Happy Spa Chicken and Harvest Time

I'm happy to report that the chicken spa treatments did the job. Voodoo's foot is back to normal and apparently we didn't have to face the dreaded bumblefoot. Now it's just harvest time in the garden, a race to get all the produce in and dealt with, as well as mulching and taking care of our late fall/winter crops. I had hoped to have a space to move my cold frames to, but it was overtaken by rogue pumpkin vines that have set fruit. Since we all love pumpkin here, I'm loathe to move the pumpkins until we've harvested them, which means the cold frames may have to wait.

Every year at this time, this blog takes a significant lull as I try to keep on top of everything going on outside in the few weeks of good weather we have remaining. Happy gardening to all!

Spa Day for a Chicken

Meet Voodoo, one of our favorite chickens. She's a six month old Barred Rock, a breed which has given us some of our mellowest and most friendly hens. Our oldest hen Hera is a Barred Rock, and a real sweetie too. Voodoo however is a little more adventuresome than most, and has consistently figured out ways to defeat the chicken pen security and escape to freedom. We find her on our front lawn, with all of the other chickens clucking indignantly that they should be out to roam too (we do actually let them out to free range as much as possible, but not when we're not around the house). It was probably on one of these escapades that Voodoo hurt her foot, and we noticed that she was limping a little bit.

Then Wayne and I went out of town to the Reno Air Races with my dad, and my mom stayed with the kids. It was during this time that the foot started to swell up and get noticeably worse. From the laptop in our hotel room, I frantically started Googling "chicken foot injury" and came up horrified. Who knew that there was this dread chicken foot disease called "bumblefoot"?? Fortunately, I don't think that's what she has after looking at the foot, but Mackenzie was very panicked when it swelled way up and many of the websites talked about lancing and surgery and antibiotics.

What I did tell him to do was to go and get some epsom salts and start soaking the foot, and move her to a sterile environment indoors. So he and grandma set off to the drugstore. Unfortunately, Epsom salts have now gone designer, with all kinds of herbal addititives (gone are the days of the $3 bag of just "Epsom salts" apparently) and they came back with a scented bag of chamomile salts. So we've been joking that Voodoo is getting her twice-daily "spa treatments" at the Blue Skies Ranch, and so far the swelling on her foot has gone down almost completely and she's putting weight on it again. Another day or two and she'll be done with her little spa vacation and can go back with the other ladies and tell them all about it. I bet they'll be jealous.

The Hundred Hen March

This week at our town's big celebration and parade, one parade entry will be the Hundred Hen March. They may well have more than a hundred hens as it seems every other house in our area of town now has chickens. Asa is planning on going, towing a couple of hens along (caged of course) in our bike trailer.

The purpose of the Hundred Hen March is to increase awareness of backyard chickens and the growing food sustainability movement. Sounds like a good cause and a fun time to me. I may have to make some kind of clever sign to march along with. What do you think of "Feeling Clucky Punk?"

Getting Clucky in NYC!

On CNN Money, urban chickens in NYC!

Mystery Chicken Death

A couple of days ago, one of our chickens went missing. Just gone from the coop. No tell-tale pile of feathers from a raccoon or raptor attack, just no chicken. Today she wandered back into the chicken pen in the middle of the day and promptly squawked twice loudly and fell over dead. I have no idea what was wrong with her, a mystery chicken death. I am wondering if she ate a mushroom of some sort since the recent massive rains have caused a large sprouting of many varieties of mushrooms in the woods and even in my raised garden boxes! We have had another chicken die like this a couple of years ago and I just don't have a clue.

RIP Bingo, this is a photo of her about three years ago, happily foraging through our leaf piles. She was a bit of a  mystery chicken from the get-go, she was supposed to be an Americauna chicken, but never developed the fluffy face feathers that our other Americaunas did. She had her own unique look to her, but was a very pretty girl. Here she is in her awkward teenage days, next to Saphire, our Blue Andalusian:

Good News For Chicken Fans in My Town

On the heels of posting the Chicken Rap, here's some great news from our own city. Our council suspended our city's two-chicken-per-household limit! You can read more about it here. It will be interesting to see what they come up with for a future chicken rule.

Some options are:

- No limits (let current nuisance laws regarding noise, odors, etc. stand in cases where there are complaints)
- Four chickens per household plus one extra chicken for each 1,000 square feet of land (this is the law of our neighboring town)
- Revert to two-chicken law (not really very helpful since chickens are flock animals, trying to keep two is crazy)

I'm obviously hoping for one of the first two. In order to have eggs for a family of four, you really need 5 - 6 chickens.

The Chicken Revolution Rap

Residents in Salem, a town just an hour up the I-5 corridor from here, are fighting for their right to keep backyard chickens. Here in my town, the city council just discussed increasing the flock size on urban lots from the three that the law currently allows (as most chicken owners know, there's virtually no way to keep only three chickens - what if one dies, you can't just get one baby chicken and introduce it, they're flock animals for pete's sake!). This rap video pokes some fun at the more outlandish concerns that people have about urban chickens (leading to meth labs in the neighborhood? really people!).



Strangely, folks are so concerned about harmless chickens. Yet did you know that dogs bit nearly 2% of the U.S. population - more than 4.7 million people annually? That over 800,000 of those bites are serious enough to require medical attention? That 1,000 people A DAY are treated in Emergency rooms for dog bites? And about 25 - 35 a year are FATAL? That most of the victims are children, half of whom are bitten in the face? That dog bite losses exceed $1 billion per year with over $300 million paid by homeowner's insurance?

So after reading all of that, how on earth residents can be opposed to chickens amazes me! Quieter than a dog, less destructive than a cat, and safer to humans and other animals than either! Now don't get me wrong, I'm a dog owner and a cat owner and I would hate to give up either. But in a city like Salem where you can keep up to a 100 pound pig as a pet, what is wrong with a couple of chickens?

Four and a Half Eggs? The Chickens Oblige

I recently had to cut a recipe in half, and that brought the number of eggs required to 4 1/2. How to do that? No problem, one of our chickens recently started laying again and obliged me with a half-sized egg!

Whoops

I put the lid up on our new cold frames today because it's been so nice and sunny. But then later I forgot and let the chickens out to forage. Of course they found the cold frame and all of the tasty little teeny plant shoots within. So there goes my veggie starts. Wah!

Chalk that one up to experience, I guess.

Our Garden Featured on Local TV News

After the People magazine article came out, our local news station came and did a piece about it. I think they did a really nice job. It's great to see lawns-to-gardens getting so much coverage! Although I don't consider myself any kind of gardening expert in any way, it's nice to think that our experience might somehow inspire others to also give it a try.

I especially love the first line: "A Eugene family is featured in this week's People Magazine, not for red carpet fashion or celebrity scandal, but for their vegetable garden." Here's the link to the story.

Dealing With Chicken Butts

Hah, I got a kick out of John K's post about Chick Butts over on The Outdoor Journey. I simply love his blog because there's so few people out there who combine my love of triathlon with a nerd's eye to the nitty-gritty science of sports, along with urban gardening and urban sustainability.

I was sure I had a post about chick butts somewhere here on my own blog, and I found it, from May of 2006. Fortunately, we've somehow been doing something right with the last couple of batches of chicks because none of them have pasted up like the first batch. We don't get our chicks from mail order, and maybe that helps with the whole issue. I also make sure to really change out their water so that they all drink a lot, and we feed them chick starter instead of the layer pellets that the mature hens are eating. Whatever it is, it seems to be working since I haven't wiped a chick bottom in a couple of years.

Our newest couple of chicks are getting along towards full-grown and we're about to move their outdoor pen into the bigger chicken enclosure to start getting them used to the full-grown hens and vice versa.

Jeepers, Where'd You Get Those Peepers??

So my hubby likes to think he's really the harcore parent, the tough guy, the got-it-all-under-control dude. But every now and then something happens that shows the real softie that's lurking underneath that tough exterior. Such as going to the feed and seed store with Asa the other day to get some chicken food. Of course, it's Cute Little Fluffy Peeping Chick season at the Feed-n-Seed in March, so Asa loves to go in and look at the little fluffballs. But this time there was only one lonely chick left in the place. One terribly lonely chick. Peeping its little heart out in its sad sad state. So of course, being the animal lover that she is, she couldn't just leave it there. And hubby, being the softie that he really truly is, couldn't let that happen either. So home came the chick and out came the heat lamp, the watering dish, and the small cage. Meet Gloria Peeper, the not-so-lonely chick.
But the problem with getting one little chick is that it was still terribly lonely. It stopped its plaintive peeping only when Asa was sitting right next to the cage talking to it. She lobbied to sleep in the garage next to the cage, but we finally hit on the idea of putting the cage out in the chicken coop where Gloria could hear and see the big chickens. This seemed to comfort her immensely and she finally calmed down. Still, it's not a good idea to try to introduce one new chicken into an established flock, not to mention the fact that big brother Mackenzie was now lobbying for a spring chick of his own so on Wednesday we went off to the Feed-n-Seed again (knowing that Wednesday is when they get the shipment of new chicks in).

So meet Shadow, Mackenzie new baby. She's much smaller than Gloria since she was born a week later, but they seem to have hit it off and are snuggling up together under the heat lamp. All is well at the Blue Skies Ranch, and although we didn't mean to add any new chicks to the flock this year, everyone is enjoying having the spring chicks around. Shadow is mellow and quiet, likely to go to sleep in your hands. She'll be an all-black chicken. We believe that Gloria is a Delaware, so she should turn out white with some barred markings, but we won't know for sure until she gets bigger since it was a mixed bunch in there and she was the only one left.

Things My Kids Must Never Ever See

My kids do not need to know that someone out there on the internet makes and sells chicken diapers. As it is, I have to tell Asa all the time that kissing chickens is a bad idea, and I have to discourage the friendlier ones from just inviting themselves into the house. We would soon have ten more housepets (on top of the four cats and two guinea pigs) if the kids could manage to get chicken diapers on our chickens. Then again, if they actually had to clean the chicken diapers, it might not be such an exciting proposition!

There is actually a lady in the movie Natural History of the Chicken (highly recommended by our chicken loving family) that keeps her chicken as a pet, even going so far as to take it in her swimming pool and to the store! She is obviously a proponent of chicken diapers, LOL.

With Chickens And Gardens For All

Among other things gaining in popularity lately due to the surge in gas and food prices, backyard chickens and front yard gardens are becoming more commonplace in my town. Several people lately have come over to look at our chicken setup, and we have been loaning our chicken tractor out as more folks get chicks. As it turns out, two of the people read about our chickens on this blog, although I also had real-life connections to them as well. I love it when the internet proves itself not just to be a means of connecting distant people, but providing local connections as well.

In our local weekly paper this week was an article on Victory Gardens and the local folks who are aiming at creating 10,000 new gardens in our city this year. Just down the street, a team of folks descended on a neighbor's house to help turn a portion of their yard into a food-producing garden. This nationwide movement to revive the Victory Garden "for victory over global warming" is gaining steam all across the U.S. Standing to benefit the most are people with limited access to fresh vegetables due to the deterioration of local grocery stores and public transportation. If you don't have a food-producing garden yet, start a Victory Garden team in your own neighborhood. Gardening always goes better when people work together and help each other out.

The Magic Machine

So what if I had a machine I could market. Say you have a garden plot. My magic machine weeds it, then tills it up, then fertilizes it. It doesn't use fossil fuels, is economical, and as a by-product it produces.... eggs! Hubby fenced off our new garden plot yesterday and we've been putting the chickens in there every afternoon. They go to town eating the weeds, scratching it all up and fertilizing like crazy. I can't wait to start planting!

By the way, the only thing funnier than running around trying to round up your chickens to get them into the darned garden plot (my wonderful plan of throwing food scraps in there didn't work because the dingbats just walked around outside the fence, ignoring the enormous entrance by which they could get access to the food scraps!) is watching your kid carrying a chicken under each arm! These gals are way too tame.

The Beauty of Instinct

Not too long ago, we had a very cold and blustery day around here. It was so windy, the gate to the chicken coop blew shut, and when I went to put the chickens up for the night, only five of them were in the coop. So I went out to look around the bigger enclosure and couldn't see them at all. Now, if you know how much like pets these chickens are, you can imagine my terror in thinking that several of them had been eaten by one of the local raccoons or killed by another dog or some other such terrible fate. I went back up to the house for a flashlight and took a closer look around the pen, when I finally spotted them.

There's an oil barrel up against the back wall of the chicken coop, and all five of the chickens had somehow managed to wedge themselves into the space between the barrel and the wall. They were stacked on top of each other, and this space is about the only place in the enclosure with a roof over it, so they were even mostly dry from the rain. When I picked up each of the hens to carry them back to the coop, they were dry and toasty warm from being all stacked up like that. The funny thing about chickens is that when it's dark, they shut down like little robots that have been switched off. I couldn't even get them to walk up into the coop, so I had to stuff them through the coop door one at a time. Once in the light of the coop, they finally woke up enough to flap up to their perch.

I've noticed some other instinctual things about the chickens, like how they're all silent and still on their perch when I go to close the coop up at night, but as soon as the door is closed and they're secure, they all hop down from the perch and go to get some food or water. But until that moment of safety, they all remain perfectly still, you wouldn't even know there were chickens in the building at all from the quietness within.

Now I know chickens are almost as dumb as the boards they perch on. If they're out in the big enclosure and one of them goes back into the little pen, they often can't figure out how to get back out again. The door is, of course, in the same position it's always been in, but they don't seem to remember. They'll pace all around the cage with an expression like "how did that other chicken get out there?". But they have their instincts, and those instincts are pretty good at preserving them in many circumstances.

People, on the other hand, have lots of brains - tons and tons of grey matter that lets them think about all kinds of interesting stuff. But our instincts for self-preservation and benefiting our flock are just about zero. It seems like every day there's another news article that shows that what the "extremeists" have been saying all along (about the energy crisis, global warming, blah blah blah) is probably going to look like a picnic compared to what's really going to go down. Wheat shortages, rainforest mowed over for biofuels, ice melting and sea levels rising, gas prices soaring, jobs diminishing, the "recession" that no one wants to call a recession looming over everyone's heads. A woman (who commutes 90 miles a day) interviewed in an article about rising gas prices says she'll have to cut back on her Starbucks to save money for gas, politicians continue to talk about biofuels as if they'll save us, no one at all mentions the big "C" word - Conservation.

We're headed for the abyss, and unlike a sensible chicken we still fail to do the right thing.

It's That Time Again

The new little chickies are out mingling for a couple of hours a day in the big chickens' pen, but in order to let them have this bit of freedom one of us has to hang out down there with them to make sure they don't, well, fly the coop. So it's about time to get out the scissors and clip their wings. I have such mixed feelings about doing this, especially after the way some of our last chickens were killed by a dog. I know that if their wings hadn't been clipped, they could've flown up into the trees (I know this for sure because I saw two dogs chasing wild turkeys on our property and even the big ol' Tom turkey managed to hoist his body up into a tree in time to not be eaten).

I also hate taking away the freedom of flight that must be a wonderful part of being a bird. Maybe I think about this kind of thing way too much, but it makes me sad to remove their ability to lift above the earth just when they're discovering it for the first time. And I know that once I remove that from them, they won't even remember they have it. Our older chickens have molted and grown back their flight feathers, but they never fly anymore. I don't think know that they can.

On the other hand, we live in an urban environment, and it's a blessing at all to have the chickens. I don't want to aggravate the neighbors with chickens flying in to decimate their vegetable gardens, and I know that we're lucky to be able to keep them here at all since many other cities don't allow people to have chickens. So I'll go out with the scissors and feel a bit sad as I remove their flight feathers, and then probably feel relieved that I don't have to babysit the chickens and they can at least roam freely within their large pen.

Teenage Chickens

Our baby chicks are now teenagers, with most of their adult feathers and a few of their fluffy baby feathers still sprouting out here and there. They look gangly and awkward, and they have attitudes, just like human teens. Cleopatra (not pictured here, but she has black "eyeliner" around each eye) is emerging as the leader of the flock, pecking me whenever I get too close and challenging everyone else to regular "chicken jousts" (where they run at each other and then flap up in a fury of wings). Sapphire, my daughter A's Blue Andalusian (the greyish blue one on the left) is the sweetheart of the bunch, and Bingo (the creamy colored one) and Ra (all black) seem to be the group's brightest bulbs.

They're starting to fly around a bit, which makes things interesting when I'm trying to put food into their feeder and not have fledglings flapping around the garage. Their chicken instincts are solidly in place, a recent visit by an overflying raven caused them all to freeze in mid-peck for at least a minute until the threat was gone. All in all, they're endless entertainment as they grow and change.

Just Me and My Peeps

I have to smile whenever I hear someone use the word "peeps" these days (as slang for friends) because that's what I've always called our baby chicks. I had this wonderful idea to get out one of our Easter basket, pile all of our peeps into it, and take a cute photo with the kids on the lawn. Unfortunately, the peeps had other ideas and they all popped out of the basket, and ran around the lawn with subsequent pandemonium ensuing as we tried to gather them all back up (the little boogers are fast already!) But we did manage to take this photo while each holding one of them. I have no idea how those professional photographers get pictures of babies with bunnies and cute little fluffy chicks. Maybe drug them? I don't know, maybe our chicks are more active than the standard photographic fare, but it was fun anyhow.

Not Much Cuter Than New Chicks

We got our new layer chicks this week, and there's not too many things cuter on this earth than holding a new little baby puffball in your hands. We all got to pick out a couple, so we have Aracaunas, Black Sexlinks, a Blue Andalusian and a Brown Leghorn. Should be an interesting mix of chickens! The peepers are out in the garage for now with a heat light, and I need to get our old chicken tractor back from a friend to use when they get bigger, until they're ready to join the older ladies in the coop.

I'm glad that the chicks arrived at our Feed-n-Seed store, because it's been a dark week otherwise. We had to put our beloved 14 year old dog Sabre to sleep this week. Even as old and gimpy as he was at the end, he always got up in the morning and evening to check the chickens with me. He was a shepherd through and through, and his working dog ethic never failed. Even after our other chickens were attacked by the neighbor's dog, they were never afraid of Sabre. He was a gentle and sweet soul, and we will really miss him. I've been having a pretty hard week of it, and posted some on my other blog about all of that. My husband gave me Sabre in the first year after we met, so he's been with us for our entire married life, and the kids have known him through their whole lives too. He went everywhere and did everything with us, so there's a pretty big hole in our lives right now. I know it will get easier with time.

In other good news, stay tuned for some possibly exciting news about our solar panels!