Sunday morning on the suburban mini-farm
By Gina Spadafori
May 18, 2008
My morning routine is pretty long these days, with feeding and watering dogs, cats, parrot, rabbit and chickens. Oh, yeah, and getting myself ready for the day, as well.
The chickens have turned out to be a lot of fun, although best not to calculate the cost of the “free eggs,” since the six ladies eat like horses and turn out a mere three-four eggs a day.
After the disclosures last year of how livestock feed tends to be the end of the road for every potentially digestible thing that can’t remotely be passed off as food for people or pets, I’ve been not really happy buying processed “layer” mix from the feed store.
After all, it’s not just the chickens who are eating it: I’m eating the eggs.
So I asked around and found a small-scale humane, sustainable and organic chicken operation in a nearby county. They pointed me to two sources of organic chicken feed made from basic, whole ingredients. (I also found recipes for mixing my own grains, and I might try that next.) The closest source of organic chicken feed is in Modesto, and once the book deadlines are past I’ll be heading down to stock up. With the price of gas and Modesto two hours away, I’ll be laying in a six-month supply.
The chicken yard itself turned out perfectly. The ladies have lots of room to roam, scratch, make little dirt bowls to roll in and more. The last three days here have been well over 100 degrees, but they have ample shade and water, and weathered the heat storm in good shape. (They didn’t even stop laying.)
After a few weeks, their personalities are starting to emerge.
Beatrice the Rhode Island Red is the smallest of the chickens, and also the bossiest. She eats first, drinks first and chooses the best spots to roost. The hen that dares challenge her gets a beak to the backside.
Agatha the Delaware is the auxiliary gang leader, and also the most prolific layer. She puts down one large brown egg right after breakfast every morning. She’s the largest and homeliest of the hens, so I guess she feels some pressure to earn her keep.
My absolute favorite is Charlotte the Barred Plymouth Rock (pictured). Charlotte likes to be picked up and held, and enjoys being scratched right where her neck meets her body.When I take green kitchen scraps out, the other hens will stay with the food. But Charlotte always sees me to the gate, and watches me go out the garden gate as well before she rejoins the flock. I think she’d follow me all over the yard, given a chance.
The Americunas, who came from a different source that the other three hens, tend to stick together and aren’t laying much, which is a shame because their eggs are a beautiful pastel green. (They may be older than represented, or the breed may just not be as prolific.) I can’t get a handle on them yet as individuals.
I remain quite pleased with my idea to add pet hens. They’re easy to care for, lively and relatively quiet to have around. The eggs are a nice bonus, too.
Cripple Crown update: Best line after Big Brown’s Preakness romp against a field of nobodies: “Love the horse, hate the in-laws.” I was driving back from San Francisco at race time, and I didn’t even try to find it on the radio. Big Brown has been sold to stud for $50 million. The Big Pay Day couldn’t happen to a less-deserving bunch of dirtballs, trainer and owners combined. The Handride blog has some questions for the trainer, who said he didn’t know why his vet gives the horse steroids every week. Yeah, uh-huh.
Hat tip: To Therese at the PetSitUSA blog. Lots of good stuff over there, lately, especially with regard to Purina’s non-recall recall. (YesBiscuit! has a good post on this, too.) Also, I found a good parrot blog! Check out Best In Flock, added to our blogroll after I noticed it on Alltop’s pet list.
When we have a little more space I’d like to get a few chickens—I would love to see more pictures of the specifics of your chicken set-up.
Comment by Meryl — May 18, 2008 @ 8:18 am
I’ll put together a little slide show later and link it up.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 18, 2008 @ 8:36 am
As you have discovered animal “feed” can be pretty much everything but the kitchen sink…
This is really just a modernization of the role that chickens played on old era farms which is to be scavangers. Chickens peck up the spilled feeds from other animals, gobble up maggots emerging from the manure and bugs from the surrounding fields making them a kind of walking organic pesticide.
By re-processing things that might include other chickens its really a commercialization of the same idea sans the pest control.
I know its then hard to recover the eggs and even harder to eggs that dont contain a future chicken but usually layers were confined to the henhouse and got corn or some kind of mash while the birds destined to reproduce or “the pot” got the priviledge of doing barnyard cleanup.
One time we acquired a bunch of little resuce peepers from a mink ranch truck. We had a calf die and the mink ranchers provided an important disposal service by butchering the dead ones that would otherwise become a sanitary problem on the farm. When the guy pulled up he had several large trash bags in it already and as I helped heft the calf onto the mink ranch herse my wife heard peeping coming from the bags.
She peered in and the bags were FULL of dead baby chicks! But a few were still alive and peeping for help. The man told us that chicken operations sexed the chicks for the desired gender and if there was no market for the (males in this case) they were simply dumped into trash bags and ground up ultimately here for mink feed.
Horrified my wife asked to rescue the survivors and the man kindly agreed saying that they were so small that a couple here and there would not make much difference.
We ended up with maybe 20 little yellow fuzz balls that grew in a roving pack of nasty roosters that eventually met a different fate when it came time to stock the freezer.
But in the meantime, they entirely fed themselves! Spilled grain, maggots and bugs were all they got and did quite well on it. I have to say they were pretty tough tough and had a rather “unique” taste… Not bad though. Just very different.
As for the irony of their final fate, well… At least they had nearly a year of free range living. Considering the alternative was either suffocation or being ground up alive for mink food like their siblings I’d say they at least had a good run of it.
Comment by Bernard J. (Bernie) Starzewski — May 18, 2008 @ 9:12 am
I agree! They had a good run.
My hens are also scavenging … I give them (and the rabbit) all the veggie scraps from the kitchen, and I’m counting on them to terminate the tomato worms.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 18, 2008 @ 9:20 am
I am enjoying your chicken adventures. I have kept chickens for years in Davis. Our Americuna “Pat” started out as a 4H project for my daughter, grew into a beloved pet and just died this winter at the age of 10. She was the friendliest chicken we ever had, and she continued to lay into her dotage. When DD was younger she would paint Pat’s toenails, or bring her into the house to catch and eat any spider she found.
I don’t have any hens right now, but was noticing the abundance of bugs in the yard, so I borrowed a pair of banties for the day and they did a great job of bug patrol!
Comment by Vickie Carr — May 18, 2008 @ 11:52 am
cool! Being a city gal I don’t know much about chickens, but I had an interesting chicken experience this week. I was at a client’s home for a private session and they gave me a tour of their gorgeous farm house that was built in the mid 1700’s. Just off the kitchen they still had remnants of what was once the chicken room. A very common north east practice of days gone by was to keep chickens just off the kitchen in what is now an extra bathroom. We speculated that the chickens needed to be kept safe from predators and easily accessed in winter. File under…I didn’t know that!
Comment by nancy freedman-smith — May 18, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
I wonder about the rat snakes we have here. Not sure that I could keep chickens safe from them if I ever got any.
Comment by slt — May 19, 2008 @ 5:44 am
Chickens can be very lovable when socialized at an early age. If you want family pets they need to be held and talked to during the brooding process. Watch out though, Oregon Health Dept. warns against “nuzzling and kissing” your poultry due to salmonella concerns;)
Comment by C.L.H. — May 19, 2008 @ 7:42 am
This morning the chickens were freaking out at 5 a.m. because a stray dog had gotten onto the acreage behind me and was pawing at the boards of the enclosure.
I felt like I was in one of those old movies … “Ma, there’s a fox in the henhouse … hand me the shotgun!”
Fortunately, it wasn’t that dire. I opened the back gate and called to the dog to see if I could figure out where was his home, and he scittered away pretty quickly.
My house backs up to a creek that cuts through the small acreage (which is partly owned by the water district, and mostly by the neighbors behind me). It’s really just a a weedy undeveloped bit of suburban leftover, but in the absence of development the animals take over. We see a lot of critters, mostly rats but also possum, skunks and raccoons. Over the weekend, one of the neighbors saw a massive raccoon in his yard at twilight, and I was guessing the invader was that guy.
Suburban chickens … the adventure continues.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 19, 2008 @ 7:53 am
>The Oregon Health Dept. warns against “nuzzling and kissing” your poultry due to salmonella concerns;)
I don’t do any chicken-kissing. (And I do a lot of hand-washing post hugging, anyway!)
Isn’t it amazing, though, that a health department can be bothered about low-risk issues like chicken-kissing while the entire government bureaucracy looks the other way on intensive animal agriculture and food import practices that truly ARE a risk to our health?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 19, 2008 @ 8:04 am
During the pet food crisis it was Oregon that didn’t look away, but instead was the first state to keep track of sick and dead pets — thanks to their “courageous” public health veterinarian, Dr. Emilio DeBess. Most of Oregon’s health practices should be the norm for the entire U.S. If the no-sales-tax State of Oregon can care for their people regarding these issues, significant or not, what’s our Federal Government’s excuse?
Comment by Nadine L. — May 19, 2008 @ 9:42 am
The chicken-kissing, or the watch-dogging?
Just kidding. :)
You’re absolutely right. Oregon’s public health veterinarian did his job with grace and courage during the recall.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 19, 2008 @ 9:45 am
A few cases of salmonella at Easter (we won’t even get into what happens to the chicks after Easter!) are a lot easier to address than the complete and total breakdown of the food safety system in this country. Go after the easy stuff, everything else is impossible.
Got my coop design book at the library last week and found a nice, completely enclosed, civilized and suburban coop design that will work for about 5 hens. I’ve started polling the neighbors to make sure there will be no objections. Should be able to start the coop in a few weeks and I’ll get my chicks at the local farm store. I’m looking at Gold Sex-links and Black Australorps. The Gold sex-links aren’t very big and I’ve heard that they are prolific layers of large eggs. Thanks for the info on feed!
A friend of mine keeps a motion detector light over her coop to help scare away predators. The raccoons and opossums take off when it comes on.
Comment by C.L.H. — May 19, 2008 @ 9:47 am
Re: The chicken-kissing ..
Oregon will also probably be the first to find a vaccine against salmonella so people are able to nuzzle and kiss their chickens! :)
Comment by Nadine L. — May 19, 2008 @ 9:57 am
especially with regard to Purina’s non-recall recall.
Hmmm…good ol’ Purina. They have been off my shopping list since last year. Enuff said?
Comment by Marcy — May 19, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
Thanks for adding us to your blogroll, it’s quite an honor!
My bf is really interested in raising chickens on his property, mostly because he LOVES eggs :) I’ll make sure he reads this.
Thanks again and keep up the great work.
Comment by Best in Flock — May 20, 2008 @ 6:30 am
Would love to see more picts of the pen and coop setup. I’m looking at doing the same thing here and am looking for ideas! I love fresh eggs!
Thanks!
Comment by Alison Brendel — July 9, 2008 @ 9:07 pm