Tag Archives: chickens

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05 Thursday Oct 2017

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Even in a suburban garden, you sometimes get to witness remarkable wildlife in action. Such was the case the other day when I turned around while feeding my chicks, to find a magnificent clean up operation going on.

Maybe I just identify with beings that stuff their mouths. I really do like and appreciate the snakes on our property just much as I dislike and cuss at the mice and sparrows that invade it, spreading their vermin inside and out. True, those grungy sparrows are just trying to make a living and get dinner — but then, so is the snake.

Even if snakes are not your thing, I hope you can appreciate this remarkable achievement in a young snake’s life –

 

Go snake.

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Mischief Managed.

Enjoy this piece? Check out the “Part Two” at my other blog, embracingchaos.net

 

 

 

Moms Aren’t Chicken

16 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in chickens, children in the garden, summer!

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Facing the world alone…

My friend and I went out to lunch yesterday and compared experiences with our young not-quite-adult children. Our youngest sons are both high school graduates this year. We mourned children who were communicative as young ones, and now necessarily shutting mom out in their effort to become independent. We held hands across the table and almost cried over our sense of loss — almost, but we didn’t. Because this process is entirely as it should be. If the kids didn’t do it,  we know we would be worried. Still, having kids home from school for the summer can be enough to drive any loving mom crazy. It could be worse though, I said to my son at supper. You could have a chicken for a mom.

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A little puff on the celebratory graduation cigar

 

Yesterday mama hen must have woke up and decided she WASN’T a mom any more. All day long we watched as the little flock of five juniors straggled around the back yard without her. And to make the new status really clear, (to them? to herself perhaps?), by the end of the day she began pecking their heads when they were trying to eat. I couldn’t take it – I shooed her away. I imagined pecking my recent high school graduate’s head to clarify our new relationship. The mama hen looked a bit confused, as well. She shook her feathers when I told her to shoo, and she didn’t come into the run again until very late. After weeks of worrying and foraging for six, her job was done, and she was a solo bird again.

I am fascinated to see what today brings, since phase two will have to be that each hen figures out where she comes in the flock pecking order. (Where did they all sleep last night? I forgot to check.) One of the bolder little pullets (a young not-yet-laying hen) already forages with the big girls. But the tail-ender of the group doesn’t seem ready for this new stage of things, and was too scared yesterday to even come out from under the coop and into the back yard with her nest-mates. She kept running up to the gate in the fence, and then back under, “panic peeping,” trying to work up the courage to face the world without mom to hide under. Life, as Glennon Doyle Merton writes, is brutiful. (That’s brutal and beautiful.) True enough.

Meanwhile, having two of my human fledglings home is working out great so far  – lots of yard work and house projects are getting done. I am enjoying the extra bodies around the house and the conversations at dinner. My daughter has us watching Game of Thrones. No writing is getting done, but that seems to be my way. When the sun is out, I want to be out there too.

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Bronwyn cuts fire blight from a pear tree with Clorox dipped shears

It’s true that we are paying them for this work (Susan says that’s cheating) but family rates! I told her that I realized I could do this since I saw my neighbor doing it. Since we are still supporting them it all makes a cycle anyway – if they work and we pay them rather than hiring other help, and then have them buy more of their own stuff. (Does that count as pecking heads?) Win-win.

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Oskar pruning the crape myrtles – more light for the vegetable garden

Maybe the mother hen is wiser than I. She knows how to let go, while I cling. In fact, I am a bit more like that tail-ender chick, running back under the coop, peeping for the past rather than run through that gate into the wider world. But the chick can’t go back into the egg. I have only to try advising my young adults to realize that a doink on their heads would be about as effective as any maternal advice on money or jobs – or probably any other subject. They just have to get out here and scratch for themselves.

 

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Lavender and sage

This morning the black raspberry harvest starts. As I head out into the yard to pick before today’s rain threatens mold to destroy the berries, I am grateful for cycles of life and transitions — and I find I am admiring the bravery of chickens.

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Snubby

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

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Snubby the Chicken gives me a Look

Sunday night I sat rocking a chicken on the swinging bench after a busy day and a busy week, feeling guilty. Edward had found her squatting on the run floor that morning, and when we came to remove her from the rest of the flock that night it was obvious that she was on her way out. So I just sat on the swinging bench and looked at the beautiful gardens and the evening sky and rocked her and thought about her life. Then I set her still wrapped in an old towel into the earth, to give her body to improve the soil and nourish a tree.

This chicken had the kind of life that makes a vegan and vegetarians cry.  She was no real breed – a “sex-link” created for high productivity. Her face had been snipped when she was a chick, so she has a funny snubby thing instead of a beak. This meant she was at a disadvantage for keeping herself groomed for vermin, and for pecking up bugs out of the soil. Chickens are de-beaked regularly as a way of stopping them from pecking (injuring, killing) each other when great numbers are confined together. When I bought this batch of young hens from the local Feed Store I was shocked. This happens all the time, but we humans never see it. I complained to the store manager, and of course she never sells any of those now – but there are chickens being snipped every day of the week, and sold somewhere else.

Further trauma was in store for Snubby and the others in her group of six as they adapted to their new home and tried to find their places in the pecking order with my other hens. Then during July and August raccoons found a way into our chicken run, killing chickens night after night before Edward, assisted by Trumbull the dog, discovered their sneaky access point.  (Trum is still always on the lookout, every night…hoping…)

For a while then Snubby the chicken had relative peace. New young hens were added to the flock, and acclimated. She got lice (probably) and got dusted with the flock to relieve her of them. But when she got the yeast imbalance “vent gleet” this winter as most of the flock did, when everybody else overcame the yeast overgrowth, she never did. Her butt was all dirty feathers. She looked more and more poorly lately, and I wasn’t sure what it meant – but I was too busy with spring garden prep, and spring’s craziness to do more than worry and feed and pasture her well. And that wasn’t enough. She lived just one year.

For animals (or humans) to have good resistance to disease, they have to be bred for that. So much of who gets what is in the genes of any animal system, and there is plenty of sloppy breeding, or breeding for productivity, fast over every other trait. But still plenty is in the feeding, and the animal’s life. Stress is a huge factor. The nutrition to useless carbs ratio in their food. Exercise.  Animals will be healthiest eating a diet as close to what they would eat in nature as possible, and having the opportunity to scratch, or wallow or run depending on what their species loves to do. I am sure these words will sound foolish to some. However, if you are eating animals, or eating and drinking what animals generate, the food can only be as good as the level of care those animals receive. Think about that.

Do you eat eggs? Do you eat chicken? Hamburgers?  Most of the animal products you find come from creatures that have been raised in unnatural or cruel situations, in cages, away from the sun, unable to scratch and peck, unable to stretch out, unable to forage in the grass or wallow in the mud — sometimes unable to move.  Mother pigs caged for their whole lives lest they become violent, chickens in caged one on top of another but still producing daily eggs, steer standing in pools of manure, fed corn that causes them stomach pain and sickness, chickens raised in barns so crowded that they cannot move and trample or attack each other, piglets so bored that they bite each other’s tails off in frustration. Essentially, eating those eggs, that pork, that roast chicken, you are eating poison. It is only a matter of time before you or your offspring develop cancers or digestive issues or auto immune illnesses or you name it.

A toxic setting produces toxic products. This should be so obvious to anyone who reflects on production costs: you can never, ever get something good for nothing. But we make ourselves blind, we think only about the dollars we are saving, buying the “sale meat.” We feel in fact virtuous when we save a few dollars. A few cents. We pay many, many dollars for expensive drugs, for expensive surgeries, for vitamins,  for medical care of all kinds to repair the damage when it’s too late — but we don’t make the correlation. Human health = farm animal health. This is not an issue for the wealthy, a shee-shee fruity goofball issue, nor a political attack point.  It is basic science, and basic business, and practical fact. You get out what you put in.

So to you, dear sad ugly funny faced chicken, thanks for opening my eyes to see in the flesh what I had been told was true. Thanks for the eggs you laid for us. Maybe someday the government will stop giving tax dollars away to fatten the pockets of wealthy big corporations, and instead support the small farmers who are doing things right. How can we make better food available to more people? And this is as true for vegetables as it is for meat products – toxic growth processes produce toxic plants. It’s just that vegetables can’t feel pain and misery while waiting for us to figure it out.

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“Huh! If she really loved us she’d let us get to that kale again!”  “You said it sister.” “I’m gonna go find me a worm.”

Tribute to White Chicken

05 Saturday Nov 2016

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Yesterday White Chicken was diagnosed. The real cause of her ill health was “internal egg laying.” There is no certain cause of internal laying, and no real cure. It means that a chicken’s yolks (ovum) begin to be deposited in her internal body cavity, rather than traveling down the oviduct, getting clothed in egg white and shell, and laid.

After a week of nursing her on the dining room, thinking she looked better, it felt bad not to get to say goodbye and thank you.

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Thank you, White Chicken, for two solid years of laying an egg just about every day. I always admired your ability to escape whatever fence I created, so you could go out and forage, but even more I admired that you could always find your way back in! White Chicken, you were unusually smart, and very independent. You got out where you wanted to go, but the fox never got you. You also perpetually thought I was about to kill you, and rushed around in near panic every time I came in with food and water.

Which is why, until she took up residence on our dining room table, there were no up close photos of White Chicken –  except this one, of her with her adoptive mother, the crazy broody Wellsummer Mama:

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White Chicken as a chick

Last night it was comforting to read in my online search that the most likely cause of internal laying is genetics, or how the baby chick was raised or maybe handled. In any case, it wasn’t me.

But still I felt sad all evening.

White Chicken was a really memorable, hard-working, nutcase hen. There is so much to know about animals — so much to learn about any living being you are trying to care for or love! Study is required to do it right. And paying attention. Listening. This October has been a month full of learning for me, in so many ways.

Last night I de-loused the flock. (The vet found lice on White Chicken.) I held each hen on my lap and massaged the powder gently into their skin. At first they panciked, then I hope they enjoyed the attention. At least they should feel better free of parasites. Today I will clear and dust the whole coop. I generally think of myself as providing a good home to my chickens and dogs – but I guess the lesson is that one can always do better. There are always things to learn.  Listen.

 

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ADDENDUM:

Yesterday I learned that my niece had a beautiful baby girl the night after White Chicken’s passing. This is such a comfort. I do not equate a chicken with a human life, still, there a beauty is the thought of a beginning of a life at the time of another life’s ending. I think, once I get to know my grandniece and see if she deserves the honor, I will add to her other beautiful names Liesel Eden the title Little Chick.

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Flowers for Chickens and Living Forage

24 Friday Apr 2015

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Take a Course at Forested! First of all, I must let you know about my friend LincolnSmith’s workshops series at his forest teaching garden, Forested, this spring – here’s the link!  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14cd4a6cf3709800

Flowers for Chickens? Why? This idea is totally stolen from an inspiring website I looked at and have not been able to relocate.  But search “chicken garden” and you find this subject is on flockster’s minds.  Because chickens benefit enormously from grass, yet this is what lawn looks like after a winter under the tender mercies of my 13 chickens:

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(It took them about 2 weeks FYI.)

The lady whose great website I cannot find plants her chicken run with living forage, grass, but things beautiful as well as tasty to peck.  What an inspiration! A run could be something other than a wasteland? She is constantly on the lookout for plants which co-exist happily such as ROSES(!) – given how prone to being buggy roses are, this could be a real source of nourishment.  She sets large rocks or pavers to protect roots from scratching claws. Beware the long list of chicken toxic plants – http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/627282/comprehensive-list-of-poisonous-plants-and-trees – Also listed below).   So, thank you lady!! wherever you exist in the blogospere. You have changed the way I am going to manage my chickens this summer.

Oh-Oh!

Oh-Oh!

Edward and I had already planned to add living forage into and around the run this year – and here’s what we have so far:

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A Mulberry sapling – we are growing a mulberry bush into the run. The first step was to a convince Edward not to kill it, since he considers mulberries invasive, water-stealing, horrible plants.  MULBERRIES are a very nutritious food, easy to grow and tough (yes dear) and voila! free food that our chickens can feed themselves.  You can see that despite Edward’s dislike, this plant is very happy.  Sadly, he says, it probably will thrive.  I have the roots outside the run wire, so it’s roots are protected most of the time,  and leaves outside the run roof get tons of sun.

Berries – one of the areas the chickens will be guided toward is under the brambles, to clean up the fallen fruit.  IMG_0240_crop

 

 

I have JUST hatched an idea to grow Black Raspberries (black caps), a plant that loves us, ACROSS a small wire paddock, so the chicks get fruit from under it and we can harvest from the top.  I will post photos soon.

 

 

Less impressive at the moment is the beginning of our Vegetable Garden Tower beside the mulberry (yes, you unbelievers, I will prune the mulberry heavily! so that the tower is not shaded!).  This is an idea I got from Ben Friton of Can Ya Love.

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The fabric cloth will hold dirt in, and plants can be inserted to grow and hang out all the way up. Chickens can harvest their side, plus the lower regions of front when they are in Paddock 1. We can harvest the upper section.  I’m going to try cukes up there.  I threw this together using some old fencing and row covers from last summer.  Learn more about Ben’s work from his website at  www.canyalove.org.  A grower friend of mine, Lincoln Smith of the teaching garden Forested (http://forested.us/), introduced me to Ben and his book Can Ya Love? which describes the creation of his vertical garden concept, and shows how he has used it to help hungry communities around the world grow their own greens.

Swiped from his website, Ben’s vegetable pillars:

Have fun in your gardens this weekend!!

HERE’s the Evil For Chickens List:

Backyard Chicken’s Comprehensive List of Plants Toxic to Chickens:

ARUM LILY

AMARYLLIS

ARALIA

ARROWHEAD VINE

AUTUMN CROCUS

AUSTRALIAN FLAMETREE

AUSTRALIAN UMBRELLA TREE

AVOCADO

AZALEA

BANEBERRY

BEANS: (CASTOR, HORSE, FAVA, BROAD, GLORY, SCARLET RUNNER,

MESCAL, NAVY, PREGATORY)

BIRD OF PARADISE

BISHOP’S WEED

BLACK LAUREL

BLACK LOCUST

BLEEDING HEART OR DUTCHMAN’S BREECHES

BLOODROOT

BLUEBONNET

BLUEGREEN ALGAE

BOXWOOD

BRACKEN FERN

BUCKTHORN

BULB FLOWERS: (AMARYLLIS, DAFFODIL, NARCISSUS, HYACINTH & IRIS)

BURDOCK

BUTTERCUP

CACAO

CAMEL BUSH

CASTOR BEAN

CALADIUM

CANA LILY

CARDINAL FLOWER

CHALICE (TRUMPET VINE)

CHERRY TREE

CHINA BERRY TREE

CHRISTMAS CANDLE

CLEMATIS (VIRGINIA BOWER)

CLIVIA

COCKLEBUR

COFFEE (SENNA)

COFFEE BEAN (RATTLEBUSH, RATTLE BOX & COFFEEWEED)

CORAL PLANT

CORIANDER

CORNCOCKLE

COYOTILLO

COWSLIP

CUTLEAF PHILODENDRON

DAFFODIL

DAPHNE

DATURA STRAMONIUM (ANGEL’S TRUMPET)

DEATH CAMUS

DELPHINIUM

DEVIL’S IVY

DIEFFENBACHIA (DUMB CANE)

ELDERBERRY

ELEPHANT EAR (TARO)

ENGLISH IVY

ERGOT

EUCALYPTUS (DRIED, DYED OR TREATED IN FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS)

EUONYMUS (SPINDLE TREE)

EUPHORBIA CACTUS

FALSE HELLEBORE

FLAME TREE

FELT PLANT (MATERNITY, AIR & PANDA PLANTS)

FIG (WEEPING)

FIRE THORN

FLAMINGO FLOWER

FOUR O’CLOCK

FOXGLOVE

GLOTTIDIUM

GOLDEN CHAIN

GRASS: (JOHNSON, SORGHUM, SUDAN & BROOM CORN)

GROUND CHERRY

HEATHS: (KALMIA, LEUCOTHO, PEIRES, RHODODENDRON, MTN. LAUREL,

BLACK LAUREL, ANDROMEDA & AZALEA)

HELIOTROPE

HEMLOCK: (POISON & WATER)

HENBANE

HOLLY

HONEYSUCKLE

HORSE CHESTNUT

HORSE TAIL

HOYA

HYACINTH

HYDRANGEA

IRIS IVY: (ENGLISH & OTHERS)

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT

JASMINE (JESSAMINE)

JERUSALEM CHERRY

JIMSONWEED

JUNIPER

KY. COFFEE TREE

LANTANA (RED SAGE)

LARKSPUR

LILY OF THE VALLEY

LILY, ARUM

LOBELIA

LOCOWEED (MILK VETCH)

LOCUSTS, BLACK / HONEY

LORDS & LADIES (CUCKOOPINT)

LUPINE

MALANGA

MARIJUANA (HEMP)

MAYAPPLE (MANDRAKE)

MEXICAN BREADFRUIT

MEXICAN POPPY

MILKWEED, COTTON BUSH

MISTLETOE

MOCK ORANGE

MONKSHOOD

MOONSEED

MORNING GLORY

MTN. LAUREL

MUSHROOMS, AMANITA

MYRTLE

NARCISSUS

NETTLES

NIGHTSHADES: (DEADLY, BLACK, GARDEN, WOODY, BITTERSWEET,

EGGPLANT, JERUSALEM CHERRY)

OAK

OLEANDER

OXALIS

PARSLEY

PEACE LILY

PERIWINKLE

PHILODENDRONS: (SPLIT LEAF, SWISS CHEESE, HEART-LEAF)

PIGWEED

POINCIANA

POINSETTIA

POISON IVY

POISON HEMLOCK

POISON OAK: (WESTERN & EASTERN)

POKEWEED

POTATO SHOOTS

POTHOS

PRIVET

PYRACANTHA

RAIN TREE

RANUNCULUS, BUTTERCUP

RAPE

RATTLEBOX, CROTALARIA

RED MAPLE

RED SAGE (LANTANA)

RHUBARB LEAVES

RHODODENDRONS

ROSARY PEA SEEDS

SAND BOX TREE

SKUNK CABBAGE

SORREL (DOCK)

SNOW DROP

SPURGES: (PENCIL TREE, SNOW-ON-MTN, CANDELABRA, CROWN OF THORNS)

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

SWEET PEA

SWISS CHEESE PLANT (MONSTERA)

TANSY RAGWORT

TOBACCO

UMBRELLA PLANT

VETCH: HAIRY/COMMON

VIRGINIA CREEPER

WATTLE

WEEPING FIG

WHITE CEDAR, CHINA BERRY

WISTERIA

YEWS

YELLOW JASMINE

 

…I hope you’re still here and read through the list.

 

I know that as I typed it, I was reminded of many very common

plants that I had forgotten were unsafe for my flock.

Christmas Lights For Chickens

23 Friday Jan 2015

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We were at December 12th.  Almost the darkest of the year.  Although we had 13 chickens, we were getting only 5 eggs a day.  Shucks.

Then one morning I plugged in the old heat lamp I keep out in the coop, just before getting out there to feed and water the girls.  That night, what do you know, 7 eggs!  But a heat lamp is 250 watts.  That’s a lot of energy to run, especially if you are prone to forgetting to unplug it after an hour as I am. (I keep it in the coop for really cold nights, and for when we have baby chicks.)

I hooked up some chili lights – a string of white Christmas tree lights with the occasional re plastic chili pepper popped over the bulb, looped over a stick inside the top of the house. I plugged it in before releasing the girls into their run and their grub.  And then plugged it in again at dusk, as they were coming in to settle on their roosts.

Wow.  That night 9 eggs!  Now we’re in business!

Now we have eggs to eat and some to sell too, which pays for chicken maintenance.  And if I forget to unplug, it isn’t so bad to run a short string of little lights for too many hours.  Do the girls enjoy the cozy warm glow of festive lights in their coop?  I only know they seem content.

Just don’t leave those lights on all night – chickens, like humans, need their dark time.

 

Chickens Paddocks

13 Thursday Nov 2014

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Chickens head out into Paddock One

Chicken paddocks is a great idea.  I have mentioned it before, and I am sure I will mention it again.   For years we’ve allowed our chickens half the day in our back yard, for their health, for better eggs, because I am soft hearted — because they seemed to get into it no matter what I did anyway to stop them!…

But we really have had enough.  We wanted our yard back, our lawn back.  Our patio without poops on it, our flower gardens nicely covered in mulch, our straw mulched veggie beds mulched in straw.  Instead of the lawn being covered in straw, the plants bare and broken by searching claws and beaks. An old classmate chatted with me at our last reunion and told me she thought of me every time she let her chickens out in the yard.  And what she thought was “Yuck! how can she stand this??”   Well, she can’t stand it any more.

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“Can I make it over?”

I was already heading in the direction of somehow containing and rotating my girls after reading Harvey Ussery’s recent article (Organic Gardening Magazine, Sept. 2014) about creating debris piles for his Icelandic chickens – “Icies” –  who love to forage in debris.  Ussery is all about sustainability –  helping chickens access fresh natural foods rather than expensive,  likely rancid, processed pellet.  Chickens naturally prefer it.  Then I came across Paul Wheaton’s blog about Chicken Paddocks – and that clinched it.  Paddocks combines all the things we want from and for our chickens.  The point is to create a rotation for them, so they can be in a space with bugs, new actively decomposing debris piles, hopefully grass, and then be moved on to the next fresh one, before they are standing on a bare patch of mud.  No animal wants to stand around all day on mud.  Ok, earthworms. They can’t stay healthy in that setting.

I am not willing to move my chicken coop and run around the yard – ours is permanent, at the center of gardens.  So our paddocks will encircle the run – and maybe we will get more creative in the summer.  For now, they have three.

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Edward and our 16 year old son Oskar, motivated by the idea of no more chickens mucking up the lawn, got right to it and have now fenced off Paddock One attaching tall 2x2s to existing fence and stapling plastic mesh to that.  It’s about 10 feet high so the girls don’t just fly over it (ha-ha see ya sucker!) as they have tended to do.  At least they always come back at night to roost.  Our very patient neighbors are also relieved.  In a month, we’ll send them out into Paddock Two, which is our kitchen garden.  No grass, but they LOVE to dig in the soft soil (any plants that are still active I’ll have wired over).  I am going to cover all the pathways with heavy straw, and they love to kick straw around.  Paddock Three will be the garden beds to the front.  Any of these areas could be subdivided..we’ll see how it goes.

I can’t complete this post without admiring the new roof Edward has put over the run, so the hens will be dry as the winter weather starts in.  Corrugated metal interspersed with corrugated plastic that will let the light through. Last winter I spread layers of plastic sheeting over the top, and that was ok – until melting days, when a hundred tiny holes let all the drips through.  I have a plan to collect that water into a drum, but let’s get it roofed first.  Winter Vortex, we’re ready!!

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Going to search for any birdseed I might have thrown to encourage foraging activity

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Ahhh – Renovated Chicken Run

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

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All Day Roadkill Diner hangs in the chicken run

A thing of beauty is a joy forever – look at that beautiful tidied chip yard! On Saturday I spent most of the day cleaning up the run and house for winter and for the addition of five 16 week old poulets to join our current flock of 8 laying hens.  Eight is just not enough, as it turns out, to keep four “Paleo” eaters in eggs.  Thriteen will be enough to have some to sell too.  If I sell a couple of dozen eggs a week, that will subsidize the cost of organic layer pellet ($30 a bag).  There are many ways to encourage hens to forage and feed themselves too.  I am always trying to figure out how to make “suburban farming” practical and sustainable, a way to bring fresh organically grown food to suburban kitchens, cheaper.

In the photo above right you see my All Day Roadkill Diner bucket, which used to hold a dead racoon I found lying in the middle of route 301.  The idea (from Paul Wheaton’s website video) is that the straw on top will manage the odor, the flies will populate the dead carcass with their eggs as nature dictates, and the subsequent maggots squirm out the holes at the bottom of the pail into the mouths of waiting hens.  Thus voila, a municiple problem becomes a healthy and free food for hens.  Chickens are not vegetarians – their eggs are more wonderful the more they are able to get bugs.  One problem: that straw on top is not really up to the task.  So, depending how much space you have, the Roadkill Diner may not be practical for your suburban backyard…  Next year I hope to grow sunflowers, dry them, and store in a metal can for the chicks to pick apart themselves.  I also plan to plant “gardens” specifically for them in their run areas.

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The divided chicken run and  coop

Chickens who are handled by humans become  quite tame (depending on the breed – I’d like to  see someone tame a flighty Italian Leghorn!).  But chickens are not all that nice to each other,  again depending on  breed.  When introducing  the young group to  the old it is generally painful  to watch.  I have  become tougher after 6 years  of doing this –  eventually the hens decide who’s  what I call the  Bitch Chicken, and who comes  next and next.  We currently have a scapegoat  chicken too –  everyone picks on her, no one will  sleep near  her.  My challenge is to introduce  new chicks to old in a divided run and house, so  Saturday I staples chicken wire (recycled! I knew  that old wire would come in handy!) thru the  center of the house and the length of the run.  If they are side by side long enough, the theory is, they will become accustomed to each other.  I will let you know how that goes.

Our current layers were raised by an adoptive mother, set under a broody hen last spring rather than in a box under a heat lamp.  A broody hen is one whose “mother” switch has flipped on, who sits and sits on infertile (in our case) eggs, in the mothering mode.  The hen adopted baby chicks in trade for the eggs without a problem. (Watch a video to see how to do this – link below)

                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRl5I2yZZ0                                                 

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Our Wellsummer with her adopted chicks

And all seemed magical, as she taught  them to scratch and to roost, until one  day she decided they weren’t her babies  any more.  Then she began to treat  them as competition and pick on them.  I guess the chicken “mothering”  hormone shuts off kind of abruptly.  She  also turned out to be kind of unbalanced  herself, and would randomly run across  the yard and jump on another chicken’s  head.  I suspect that she taught these  aggressive behaviors to the chicks.  She  herself was one of a flock of  Wellsummers who were aggressive to  each other, and tended to pick on her.  The best way to break general chicken bitchiness is see it coming, and redirect them – give them compost piles to dig through, weedy gardens to scratch up, leaf piles to break down, dig up some dirt for them to work over instead of each other.  Hens like to have something to do.  But a hen who attacks has to be got rid of – or that cycle of domination and fear just keeps repeating.  Animals and humans both tend to treat others the way they have been treated…  So I will do everything I can to ease the creation of this new flock.

I talked to a farmer about chicken woes last spring, and she suggested hanging old CD discs (PS why not those bird seed balls used to feed wild birds?) to distract them from pecking each other.  Some turkey farmers do this she said.  In commercial poultry farming a common practice to solve the problem of chickens pecking, damaging and killing each other, is “de-beaking.”  The breeder clips the beaks of very young chicks, blunting their ability to do damage to each other.  But only chickens (animals) who are confined to too small a space, without any chicken-like things to do would engage in tissue-damaging levels of pecking. Given some space to spread out in, they would rather hunt bugs in the grass.

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New hen observes the old flock thru the wire fence

Our new five hens are now installed and seem to be getting comfortable in their part of the run.  But yesterday as I watched them settling in, I realized that they are victims of debeaking.  I called my friend at The Feed Store and told her that if I’d  known I was supporting debeaking I wouldn’t have bought them.  Since they are here, I will have a chance to learn how debeaked hens function – and let you know.  But how they look is ugly.  Hopefully they can still enjoy foraging.  I count on my hens to find some of their own food.  And entertainment!

Does the idea of supporting the mutilation of animals bother you?  Then redo your life and budget to accommodate buying organically raised meats.  And try raising your own eggs, from chickens in your own backyard.

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