A Backyard Chicken Whisperer's Rookie Mistake

Alright, so I may have accidentally left the door to the chicken run open last night. As a result, one of our chickens got its day started out in the yard at about 4a this morning (when I got up and went outside to find out what all the squawking was about).

This is all that remains. No blood. No carcass. I tracked a few feathers a half a block away before losing the trail. Judging by the crime site, we've concluded that the area Cooper's hawk struck again, this time for the win.  I hadn't blogged about this, but a couple of weeks ago, I witnessed an attempted snatching in broad daylight by a hawk while standing not two feet from a chicken.

Still, what a humiliating mistake.

ThinkKit D11 - Charting Our Chickens

Day 10 of the ThinkKit challenge asks us to draw a pie chart or Venn diagram describing some aspect of this past year.  I'm opting for a line chart because I've got something I've been documenting these past 12 months that I want to visualize.  Namely, this year's egg production from our backyard chickens.  Over the course of this past year, I've been logging feed purchases and egg production in order to answer two questions.  First, is this backyard experiment costing me more money than it would cost to buy the same quality eggs at the store?  Second, can I validate that chicken egg production is closely related to the position of the sun in the sky.

Come to find out I despise this particular chicken

Regarding the overall cost, here's a breakdown:

• Total eggs laid, 2012: around 394 (we may have missed a few entries)
• 6 X 50lbs. of chicken feed at $20/bag = $120
• 3 X 5lbs. of chicken scratch (i.e. cracked cord) at $3 per 5lbs container = $9
• Let's say, $40 in fence and posts for the run we built out this year.

That leaves us with a cost of around $169 in 2012 to maintain three hens.  This breaks down to about $.43/egg.  Let's say a dozen free range eggs at the store costs $5 (which I'm pretty sure is accurate) or $.42/egg.  So, it's a wash for 2012.  Without the hardware investment, it breaks down to about $.32/egg.  So, given I don't go out and decide to build the Taj Mahal of chicken coops in 2013, we could maybe save a little money.  That wasn't the goal or anything, but it would be nice to finally have a hobby that didn't cost me money.      

There's a lot of variance in this chart.  This is due in part to  a handful of bouts of broodiness as well as losing old Red and having to raise the pullet we acquired to replace her.  As mentioned above, we've read that egg output is dependent less on the cold weather and more on the position of the sun in the sky.  Well, this chart doesn't really validate that notion.  So, I don't really know what to say about that.  All in all, I had a notion that there would be large swings but not like this.  I have no idea what to make of it.

Note, the low spot in May was a result of one broody hen and another pullet not yet old enough to raise eggs.  So, I was essentially feeding birds for the hell of it.  We actually had to buy a dozen eggs at the store, which was kind of insulting.

Our First Fairy Egg

We received our first "fairy" egg the other day. While researching online as to why one of our hens would lay such a small, yolkless egg, my wife mentioned out loud that they were referred to as fairy eggs. Our oldest daughter, a 4 year old, was in the room and latched on to this immediately.  "Did it really come from a fairy?", she asked.  "Of course it did", was our response.  We ran with it and won't look back. 

These little hands are cute holding this little egg

he's just a little guy

The Presidens' Day Chicken Territory Treaty

The final product is clean and appealing

President's Day 2012 marks the day the Fords and their chickens drew new borders in the backyard territory.

What's at stake is a backyard lawn that's in high demand. As a compromise, the Fords have erected an additional 7 X 15 foot run out of plastic chicken mesh, a few steel fence posts, and some zip strips.  The result is a segmented area of the yard that will be open to the chickens all day.  Jon, head chicken whisperer, stated that it still seems prudent to shut the doors to the inner run nightly, in the event a pack of coyotes makes it south of Broad Ripple.

The Fords welcomed the re-redistricting.  Seen rightfully as their land, they have not ever been able to freely walk barefoot since buying the house in 2004.  According to the Fords, these new arrangements give the chickens a sizable run to peck and cluck while the Fords have a backyard for barefoot summer play.  Allison, an official spokesperson for the Ford family, stated that the new extended run gives the three chicken population more than enough room per square foot as dictated by back yard chicken best practices.

Relations between the two parties have chilled
but are expected to rebound

Reactions from the chickens were mixed.  Adventure Chicken,  the most outgoing of the poultry population declared, "cluuuuuck cluck cluck," adding that it was viewed by most in the coop as a land grab.  Regardless most involved agreed that due to their extremely small and limited brains, the chickens will forget they ever stepped outside the bounds of their new arrangements.  Ford officials, however, will continue to monitor the actions on the ground to determine if the backyard poultry population is mounting an insurrection.

Confirmed! Pictures of our predator in the sky

I'd been home from work for only a few minutes today when I looked out into the back yard.  The chickens were minding there business pecking around in the backyard (and not laying eggs) when I confirmed our suspicions earlier this summer.  Confirmed with one correction.  I'd previously stated that our visitor was an American Red-Tailed Hawk.  These pictures suggest that what we have here is a Cooper's Hawk.  Our visitor was a mere twenty feet from our coop subtlety taunting our hens.  I've read a couple of online accounts of the Cooper's Hawk snatching chickens from the sky in broad daylight while owners were watching.  So, fingers crossed that I'll get to experience that craziness.

A Vintage Chicken Christmas

My dad has a pretty solid streak at giving us great gifts.  His Christmas gifts are things you don't really ask for and are unexpected gifts you really appreciate.  This year, he evidently found some inspiration from our backyard chickens.  We received a couple of interesting vintage chicken tools that are worth sharing.

First, the egg scale.  This is a neat little piece that Allison received.  No need to worry if you don't feel like getting locked into the Jiffy-Way, the scale also measures in ounces.

The other chicken themed gift is also an antique, one with a connection to the glass capital of Indiana.  I had no idea what it was when I opened it.  Apparently, it's a chicken catcher.  This one was some swag from Shatto's Electric Hatchery, circa whenever it was you could have a telephone number that was 315.  Shatto's Electric Hatchery, by the way, has also now become the name of the pub I will never and have never thought of opening. 

Look at the range!

Yup, 315 was the telephone number

I'm not exactly sure why you advertise a hatchery with the adjective 'electric'

I'm sold

Summer Growing: A Post-Game Wrap-Up

It's finally cold enough that part of our garden can be dismantled.  It's hard to believe that we are still picking greens, kholrabri, and turnips (blech). Garden in the ground?  Oh it must be Thanksgiving, right?  That makes perfect sense.  With this late, warm fall finally coming to a close, I thought I would recap some of this season's green thumb farmer adventures.


Humility Through Hops
My mother-in-law's words haunt this experiment.  "I've got a hops vine in my yard and its impossible to kill", she said.  It was a bittersweet feeling proving her wrong.  As I alluded to in an earlier post this spring, I did not end up having much luck with the hops.  There were two significant logistical hurdles that could not be overcome including the unusually wet spring and my hops field location.    

The most significant challenge, by far, was the unusually long, wet spring.  The problem I discovered was that the above average rainfall created a large period of time for my rhizomes to sit in our cool, damp refrigerator.  Prolonged exposure to these conditions promotes rotting and that is exactly what I experienced.  That being said, well over 75% were unaffected.  Still, that starts chipping away at this project's success.

My hops sources told me that the rhizomes really had to be in the ground, at the latest, by mid May.  My mail order rhizomes were available for pick-up in late March. I thought maybe they ought to be placed in some soil to preserve them while they sat in my refrigerator, but that is ill advised.  Everything I was told or read said that the soil would trigger the growth and rooting in the rhizomes.  While in this fragile state, the chance of survival would be negatively impacted when transplanted to the ground.  So, they sat and sat in the refrigerator.  I threw caution to the wind and finally planted them as they were just going to rot in the refrigerator if I'd waited till early June, when it was finally dry and appropriate for planting.  As expected, the soil was too wet and dense and therefore not conducive for growing anything, let alone a resilient hops plant.

My other logistical issue was geography.  I'm only an hour and ten minutes, door to door, to my parent's farm and location of my hops experiment.  That is assuming no rush hour traffic, accidents, but at an appropriate speed limit.  If you've spent any time on I-69 north of Indianapolis, this is not always a safe assumption.  It's not far, until I need to be there consecutive days during the week.  Early on, I really needed to be there for multiple days a week to water and weed.  I also needed to be tending to the  during those few days when the vines needed training.  These needs won't always manifest on a weekend, the only available time I really have to warrant a trip to the farm.  If this was my backyard, growing hops would be easier.  But you've seen my back yard in earlier posts. It's not large and it's currently occupied - and not by that social movement!

Will I give the hops another chance this next spring? The poles are in the ground and there will be turned soil at my disposal.  So in that regard, there'd be less work.  I could also likely assume that next spring would experience average precipitation.  However, I still have this geographic problem with my field.  One could also look back and say, "what the hell were you doing?"  with your second baby due in May and a Masters thesis you weren't interested in touching.  Let's leave that alone, shall we?  I still have that thesis to complete.  So, I'll be generous and consider my hops experiment a game time decision next spring.

Backyard Chickens

Remember this extreme nester?

Here we have another project conducted right around the time we had our second baby.  Regardless, our chickens are a success.  For a couple of months now, we've had a steady stream of eggs.  Comparing the hops experiment to the backyard chickens, it becomes clear that you really have to be within close proximity to these sorts of experiments.  Everything that needs tending is conveniently tucked away in the corner of the yard.  I'm going to need to be close to this project in the winter, what with battling freezing drinking water and potentially heat in the shithouse coop.  I use the term shithouse in that it's a kids toy outhouse re-purposed as a chicken coop and not a reference to its craftsmanship.  Anyway, the chickens are a home run.




The Garden
Finishing at around the .320 mark was this year's garden.   It could be characterized as a handful of wins and losses.  This year, The biggest winners were the leafy greens.  The spring planting was really fantastic.  For weeks, we had great tasting spinach, greens, and different varieties of lettuce.  We even got a second, albeit less bountiful, late season crop.   Our kohlrabi was good.  Our bell peppers were a hit. The tomatoes and beans were not very successful.  That's too bad as I really like tomatoes.

We had a variety of  bell pepper colors

Lot's of lettuce!

What's next?
With two of three agricultural projects success, I consider this growing season a win.  I'm already thinking about next year.  I'm considering backyard bees tucked away somewhere in our 'spacious' yard.  We'll probably spend some time figuring out how we could organically maximize tomato yields.  Also likely is an annex to la casa de polio.  I've also been interested in cold frames.  Or perhaps even some grander scheming I've been mulling around in my head.  There's so much experimentation and technique refining that I wish I could quit my job in order to free up more time.   The future is bright!

We're Being Hunted From Above

I smell trouble.  It seems like a looming inevitability.  Each day this week, I have heard cries from the sky.  I had enjoyed the open windows and screen doors of September until the paranoia set in. Something is circling, perching, waiting near our backyard.  Our chickens ought to be more afraid than I as I think they are the prey and a Red-tailed Hawk is the hunter.  Still, it feels a little uneasy in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe or Hitchcock to know that a bird is observing and plotting from above.  

An early artist sketch of our stalker

I first heard the 'keee-eeee-arr' late in the afternoon and earlier this week.  I confirmed the sound here.  On Tuesday, Allison claims to have seen it perched upon our fence, taunting the hens in the cage.  It was only there for a second, she said.  She was pretty sick that morning, so it could have been a fevered brain playing tricks on her.  The more likely scenario, it seems, is that we have the above mentioned hawk, sometimes referred to as a chicken hawk.  Nap Town Chickens, currently just a Facebook group, has a post from someone else in the city with a chicken hawk problem and was asking about the legality of shooting said predator.  Seems a little too old-crotchedy-farmer for me.  These chickens cost me $3 a piece.  I'm pretty sure I don't need to be discharging firearms in the middle of the city to protect the flock.  

It does make good sense for such a bird of prey.  Chicken mania has swept our neighborhood.  A month ago or so, our neighbor also picked up 3-4 hens.  Last week, I talked to a neighbor a couple of blocks away who also has some backyard hens.  There was even a self-guided tour of coops in  the neighborhood last Sunday.  I think we could lobby the powers that be to christen our neighborhood, the Chicken District.  Maybe not, if that hawk  calls in the re-enforcements.  I must have a picture of this bird in action, if it is indeed what we have on our hands. More to come, I hope.  Until then, I'll have my eye to the sky while trying to figure out what to do.

 

Mother Cluckers In The City

Our chickens have settled in to la casa Ford. I must say that they are a unique addition to our little homestead. While I did grow up on a farm, we never raised chickens. So, this is uncharted territory for the Ford household. I know I may regret committing this to the Internet, but they are strangely captivating to watch as they meander around our little backyard. There's some sort of zen aspect to this. Either that or we've acquired a rare bread of hypno-chicken.

You may be asking yourself, "Why on earth would we reserve space on our postage stamp property for urban chickens?" Yes, we buy the free range, organic eggs to the tune of over $4 a dozen but this doesn't break the Ford bank. If you add in the additional labor and supplies, our eggs won't exactly be free for awhile. That being said, they are really pretty easy to maintain and they are not that messy. At least four of them together aren't messy. So, what gives?

Overall, maintaining chickens in the city is a fun challenge. It's a learning experiment that brings a little more life to our backyard. Our daughter giggles uncontrollably when we let them run around in the yard. That's more than enough for us. But wait, there's more!

Bye bye bugs?
We've read that chickens will keep slugs, mosquitoes, and other bugs in check. This is currently an unconfirmed benefit to having a few hens pecking around in your backyard. I hope this to be true as the mosquitoes in our backyard are atrocious and I've got to be losing just a tiny bit of karma by pouring salt on the slugs I discover in the backyard. Yeah, I'm nine years old like that sometimes.

Chickens love to help with compost
I woke up one day awhile back and realized I had a weird fixation on dirt and compost. I get a weird sense of satisfaction seeing my organic trash turned into rich soil. What's not to love? These chickens get a gold star from me as they like pecking at certain food scraps, accelerating decomposition. We stir it into a compost bin with the rest of our organic material and the rest is magic.

Local, local, local
Chickens in our backyard are not going to single handily save our food system nor will they ween us off of said system. That's not the point. From a cost and quality perspective, our future food system will have to be obsessed with local sources of food. Food sources great and small. Feeding both rural residents and urbanites is going to require new collaborations between consumers and producers. We believe that chickens in your back yard, a decent sized urban garden, and so forth help create a catalyst for larger scale, coordinated local food movements.