Category Archives: chickens, etc.

Aichi (nappa) cabbage:  kimchi-ready

Ah, September!  I always love your cool nights and your warm days.  School busy-ness has changed the household routine, as has homework.  The long-season crops like cabbage and Brussels sprouts have begun to flesh out after their Summer of Despair (hot weather, too much rain).  And of those long-season crops, our eyes have cast themselves on the feather-clad crops.  How long before Winner Winner Chicken Dinner?

Dinner on the hoof

Not long at all.  The Freedom Rangers (who, though in their tractor at night, now truly range free during the day) are doing quite well, fattening up nicely.  I am growing enough of them to have enough to sell, thus tipping the meat chicken bank book into the black.  (We’ll keep 18 of the 28 for ourselves.)

Pretty little Red Hen

So too are the turkeys.  Ruby hatched enough for me to sell a few poults this spring, and I am raising two birds for others and one for ourselves, like last year.  This means the turkeys, likewise, are self-sustaining.

Uday, Raghad, and Qusay in a quieter moment

We’ll all be quite glad to see the turkeys off the farm, though.  We have two young toms and a hen, and, while the hen is no problem, the boys are thugs.  I call them Qusay and Uday.  Gobblegobble!

Thought I would show you the chicks:  It was a big week for them.

They’re out in the tractor now!  Yes, the little darlings are less than three weeks old, yet I have cast them out onto the cruel, cruel world.  Am I heartless? Hah.  Hardly.  I have been watching the nighttime lows and eagerly watching their feather development.  The high dew point overnight is what tends to worry me.  There’s enough fluff on those babies still and when fluff, unlike feathers, gets damp, they get chilled.  But the weather has remained hot, including overnight (not-very) lows.  So they’re out.

All 28 babies are doing well in the tractor.  This tractor (6′x12′) is fine for all of them now and I need only move it once a day so far.  The high grass is fun for them, I think:  they stalk bugs and each other.  They fly about like fat sparrows, skip-hop-flapping from one end to the other, releasing the bottomless energy that seems to be the province of the young.

Still cute, yes?

They’re growing well on their chick starter feed (20% protein), but since they arrived I have been supplementing their rations with yogurt- or kefir-soaked scratch, crumbled hard-boiled eggs, and worms from the garden.  They also get poultry grit thrown in their food (rocks, basically) to help those little gizzards do the tough job of grinding up their food.

Nothing like the hottest week of the year to receive 154 chicks in the mail.

I didn’t order the weather, but I did order the chicks.  Granted, 125 of the birds are going to homes other than my own, but…I do have method to the madness of ordering chicks in July.

Chicks, let’s be clear, are a lot of work!  I find it best to let a hen raise them (either her own or foster birds) and that has worked for me in the past, but a 100% farm-hatched meat bird operation has not.  So I order in, and play Mother Hen myself.  If I have to raise them myself, I find the best time to do so is when it is warm, even hot, outside.  I only need the lamps on overnight for that first crucial fluffy week.

I supplement the home-hatched roosters with a slow-growing meat bird, tractored out on pasture.  Last year we received 25 Freedom Ranger birds.  I loved the taste and tenderness, and they grew out quickly, but…the first week was tough as I lost three chicks, and all three chicks plus three more experienced spraddle leg.  Spraddle leg can be caused by three things:  a too-slippery surface (like their transport box) for the first few days of life, old eggs, or a food deficiency.  It takes two days for the chicks to reach us by mail (coming from Pennsylvania!  go figure!) and if it happens to these birds, that’s it, no more Freedom Rangers for me.

Considering it’s one of the most commonly asked questions I get, I will document the care of these birds a bit more than I have done in the past.  They’ll be here until October, and then they’ll hang out in our freezer.  Stay tuned.

This–and chicken soup–would make anyone feel better

So.  Last week was an eventful one:  I spent it in the hospital.

Granted, I was not sick.  Our daughter was.  Asthma.  Scared us all half to death.  She’s fine now; in fact, she’s playing tennis Monday and looking forward to snow tubing and cross-country skiing on her upcoming birthday weekend.

But yes, hospitals.  She learned the important life skills of opening a milk carton and opening a bag of chips.  How they expect patients to get well while eating such crap is beyond me, but then again, perhaps that’s the point and icky food helps the bottom line.  So she sampled her first powdered potatoes and gravy, breaded chicken, iceberg lettuce, white bread and Froot Loops.  And her parents ate take-out for all meals.  Yes, a greenhouse salad was a welcome event on Saturday night.

I would spend all day and night at the hospital, and return home in the morning to milk the goat, feed the critters, answer work emails, and shower. Fun week!

Thursday morning:  While letting the goats out for their morning passagiatta to the mailbox and back, I heard the tweeting of the feed-stealing sparrows in the chicken coop and went to chase them out.  Instead, five tiny madly peeping bantam chicks greeted me in the straw, with a mightily defensive mother flying at my head.  What an idiot, that hen:  who sits eggs in January?  It was maybe 15 degrees outside and there was no way the chicks could live in the cold, so I collected them in my pockets to put them in a makeshift brooder.  I turned around to see that the goats had followed me and were now themselves eating the chickens’ feed!  Dang caprines!

I flew at them, pocket chicks shrieking, snow flying, lunging with the dog to get them out of the henyard.  Feathers flew as all the yard birds took cover, making a huge ruckus, crowing, cackling, and the damnable guineas pealing.  The goats ambled out, licking layer crumbles off their lips, while the dog and I fumed out behind them.   It was an amusing sight, surely.

And yes:  I simply thought the mother hen had escaped about three weeks ago. She’d flown out of the henyard and I assumed she’d, you know, made a break and gotten lost and/or eaten.  In hindsight of course I had wondered why I hadn’t any bantam eggs in a while, but I also figured it’s the dead of winter so goodness maybe the girls were giving themselves a break.

The babies are now living in the toasty confines of the goat shed.  Anyone want any bantam chicks?  Just let me know!

First goats, then bunnies, then turkeys…now chicks!

Here’s the first chick conceived and hatched on our farm.  Congratulations go to the bantam for sitting so patiently.  This is a half Araucana, half black sex link (Barred Rock/Rhode Island Red) so…s/he’s quite a mutt, chicken-wise.  So tiny!

Small packages don’t get much cuter than this.  Cheepcheep!  Happy Friday….

Chicken Patty is sitting again.  And she’s cluckingly, spittingly mad.  Doesn’t she look tough?

Amanda asked what one does with a broody hen determined to sit on unfertilized eggs.  I had been hoping at least one of our 25 hens would get the urge:  the clock is ticking as we do want some chicken in the freezer this year.  This is our first year with roosters, too, so with hope the eggs, should someone decide to sit them, would be fertile.  I had even gone so far as to secure the lease of an incubator when blammo! Everyone has the urge to sit.

Last year we had no roosters but Chicken Patty (our lone meat bird) went broody.  Not willing to miss an opportunity, I let her sit on some duds for a week and THEN I stuck six day-old chicks under her, one at a time, substituting chick for egg.  This worked!  Jerusha and Johanna and Nice Rose are clucking around the barnyard today and their three brothers went to Freezerville.  But I know this plan only works if you actually want more birds.

I have no direct answer for you, Amanda, but I am sure others will tell you in the comments.  Eventually, this too shall pass…perhaps harvesting the eggs while wearing gardening gloves is an option.  I have heard extremes like sticking the girl in a wire dog kennel, off the ground, and she’ll come out of her broodiness in a day or two.   Me?  I wouldn’t go that far, but then again I want a broody bird or three.  Like most of chicken-keeping, it’s a matter of adjusting to their quirks (“Hey, my chickens are digging up my garden!”  “Well then get them out of your garden!”) that I have found to be both fun and somewhat frustrating about having them around.

I suppose they could say the same thing about me.  We’ve certainly got each other very well trained.

The bantams, true to their reputation, are broody little birds.  Here, a Golden Sebright and a Mille Fleur d’Uccles patiently wait out their confinement in an old dog kennel.  They’re sitting on about 2 dozen chicken and wild mallard (!!) eggs.

Chicken Patty says she wants to be the first meal coming out of the masonry oven.

And who in the world could take care of 17 children?  I don’t wish it on Ruby so the majority of them are now under lights.  She gets to raise the three we intend to keep.

And this little fellow has been living in and around my garden the last two weeks.  Very shy, you gotta wonder how he got where he is.  I explained it to my daughter this way:  “Do you remember when you lost your first balloon when we were at the county fair when you were 3?  Well, that’s probably what happened to this family when their little bird flew out the window.  There’s nothing you can do but cry and watch it fly away.”

Hey:  have a yen for a funny little bunny?  Live nearby?  Willing to part with $15?  Then email me!

You know you want one

Pedigreed Mini-Rex bunnies for sale:  black and black otter in color, born 3/3/10, just weaned, six total.  Super soft and cuddly!  Both parents are small, under 4 pounds.  $15 each.

I’ve wowed you with caprine couture, so how about hen habiliments?

Mary Ellen and The Colonel, our two full-sized roosters, have been fairly aggressive with a couple of our girls this winter.  They stand on their backs and pull the girls’ back feathers out in the heat of passion.  Poor biddies!  Time, then, for some costumes, straight from the bench of my dear mother-in-law’s whirring sewing machine.  And my dear husband whipped up this template for you to follow along at home.  Print it out on 8-1/2″x11″ paper.  Use elastic bands for the arm loops, heavy canvas for the body, and of course you can embroider “Keep Off” on the saddle itself!

Here’s a video

Poor Sister Wendy

As you can see from Helen’s and Caroline’s rears we need a few more.  Everyone else seems to be able to get out of the roosters’ way.

“She’s set it down, but it’s not food!” Disappointing Blanche, Nice Rose and Emilie just for a photo

So we passed something of a farm record last Friday:  one dozen eggs in one day.

Then, the next day, we got 13.  The next, 15.  Holy frittati!

This surprises me, though the numbers shouldn’t.  It’s one of those math puzzles I have such a mental block about:  I am getting eggs from hens whom I don’t consider egg-layers.  So, philosophically, I have three categories of chickens:  egg-layers, meat birds, and bantams.  The bantams, quarter-sized chickens, are simply cute yard decorations.  But all three categories of chicken (25 girls) lay eggs.  Year-round, apparently!  It really picked up after the December solstice.  So:  each bird lays an egg every 36 hours or so (less if they’re young) and so, duh, I should have a dozen eggs a day.

(If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, El…)

I “expect” eggs from my stalwarts like crazy Pauline the Egg Machine (she’s a Leghorn) and Verloe, the RIR.  And all the new egg birds are just that, new, so they’re in their most productive year.  Likewise, all those extra meat birds I couldn’t bring myself to slaughter (3 thus, still unnamed) AND their clutchmates are eggy now too…as are the cute Bantam chickens (Janet, LaToya, Rebbie and Featherfoot) with their even cuter half-sized eggs.

But yeah, we’re awash in eggs.  Luckily, I have customers!

Welcome, Edna!

About a week ago, we got a knock at the back door.  It was dark out (and we have no lights on the back porch) so we figured it was something pretty important.  Honestly, the only visitors we have out here are delivery people, and that is with enough regularity that we know their names, even their birthdates…anyway.  The other people who come to our door are proselytizing types, but that’s usually during daylight hours.

This was a neighbor who lived two doors down.  I had never met her.  But:  she had a chicken!  A poor, lonely chicken whose sisters had all been eaten by a raccoon who had clawed his way into their pen.  Could we possibly find a home for her in our flock?

So, here she is.  She’s a Buff Orpington, but is really tiny, and shy.  I’m hoping her ashy comb reddens up, but she’s beginning to feather out nicely.  I cornered her in the chicken condo for this picture:  you should have heard her clucking with indignation.  She’s been picked on, but she just usually hangs out with the other low-totempole chickens.

Queen Ruby

Ruby and Earl (the turkeys) are living with the chickens now too, because, well, they like the company as they miss the geese.  So:  this makes 31 birds in the back yard.  Wait:  did I just say that?  That’s a looottt of birds.

Nixie Knox says bawwwkbawwk!

We tried to tell her “But Nixie, everyone LOVES chicken!”

Nixie says I am so not amused.

Have a spooky holiday!  And parents:  Try to save some candy for the kids.

Happy days in the back pasture: Mama, Daddy and baby geese

The grand goose experiment is over.

We found a great home for our mated pair, Mel and Yoli, on Friday.  Monday was the day their babies went to the butcher.

Geese, chicks and tiny turkey at the far right center

I am a little wistful about Mel and Yoli. As goslings, I loved their soulful eyes, their yellow-trimmed gray coats, how solicitous they were to the turkeys (same age, but much tinier), allowing them to climb onto their backs and under their wings to sleep.  They grew to be sweet full-grown geese, flying around the place when released from their pen, always up for a gambol, a stroll about the property with us.  Puberty happened in spring and we found out I didn’t have two ganders and a goose, we had two geese and a gander.  The non-bonded girl goose became the odd girl out, and the first in the freezer.

Nest-sitting Yoli and three-day-old Jeffrey

Mel and Yoli (named after Tom’s great uncle and aunt, a kooky couple) had a radical personality transplant when they became parents.  Jeffrey was their first-hatched gosling, brought out into the world by Ruby our turkey hen.  Ruby knew he was no turkey, so in the pen with his parents he went, little fluffball that he was.  I figured Mel would either attack him or accept him.  (Yoli was sitting 10 eggs, her parenting energies thus directed elsewhere.)  Mel of course accepted Jeffrey and the six goslings that followed him.

Baby Turkey and the geese, doing a little puddle work in the driveway.  This is as close as I could ever get to them.

Nine geese is a lot for any farm, especially one without a pond.  Of the seven goslings, one died fairly soon after hatching and one gosling got “spirited away,” just vanished one night (first time that ever happened here).

Like anything on this farm, any new undertaking has to be a joint venture.  Tom neither liked the live geese nor liked them as dinner, so…I can cross geese off the list of self-sustaining, easily-raised home poultry.  It’s a bit of a shame because they’re more flavorful and easier to care for than chickens; they graze constantly when the grass is green and otherwise are much more self-sufficient.  They don’t even need a shelter in our climate!  They just need some dry straw to nest in so their feet don’t freeze overnight.  I am really glad Yoli and Mel have the opportunity to raise more babies in the future.  I really thought they were adorable.

The daylight is shortening yet we’re getting lots more eggs.  Magic?  Nope!  Young chickens.

Since we have kept chickens, I have always known who laid what.  This was not rocket science, as it’s rather easy to tell a white egg from a light or dark brown one, a spotted from a blue. This has been a rather convenient ability, as we can tell who’s ailing and who’s well, plus, it makes breakfast choices more easy:  “Whose eggs do you want today,” I ask the girl, “Pauline’s?  Letha’s?  You haven’t had Maggie’s in a while.”

But now, I find I am rather stymied at egg harvest time.  Lined up on their towel, newly washed and wet, I turn them over with my fingers.  It’s like we have chicken company or something, and the feeling is quite surprising.  Whose are YOU, little speckled one, little pointy brown one.  And new eggs from new chickens are indeed surprising.  Often, they don’t have the kinks worked out in the system, so double yolks are quite common, as is the somewhat gross jelly egg (soft, unformed shell) and–once–the egg-within-the-egg total freakout.

I am glad we like eggs.  With the wee bantam eggs, hard-shelled guinea eggs (guineas are stalwart daily layers in warm months, feedburners the cold months, so I guess it averages out), and now eggs from both laying hens AND meat chickens…we had better like them!

This is the year that we decided to move our chicken ranching up a level by breeding our own meat and egg birds.  Raising chicks, though rewarding, is hardly any human’s idea of a fun time:  it’s an ordeal.  And frankly, there is no substitute for Mama Hen as far as chicken smarts goes.  There’s too much to learn and we humans are poor teachers in the ways of All Things Chicken.

Step One in this venture: we’ll need two roosters, one for our egg girls and one for our meat girls.

Step Two was to decide what kind of egg-laying birds we wanted to breed.  Our motley egg-laying flock currently includes six dual-purpose (egg/meat) breeds (Australorps (Maggie), Orpington (Sarah), Wyandotte (Helen), Rhode Island (Verloe), Plymouth (Letha), Black Sex Link (Mary Ellen)), and two egg-laying breeds (Leghorn (Pauline), Ameraucana (Phyllis)); all hardy souls that can be found readily in almost any American henyard.  We wanted to try to raise birds that were threatened with disappearing according to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, and were a hardy, low-maintenance, calm bird, so we selected the dual-purpose Speckled Sussex, a breed known for its curiosity and kindness.

The Colonel

Step Three is to decide which of the meat roosters will remain to be THE rooster.  Chicken Patty raised six adopted meat chicks this spring, of which three were cockerels.  They are all currently in the henyard and so far one white slow-growing Cornish (like mama Patty) is showing promise of being a gentle soul. Chicken Patty, two red broiler chicks (Nice Rose and Sister) and one more white slow-growing Cornish hen (Girly) round out the meat bird crop, and all will soon have their own coop and run.  SO:  The name for the new meat-bird rooster?  The Colonel, of course!

Step Four in this venture was the acquisition of five bantam chicks.  Bantams are diminutive chickens:  usually they are a third to a quarter the size of regular ones.  Because they were bred for their size, chicken traits common in other birds (eggs, meat) were not a factor, nor quite frankly has any bantam selected for docility.  In fact, they’re rather flighty birds, both literally (they can fly anywhere) and figuratively, as in, they’re unapproachable.  They’re a lot like our guineas, in other words; lots of sturm-und-drang.  One of the quite useful traits that hasn’t been bred out of bantam chickens is the urge to sit eggs and raise chicks.  Should any of our girls decide not to sit their (now newly fertile) eggs, I figured having a few banty hens around would help as bantams don’t care whose eggs they sit on.  Consider them the surrogate mothers of the henhouse, our Plan B for incubation and hatching.

Poor little Ellis

Step Five isn’t really a step, as I thought I had thought this through.  Of the six Speckled Sussexes we had, one was a boy, Ellis, and therefore destined to be Egg Chicken King.  However, he became sick!  His illness caused me to break the #1 House Rule (No Poultry In The House Unless Plucked and Gutted) and did time in my office in a cardboard box, enjoying his scrambled eggs, milk and cornbread. I didn’t hold out much hope that he’d live, though, and it breaks my heart because he was so pretty.  Indeed, he died, a few days later.  There goes my hope of having home-hatched Speckled Sussex chicks next year.

Michael Jackson

Step Six:  what in the WORLD am I going to do with five bantam roosters?  Only one crows, though, and is quite a terror.  He’s the cute white chick my daughter insisted upon buying this spring.  As putative songster king of five boys, I started calling him Michael (as in Jackson), way before His Weirdness’ death of course.  He even crows his name!  MiCHAEL JACKson.  Then, magically, we started to find little bantam eggs in the nestbox.  Apparently, the other four are girls!  (sigh)  And, unlike his namesake, our little Michael actually likes girls.

Mary Ellen

Step Seven:  WHY is the Black Sex Link pullet, Mary Ellen, crowing?  Ah.  I think we have found Ellis’ successor in the egg-bird rooster department.  Mary Ellen (whose name is sure to be changed, or not) is a nice calm bird, very attentive and solicitous of everyone but Michael Jackson (who terrorizes any and all birds).

So…maybe I will have mutt egg-laying chickens after all.  There are surely worse things, including raising the chicks yourself.

Those little chicks I mentioned a while back are now between six and seven weeks old.  For the last two weeks, most of them have been living in the Chicken Tractor.

I’m still ambivalent about using this thing, feeling as I do that confinement is confinement and a perfect world would have them safe in their own enclosed pen, where they could scratch and dustbathe and in general do anything their chicken-y hearts desire.  This, however, is not a perfect world.  In my perfect world of the future, this is the last (knock wood) year I will be ordering chicks, ever, as I will now be handing the chick-rearing reins over to Chicken Patty, a husband, and a sister-wife.  Roosters likewise will be culled from our new egg-layers, as we have a rooster of the egg bird persuasion now too.

Hi!  You have treats for us?

But back to the tractor.  My concern for these birds makes me check up on them multiple times of the day.  I move it, then, three times a day to ensure they get their fill of fresh grass and clover.  I also verify that the tarp cover gives them at least 3/4 of their space in the shade:  it doesn’t get super hot here (highs at most in the low 80s) but I don’t want them to be uncomfortable. They get fed two times a day, with a two to three hour gap between feedings.  Unlike the first batch of meat blobbos that used the tractor last year, these slow-growing CornishX (the white ones) and some slower-growing red broilers move more, they perch, their poop is a lot more “processed” and they HATE lying in their own poo.  There are 35 birds in this tractor, for now.  Once they get to be about 12 weeks, half of them will be housed elsewhere (including the freezer) as I think they’d be too cramped in there when they’re all that big.  Full-grown birds should all be ready to go, then, at 16 weeks, though last year I waited longer than that.

Four of Patty’s babies in the grapevines

As a point of contrast, Chicken Patty’s adopted chicks are a lot smaller.  I attribute this to two things:  one, when the other meat birds had 24/7 feeding under the light of the heat lamp, the babies under Mama Patty got used to the idea of circadian rhythms.  And two, Chicken Patty’s six babies are running everywhere, all day long.  Patty did a wonderful job raising them until she didn’t, incidentally.  When they were just over a month old, her egg-laying cycle kicked back in, so she started roosting in the coop with the other egg girls, leaving her babies behind.  I am not sure if this is just nature or if Patty is just a flaky young teenaged mother, or what.  The babies sure can fend for themselves, though, doing a fine job foraging and dust-bathing and keeping themselves together.  There are three roos and three girls.  One of the boys will be Patty’s future husband…though not a blood relation, is this, uh, Oedipal?

Bunnies!

They…

MULTIPLY!

When I came home from work Friday, our bunny had a new friend, another mini-Rex like himself, also a young bunny.  They’re getting along just fine.

A week or so ago, the feed store yielded up another creature to add to the menagerie at this house.  Considering it was my birthday, I figured this bunny was for me.  I was mistaken.

He’s a baby, too:  born at the end of March

Isn’t he cute?  He’s a mini-Rex rabbit, and oh so soft.

My daughter told a friend, “We didn’t get a girl one, because I don’t want my mama to eat her babies,” which I thought was hilarious, but slightly spot-on:  I do eat everyone else’s babies, apparently.  But this guy is lucky, he’s no eating rabbit.  And I am kind of laughing at the whole Pets or Meat thing, but then again, this is Michigan, where the economy (always) sucks, and I think Michael Moore is more spot-on than not.

Little Edie, our great huntress, oversees the new creature.  (Don’t worry:  the rabbit chases her, as well as the dog.)

And he’ll need a friend for warmth in the barn, so…we’ll be getting another (boy) rabbit soon.

sniffsniff!

Okay I swear this will be the last poultry post for a while on this (ahem) gardening blog, but it was a big weekend around here last weekend.

Six appears to be the magic number.

She’s not exactly doing the Hovercraft thing, but her tail is quite fluffed out.  She was giving me the warning crackle the whole time I visited.

Here’s Chicken Patty with her six foster chicks.  She’s doing very well with them, though admittedly she was getting kind of bored in the dog kennel I had set up for her in my gardening shed.  So, I moved her and the babies out to the Chicken Tractor, which is (conveniently) set over the goose/turkey nesting box.  Considering the geese and turkeys have other sleeping arrangements, this works quite well for Patty and her little brood.  The babies are five slow-growing Cornish like their adopted mama and one little red broiler.

And Yoli, our goose, hatched six goslings this weekend, of the 9 eggs she was sitting.  Isn’t she just the prettiest bird?  Look at that refined, beautiful head of hers.

Here’s the back end.  Can you count three little legs?  Must be warm in there…