New Batch of Baby Chicks

I picked up a new batch of chicks a couple weeks ago and haven't gotten around to sharing the news yet.

I have 11 chicks at the moment, but only a portion of them will be staying with me (the rest will go to other chicken owners). In the mix are a Buff Orpington, a Silver Laced Wyandotte, and nine Easter Eggers. I decided to keep only Easter Eggers this time. I think it will be fun because they will all look different and it will be a surprise!

Here are some photos of the chicks when they were 2 weeks old.

Easter Egger

Easter Egger

Easter Egger

Buff Orpington

Silver Laced Wyandotte

Fun Links and Plant Sale!

I was recently interviewed about urban chicken keeping in the Greater Lansing area by Lansing Area Capitol Gains, and online publication. I got to share a little bit of my enthusiasm for urban agriculture and homegrown food. My hens also got their photos taken, including a gorgeous close-up of Graybeard The Pirate (AKA George Clooney), my gray feathered hen given her celebrity name by the neighbor boys (who didn't realize all my chickens are female).

Photo by Dave Trumpie of Lansing Area Capitol Gains

Here's a link to the article: http://www.capitalgainsmedia.com/features/animals0719.aspx

I also wanted to make a quick shout-out to the MSU Horticulture Gardens annual Plant Sale!!! Their prices are great (I actually think they should raise their prices, considering it's a fundraiser), the selection of flowering plants is exotic (compared to what you'll find at most big-box garden centers), and they have a huge selection of heirloom vegetable seedlings.

Here's a link for the plant sale info: http://www.hrt.msu.edu/plant-sale/.  They even have lists of what will be available for purchase. Time to make my shopping list!

Although all of my garden beds are already reserved, I'm going to have to make room for a few extras.

Getting back to it!

It has been a LONG time since I last posted. Life has been busy (and difficult). I've worked at 5 different jobs since last fall...trying to find that long term career has been more difficult than I ever imagined. I spent the spring semester teaching introductory biology at a community college, which was a blast. However, once May rolled around, I found myself unemployed yet again. That said, the last week and a half since the semester ended has been fantastic! 

I got my lettuce and other salad greens planted.

I grew my first ever pullable lettuce plug. For someone with an horticultural background, this is a BIG DEAL!

I've been able to spend all day, every day, in my garden. I've transformed my raised bed garden into a (hopefully) more productive linear bed layout with a drip tape irrigation system. I bought an irrigation kit from www.dripirrigation.com and added a few extra components to customize it to the size of my garden.

The drip-tape system was incredibly easy to install, I didn't even need the instructions once I got the filter and backflow preventer hooked up to my spigot. After last year's drought-like conditions, this is going to be a huge timesaver (and plantsaver). All I have to do is turn on the spigot for about 45 minutes each morning and walk away. The hardest part is remembering to turn the water off again!

My chickens have been enjoying some valuable mommy-and-me time. I've been letting them out into the yard all day every day (except for the day when a giant husky tried to eat them). They are still enclosed in a makeshift fence, so they aren't completely free-ranging (which is illegal in my city, by the way). 

I haven't been able to harvest much from the garden yet. However, the perennial herbs and rhubarb have already been quite productive. I made a rhubarb syrup using 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 4 cups chopped rhubarb. I simmered it for about 20 minutes and strained the syrup from the pulp. I imagine the pulp would make great fruit leather, but I didn't want to haul out my giant dehydrator just for one sheet. So far I've used the syrup to make rhubarb soda, which is pretty tasty.

My front tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs were really pretty this spring despite the harsh drought conditions of 2012. After the tough summer last year, I was pretty sure that my bulbs wouldn't do much this spring, but I was wrong. My grape hyacinths were particularly nice this year. I brought these bulbs from my parents house to my new digs four years ago. They have multiplied quite a bit!

Chicken Garbage Disposal

I didn't want to admit it to myself, but one of the two batches of applesauce I made last fall got scorched...and the burned flavor is still there. I've avoided dealing with the botched batch for almost a year and I finally came up with a solution that doesn't make me feel wasteful.

Turns out, chickens love burned applesauce!

Now I have a way to dispose of my last 5 quarts of the stuff (they've been taking up precious pantry space too). The non-burned batch of applesauce was turned into apple butter, but I'll save that for another post.

Pasta for Chickens

After cleaning out some of my kitchen cupboards, I decided to make a little treat for my chickens. I found at least 8 mostly empty boxes/bags of pasta shapes (none of which had enough left for a meal), so I boiled them up into a pasta "trail mix". I have the big bag of noodles in the fridge and I give them a sprinkle of it everyday.

They love it! I'm sure it's not particularly nutritional (although there was a box of whole-wheat macaroni in there), but it's a nice treat in small quantities.

...And I'm loving the cupboard space.

Signs of Spring

I don't go into this part of my yard very often, so I was completely surprised by the little clusters of crocus .

This hellebore has been continuously blooming all winter since it has been so mild.

I was afraid my rhubarb hadn't survived the winter (since we had almost zero snow cover), but look what I found!

The Wolf Moon and Spanish Roja garlic that I planted last fall is well on it's way.

Maybe the second year's the charm with strawberries, because last year was a total bust.

My lovely ladies enjoying the sun and warmth in their temporary playpen (so they have access to fresh grass).

Popcorn Chickens

My boyfriend brought home a giant garbage bag full of popcorn to feed to the chickens. I'm only giving it to them in small quantities since it is butter-flavor popcorn, but I'm sure a little bit won't hurt them any.

They love it! They seem to like to crunch it up into smaller pieces and then pick up all the crumbs.

I wonder if this will make their eggs buttery tasting (or higher in cholesterol)?

Aged Eggs

I've been getting eggs from my chickens for over 6 months now and I recently realized that I still had a carton (or two, shh) of their eggs way back from the beginning. I opened up the carton and started laughing because they used to be so tiny! Here's a side-by-side shot of last week's eggs on the left (notice that the Aracuana is not laying) next to the first round of eggs on the right.

I decided it was probably time to get rid of the 6-month-old eggs, so I cracked them down the garbage disposal and put the shells in the compost pile. Amazingly, even though they seemed a little shrunken inside, not a single one smelled off...even after 6 months.

These'll make a nice addition to the compost heap.

Do You Feel A Draft?

Despite the freezing temperatures, my poor little molting hen seems to be feeling and looking better. The cold doesn't seem to bother her!

Her rump is completely featherless, but you can now see new feathers starting to poke through the skin.

I've been trying to keep an eye on her to make sure she isn't getting bullied by the other hens. I also want to prevent her from getting an infection. She does seem to spend a lot of time picking at herself, but I imagine that the new feathers coming in are itchy. It looks like the bloody spots she used to have are healing up just fine, so I'm not worried.

It's amazing how small a chicken looks when all its tail feathers fall out. Checkers currently looks tiny compared to the other hens, even though she's normally in the middle of the pack in terms of size.

Mangy Chicken

My USB memory card reader finally arrived in the mail, so I can now share some photos of my mangy molting hen. As you can see, her feathers were very sparse.

And the back of her head and neck was completely denuded (see below). I don't have any photos of her rump, but her rear-end and tail were also completely naked.

Amazingly enough, between the time I took these photos, discovered that my camera cord was broken, and ordered and received my new USB card reader, most of the feathers on her head and neck are already coming back in. Her rump is still naked though!

Her mood during the molt has changed pretty dramatically too. She's very spastic and runs around "like a chicken with their head cut off" to put it bluntly. I realize this is probably pretty stressful for her, so hopefully she'll be back to her old self one all her new shiny feathers grow in.

Ugly Chicken Photos Soon To Come!

I've been wanting to post some photos of my ugly chicken that's going through a pretty extreme molting session at the moment. She has lost all of the feathers on her head and neck and all the feathers on her rump. In addition to looking really mangy, she's also acting really spastic, which is pretty funny to watch. Unfortunately, my camera cord (or possibly the plug on the camera) no longer works. I ordered a USB memory card reader, so hopefully I'll be able to download all the photos on my camera pretty soon.

I guess I'm not surprised that something on the camera has broken. I've had the thing for almost 7 years (and it has gotten lots of use)

Chickens as Time Keepers

My chickens have been producing really well this fall, despite the shortening daylength. About a month ago, I put a desk lamp out in the coop to supply photoperiodic lighting for the hens. Chickens need at least 14 hours of light per day to continue egg production in the winter. Since the photoperiod in my area is currently less than 10 hours, I have used a timer to turn the lamp on from about 4:30 am to 8:30 am.

The last couple days my egg production has been lower than normal. I went into the coop to adjust the time and increase the duration of light from the desk lamp...but found out that the light bulb had burnt out. So that solves it! The hens weren't laying as many eggs as normal because they weren't getting their usual morning supplemental light.

I swapped out the incandescent bulb for a brand new compact fluorescent, so hopefully it won't burn out for a long time.

P.S. It's funny that I'm witnessing such strong photoperiodic responses from my chickens because my graduate research happens to be on the effect of photoperiodic lighting on plants. We are basically testing the effects of different types of light (e.g., incandescent versus fluorescent versus LED) given during the middle of the night on the speed at which plants flower.

Chickens Out and About

Over the last few weekends I've been letting a few chickens out of their pen to wander around the yard. At first I only let a couple out, but this past weekend I let all of them out at once. I'm happy to say that everyone was very well behaved and also very easy to return to the chicken run (using food as a bribe, of course).

My city doesn't allow urban chicken keepers to let their chickens free-range, but I doubt I'm going to get in trouble for letting them out for an hour or so.

They had a great time scratching around the garden, eating weeds (and my fall lettuce), and exploring.

Pet Protocol

I've had three of my pets die this year and I've come to the decision that I'm no longer going to get new pets unless they can be used for producing food.

I've purchased a number of small critters over the years (rats, hamsters, parakeets) with dreams of them being loads of fun to interact with. However, when it comes down to it, they are all too small, fragile, and skittish to gain much enjoyment from.

I'm also not interested in getting a dog or cat, which I assume would be more enjoyable and interactive. My family never had a dog or cat, so I have almost zero experience with them. I once babysat my brother's dog Sophie when she was a puppy for a couple weeks. She's cute, but I just didn't "get" the whole "man's best friend" thing. I don't dislike dogs, but the constant pleas for attention didn't seem like much of a friendship situation. I guess I'm just odd that way.

That said, from now on I think I'll stick to animals that can be used for, or produce, food. I've really enjoyed having the chickens. I love watching their antics, they are super low maintenance, and their eggs are delicious.

While I can't fulfill all my livestock dreams at my current home in the city (mostly due to ordinance issues, not lack of space), someday I see myself having dairy goats, meat rabbits, ducks, turkeys, geese, and bees. At the moment, I'm especially excited about the bees. I'm pretty sure they are legal in my city...more on my bee-dreams soon!

Triple-yolker?

One of the best parts of keeping chickens is collecting the eggs each day. You never know what you're going to find. The other day I found the biggest egg ever!

The egg on the right is super elongated...it's almost like two eggs just got stuck together (notice how both ends look exactly the same). I sold this egg, so I won't be able to find out how many yolks are crammed in there, but I'm guessing at least two, probably three.

Who's Watching Who?

This is what I found when I went outside to shut the chickens in for the night. I'm not sure who's more curious about the other?

Bantams At The Zoo

I went to the zoo this past weekend. I think the petting zoo is probably my favorite part of any zoo (because I can daydream about having all kinds of farm animals). I was surprised to catch a glimpse of some bantam chickens (the two on the left). I had never seen any in person...they are soo tiny! I asked the zookeeper about them and she didn't even know they were bantams. She told me they were just baby chickens, but it's pretty obvious that they're bantams (since they already appear to be full grown, yet about 1/3 the size of a normal chicken). They're so cute! I might have to get some in my next round of chickens (whenever that happens).

Feather Hair Extensions

I've been noticing more and more feather hair extensions lately, so I was curious where they came from and whether they were real or synthetic.

Turns out, most of them are real rooster saddle feathers. On Etsy.com you can buy 3 dyed saddle feathers for about 18 bucks! I can't believe how expensive they are considering they're basically chicken butt fluff.

I'm not a vegetarian or anything, but I started reading about how these hair extensions are produced and it's kind of sad. Read this article if you're interested. Basically, rooster farmers catering to the fly fishing industry are now producing feathers for the hair extension market. The sad part is that the roosters only grow one set of feathers in their lifetime, so the feathers are "harvested" by killing the bird and removing the saddle. The birds also happen to be inedible, so the meat is wasted (at least they said it is composted).

I wouldn't be so opposed to these hair extensions if the feathers happened to be a byproduct of slaughtering the birds for meat (or if they could be continually harvested from the bird, like angora from a rabbit), but they're not. They are grown and slaughtered solely for their feathers.

How is this different from wearing fur?

Three's Company

At least three of my hens have started laying! Here's yesterday's haul.

Got To Be A "Double-Yolker"

The egg on the left was laid one day before the egg on the right (by the same chicken), but is HUGE! I predict that it's a double-yolker, but we'll have to wait and see.

This chicken happens to have gone broody too, so last night I started trying to break her broodiness. I took away the plastic decoy eggs and gave the hen a "clutch" of ice cubes to sit on. Hopefully this will cool down her bottom enough to stop the broodiness. If that doesn't work, my next tactic will be to dunk her bottom side in some cold water. I don't really want to have to resort to the "tiny metal cage" tactic because it sounds uncomfortable, plus I don't have an appropriate cage. Hopefully the ice cubes will do the trick!