Gratuitous chicken-blogging: Three to go
By Gina Spadafori
March 6, 2009
This morning, Lacey, Harriet and Hester are heading out, leaving me with eight chickens while my friends and I wait for our spring chicks to arrive. After you have chickens for a while, you develop your preferences and priorities. My priorities have turned out to be a couple of chickens who have endeared themselves as pets (Charlotte and Agatha), while the rest (mostly Rhode Island Reds and Red Stars) make the grade for the steady production of beautiful brown eggs.
When the three go to their new home this morning, the only non-red chicken on the place will be Charlotte (barred Plymouth rock) and Agatha (Delaware) and of course, Viviana the Americuana, the layer of lovely green-shelled eggs.
Yes, I know some people keep chicken as pets like any other, but for me, it turns out, chickens live in the gray zone between pet and livestock. Some, like Charlotte and Agatha, will be here for life, because they became pets. But they don’t get special care, and all the hens have everything a chicken could want — fresh water, good food, safe shelter and the room to roam, take dust baths and eat whatever fat worms and grubs they find.
Aside from those two pet hens, though, the situation isn’t long-term secure.
Which is why the three are going out today, to start a flock for another beginner, one who wants as much variety as possible. She’s getting a lot of variety: A buff Orpington, a silver-laced Wyandotte and a barred Plymouth Rock. They’re all young, healthy and laying, but I want to focus on the more productive Rhodies and Red Stars. I’m also trying a small experiment with meat birds, believing I can offer a better life and a more humane and less stressful death than any commercial enterprise. (Yes, I did order slow-growing, free-range chicks, not the Jabba-the-chicken factory-farm miseries whose legs can’t support their mature weight.) I’m not much of a meat-eater, but I live with carnivores, and they need to eat. The more food I can grow “off-the-grid” to supplement the humane, sustainable food I buy from regional small-scale producers, the better for us all. The garden grows, and this year, so will some meat birds.
So goes life on the suburban minifarm.
Image: Harriet, on the move.
BTW, how’s Marble doing?
Comment by Sonia — March 6, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
Oprah adopted a shelter puppy. Cocker Spaniel and cute as all heck! And another one of her guests is showing a pic of his shelter puppy. Apparently, her June mag will feature shelter dogs. OK, another guest is taking about her 2 shelter pups. And she’s got the litter mates on . . .
so if you need a puppy fix, lol!~
Oh, were we talking about chickens?! :)
Comment by straybaby — March 6, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
I love chicken posts!
Comment by Cait — March 6, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
Go RI Reds!! :)
Comment by Carol V — March 6, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
How do you plan on killing your chickens? Do you take them to a place that does it for you?
Comment by Ann — March 6, 2009 @ 3:19 pm
Rumor has it that Nancy Freedman-Smith is catching the chicken bug, Gina, now that her city has passed a ordinance allowing for 6 hens. See what you’ve done? The Backyard Chicken Bug is spreading!!!!!
Comment by Anne T — March 6, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
Chickens are the new black.
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 6, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
Hey, chicken fanciers! you can get involved with saving fight-bust chickens!
http://badrap-blog.blogspot.co.....-good.html
Comment by EmilyS — March 6, 2009 @ 5:33 pm
Anne … I’m told chickens are a gateway drug. Next think you know, you want a goat.
Emily … not sure I want to go there with fight-bust chickens, not even the hens. I’m looking for quiet, docile, and very productive layers with good food-to-egg ratios. Like my Rhode Island Reds.
Roosters would be completely out — I’m not zoned for them.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 6, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
So Gina . . . when is the goat showing up? ;)
Comment by straybaby — March 6, 2009 @ 7:49 pm
I’ve heard that the little Icelandic and Shetland sheep are pretty easy keepers by comparison. And the fleeces can for up to $40. But you have to find someone to shear them.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 6, 2009 @ 8:16 pm
Shetlands and Icelandics are horned, which creats a whole new hazard especially with rams in the fall or ewes who are defensive of their offspring, and their fleeces have a dual coat, meaning it is more of a challenge for a hand spinner than just a wool breed. Plus, you need to keep the fleeces clean and free of dung, hay chaff and other detritus. Sheep were misnamed by our ancestors. They should have been called pigs. They are messy creatures, and one of their favorite activities is to munch over each other’s back, dropping timothy heads and grain into the fleeces.
Anyway, you have to work hard to make sure your fleeces will earn you $40 for a mere 2-3 lb fleece. It would have to be truly exceptional for me to pay that much. Now a good Wenslydale hogget, Hexham Leicester or a Polwarth, coated and well skirted, I’d pay $15 a pound or more.
Comment by Anne T — March 6, 2009 @ 8:48 pm
So….my instinct to not give in to buying that cute ram and one of his ewes was the right one, never having been around sheep, but thinking, hey, picturesque grass mowers for our acre. Save my husband some work. Thanks for the info., Anne.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 6, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Emily - I saw that post and I really wonder how many gamecocks they’ve actually been around. While the hens are usually pretty tolerable, most of them tend to be on the nasty side if you have to collect their eggs, and they’re VERY prone to going broody. Then you have a hatch with statistically half little game roosters- too scrawny to be worth eating and too cranky to keep in a group. Ugh.
Comment by Cait — March 6, 2009 @ 11:17 pm
Love the chickens. When my grandma was in the nursing home (she lived to 103) she asked what I was cooking for supper that night. I said, “Chicken,” and she said, “Oh, you’d better get going then! That’s a lot of work.”
I was thinking frozen Tyson and she was remembering when she bought her chickens live and butchered them in the back yard on a chopping block. Chicken dinners were hard work.
Comment by Kristi — March 7, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Just found out this morning at our local co-op that the Rocky and Rosie chicken folks have been bought out by a bigger poultry producer. Prices up, quality of operation down, so they’re gone from the store.
Now they carry someone called Mary’s Chickens and the guy behind the meat counter was able to answer all my questions about how the birds are treated, like not being de-beaked and having real access to the outdoors.
And, after careful carton reading,(RAISED cage-free? What the heck does that mean? Into the battery when it’s time to lay, I’ll bet.)the only acceptable eggs available around here are from pastured (in mobile cages) chickens up in Crescent City. Gulp, $5/dozen to do the right thing until we get our own in a few months. But we are opting out of industrial agriculture as quickly as we can and fortunately are in a position to do so.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 7, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
Just found out this morning at our local co-op that the Rocky and Rosie chicken folks have been bought out by a bigger poultry producer. Prices up, quality of operation down, so they’re gone from the store.
Hmmm, I think they were giving you a little “spin” to make their story about the new chickens better. Petaluma Poultry, which produces Rocky and Rosie chickens, was purchased in 2006 by Coleman Natural Foods, which is a big organic and natural beef producer in Colorado.
Comment by Christie Keith — March 7, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
Ah. Thanks, Christie. We didn’t catch the name of the buyer. Haven’t heard of Coleman, but will check them out.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 7, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
Michael Pollan has a lot of detail about “Rosie” the chicken in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Based on what he found, it was all spin from the beginning.
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 7, 2009 @ 9:11 pm
Talking about “spin”, my head is going to spin trying to get everything done with the clocks being pushed forward tomorrow.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — March 7, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Based on what he found, it was all spin from the beginning.
That may well be the case, but it still irritates me when sellers twist the truth to make their product look better. Perhaps it is, but if so, stick with the truth, that’s all.
It reminds me of that recent thing where a set of growers had this whole story about why they couldn’t be “organic” because that meant they couldn’t treat their sick animals, and thus, it was better to buy their eggs or meat or dairy products (I forget which it was) than organic ones.
I mean, I agree that factory farms are bad even if they’re organic, and I’d rather buy from a local ranch with good practices that treats its animals humanely and the earth well even if they’re not “certified organic.” But don’t LIE TO ME, or twist the truth, because that just pisses me off.
Comment by Christie Keith — March 7, 2009 @ 10:11 pm
H Houlinahn—-
I JUST read that black was the new black. (lol)if all goes well, chickens will be my new omlette.
Comment by nancy freedman-smith — March 8, 2009 @ 5:44 am
I hope you become a total trendsetter with the backyard chix. I love reading your updates.
Comment by Sarah K Andrew — March 11, 2009 @ 2:03 pm