Raising chickens Archives

March 19, 2014

Counting Eggs and More

Tomorrow is egg delivery day. Most of the eggs are used by Tweets Cafe, but some are destined for retail sale. Those cartons get special treatment so that when customers purchase them and open them, they get a nice surprise with a varied collection of eggs.

EggPrep

Billy is no longer the top rooster. His position has been usurped by younger, more vigorous roosters. During the day, he keeps to a quiet part of the farm where the other roosters don’t venture much. He does have the company of many hens, which keep him happy. Here he is with Niji-hime and Imelda.

BillyAndHens

The sun came out, and this hen spread her body against the warm pavement to soak in the heat.

HenOnPavement

The skunk cabbage, lysichiton americanus, are up. They do smell like skunk, though not nearly so strong, though sometimes when there is a breeze blowing from their direction, you wonder what has died. Lysichiton camtschatcensis, the variety which grows in northern Japan and far eastern Russia has white blooms.

SkunkCabbage

This time of year, there is so much happening. The arugula I planted last week is up. Much of the arugula you find in restaurants this time of year comes from the deserts of California. On a recent field trip to Charlie’s Produce in Seattle, I learned that due to the warmer than usual winter in California, farmers there are having a hard time growing this cool loving crop.

SproutingArugula

March 17, 2014

Hazel

Hazel is nine months old. Here are some pictures of her from June of 2013, July of 2013, December 2013, and March of 2014. She has stunning patterns on her feathers, and with her naked neck, she cuts quite the pose. At a man and his hoe®, every chicken is special.

Hazel1306
Hazel1307
Hazel1312
Hazel1403

March 6, 2014

Working Mother To Be

So what is life like for a mother-to-be hen? Most of the time, day and night, it is sitting quietly on her eggs. She is also gently turning the eggs many times a day. This keeps the embryo centered in the egg and prevents it from sticking to the shell membrane. She also protects the eggs she is sitting on and will keep other hens and predators from getting into her nest. (The squiggly lines on the eggs are ones I drew to mark the eggs she started incubating.)

EggsBeingIncubated Of course, a hen doesn’t have a servant to bring her food and water. At least once a day, she has to leave the nest to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, and get some exercise.

OutEating Afterwards, she is back on her nest until the next day.

BackOnTheNest

February 27, 2014

Maple or Ina?

Ina

It’s easy to tell chickens apart when they are as different as Ina and Maple. But how does one tell chickens apart when they look very similar?

Maple

Chickens of the same breed have slight variations in their color, shape, size, and personality. One thing that is unique to each chicken is the size and shape of their comb. When you look directly at their face, which is how chickens recognize each other, each chicken looks very different. There are flat combs, straight combs, wavy combs, spiky combs, wide combs, narrow combs, and on and on.

MapleMidgeMolly

February 25, 2014

Mother and Daughter

The relationships mother hens have with their chicks can be rich. Watch hens interact with their chicks, and it’s clear that chicks need their mothers.

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HenWithChicksInSnow

February 23, 2014

Chicken Love

ChickenLove
Five year old Billy and one of the hens who like him. Hens have their favorite roosters, and Billy is well liked for being a kind rooster. The oldest rooster at a man and his hoe®, he has the longest spurs of any of the roosters. Watch the roosters and hens for an extended period of time, and you come away with an appreciation for the intricacies of chicken life. Give them the space they need to live they way they want to, and you realize how absurd it is to cage these animals, or crowd them together by the tens of thousands.

February 23, 2014

Snow Day

We woke up to five inches of fluffy snow. Not the chickens favorite weather. Fortunately, the forecast is for much warmer weather tomorrow and the rest of the week, so the snow will be gone soon.

BlackBresseInSnow

When it’s cold and snowy outside, the best place for a young chicken is to huddle next to its mother. And the Black Bresse hen in the red barn, isn’t sure whether to venture outside.

MotherWithChicksOnASnowyDay

But the snow doesn’t deter Spikey. She likes to lay her eggs in one of the doghouses. She’ll even chase the dogs out of the doghouse if she has to. She is one of three hens who lay their eggs in the doghouses. Some days we get all three eggs before the dogs do. Other days the dogs get all the eggs. Life is hard.

If ten years ago, someone would have told me that I would be rushing to get just-laid, warm eggs out of a doghouse before the dogs got to them, I would have told them they were nuts. It makes you wonder what I or you will be doing ten years from now. Life is like rafting down a river. You never know what is around the corner. You might as well enjoy the ride.

SpikeInTheSnow

February 22, 2014

Growing Up Is Hard

Mother on the roost with two chicks
Life is full of challenges. Things are always changing. Nothing stays the same. And it’s as true for chicks as it is for us. The Milky Way galaxy we live in is moving at some 1,350,000 miles an hour through the universe. Every day we travel some 32 million miles. From the moment we are born until we die, we are never in the same space, traveling through space at incredible, unimaginable speed. All of us, even the chickens. At times it may seem like nothing changes, but every hour of every day hour we travel more than a million miles. At that speed we could buzz around the earth more than 50 times in an hour. So the next time you are in a difficult situation, close your eyes and remember that in an hour you’ll be more than a million miles away from where you are now.
Yesterday evening was a traumatic time for these chicks. Their mother decided it’s time to start roosting again after sleeping with her chicks in a small barn for the last two months. Two of her chicks followed her up to the roost. But the other two couldn’t understand why she wasn’t in their bed. So they spent the night huddled together, wondering where their mother had gone.
Today, they are all together, following her around through the pasture and woods. Maybe tonight, they will all figure out that their mother is roosting with the other grownup chickens and join her and the other chicks on the roost.
It won’t be long before they have an even more traumatic experience, when their mother decides that her mothering time is over and shoos them away when they want to follow her around.
Broiler raised chickens never have to face this ordeal of growing up. Broiler and most farmed chicken never have a mother to contend with. So they never have to confront separation anxiety. Then again, most farmed chicken, broiler-free range-pastured never live this long.
Chicks on their own
Note: The egg you see under the chicks is a wooden egg. I keep wooden eggs in the nests I want the hens to use, to encourage them to lay there. Hens prefer to lay eggs in nests where there are other eggs.

February 19, 2014

Surprises Every Day

When you let your chickens run free, you never know what they will do or where they will go. A few days ago I heard a rattling in the shed we use to store hay and straw, and where our wonderful UPS driver picks up and leaves packages. When we have an outgoing package, we put the package in the shed and leave the doors open for the UPS driver. Our regular UPS driver then closes the door when he picks up the package.

What he didn’t realize is that one of our hens had jumped up into the shed earlier and was quietly sitting on a bale of hay in the corner. He closed the door, trapping her inside, and I was hearing her trying to get out later a few hours later.

Now we leave the shed door open so she can lay an egg where she wants to. These are pictures of the shed, Yuki-hime on the bale of hay, and the egg she laid today.

And below is a photo of a two and a half month old daughter with her mother. The mother is laying eggs again and is checking out the elevated dog house used by other hens for laying eggs. An older chick, she still spends much of the day with her mother, and roosts with her at night. Even with their tiny brains, chicks display a need to be with their mothers, even when they are well able to be on their own.

Which brings to mind this article by Nicholas Kristof, Is That Sausage Worth This, where he describes the dreadful conditions under which most pigs are raised. One has to question the sanity of modern farm industrialists who treat animals as if they are just machines. Spend time with any farm animal, be it a cow, a pig, or a chicken, and you realize that they are full of emotions. As youngsters they love to play. Even little chicks play with each other and with their mothers.

The drive to raise these animals as cheaply and as quickly as possible is making farmers to act as monsters. And all of us who go along consuming these products without thinking are their unwitting accomplices. The next time you go shopping for chicken, ask your grocer, “Was this chicken raised by its mother?” Does it matter? Did it matter to you that you were raised by your mother?

February 16, 2014

A Chick Grows Up

Words lack the capability to describe the love and care a mother hen showers on her chicks. You have to see it to understand how important mother hens are to chicks. Born at the end of November, the chick at 2 and a half months of age is nearly halfway to becoming an adult. At times, she ventures out on her own, but she still spends much of the day with her mother, and roosts with her at night. This is what humanely raised chicken looks like. The chick is 13 weeks old now. You can scarcely find a chicken that has enjoyed life so long in your supermarket. You certainly won’t find any that have had the joy of being raised by a mother. At a man and a hoe, that is the only kind of chicken I raise.