 pound chickens at a price per pound that had counted on them being 6 pounds, it was painful. My friend's experience made me worry about whether ours would be big enough on execution day.

We picked up the chicken rig the evening before, and we felt pretty good about getting everything going, as we had used this setup the past two years. Well, harvest morning, we could not get this scalder to light. Jason worked and worked with it; he took the propane tank and had it topped off just in case that was the problem. Our friend showed up to help, and he worked on it. We got a huge pot of water heating on a propane burner, and still Jason and our friend tried to figure out the problem with the scalder. They actually had a good idea of the problem, but we were already two hours into our harvest and not a single chicken had been killed.

That's when Sylvie let all sixty chickens out of the fence.

Finally, chickens were rounded up, water was at temperature, and we were off. The rest of the day was uneventful. We realized that the scalder was nowhere near as important as the plucker and killing cones. We spent roughly 4 hours doing in 60 chickens; our friend, as well as Ezra and Phaedra learned how to eviscerate, Sylvie learned how to clean gizzards. It was quite a team operation.

Unfortunately, there were no free hands for a camera, so I'll try to describe the one thing I wished I had a picture of. At about 3:00, I looked at Jason, and he had chicken blood all down his neck, splattered across his face, and all over his clothes as he grimly set about killing the next chicken.

The Permanent Chicken Coop

For two years, we moved our chickens around the field in this :

There came a point last summer when we just could not make time to move the chickens anymore. Also, anywhere we moved them, no matter if it was only for a day, they pretty quickly decimated the spot; our sandy soil cannot even stand up to a chicken.

We noted that they got much calmer and easier to deal with when we were not moving them around all the time. We also found that they ranged pretty far and wide doing their chicken business. And let's face, it was much easier on us to leave them be. The eggs were easier to gather, they were more likely to be in a safe place when it came time to roost, and they still did the work we most wanted them to do- dispersing cow pats.

This past summer, we began in the same way, knowing that we wanted to have a permanent arrangement for them. I wanted whatever it would be ready by the time the meat bird chicks arrived at the beginning of July so that we did not have to brood them in the house again. We worked frantically for two weekends and we now have a fixed coop.

It is in what has been the cow shed. I would say the thirty layers look quite comfortable in it. Just to the left there is the brooding space, which was plenty big for the sixty meat birds for the first month of their very short lives.

This coop is not all I hoped for, yet it functions better than any I've had to go into so far. The fact that it is more square means the chickens and I are not chasing each other as I tend to chores in the coop. They are less stressed by our presence because they can get out of our way. They are also all laying in the nest boxes- except for one who insists on depositing her eggs on a particular bale of hay in the barn.

Come winter, they can have this whole structure to move around in, which will be nicer for them than being confined to the coop only. The past two winters, they have stayed in the very big greenhouse. I figure they can adapt to the smaller digs.

They spend the night and morning locked in the coop to maximize the chances for the eggs all being in the nest boxes. Then they range all over the property the rest of the day.

The only problem has been with fencing garden spaces. I haven't quite figured that out, so they ate all our berries this year. Maybe next year I can outsmart the chickens.

Raising Chicks

If you've dreamed of raising your own chickens, you have probably read the long list of things you must do to keep them alive- keeping them an exact temperature, feeding them only chick starter, giving no scraps, etc. You may have decided not to handle them too much because they might get dropped. Maybe you've designed the perfect brooder.

I'm going to share with you a bit of advice the lady at the feed store gave me- "They're chickens!"

Many moons ago my friend got chickens, and within the first twenty-four hours she had offered them apple. It did not take long to assess that this would not kill day old chicks. When ours arrived the other day, we gave them their initial beak dip, a tray of chicken mash, and then a few seed heads from the garden.

I do use the chicken electrolyte stuff for the first couple of days because I figure being shipped is not that easy on a chicken's system. However, we are not using special chick food this time. Maybe they will not grow as fast, but I'm not too worried about that. And the seed heads lead to another way in which I officially disregard some of what I've read about raising chicks.

Those chicks were SO excited by the seed heads that I let the kids take the "pet" chickens outside to see what they would do. The thing that should NOT have been a surprise is that these precocial birds began foraging immediately. They love being in the grass and when given the opportunity, lay on their sides to try their hands at dust bathing. Also, they enjoy feasting on bugs; the children bring them crickets and grasshoppers, but they like looking for them.

They liked it so much that I began questioning the whole brooding them thing. We brood chicks in great big plastic tubs with modified lids. We put pine bedding in the bottom. The fact is, even with pretty rigorous attention, they smell. I have accepted a bit of odor as a given. However, seeing them in the grass made me think that even if they spent only part of the day in the grass the odor in the house would be less.

The next question was keeping them that perfect 90 degrees they supposedly require. I already do not use a thermometer. It is much easier to monitor the chicks. If they are all clustered together or peeping loudly, they are cold and need the light on or closer. If they are all avoiding the light, they are too hot. We were not keeping the light on at all within the first two hours because no amount of moving the light away seemed to bring them into a fluidly moving cluster. Once the light was off, they happily moved throughout the tub doing their chicken business. They still definitely want the light at night, and they want it pretty close to the top of the tubs.

Since they did not seem to want a light during the day, I decided to build a small chick "tractor". The idea was for it to be small enough that Ezra and Phaedra could carry it, but big enough for all the chicks to be in it comfortably. With ample help in figuring out how to do an a-frame, we now have a 3 x 5 grazer. It is about 3 feet tall. It is not predator proof and it has no nest box, but it means the chicks can spend part of each day on grass. There are, of course, problems.

The chicks are so small that it must be completely flush with the ground or they can pop out. You might think, "Big deal!" unless you have tried to put a stiff frame completely flush against the ground. Even very smooth ground has slight variations that would allow a chick to get out. The solution has been to put rolled up beach towels outside the edge to cover any gaps. And within a week or two, they will be big enough that this will be less of a problem.

I wish I has made it narrower because it is pretty hard to fish those little bits of fluff from the far edges. I did put in two doors, but that isn't that much help. I wish I had incorporated handles into the pieces that are about halfway up each side so it would be still easier to carry. I wish I had framed out the door area to give it a bit more security and rigidity.I'm wondering if a couple of squares would work better than a rectangle. And so on.

Still, I'm glad they can be on the grass some. I figure they will be better foragers, which is part of their work. We have been baffled in the past by how long it takes chickens to start foraging when we finally move them from the brooder to outside. Maybe this will solve that problem.

Night of the Living Dead Chicken

This is a gruesome animal story, so skip it if you're feeling all vegetarian or something.

We have hens who are heading into their fourth summer. Mostly, people do not keep layers this long unless they're pets. Ours are in a gray area, and the older hens are scheduled for the axe this summer. There was one older hen who had pretty much quit acting like a chicken; she sat in the nest box all the time. And before you ask if she wasn't just broody, other signs of broodiness were absent and this has gone on for about three months.

The other night, Jason and I grabbed her and brought her up to the house to kill her. We had a discussion about which way to do it- chopping off her head or slitting her throat. I pressed for the throat method because it had been so easy, quick, and seemingly painless when I killed the spare roosters in the fall.

Time for a slight sidetrack. I once helped a friend with a chicken harvest; it was her first time and she was using killing cones and trying to kill them as humanely as possible. Something did not go quite right with the first few and they were still alive after bleeding for ten minutes. She tweaked what she was doing and the rest were dead within a minute. I decided then that I preferred being thorough and quick to being especially humane.

Back to the other evening- The bald, black hen put up no fuss and seemed pretty limp even when we took her out of the coop. Jason carried her upside down to the house because this position seems to calm chickens down. Really! try it sometime.

Jason held her by her feet and I slit her throat and she proceeded to not really bleed. There was a brief debate about whether she was so close to dead that her heart wasn't really beating strongly and I cut her throat more thoroughly. I think at this point one of us mentioned that the idea of zombies must have come from someone who slaughtered animals.

Still not much blood. I cut her throat until I hit her neck bones. Then there was a little more blood, but not like we usually see. I had gotten to her neck bones, so we put her on top of the compost and waited for her to bleed out. She wasn't moving, so we covered her with a thick layer of straw. I stayed outside another twenty minutes because I kept worrying we hadn't actually killed her. The House of Usher was definitely on my mind. I finally went in the house satisfied that she was dead under there.

The next morning, we went down to do chores. Jason carried milk up to the house and I went to turn off the water and glanced over at the chickens. (This is a good time to mention how far the chickens are from the compost pile right now. It's maybe a hundred yards with a steep, brush covered hill in between.) There was one of our few black chickens sitting outside the fence; you know, one of the ones left since we killed a black one the night before. And this chicken was looking pretty limp.

My thought was, "You've got to be kidding!" Then, Jerry Lee and his living hens all gathered on the inside of the fence, so I could easily count three living black hens on the inside of the fence.

Did a fox dig the dead chicken out of the compost and deposit her by the chicken fence? That was one of many thoughts racing through my head and I walked toward the chicken fence. Then, she lifted her head and looked at me. Telltale Heart, anyone? I scanned the field to be sure no one from PETA was watching and grabbed the chicken by her feet and marched up to the house.

Jason grabbed the cleaver and we severed her head completely from her body. She hasn't reemerged from the compost since, so we're pretty sure she's dead. I'm not going to check.

Chicken Management

We had Thanksgiving at a friend’s house last week, and this friend knows many interesting people who have skill sets I could only dream of. One of the guests was quite knowledgeable about chickens, and she explained to me that roosters could peck each others’ heads until one died. She expressed surprise when I told her about our two roosters and told me about her brain damaged rooster she is currently nursing.

So, here’s the rundown on our chicken situation. We have two roosters. One is a lace Wyandotte another friend gave to us because she had too many roosters. He is about one month older than our pullets, but he’s noticeably bigger than the other roosters. He is so beautiful; he is also a good breed to create our own flock of chickens brought up from our own hens. A little genetic variation helps to have a healthier flock, and, as I said, he is so beautiful.

At the time we added him to the layer flock, we had six New Hampshire Red roosters. It’s not that we wanted six or seven roosters. Back in June we ordered a “straight run”; that means we got whichever chickens came along- they were not sexed. We could have ordered all hens or all roosters, and the hatchery would guarantee 80% accuracy. Since the minimum order is 25 chicks, and we did not need 25 hens, we asked for a mix of roosters and hens. We had seven older hens, and the new batch of 26 chicks included eight roosters. The plan had been to kill all the extra roosters. After a couple of accidents- like the fox, cat, neighbor’s dog, and coop attack- we have 17 hens, which easily justifies keeping two roosters.

The top rooster is the Wyandotte and he earned his name the second day he was with the flock. The older hens did not give a fig for him, and the pullets were too young to be of any interest. He is a very flashy black and white with fluffy feathers and a definite strut. He would drop his wings as he moved close to an older hen, then kick a little with one of his feet and do a sashay. I named him Elvis on the spot.

The one I liked best of the six red roosters had this outlandishly big comb. He had earned my favor by keeping Nico away from the free ranging hens and then by seeking Nico out to play with him. He was definitely the top rooster before Elvis came along. His personality drew my attention, and then his comb made him easy to pick out from the rest of the roosters. He is now named Jerry Lee.

Once he joined the flock, Elvis kept the other roosters away from the older hens. He most particularly chased away Jerry Lee. I figured as the red hens matured, Jerry Lee would claim a few of them for himself, and Elvis could just keep the more mature ladies. That’s not how it played out. As the red hens came of age, Elvis added them to his flock. I wondered if it was just too many roosters, and if the animosity would subside if there were fewer roosters.

So, one day the kids and I culled the extra five roosters.

Things did calm way down in the chicken yard, but Jerry Lee seemed to be even more of an outcast. A few of the red hens shunned Elvis, but they shunned Jerry Lee as well. I had to start putting food out in multiple places so Elvis could not keep these hens and Jerry Lee from the food.

If you’ve read this far you might be wondering why I did not just kill Elvis, that big meanie. He’s a very good rooster. He calls the hens in, he lets them know if he’s found a delicious tidbit, he never eats before them, he rounds up stragglers when it’s time to roost, he’s very watchful, he doesn’t let then hens pick at each other, and he’s really beautiful.

And that’s where things stood when I visited with the knowledgeable chicken lady on Thanksgiving Day. As you might imagine, I kept thinking of Jerry Lee’s wondrous comb, and I thought about how I want two coops next year on opposite ends of the property so that the chickens do not get moved around so much. The next morning, Ezra and I segregated Jerry Lee and eight of the hens. We put all four black hens with him, because Elvis did not seem to like the black hens. Then we added the red hens in who seem to fly out of the fence the most often; we figure they must not be too fond of Elvis or they would stay closer to home.

I’m not quite sure how it will work this winter, but I currently plan to alternate which flock gets to roam. That is, I’ll alternate when I feel like the new flock has melded into a flock. For now, everyone is locked up, getting used to this arrangement.

Chicken Harvest- A Photo Essay

A Few Lessons about Chickens

1. Do not move their coop too far, even if it would work much better for your grazing plan. If you move it too far, and they cannot see it and you think they'll go there when they get ready to roost, you're wrong.

2. When your chickens cannot find their coop, they just might "roost" on the ground in the last place they remember it being. They might indeed be quite attached to the place their coop was the last time they slept in it.

3. An eight-pound cat can kill an almost grown rooster that comes close to outweighing the cat. That is, if the rooster has decided to roost on the ground because he couldn't find his coop.

4. It is REALLY unpleasant to look for chickens in the dark when it's raining.

5. Even if you have never had a predator problem, a chicken sleeping on the ground outside the electric fence MIGHT get eaten by a fox.

6. If you look at your ten-week-old meat birds who only waddle when they want to move anywhere and think you'll easily herd all 60 of them to a new spot across the road, you're in for trouble.

7. Even really fat meat birds can move fast when they are frightened of the strange surface of the road.

8. Yelling at your children because the meat birds are all over the place on the wrong side of the road will not actually get the chickens where you want them.

9. If you chase a meat bird until it's flapping its wings in fright, you'll be able to catch it sooner because it will get tired.

10. A fishing net is an excellent tool for catching chickens.

11. Once enough chickens are in the fence, the other chickens will want to join them, so you can just get some in the fence at a time. The others will follow.

12. It could actually take five people one-and-a-half hours to move 60 chickens 20 feet. You do the math.

Eggs

What are people thinking when they get eggs from one or two companies who send eggs to SEVENTEEN states? Do you think that those chickens are happy? Do you think there is any chance at all that the chickens are genuinely healthy? Do you think unhealthy chickens are going to lay healthy eggs all the time?

Chickens are easy to keep. Eggs are clean and sterile unless poorly handled. There is no reason for us to set ourselves up to fear our food. What do you need to do to secure your food?

I will continue to raise chickens and I will continue to pay a hefty sum for eggs when my chickens are not laying enough to meet our egg demands. Because I'm willing to do that, I can eat homemade mayonnaise and eggs over medium. I can stick my figure in cookie dough and cake batter and let the children lick the bowl. I will not blanch over any recipe that calls for a raw egg in the final product because I know the eggs I'm eating are not from some huge factory with hens stacked on top of each other so that the factory can then send eggs to seventeen states.

Do not let yourself be so far removed from your food source that you cannot know whether or not to trust it.

To All the Chickens in the World

I like chickens. They make the nicest noises as you move among them and they tend to their business with such industry. When given the space they need, they're tidy and pretty to look at. It's fun to just watch them taking care of all their chicken business.

The chicks we're raising into a new batch of laying hens are particularly funny to us right now. They are able to get out of the fence, and they do. When we're sitting at the table, we can see them moving around in the back field. And they move mostly as a unit. One of them will have her idea for the day and take off running, and all the rest suddenly follow. It looks like they're on maneuvers. There will be a wave of chicks moving swiftly from the edge of the field to the coop then suddenly back to the trees. Or when we go out to feed them, they are finally learning that our arrival usually is for good tidings. They will come running to us, then suddenly remember they're still quite afraid of us and run away again. One or two roosters follow us pretty steadily as we do our chores until we look at them.

The meat birds seem sadly dumb at the moment. I remember thinking this of the other chicks so there is some hope they will have some personality. Meat birds, even the slower growing ones, hit a point at which their feathers cannot quite keep up with their body growth. Ours are at that point and look bald in certain areas. They are most definitely in an ugly stage. And, even though we have them on grass and move them along, they smell. Animals that eat and drink that much just make a lot of waste, and that waste has an odor. Still- I'm happy to see them growing so well.

Finally, our older hens are looking better. They are getting feathers where they had been pecked out. They are definitely happy to see us and hope for treats. We have different favorites, but no one likes the Buff Orpingtons; those two are too nasty to the other hens. One poor little hen gets her head pecked so often she's a bit bald. They have so much room, that the Buffs must have hunt her down to do their evil deeds.

But still, I like chickens.

Two Down

A friend once told me that farming meant we would accidentally do cruel things. So, I felt only slight guilt when I relished the death of the caterpillar that I found on a newly leafless little pear sapling. I've tried to make chicken slaughtering as panic-free as possible. I've tried to make any animals that depend on us as comfortable as possible to make up for whatever mistake we were bound to make.

And yesterday morning, we made our first cruel error.

The month old chicks are in a chicken tractor that's about 8 feet long. We move it one to three times per day because they love to eat the bugs and grass seeds they find. They quickly learned to walk along with it when we slide it forward. One would occasionally squawk, but we'd stop and check and everyone would be fine. However, yesterday morning when we scooted it along, there was a squawk, and it was not alright.

For some reason Soup did not scoot along with the tractor and his leg was very broken. At first we thought he might be fine and just watched to see what he would do. I should mention here that Soup had been shaping into a confident, friendly rooster. He was first at the door when we changed food or water and he never ran away from us. He never fought with the other roosters, and he never was attacked and did not attack chicken or human. We assumed it was because every other chicken understood he was the boss.

There he was, top rooster, wounded in the coop, and the chickens did what chickens do. They attacked him. As soon as that started, we hopped into the coop and got him out. That's when we discovered that one of his legs was actually dangling. Oh, how we wanted to just walk away and act like nothing happened. But we didn't. Before 6:30 yesterday morning, we had killed our best rooster.

Then, when I was tending meat birds, I discovered a limping chick. I'm not sure how injured this chick is, but there is no way it can compete for food in a group of meat birds. I was ready to euthanize another chick, but Phaedra stepped in and wants to nurse it back to health. I really wanted to say no; I was really clear with her that this bird has no chance of becoming a pet. Yet, I remembered a friend who apparently tended animals all through childhood, and her mother supported her and I knew the chick could get no worse a deal with Phaedra than it would get with me. So I relented. Even if the chick dies under Phaedra's care, no one has lost anything more.

I figure these animals are still getting better care than almost any other animal I've ever consumed. That knowledge is not exactly assuaging my guilt and grief.

Chickens

Last Monday, as we sat at breakfast planning for how to welcome the cow, Violet, and how Jason was going to drive the livestock trailer the first time, the telephone rang. I should point out that being up here in the far, far north, the sun greets us well before 5:00, and we tend to be awake by 5:30 on a summer morning when we're sleeping in. So, for the phone to ring during breakfast is a remarkable event. It was not even 7:00.

It was the post office letting us know that we had 27 chicks sitting in a box just waiting for us to pick up. I leapt from the table and the children leapt after, and we made our mad dash to the post office.  (Quick aside- I think the postal service is amazing.)

I knew the chicks were supposed to arrive last week, and I had written down that they were supposed to arrive Monday, but when I looked back at my notes, that just did not make sense to me. Things don't ship on Sunday, so they would have to ship on Saturday and just sit somewhere until Monday in order to pick them up Monday. Needless to say, we were not exactly ready.

The people at the post office are not nearly as excited about chicks as we are. There were not happy smiles wishing us luck, just a quick, "Here are your chicks. Good-bye!" So we hustled home with them peeping away in Ezra's lap. I only had to tell him 80 times during the 5 minute drive to keep the box closed.

At home, we quickly assembled our brooder, dipped their beaks in water, and set them inside. By day two, we had spread them into two boxes just for an excuse to handle them all. They muck up their water quickly, and one of the roosters already charges and pecks at us when we're changing the water or food. That's funny now because we weighs less than two sticks of butter, but I've already started calling him Soup.

They grow really quickly and eat like they're growing quickly. This is a picture from last week. That one is not dead; it's just what chicks do. They walk around pecking and drinking and eating, then suddenly they fall over asleep. It can be rather alarming.

Here are pictures from this morning. Note how many more feathers they have, and the one bird up in front is Soup.

So Much to Do

I went to the NOFA winter conference yesterday. I attended one workshop on using a hoophouse to winter laying hens, and how this can be used to increase the fertility in the hoophouse as well as creating compost for other gardens. The next workshop was about the security and resilience one can incorporate into a homestead. The last was about agroforestry. I headed home with a dazed feeling.

The hoophouse seminar was pretty straightforward and well- presented. The idea is to create a bedded pack (lots and lots of pine shavings) for the hens to live and move around on in the hoophouse. Come spring, most of this is moved to other gardens, but you also leave some in the hoophousee to be worked into the soil.

Notables:

• The hens should only be wintered there every three years to avoid a salt build up in the soil.
• The doors should be open as much as possible, regardless of weather, or else you create health issues for the chickens. I also know from one friend's experience that there can be a moisture problem if there is not enough ventilation.
• Pine shavings breakdown faster than straw, but some people have good luck using straw in a bedded pack.
• If the hens smell, you've already missed the point at which you should have put down another layer of bedding.
• When you smell ammonia you are losing nitrogen to the air instead of keeping it in the bedding/future compost.

More later on the other two seminars.