Talking Chickens

Pretty picture of a red elderberry

Yacking with somebody I found by accident, raising chickens in Yakima. We were talking about coyotes and peacocks (The picture of the elderberry tree is just for pretties; high summer is the sight of red berries, the sound of the salmon-berry bird, and the taste of thimbleberries). Anyway, this is me, and it should be clear enough how the conversation went:

"Wow! You are the poultry MASTER! You should have a blog. We had guineas, too, when I was a kid. Another weird cry that I miss.

I just keep chickens like on board a ship - a little chicken tractor that gets moved to new grass every day. At least 2 other tractors, locally, nice ones. Mine can't have any wheels because of small predators, so it's pretty ugly/lightweight wire, but it does it the job. 

Four Easter-Eggers sold to me as Amaracaunas (oh, don't get me started on that whole "what's an Araucana?" mixup). The rooster - "Mr. Kate" (go ahead, laugh now) went off to a flock of 15 Amaracauna hens. Talk about a food vacuum. In an open situation, he'd have been magnificent - white as snow, obviously leghorn blood - but like I said, we just have a small egg coop.

Sounds like somebody took away all your big anchor predators. We had a few cougars when we were kids - we have 'em up here. So no, we're not up to our eyeballs in coyotes. Or, to put it more properly - the coyotes aren't up to their eyeballs in humans (trying to be fair, here; this was their home first).

A neighbor up the river lets her big, weird flock run free. Another neighbor said his sister keeps poultry in a wildlife area. First couple of years, lots of kill-off. Then the chickens got smart (or the dumb ones got et). Poultry is from jungles, after all. Those wild gene files are just sitting there. Well, that's not a surprise; poultry were the last animal that domesticated themselves - even after cats"

Mr. Kate Goes To The Farm

Mr. Kate has a new home.

Oh, those of you with chickens KNOW why he's called "MISTER" Kate. Now go ahead and laugh.

He was sold to us by a feedstore in Port Angeles as an Amaracauna hen. Obviously, he's an Easter Egger - you can't see it, but his legs are green. Easter Eggers are Amaracauna/Other crosses. That looks like he's got Leghorn in him. He's tall and heavy, even though he's only learning to crow and only has nubs for spurs, and he has a wide stance. His daughters are going to be top layers.

Now, since we run this place like a ship - including having only room for the four laying hens - and he's too big and rough for the small space, he's gone to Joe Gregory's farm. Where he shall be placed in a cage with 15 Amaracauna hens. Oh, boo hoo for him, how awful.

And no, Joe's not going to eat him. Everybody knows Joe doesn't have a farm - he has a petting farm. He refers to his animals as "cute."

Chickening In

"I don't need chickens. I can buy the few eggs we need."

Not.

There's nothing like the luxury of having all the eggs we want, for cooking and distribution (I'm a publisher - we use publisher words). I'm spoiled. I want my hens back. I originally dreamed of having bees (like Sherlock Holmes?) but I have to face it - I'm a chicken farmer. We should do what we're good at.

"Food dish? No, it's a nest. Because we think so."

So here they are from the Airport Garden, five little Ameracauna hen chicks (99% guarantee from a nice bunch of people who keep love-me cats in the shop). The young man who sold 'em to me could talk chickens all day. Green eggs, evidently. Cool. I like color in my shells. Nothing as huge as the big pink eggs laid by old Rhode Island Red, but not quail eggs, either.

The first day, two chicks would fit in the feeder. Not the next day.

The five little chicks were given working-horse names. You don't give working farm animals - or goldfish - fancy personal names; it's a jinx. So meet Goldie, Blackie, Brownie, Pinkie and Stripes. The names might as well be yelled by Andy Devine in Stagecoach.

Yes, they're in the bathtub. The young man asked where I was going to keep them.

"In the bathroom."

"Oh. You're smart."

Most people must stick baby chicks out in the shed with a light. How am I going to get them friendly by picking them up and talking to them, if I can't drop in on their heated room whenever I feel like it, instead of putting on a coat and boots and finding excuses not to? Besides, they're so darn cute. 

Hey, I'm not the only one. The old farmer up here never talks about how his back-bred Jersey calves are successful, or his little Devons are blocky or milk well. They're "cute." He doesn't have a farm, he has a petting zoo. And is successful with all his beasts. Love = success? What a concept.

Down On The Farm.

My aging hens are safe and happy at Dryads Rest, in Chehalis, Washington. They have a farmyard, a clean roomy coop, a whole flock of hens and a big handsome rooster named Tiberius. They're sorting out the pecking order. Black and Tiberius had a cockfight, and he's still trying to keep the peace as the hens work it out. Red, who was so terribly torn up by the neighbor's dog, is just fine. Little Inky seems to feel safe.

I have to think about whether or not I want chicks in the spring. For one, I'd have to find a place for the aging hens, and there's only so many non-producing adoptees a farm can take. Then again, they'd still have the ability to produce some chicks and add to the bloodline. We'll see how I feel when I get the January gotta-do's in the yardwork and building line.

For second, Dan says my homemade tofu is an acquired taste - and he's acquired it. And I use a lot of homemade soy-milk. So maybe the whole hen operation will be replaced by a couple bags of soybeans every year.

Though, if I ever end up on a bigger piece of land, I can run a chicken operation, now I've learned about their care and medicating, etc. 

In the meantime, the co-op's tourist operation and the locals all want my homemade sea salt, and since I make it for us anyway, I can get the extra cash that way.

The girls safe at Dryad's Rest

The girls are all at home at Dryad's Rest, JoAnne Kirley's farm in Pe Ell, Washington State.

Dryad's Rest has a big, beautiful rooster, Tiberius. Our big black hen, Black, seemed to decide he had disappeared her tiny black companion, Inky. She went for Tiberius, and was pulling feathers out of him before I could make her stop. When Inky finally reappeared, Black calmed down. I knew she was top hen, but didn't know a hen would beat up a rooster twice her size. Bad girl!

Poor Red

Leo and Fearless helping Red.  Actually, drinking her water.

From now on, I take a flashlight into the coop. 

Last night, I thought Red was just sulking in a corner.  Turned out, she'd had her leg stuck in a side of the nesting box and was stuck there all night!

She's in the house, now, warming up, letting some circulation get back into her leg, and drinking from a syringe once in a while.  Priority today is fixing the nesting box.

More: I should have posted this a long time ago, but no sooner had Red healed, but she was attacked by the neighbor's uncontrolled Husky. I thought she would die, but with the help of some antibiotics and cat pain-killers I keep in the house she healed, and went to Dryad's Rest for retirement.

Here's the horrible dog-bite wound, already closed:

Here's Red, back on her feet in the cage. She went back to laying eggs and is enjoying herself with Black and Inky on a lovely farm.

Raised Bed RAISED

FARM!

The raised bed done!  Took me two days of hard digging and organizing to build this thing.

Here's the new chicken coop -- the final one!!!! -- and the Girls. 

I have learned a construction secret:  NEVER use nails or other permanent fasteners when building semi-permanent structure.  This is all screw and pin nails.  It lets me get the pieces back out if the next step in the scrap-building process does not quite work out.

Scrap building is really hard; you have to think about everything, like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.  The back of raised bed looks crappy because I didn't have enough good stuff -- the nice little cedar boards Denny Eichhorn gave me last year from another building project teardown.  

Gonna plant flowers around the edges of this thing, so it will be pretty and afford food and shelter for predatory insects.

CHICKENS AND SKIN MONKEYS

So scared the chickens were not going to be all right in the bitter cold -- but they're out there eating popcorn for a treat & drinking the freshly-replaced water AM & PM, & still laying. The crows insist on their own big bowl of popcorn too, and swear at me if they don't get it.  Whadaya gonna do?  Now I'm a bird flunky as well as a cat servant.

I was worried about the poor cold chickens and was trying to figure out how to warm them, when I realized if I did, they'd lose their natural resistance to cold.  It's like losing your night purple after using a light in the dark.  The best cure for cold for outside animals is lots and lots of good food, so they can lay on lots of fat.

Wild animals all have houses; their own tough skins. WE lived in deserts, lost all our hair, had to wear clothes against the sun.  It must explain why nudity is a sin in the middle-eastern religions; it's DANGEROUS to run around naked in equatorial deserts.

The more "purebred" Makah up here run around in sleeveless t-shirts on miserable, cold, rainy days.  It's the 70-degree days in summer that make these big guys miserable.

People have asked me, "What about coyotes?"  Have you never heard of the miracle of chicken wire? The local Cooper's Hawk skidded to a hover over the cage and we pointed and laughed; you've never seen a hawk drool.  This is the same bird that got into a neighbor's cage and ripped the head off a chicken.  She'd left a hole the size of a football in the chicken wire.  

If we're going to raise farm animals near predators, we have to be aware of these animals' versatility.  In a film taken with a camera on the back of birds of prey, we see what the Cooper's largest relative -- the goshawk -- does with small spaces at speed (there's an ad, but it only lasts a few seconds).  Makes me wonder if people who have been animating movies about flying on dragons haven't referred to the real thing.

Remember, if a predator gets your domestics, it's your fault.  Don't think you can ultimately solve it by killing stuff; everybody doing that has decimated natural animal populations.  And if you're raising stuff to sell to eat and taking shortcuts by killing wildlife -- what ELSE won't you take a shortcut with?  And why should I buy your stuff?

Chicken Report

Moved the chicken tractor this morning, to a more sunny location, because their water was skinned over with ice last night.

Red, who has been twice caught under the slats in a move, decided to get up in the nesting box and ride.

They've started laying again -- two eggs yesterday.

BATTEN DOWN THE CHICKENS

Second day of the November storm; snow is six inches and rising. We evidently have Alaska's winter, and they have ours.  Oh the fascination of being on the Great Pacific Circling Current.

(right) Tarps on chicken tractor, to keep them out of direct wind. So far, they're surviving the freezing temperatures.

Placed a Dutch oven full of water in the nesting area.  Pour boiling water into it twice a day.  First time I did it, heard a chicken squawk.  But they're not stupid, or followers like sheep -- once is enough.

Made them suet cakes to go with their feed.  Gonna fatten 'em up for spring through autumn laying.

During the 2008 blizzard, Jim the cat was forced to live outside by his original owners.  This is him (right) going outside for a bit of a run, but keeping an ear cocked for when we call him.  No more sleeping on a damp carpet under a porch for HIM.

Being Stupid With Bees

Note:  just because we can trot out in our jammies at night to feed our gentle tame bees does NOT mean we can re-arrange a tower of Russian ferals in BARE FEET.

Quite sick, now.  Oh, look!  I'm allergic to bees!  Anybody wanna buy some hives?  With nice strong bees?  Rats.

A colleague says we comic book people are only good at doing comic books.  Nobody else is -- it's extremely difficult and demanding.  We're just not so good at anything else.

We'll see how long the chicken business lasts before I get some stupid infection or something.

Black Gone Broody Mad, Bitch

Our black hen, Black (yes, it's a food-animal designation) is brooding her brains out.  I even had to go get her some fertile eggs to brood, so she'd get off the nest once in a while.

Now I'm having to lift her up to check she's not brooding Red's eggs, too.  

Bad news; they managed to discover eggs are edible.  I'll go have to look up something on that.

The Next Chicken Step

Now we've got the egg production up and running -- 227 eggs as of today -- it's time for the next step.

Rebuilt the bigger cage to make it easier to access for cleaning, and got three nice new chicks (featherball stage)  from the Triple Nickel Farm on Highway 112.

The process now is:  buy new chicks when the older hens are cycling down (not yet, but will come soon enough), get a big rooster for the older hens and let 'em go on the hill behind us to have a few days/weeks/months of freedom.  Better than being slaughtered for soup or braise.  

The hill is the breeding home of eagles and other predators.  They don't hunt near their nesting area, and they keep down other predators.

I was perfectly willing to try slaughtering chickens, but when I was talking about the whole recycling process, Dan's face crinkled up in distress.  He was raised on a chicken farm, and had to kill a lot of them.  He just doesn't want to do the same with two hens he considers family pets.  So the girls will get an end-of-life vacation.

The new chicks are mixes; a black Arucana mix, and a couple of red/gray mottled things.  They cost two bucks apiece.  They're still scared, but they know where their compfy grass-lined nest is, as well as the food and water.

After a lifetime of not really eating eggs because Dan can't eat store eggs, we don't really eat a lot of eggs ourselves.  Most of them are now part of the swap system  with our neighbors, for cleaned, packaged salmon fillets and elk-burger and trout and ling-cod and halibut. Both sides of the swap think they've made out like fat rats and gotten the better end of the deal.

I'm going to check with the co-op and see if we can't just trade for milk, cheese, butter and  yogurt.  If you've got chickens, you've got a cow.

April Is The Cruelest Month

Rats.  Our white chicken died.  No weird foaming, green droppings, nothing.  Just laid down and died.  The poultry site says, "Sometimes chickens just drop dead."

Her eggs had been getting smaller -- I thought she was just ramping down for summer.  She SEEMED completely energetic.  Her eyes are clear and bright.  Who knows? The site recommended some Baytril, which we keep on hand.  But they also said cut grass is bad for chickens -- and I'd been giving them grass (I thought chickens ate grass!).  Maybe they meant oily lawnmower grass, not hand-pulled or hand-cut grass?

We've been keeping cats for 30 years and nearly lost one to a whole WTF? episode with asthma.

And my bees aren't looking so good today.  I SHOULD have kept them warm in the house and put them in today.  I hate saying "live and learn" when other things die.

We were also calling the hen "Steve" (McQueen, in The Great Escape) because she'd got out once by burrowing under the fence.  NEVER NAME A GOLDFISH OR A CHICKEN.

Now I know how the rooster feels.
     E.B. White may have waxed romantical about hens, but when our hen White is standing outside yelling just to hear her head funnel sound, it's hard to think about anything but braised chicken (yeah, that's right, birdbrain, I'm thinking recipes when I look at you).
     She does these fertility dances with her throat out there whenever anybody lays eggs.  Black doesn't say much, and Red just drops 'em in the pen. But White talks her brains out the whole time like she's responsible for all the production around here.
     We figure all this noise was originally about letting the roosters in the original jungle-fowl flock know there was an egg, and to get him revv'd up to fight off anything under the trees. 
     I'm not using "brain like a chicken" to describe stupidity any more. I don't care what our antique sciences (read: religions) say about animals not thinking, the modern sciences are finding out how wrong that was. Chickens think, and it's mostly about how we're Not Doing It Right.

Land of Eggs and Honey

     We have a problem; too many eggs.

     We can't eat more than one a day each, in whatever form -- they're just too rich -- and the girls are out-laying us.  We'll have to take the excess to the folks who give us salmon.  Poor us.

     The eggs are color coded; the two pale yellow-green (bottom left, top right) are from White.  The large pale brown (lower right) is Black's.  Red lays the dark red with white speckles (upper left).  Black's eggs are the richest -- but she's by far the fattest.  Lift her up and feel the rolls of blubber and all you'll think of is duck-style-roasted chicken.

      After feeding them for a year, was thinking of just buying grown layers next time, but now realizing the rich feeding while they're growing up is what's making them good layers, despite their youth and the season of winter.  We've discovered a source of great calcium; dried-out sea-urchin and crab shells from the beach.  It's where we get the good grit, too, with the addition of sea minerals.  Fat hen + loads of calcium = loads of fat eggs.  Well, d'uh.

     Speaking of feeding animals right to get a return: after years of thinking and research, finally bought a beehive from Sunny Farms.  It has two fully-framed brood bodies and a honey body.  All the amateur -- and I do mean "WTF are we doing?" amateur -- beekeepers up here are listening to me when I tell 'em NOT to feed the bees crappy sugar and corn-syrup to get them through the winter.  Hello?  Colony Collapse Syndrome?  The bees are having enough trouble without being given crummy ersatz food.  Or, to quote, "Thou shall not muzzle the ox that treads the corn," if you need something from that antique-science book. The local Olympic Grays ("Pioneer" bees from Caucasian stock brought in by white settlers over a century ago and gone feral) are pumping out honey and white wax -- from the Douglas Firs, would you believe! -- like little machines.   One keeper has over 100 pounds of honey on one hive. Imagine what fir honey tastes like.  If you like pine-nuts....  At least I'm imagining it; nobody's tasted it yet.  

     My hive is actually painted; I found some neutral base, so the hive can have that nice raw-wood look and still be protected.  I'm not going to buy bees; I'm going to ask one of the local keepers if I can put one of my hive bodies next to his until we get a swam to inhabit it.  Maybe offer him some eggs.

Unwatered Wine

The Greeks said not to drink unwatered wine, for it would lead to madness. I'm snorking down the Gallo Paisano with no care for Homeric safety regulations.

Mostly it's because we're still on death-watch for Hector. I have a million things to do, and can only circle uselessly around them. Or watch Hector to see if he will even eat a smidgen of food. Or to see if he wants me to put on his green leash and let him all rickety pull me around the yard.  The other night he did it in the dark, three times through the working wood-pile.  No doubt to lose me so he could go die under the house.  I'm sorry, but it's the only thing I'm not letting him do.  Mr. Weird is now Mr. Flat-ass Stubborn. Anyway, after two and a half months, all the grief of my life -- humans as well as animal, including a terrible loss and a missed opportunity recently -- is circling my head and turning me into a vegetable (this is drunk writing, so I'm not taking responsibility for any of it).


Ran into a very dear friend on the beach today, who said that their household fell apart as their old dog died.  So I don't feel so lost and stupid about it now.

She had smoked rabbit.  We swapped for our smoked salmon.  Then we spent the evening blathering and laughing. She's one of the few people up here on my intellectual level, and her daughter is a living spark.  I, of course, did not recognize the kid.  How am I supposed to recognize someone I could once pick up and carry and who can now look me in the eye?  Some kid is going to figure out that adults -- especially we old farts -- cannot recognize them before and after the growth spurt and scam us to dead.


Next step, if I can just get anything done:  build the basis for the bee-hives.  I love honey.  The 3 hens are laying what comes to an egg a day.  The seeds just came in the mail.  With honey, eggs and veggies and the occasional fish, we'll have more than enough to eat and swap.

I may have talked myself into milking the old farmer's cows for him.  As he said, his 80 + years hands can't do it any more, and he's had to let the cows dry up.  If I do, it's half the milk, and I don't care how that makes me sound.  CHEESE.  And yogurt.  Which I'll share with him, too.  Fuck, I'm becoming a farmer.


And another shot of the young whale on the beach the other day. Note how close to the shore. It shelves off very abruptly.

Finally got the new chicken cage pretty much done. It's made of junk lumber, so it's not necessarily so pretty.

That's Red, White And Black enjoying the new place.

No, I'm not naming anything we may have to eat someday.

Hector's still here, and has stabilized. He's slipped into a weak, thin, but interested old age. So far, his water bag IV is set at two units (about an inch) of water per day, he gets Diazepam (Valium) twice a day, and while he usually eats a dry kidney-support diet, we let him have anything he wants. What can it hurt, now? Knowing he has purr-ogatives lets him know he's still top cat. Or, officially, Top Cat Emeritus. Leo is Top Cat, now, sort of. Living with Leo is like living with Denny Crane, but without the penis comments.

Chicken emergency resolved. As the hard rains of the El Nino came in, the chicken cage became unbearable. It was originally built for security, but this made it almost impossible to clean. So for about a week, I threw myself into building an actual mobile cage -- a bit too heavy to be an actual chicken tractor -- to get them out of the filthy, muddy, ammonia-reeking trap their home had become. Red, the hen as tall half-way up my thigh, and the boss chicken, was yelling for help.

Yesterday I ignored the lashing rain, each hammer-blow splashing water as though it were coming down in a puddle, and slammed through the project until the cage was at least sturdy and completely enclosed. The neighbor was so upset at seeing me soaking wet in the rain she brought me a nice red rain jacket. I tried to tell her I had spent much of my childhood in the cold rain. My father was injured and in pain much of my early life, and mom just threw us out in the rain to fend for ourselves. We didn't know we were abandoned; we had woods and beach and fields to play with, ponies and peacocks, seagulls and wandering hounds. But we did spend most of our time soaking wet, sometimes just stringing our tennis shoes (we got one pair a year) around our necks on our shoelaces and running barefoot.

But, back to the present. I ran in the house and changed my sloppy sweatshirt so I wouldn't get the nice red jacket wet on the inside and dashed back outside before I warmed up; it's running in and out of heat and cold that makes a weatherproof person sick. By the time I got the cage finished, it was the hen's bedtime, and no time to move them. Red did lay her first egg, however. A PINK one. White's are yellowish, Black's are light green. Easter eggs!

This morning Dan helped me move the hens. Red was squawling to us to come rescue them, and came to my hands to be handed out of the hutch. While Dan ran with her to the new cage, Black came in to be caught, too. My God, is that a fat hen! She's rather gorgeous -- in the sun, shimmering black/green with black edges on each feather. White was an idiot -- white chickens usually are -- and had to be cornered and caught in the muck.

The moment they were all together in their new hutch and cage, they happily started scratching the grass. This is growing over a concrete-tile path that is nearly covered over. Let THEM clean the damn' weeds off the path. Then we'll roll the cage to the next patch on the path and sow the edges with white Dutch clover. Ha! They can replace the nasty thin grass with nice rich clover while they're at it -- and they lay just enough eggs for us to have scrambled eggs twice a week.

Rebuilding the chicken tractor, or building a new one. The old one turned out to be too heavy to move!

I'd had the new one partially built, for light weight and security, but it didn't pass the waterproof test. So I had to tear it apart and start again.

Part of the problem is building with junk materials; this is actually much harder than starting fresh with a plan. You have to play jigsaw, and the stresses and balances are much more difficult.

I'm glad I'm stubborn.

Two more eggs since the last one -- one pale brown, the other more yellow. So all the girls have had their first period. If these are the pullet eggs, then the adult eggs should be a very nice size.