The Chicken Killing Cone

This week we got a package in the mail. It was one that we ordered. Did we really? Yes, indeed we did. I can't believe I ordered this thing on Amazon and actually shelled out the money for it. It's not that it was that expensive, it's just the nature of the item, more specifically, what it is used for. You see, we have intent. Our intent is to raise chickens for egg production, nitrogenous chicken poop, and down the line...for consumption after their laying life has waned.

But how does one reconcile intent with action? In this case, our intent to provide for ourselves and live a sustainable lifestyle runs smack up against a belief that all life is deserving of respect. In other words, I don't' think I am there yet...there being the act of using this killing cone. I know I know...we homo sapiens (puts us more on an animal level saying it that way) have been outfitted to eat meat: we have enzymes in our belly to digest it and teeth made to chew it. All useful underpinnings in my heady justification for my meat-eating ways. But to be so close to the harvest of meat has created some really heavy internal dialog. Taking the life of a little creature that I have named and have enjoyed watching run around my yard for two years...it's just not something that I have been prepared for.

Several weeks ago, we had to take the life of one of our chickens that was sick and didn't get better after more than a month of trying. Trying translates into moving her indoors and having her share our house with us, forcing medicated water down her throat three times a day, holding and talking to her and having her become really comfortable as a lap chicken, rejoicing in signs that she was feeling better (like having the gumption to run away from us after we gave her a few hours of unfettered access to pasture), then saddened by the stark realization that she wasn't going to recover fully. We chopped her head off. Well, we is the proverbial sense, I was at work and got the moribund text just before and just after the difficult deed. Are we really gonna do this when our ladies are fit and happy?

Damn, nobody warned us about the other side of this equation. Even all the justification that I've heard from others haven't made this feel right. Like, for instance, the fact that our chickens are one of the most spoiled beings on the planet and in fact run our dogs out of the yard on occasion. The have a huge yard, all the food and cool clean water and, as Michael Pollan would put it, the opportunity to life out their full chicken-ness. I think it's easier to hunt and kill an animal that didn't exist side-by-side with you for several years. And to think that I scoffed at the craigslist add looking for a home for hens whose best laying days were behind them...a "no-kill" home, that is.

Vegetarianism is looking better and better.

Suburban Homestead Expansion

The old suburban homestead is expanding, hopefully not to suffer too many growing pangs, or copyright infringements as nobody I know has sought ownership of the words "suburban homestead" as the Dervaes Institute has over the words "Urban Homestead" (see Electronic Frontier Foundation's fight against the co-opting of this all too common phrase @ www..eff.org/takedowns/urban-homesteading)

Our little plot of land is richer by 12 baby chicks that now include 4 Cuckoo Marans, prized for their dark chocolate colored eggs. I'd like to have some Black Copper Marans, but they are rare and that's for another chick season. Meanwhile new coop construction is taking place on the south 40 to house the new additions as we're not ready to cull any of our current flock.

We've also just adopted two kids, baby Nigerian Dwarf kids that is... they will someday supply us with milk. They are still with mom and won't come home for 8-10 weeks which will give us time to concoct some sort of shelter for them as well.  We visited them today and were charmed by their playful antics as they climbed up on everything in sight, including one of the mother goats,  jumping off and kicking up their heels with a carefree exuberance. They are the picture of bliss.

Meanwhile, the rare sight of snow last Friday delighted us, particularly since it neither lasted all that long nor posed a transportation hazard. It was the celebration of bringing home our last set of chicks. It is spring which means everything is popping, and there is much to do...if only the weather would cooperate.

Brussel Sprout Recipe That Will Convert The Most Hardened Brussel Sprout Detractor

I'm a relatively recent brussel sprout convert. Our brussel sprouts are nowhere near harvest-ready yet, but I'm practicing so my recipe will be perfected by the time they arrive on the scene.

Try this easy citrusy delicious recipe served up with brown rice:

1 lb brussel sprouts, halved (quartered if large)
1 T butter
1 t olive oil
1 1/2 T capers
2 clove garlic, minced
1 big squeeze of lemon juice
1 t coarsely ground sea salt
(carrots were just hanging around and found themselves suddenly thrown in the mix for color)

Melt butter in a pan with olive oil, add garlic and saute on medium high heat for 1 minute. Add brussel sprouts and capers and cook about 5 minutes or until brussel sprouts are wilted but not mushy. Finish off with lemon juice and sea salt to taste.

Don't  overcook brussel sprouts as you'll diminish their nutritional value. Brussel sprouts are outrageously healthy and recommended for pregnant women due to their high folic acid content. I'm not pregnant, but I crave them as if I were!
A sante!

Humboldt Hens: Legalizing Urban Chickens

Humboldt Hens: Legalizing Urban Chickens

www.eatwhereulive.com/chicken_ordinance_report.pdf

Legalizing Urban Chickens

Here's a link to a great research paper from DePaul University students in a Green Urban Policy class who interview staff from 20 cities after they legalized backyard chickens. Hopefully it will give more weight to those fighting to keep their chickens!

http://www.eatwhereulive.com/chicken_ordinance_report.pdf

Holiday Chicken Sickness And Another Batch of Baby Chicks

One of our faithful layers is sick. She's listless and puffed up, definitely not acting the part of a healthy forager like the rest of her kin. This is not new to her; she fell ill on New Year's weekend just a month and a half ago. Her symptoms then seemed more severe. She wouldn't stop drinking water, and was again listless and puffed up. A call to the local veterinarian's office yielded the holiday on-call veterinarian who know less than I about poultry. They proffered the phone number of University of California Davis that has a poultry veterinarian. Really? On a holiday weekend? Sure enough they answered the phone and after I described the worsening symptoms the young voice on the other end informed me that it was serious and I needed to bring her right in. Really? 5 hours drive for a sick young layer? I don't think so. When I declined the generous offer and pressed for at least a little over-the-counter advice, the actual vet call me back a bit later. During the high anxiety wait, I combed the internet (oh yes I know one normally "surfs" the internet, but "combs" it for chicken information...it's apropos as well as anatomically correct). Some obscure blogs and poultry forums gave me a few ideas and upon sticking a nose to her open beak and smelling her sourly fermented breath, she was most assuredly the victim of an impacted crop. Apple cider vinegar, force-fed yogurt, and a crop massage while she was upended (suspended from Cosmo Bean's lap upside-down) seemed to help and by the third day she was back with the pack, indiscernible from her sister leghorns.

But it seems her 'crop failure' has returned, again on a holiday weekend. Perhaps she's allergic to holidays. More likely she ingested something rancid during the moving of the compost, or her crop is weakened from her new year's weekend incident and now is more susceptible to becoming easily bound. We do have quite a lot of high grass that could also be the cause. Whatever the case,  we hope she makes a quick and full recovery. These episodes have fostered much more knowledge about a chicken's anatomy whereas prior to the advent of the year 2011 I thought a crop was something that sprung verdantly en masse from the earth or a little stick to goad on a horse. Add one more definition: The storage pouch for food on a chicken before it enters the stomach. Interestingly enough the crop evolved in chickens and other birds that are easy prey to other animals so that they can quickly forage in open spaces and fill it up then get to safety then digest it's food later (this according to the University of Kentucky Agricultural Extension).

Meanwhile more chicken antics ensue. Yesterday we got our second batch of little poults. Now our miniature flock is 8 and consists of: 2 Giant White Cochins, 2 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Delawares, and 2 Bantam Silkies (one white, one black). It's chaos in that little tub right now. The 4 chicks we adopted last weekend are behemoths compared to the newbies. They've sprouted tail and wing feathers and tramp all over the littler ones.  The teeny black silkie elicits "oohs" and "aahs" from every visitor. We've been on pasty vent cleaning duty relatively often since we've gotten them. The stress of being cargoed half way across the nation probably is to blame. In fact our cochins are two of only a handful that lived through the shipping experience, the rest succumbing to asphyxiation. The person at the poultry farm neglected to cut air vents in the box, a deadly mistake. I pity Tom from A&L Feed who had the distinct displeasure of opening that package at the Post Office. We're still hoping to get some Americaunas and Marans to round out the egg color.

Our dogs are an interesting dichotomy when it comes to chickens. Cosmo is the perennial hunter and is as obsessed with the chicks as he is with the chickens. Riley on the other hand has assumed the role of chicken sitter, mother hen, or shepherd, you can decide what to call him. He lays by those babies day and night and growls and barks Cosmo right out of the room. I've never seen Cosmo stand down to Riley until now. Evidently he is serious about his self-appointed stewardship. He's even gone so far as to chase Cosmo completely out of the house.

I Know of Nothing More Adorable...

...than baby chicks! I had a little disappointment upon arrival at the feed store to find that there were no Americaunas, no Cochins, no Speckled Sussex as originally expected. They had breeds we have already (Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red, Barred Rock) and after reading Robert Plamadon's website (www.plamadon.com) I'm down with the idea of getting different breeds in alternate years to help keep track of age without too much consternation (translation: work). But after all the anticipation,  going home empty-handed was not an option. Two Buff Orpingtons it is! Back tomorrow for Giant White Cochins. We were the proverbial kid in the candystore when taken out back to see the partridge blue laced red Wyandottes, a pint-sized version of the ones we have at home. It's hard to refrain from buying the entire lot of them....oh and the baby ducks (see what I mean).

Meanwhile, we are the stereo-typical  "mother hens" over these two little girls, checking chicks every 5 minutes. One was quite lethargic, sleeping, laying there with it's teeny tiny wings spread out like little floats on an outrigger canoe keeping it aloft on a sea of pine shavings. But this evening she's showing signs of life...after an  unauthorized feeding of Straus Family Creamery Blueberry Pomegranate Yogurt, the best yogurt on the entire planet. Probably a no-no and if one she is dead tomorrow, I'll feel good knowing she had a cosmic food experience before passing!

WWMPD? (Translation: What Would Michael Pollan Do?)

Are These Mary's Free Range Chickens?

Or Are These?

I'm curious now, and eating less chicken these days. Reading The Omnivore's Dilemma enlightens in ways that sometimes are inconvenient, like the inconvenience of no longer being able to ignorantly purchase "industrial organic" chicken. My local butcher, The Northcoast Co-op, apparently does not have a source of local free range organic chicken because it only offers industrially grown chickens. Well maybe, but I am suspicious none-the-less.

Last year they swapped out Rocky and Rosie chickens for Mary's because they felt they were better. After reading the chapter in Omnivore's Dilemma entitled "Meet Rosie, The Organic Free-Range Chicken" I have a better understanding. These fowl are raised under similar conditions as conventional chickens, sardined into housing, but offered a small 15 foot swath of grassy land to "free range" on. Knowing how my chooks quickly scratch the living daylights out of their once-grassy pen, it is highly suspicious that 20,000 birds haven't completely degraded the grass within the first hour of having it offered to them. Thing is, they don't use it. They don't get the generous offer of pecking grass, grubs, and other crawlies until they are 5 weeks old and quite settled in their ways. The grass is, as Pollan terms it, "ritual space".

Now my butcher offers Mary's Chickens. Mary's website does a darn good job of giving you that down-home small farm feeling. They provide a sweet video of interviews with the farmers who raise the birds with cute little chicks running around at their feet. But alarms go off in my head when I see them advertising a "vegetarian" diet. Since when are bugs a part of a vegetarian diet? But I want to hear from Michael Pollan if Mary's birds are truly free-range fowl that spend their days feeding on good grass or if most of their time is devoted to being stuffed into housing with way too many others, eating "organic vegetarian" grain. Michael, what say you? Meanwhile, until Pollan weighs in, here's Mary's website for you to make your own decision to eat or not to eat...that is the question: www.maryschickens.com

Giant White Cochins

Excitement is building around here. Tomorrow A&L Feed receives it's first baby chicks. We'll be one of the first beating down the doors to get ours. In their wisdom, they've been building the excitement by advertising for a few weeks now, listing the different breeds on their website, giving chicken lovers like me time to do some research and make a semi-informed, but still emotional decision. Here's what they're offering: Ameraucanas, Speckled Sussex, Sicilian Buttercups, Rhode Island Reds, and Giant White Cochins. I'd love to add a few of each to our flock but I want mostly dual purpose birds and ones that are not flight, sorry Sicilian Buttercups. We think we've decided on a few Ameraucanas for the blue/green eggs they lay, a few Giant White Cochins, a few Rhode Island Reds, and a few Speckled Sussex. Notice how I don't exactly specify number...trying to balance reason and emotion and not overdo it. Somebody hold me back! Plus room needs to be saved for a few chooks that lay the deep chocolate colored eggs, Welsummers or Marans to round out the color spectrum of eggs. Since we haven't raised chickens from babies, our first batch were several weeks old when we got them, this will be a brand new experience. Stay tuned!

The Dirty Dozen Redux: Egg-o-nomics Takes a Dive

Last night's discovery set us back in terms of the cost associated with raising our own food. Fortunately it was not paired with the emotional setback of losing one of our layers in the prime of her laying life. We can't say we weren't warned however, the harbinger to the event being the observation that one of the leghorns was extremely dirty, particularly under her chest.



Here's what we found in the rarely visited back corner of the garage. There were nearly two dozen eggs that she's been depositing and brooding over. Based on the number of eggs, she's probably been hard at this now for three weeks. What's more,  this discovery came at bedtime for the girls and this leghorn showed no sign of moving from her makeshift nest. We think she's been sleeping here for three weeks with her eggs. This must have become sticky business for her as several of the eggs were cracked, their contents oozing out and painting the entire bunch in a yellowy-brown film. As puffed out as she was, the impossible task of keeping 21 eggs warm must have had its frustrations. She's probably relieved we finally found her cache.