Chicken Cam!

Two minutes you will never get back:

http://youtu.be/AEswJP6iUzw

A Dream of John Ball

Artwork by E. Burne-Jones, April 1888, for the first book edition of William Morris' A Dream of John Ball. Illustrates the couplet "When Adam delved and Eve span / Who was then the gentleman?" which had international popularity in several Germanic languages as an equalitarian slogan during the medieval period.

Edward Burne-Jones [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
John Ball

Week 4 egg production stats and egg eating update

We're averaging eight eggs a day, not including the two that were eaten by the chickens on Friday

 

The chickens have laid 74 eggs now...three dozen are boxed up and waiting to be delivered to new homes tomorrow.  Some we gave away, and two dozen we ate ourselves...boiled, scrambled, omelets, bread, béchamel sauce, spaetzle.  I was going to make and freeze a bunch of pasta, but it will have to wait until the chickens lay some more.

 

 



Our eggs don't fit in a standard size egg box, so we're not sure how to transport them.  We're using a rubber band for now.

Ideas?

The chickens didn't eat any more of their own eggs after the one day of egg eating.  For two days after that we collected the eggs every few hours in the morning (the chickens really only lay in the morning).  Now we're back to checking on them once or twice during the day.  We've found up to five eggs in a single nest, all intact. 

On Sunday our neighbor brought us a bale of hay he grew, which set off a morning of cleaning out the coop, removing the cardboard boxes we brought the chickens home in, and installing more permanent nesting boxes.  The chickens seem entertained by their new environment, although they only lay an occasional egg in the nest boxes we built.  Their favorite spots are now behind the bike wheels in one corner and behind the new hay bale in the other corner.

We did however collect three slightly fractured eggs.  Two of these were from the Auracana, who is always being chased off her nest and ends up laying in the middle of the floor.  Hopefully having some more straw in the coop will help with this (so the eggs have a soft landing), but the chickens seem determined to express their creativity in finding awkward places to lay.  They also sit with their heads close to the ground and their backside in the air as they're laying, so the eggs begin their existence with a 4" drop to the ground.  Fun fact.

LG G2 cracked screen repair: The limits of DIY

Waaay back, several weeks ago, we started this blog to talk about chickens and homesteading, and random projects, and just keep people up to date on our lives in general. 

We also posted a picture of my cracked cell phone being controlled by a mouse, because it looked ridiculous and was therefore sort of funny, and we were going to have it fixed in no time anyhow...

Phone attached to mouse.  The glass was cracked on the bottom right and didn't respond to touch.

Three weeks, three parts, and some professional help later, my phone is finally fixed.

What I learned:
- The front of your phone consists of a digitizer (the glass part) and the LCD (underneath the digitizer).  If you drop your phone and it doesn't respond to touch anymore, you broke the digitizer.  You can get a connector to plug your phone into a USB mouse and continue using it that way.  This is fun and novel for awhile, but extremely ridiculous if you try to answer your phone in public. 

- If you drop your phone and there are problems with the image on the screen, you damaged your LCD.

- All of the major phone carriers sell slightly different models of the LG G2.  All of the models require slightly different parts.  This means that physical stores don't bother stocking the parts.  You can find out what model you have by taking off the back of your phone and looking at what is printed on the orange strip next to the battery.

- All LG G2 models are held together by an excessive amount of glue.  Said glue will not prevent your phone from breaking when you drop it.  It will make professional repairman extremely reluctant to help you when it does break.

- As much as I hate to say it, if you're a clumsy person in the market for a smart phone, consider a popular model, such as the iPhone or Galaxy.  It will make your life much easier when you inevitably have to repair it.

- If only your digitizer is broken, you can save $20 by buying only the digitizer (rather than a digitizer-LCD assembly) and try to pry the old broken digitizer off of your working LCD. You may succeed, or you may totally destroy your LCD and be back at square one.  Heed the warnings in the product review section of the part your are ordering.  If you have an LG G2, see above note about glue and consider carefully the fact that most professionals wont attempt this.

- Replacing the digitizer-LCD assembly (e.g., replacing both parts rather than trying to pry them apart to save one) is very easy, assuming you select the correct model and are sent a working part.  There are already tutorials for every possible phone model already online.  However, LCD screens are finicky and based on reading online product reviews, its quite common to get a defective part.

Tutorial for replacing the digitizer-LCD assembly on the LG G2
(Note: In the image here the ribbon cable connectors highlighted in orange go to the digitizer while the red one down by the usb port goes to the LCD.  The flap between the LCD and digitizer connections is empty and doesn't do anything.  If you get through the tutorial and you can see the screen, but touch doesn't work, check the digitizer connections.  If you can't see the screen at all, check the LCD connection)

40 minute youtube video of a guy separating the digitizer and LCD
Follow directions on previous tutorial to completely remove the digitizer-LCD assembly from the frame and other components before attempting.

What happened:

Day 2 of having chickens, everyone was very excited for us and requesting pictures.  I thought I would oblige...but I also needed to take the compost out...and chicken treats...and I think some other stuff...and as I tried to shut the back door, I dropped my phone on the cement patio.

The local Radioshack wouldn't repair my phone model and the only place that would was at the mall (which is far), and they were going to have to order the part anyhow.  Such is my hatred for the mall, I ordered the part and attempted the repair myself. 

As you might glean from the What I Learned section, I ordered only the digitizer.  The repair began with removing the broken digitizer-LCD assembly, and then trying to melt the glue holding the two parts together with a hair dryer while carefully prying them apart.  This went well for awhile, but I think my LCD was also slightly damaged and weak in one corner.  It ended up cracking.  I might have succeeded had the LCD not been damaged, but it turns out that trying to melt the glue and pry things apart turns what could be an easy 20 minute repair into a risky 1-hour project.  At least this was the case for the LG G2, I read elsewhere that other phone types use less glue.

I ordered an LCD-digitizer assembly.  It took longer than it should have to arrive.  I tried to install it, but for the life of me could not make one of the ribbon cables connect.  I was convinced I had the wrong part because the part I was sent had a different part number from what I was replacing.

For the record: P/N 6841L-0365A(ASS'Y) 6850L-1071A(Bare) can be used to replace P/N 6841L-0365B(ASS'Y) 6850L-1071B(Bare) on the LG G2 D800, D801, and D803 models.

The company sent a new part: the same part, only attached to a new front frame this time (making the repair more difficult).  In frustration, I went to the mall.  I even drove there in the snow.  The technician confirmed the first part was defective and then installed the second one for me.  I bought a case and was charged $15 for the repair (I was originally quoted $150), perhaps because I was the only one there as the store opened on a snowy weekday morning and came with the part and my phone already disassembled.  Perhaps because I looked like I was at my wit's end and  almost hugged the guy when he finished.

I didn't escape the mall unscathed though.  As I was leaving, I passed a kiosk handing out samples of lotion.  As I reached out to take one the saleswoman grabbed hold of my hand.  "My God! Look at your nails!" she cried, as she began to buff my right thumbnail with a fancy emery board she'd been hiding somewhere.  Then she told me about some Dead Sea salt products that fell in price from $60 to $20 before I managed to escape without buying anything.  Incidentally, my one fingernail looks awesome.

Blogger ate my comment!

A few people emailed to say that they spent time crafting a beautiful and hilarious comment (thank you!) only to hit publish and have it disappear forever.

I checked my Blogger comment settings (Settings>Posts and Comments> Who can comment?), and I had comments enabled for only "Registered Users", whatever those are.  I changed the setting to "Everyone", which I hope fixes things.

If you tried to leave a comment before, I'm sorry and I love you for trying! Please try again and let me know if its still not working.

Update:  I have captcha's enabled, which means that you have to either type in some text or click a box that says "I'm not a robot" before you click "publish".  Otherwise, your comment will disappear (because you are a robot).

'Modern Farmer' is dead, long live modern farmers

The New York times is running an article on the (possible) demise of the Modern Farmer magazine/brand as it currently exists.

My only connection to this magazine is that someone cut out a glossy article about it for me a few months ago.  See, there are other educated semi-hippies out there that want to do this whole farming thing too!  I kind of get it now! is the message that seemed to come along with the thoughtful gesture.  I read the article, but never bought the magazine or visited the website, and I'm pretty sure the person who passed the article along didn't buy the magazine either.

The idea of someone wearing Gucci while posing next to farm animals, fancy portraits of roosters, and expensive farm to table restaurant reviews didn't appeal to me, and that's really the only impression I had of the magazine from the article.  It sounded like something I'd happily leaf through if I found it on a coffee table, but nothing I would go out of my way to pay $7 for on a magazine stand.

And therein, perhaps, lies the problem of Modern Farmer, which is now in peril because its founder walked out over a dispute with the chief financial backer over the magazines ability to bring in money, despite the website allegedly getting a million page views a month. 

Many of the people I know who are interested in the modern farming movement are hyperaware of the way things are monetized, and, for whatever reason, are not willing to take part.  Many just simply don't have the money.  Or they graduated college and were forced to enter the job market for the first time during the Great Recession and now have a bit of a 'prepper' mentality when it comes to money. Or they grew up in a climate of extreme abundance and are just tired of stuff and the culture of stuff.  Or they simply find joy in building and creating things themselves.  Or they're willing to pay for quality, but only from specific places that don't lend themselves to mass marketing.  Or. Or. Or. Or.  The point being, its a tough market to turn a dollar.

Of course, that is just a small subset of the people becoming more interested in the environment and "who want a little more back story to their food", as Ann Marie Gardner, the founder of Modern Farmer, says.   Some of these people do have money.  Some of them are willing to buy fancy muck boots at a gazillion percent profit for whoever is selling them.  And for that reason, we'll continue to see products and marketing geared towards this group.  And they will therefore continue to be the stylish face of the 'modern farming' movement.

But for the rest of us, I made a list of sites below that serve a different set of modern farmers- a growing community of do-it-yourselfers interested in finding new (or very old) ways of producing food and stewarding the land.

Meanwhile, the New York Times article changed my impression of Modern Farmer magazine.  The initial article I read presented it more as a uppity glamour food porn venue.  The NYT suggests that this side of things is more of a wrap to support a journalistic heart focusing on food/farm issues.  The NYT ends with this:

“I don’t want to speak ill of the dying, but what is the plausible audience in such a magazine?” he asked. “It was too kind of nitty-gritty and old-fashioned, back-to-the-land hippie magazine for the food-farm porn market, and yet too ‘What about the dairy situation in the Philippines?’ for people who are really raising chickens for a living.”

Actually, that sounds exactly like something I want to read.


****Farming resources for the modern farmer******

Pick up almost any garden or food book today, or even do a search on the internet, and much of what you'll find is pretty pictures and regurgitated elementary information on how to site your garden and eat whole foods.  Everyone online is a content producer claiming to be an expert.  But where do you go to get actual, practical information once you're sick of articles on How to site your garden in a sunny spot! and clicked through all twenty slides of Must-have perennials that will make your garden pop!?

These are sites I've found informative/interesting.  If you know of others- please email me or post in the comments.

Farm Hack  - This is a young site where anyone can post links to tools and resources that "support sustainable farming and sustainable farmers".  The 'tools' run the gambit from a dump of Enterprise farming budgets (which can help farmers just starting out get a realistic picture of things), to arduino heavy remote sensing projects, to how to build physical tools like a wheel hoe or squash peeler.  The site organizers recently posted their community principles here.

Open Source Ecology - A bit like Farm Hack with a more directed purpose.  They are "developing a set of open source blueprints for the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – a set of the 50 most important machines that it takes for modern life to exist – everything from a tractor, to an oven, to a circuit maker" and posting the blueprints online.  The community is a bit more controlled than Farm Hack, but you can still get involved.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA)  - Lots of acronyms associated with this one!  They are mostly supported by the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Business-Cooperative Service and are a branch of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) "a private nonprofit organization, founded in 1976, which manages a series of projects that promote self-reliance and sustainable lifestyles through wise use of appropriate technology".  The site is a treasure trove of information related to sustainable agriculture.

Rodale Institute - The slogan of this group is "Through organic leadership we improve the health and well-being of people and the planet".  They provide a wide range of research, news, and farmer resources related to organic agriculture.

Your local agricultural extension office - Yup, this a still a real thing, it still exists, and every state in the US supports them.  They host informative events for farmers, fun and educational activities for the community, and produce valuable research that you can find free on their website.  You can even call them and talk to a real live person and get personalized farming advice.  Its like your local library- your taxes paid for it, you might as well use it.  Just google the name of your state or county + "agricultural extension".  They're also a good place to read up on ongoing research.  I particularly like the research archives at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

Dialing back...
Believe it or not, back when it was harder to get information out to the public, people put a lot of effort into making sure that information was actually useful.  The best, most practical gardening information I've found was mostly written before the 1940's. 

Some of my favorite resources are George Washington's Carvers agriculture bulletins published from the late 1890's to 1940's.  A complete list of them can be found at this Tuskegee University site, and then googled individually to get the full text.  Most of them can be found as Google Books.

Several other resources have recently been posted at Farm Hack- including this Encyclopedia of Farm Knowledge from 1922.

Other sources can be found in the FAO's online portal to the David Lubin Memorial Library.

***Other sources not directly related to farming***

These aren't directly related to farming, but I thought they deserved a mention.

Public Lab - This is a bit like Farm Hack or Open Source Ecology, but dedicated to science education and making science tools (like spectrometers) free and accessible.  Some of these tools are just neat, others, like  instructions to create your own aerial imagery are of direct use to farmers.

Adafruit - Many of the tools being promoted by sites like Farm Hack require some technical know-how.  Adafruit sells introductory electronics equipment and provides tutorials to get you up and running building your own weather stations and more in an fun, easy to understand way.  Best of all, many of the projects on the site are particularly geared towards women and young girls, without the here-let-me-empower-you vibe that usually comes with such things.  Credit goes to all around awesome founder, Limor Fried.

Egg on your face, you big disgrace

Yesterday we had a record breaking nine eggs, for a total of 625 g (22 oz).  This is equivalent to about a dozen medium eggs.  We're hoping to average at least 3 eggs a day to break even with local organic/ free range egg prices, which should be quite doable with 12 hens (knock on wood! knock on wood!).  For the last week, we're averaging slightly better than 4.5 eggs per day.

One day's harvest

However, in farming, it seems even moderate success must come tempered with misfortune.  I've been letting the hens spend slightly more time unsupervised lately (we really need to build a run).  Yesterday afternoon  I was messing around inside the coop and heard an alarm call.  I ran out to find two chickens almost all the way across the yard staring down a cat.  Both chickens were easily bigger than the cat, but I'm sure he still could have done some damage.  I ran towards the group and the cat ran away while the chickens stood their ground.  Then I played the part of the alarm chicken and spread my arms straight out to my sides.  The flock took it as a signal to beeline back to the coop.

That was (near) misfortune #1.  This morning I let the chickens out a little earlier than usual and there weren't any eggs yet.  As I stood outside watching the chickens forage, I heard squawking inside the coop.  At first I thought it was just the sound of a chicken laying, but then the Barred Rock began running in and out and most of the other chickens began to do the same.  I followed them around, and at first couldn't find anything.  Then, I heard tapping coming from inside one of the nesting boxes, and there was Turken, eating an egg.

I chased her away and found two eggs in that nesting box- a dark brown one with a hole pecked into it, a light brown one still intact.  Agh.  I picked up the shell and covered the mess with straw.  As I was cleaning up, another chicken finished laying, so I grabbed that egg as well and took them inside.  Everything went back to normal, except the Barred Rock and Araucana continued to seem upset.

Twenty minutes later I decided to go back and check on the coop.  I opened the door and everyone rushed out but one Silky.  I peeked in a cardboard box, and there she was, pecking at a small pink egg. Agh again.  I tossed the whole box outside and observed.  The Silky and the Araucana were very upset.  They spent a bunch of time scraping around in the straw where the box had been, making sad noises.  Eventually the Silky gave up on her lost egg and only the Araucana remained to mourn (the loss of the egg? the box? the futility of life in general?...I really don't know what this bird's problem is).  And then, as I watched the Araucana crying, I heard an alarm outside and the cat was back, just behind the neighbors fence next to the coop.  Everyone back inside.

Turken was behind the bike wheels making a nest, so I grabbed a book and a cinder block, and made myself comfortable inside the coop.  The egg laying process, from the start of nesting, usually only takes 10-15 minutes.  In the meantime, I had some time to read and observe.  I tried to educate the chickens a bit about Bertrand Russell, but their interest waned when they realized I wasn't going to feed them parts of the book.  Cretins. 

  Logicomix: Easy reading while you're waiting for the chickens to do...something.  Chickens don't appreciate.

I watched as the chickens got used to my presence and went about whatever it is they do when they're locked up in the coop with noone around.  Most of them sat down on the straw and went to sleep.  A Golden Comet pulled a feather out of the Barred Rock and ate it directly.  A few pecked at the feed pellets without much interest.  Another Golden Comet wandered around checking out the nesting boxes.

The Comet made a bit of noise behind a cardboard box and I went to investigate.  A cold blue egg.  The Araucana, our only blue egg layer, wasn't anywhere in the vicinity, so it had been there awhile unharmed.  At the same moment, I noticed the Turken had an egg under her, so I shooed her away and picked up the warm, just laid egg.  I added some more sunflower seeds to the feeder and came inside.  So six eggs laid for the day...two destroyed, four to add to our collection.



Crushed egg shells

Why the sudden egg eating? Are they stressed from the cat? Too little protein? One broke accidentally and set off a chain?  We put crushed egg shell into their feed as a calcium supplement last night...did they recognize the material and want more?

As far as breaking the habit BackyardChickens.com suggests:
- Fill an empty egg shell with something distasteful or trick them into pecking at a golf ball...something to try if this goes on.  Not sure the golf ball will work, since we don't have white egg layers, and our birds just seem smarter than that.

-Make the nesting area dark...not really possible, and probably not effective, since one of the egg eaters was in a deep dark cardboard box.

-Take away their bedding so the egg rolls away if they peck at it...I doubt this would work unless the egg were to roll into a totally protected area, like in commercial nest boxes.  Elsewhere, the same website recommends increasing bedding.

- Special chicken blinders...seems like overkill

- More protein....check

- More calcium to make the eggs strong....our eggshells are actually a bit lumpy, suggesting that they already have a lot of calcium...

- Don't let them go hungry...they have plenty of feed

- Hang some sort of vegetable from a rope to entertain them so they're not bored...we had this before, but they ate it all.  Will have to replace.

-Remove the eggs as they're laid... this seems like the best solution I've seen, and the one with the most testimonials claiming that it works.  More frequent visits to the coop it is then! 

I've also seen elsewhere tips on how the make the nesting box smaller, so that the chicken can't stand up inside and peck at the egg.  I may try this as well, but so far their preferences for where to nest are pretty random, and we'd have to eliminate pretty much every other object from the shed...which might increase boredom.  And woe to the Araucana, who was thrown into a frenzy by the loss of just one box.

Update
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http://farmgirl-unleashed.com/2015/02/farmgirl-friday-blog-hop-187-2/

Strange Tastes

We have eleven more eggs since the last post and the chickens have been eating a little less feed since they've been foraging outside.  If they keep it up, our egg costs might start looking reasonable in another two weeks.

Getting better...

We've been supplementing the layer feed with sunflower seeds since I noticed that some of the chickens were eating feathers off the ground.  One of them went so far as to growl at me and then grab a particularly pretty feather that I had picked up straight out of my hand and then swallow it whole.  This was before they were going outside and getting a daily serving of worms, but it still doesn't hurt to up their protein a bit given that some of the chickens are obviously molting.

The instructions on the store bought sacks of layer feed, and conventional wisdom often repeated about raising chickens, is that you shouldn't allow your chickens to eat anything other than what comes from the store bought sack- which is perfectly balanced to maximize your flocks egg production.  Messing with the formula, by adding things like sunflower seeds or allowing foraging, will throw off this formula and then...disaster!

Of course the good people selling layer feed want you to believe this, but their logic fails on several counts. 

First, we have various breeds, some of which are laying almost every day now, some of which haven't laid an egg at all.  Some of our birds are meatier than others, some have more feathers, some are molting, some are not.  Some really like foraging outside (the Golden Comets) and some will hardly go out at all (the Auracana). Saying that a single feed formula will be ideal for all of these birds is worse than saying all people thrive on the exact same diet, and that diet doesn't vary at all during the year.  In fact, the chickens that are outside foraging should end up having a more balanced diet provided they can find enough variety on our three acre lawn. 

Second, even if the store bought feed is perfectly balanced to maximize egg production, it doesn't necessarily work out to the most efficient solution in cost per egg (which is really what we're after).

And besides, the chickens are just so happy and beautiful running around eating our lawn.

Pictures of chickens actually looking happy outside to come...

Besides feathers, the chickens have been catching up on their grit intake. 

Chickens don't have teeth.  And to deal with not having teeth, they eat small rocks that grind their food in their digestive tract.  Back when I was tasked with figuring out if lead in soil could make its way into chicken eggs, my initial thought was that the chicken probably couldn't eat enough soil for it to matter.  I was wrong.  Chickens eat a ridiculous amount of soil.  Basically, 30% of their diet can be rocks and sand without any adverse effects [1][2].  In fact, it actually helps them extract nutrients from their food better.  Since our chickens eat 3-4 cups of feed a day, that works out to 9 or more cups a week in rocks that our chickens might want to consume!

The first week we had the chickens we were trying to think of things to make them happy. I sacrificed a sad pineapple plant that was growing in sandy soil and put the pot in the coop.  They ate the entire contents of the two gallon pot in less than a week. That's 32 cups of sandy dirt- and they definitely ate it.  We figure they weren't getting adequate grit at their previous home.  Now that they're outside more, they've been going to town on our gravel driveway.

Speaking of strange tastes, we haven't had any more 'gamey' tasting eggs, so I'm hoping it was a fluke.

1.Van der Meulen, J., C. Kwakernaak, and C. A. Kan. "Sand intake by laying hens and its effect on egg production parameters." Journal of animal physiology and animal nutrition 92.4 (2008): 426-431.

2. Van Krimpen, M. M., et al. "Effect of nutrient dilution on feed intake, eating time and performance of hens in early lay." British poultry science 48.4 (2007): 389-398.

 

 

The economics of egg production so far

This morning, we collected 3 eggs, bringing our total to 14. So, we've finally broken a dozen (so to speak)! Six of these we gave to the neighbour as a thank-you for allowing us to take lumber from his wood pile.

But we've already been asked a few times: is keeping chickens worthwhile, economically?

Well, I noted down all the costs we incurred so far, and the grand total is $105.60. That makes our cost per egg $7.54 (or just $90.48 per dozen!). So, not exactly a path to riches.

But, over time, our production cost per egg has decreased, as the chickens have started laying more:

The data fit our trendline well, with an excellent r-squared value of .767.  As you can see, the trendline should pass through zero cost around January 19. So, we confidently expect that we will start making a profit on these eggs tomorrow. You can't argue with data. 

What's the cost breakdown? I wanted to extend the Excel awesomeness to making a pie chart, but I'm kind of sick of making graphs. So in numbers:

Feed        54%

Bedding   28%  

Heat          5%

Other       13%  (Oyster shell, buying a heat lamp)

We'll see whether these numbers change in a month or two! 

Note: Post and graphs created by Jan.  L eschews graphs made in Excel.

Taste Test

We are up to seven eggs now- one more yesterday and two more this morning.  I entered the coop this morning to find one Silky scratching around in a nest box, a Golden Comet seemingly nesting in the middle of the floor and the Barred Rock eating something gooey in the corner...wait, what? 

Barred Rock

I shoved the Barred Rock away and covered the mess with straw.  I didn't see any egg shell, so its possible she was just eating her own vomit.  Yes, chickens are gross.  I've read that egg-eating is a hard habit to break once it gets started, so I sincerely hope that she wasn't eating an egg. My entering the coop created a stir, so the Golden Comet went and hid herself behind a bike wheel and the Silky came over to see what everyone else was doing.  Oh well, maybe the Silky will lay later, I thought.  I went outside and most of the flock followed.

We still haven't built a run, so the chickens just get some supervised time outside in the morning and late afternoon.  We back to a long stretch of woods with a stream and many trees that are good for wildlife.  I've seen raccoons, foxes, cats, hawks, and evidence of snakes in the short time we've been here.  A few minutes of scanning the skies and you're bound to see half a dozen bird types and probably one of the hawks that live nearby.  Incredible for a nature lover, dangerous for a chicken.

The chickens have shown a reassuring degree of self preservation.  Canadian geese making a racket, no reaction.  The shadow of a hawk?  One of the chickens will spread her wings wide, lean her head back and call out an alarm and all of the other chickens rush back into the coop- legs splayed wide in a wobbly run or else flying low to the ground.  The alarm chicken will then rush after them, wings outstretched.  A hawk passes overhead about every fifteen minutes, so outside time usually ends itself naturally in this way. 

Back in the coop this morning, I found that the Golden Comet had already finished laying her egg and moved on to other things.  The straw in the coop is starting to look wet and gross, so I brought out the second bale we bought and started tossing handfuls of dry straw from the nesting areas (where the chickens don't hang out as much) into the sleeping/food areas.  I picked up a double handful that had been pushed out of the nesting boxes and tossed it back inside.  Thud.  I had accidentally picked up and tossed a giant pink egg that was probably laid by the Silky I'd seen scratching around earlier.  I really hope there aren't more well hidden eggs lying around or being eaten. 

The egg was only slightly cracked, so I brought it back in for breakfast.  The yolk was dark orange and so thick it just broke up into chunks when I tried to scramble it.  Random googling suggests the chunkiness of the yolk could be due to the egg freezing or its just extra fresh and healthy.  The egg white was also watery- not runny, but more liquid than I'm used to.  The best explanation I can find for this is that its a sign the chicken is old (as is the fact that the eggs are larger).  The other two eggs we've eaten looked pretty normal- the yolks were darker than usual and the whites a little firmer around the yolk, but not really anything you'd notice unless you make a point of examining your eggs.  This egg was noticeably different from anything I've seen before. 

Being adventurous, I scrambled it as best I could and had a taste.  It was... gamey? meaty? a note of sour? a bit like goat? It wasn't necessarily a bad taste, but I'm not a huge fan of meat and if you're used to your egg being largely taste free, this was definitely...different.   Searching for "gamey chicken eggs" yielded mostly articles about duck eggs (our eggs are duck sized) and eggs from other birds.  I did find, however, one blog post mentioning that Silky eggs in particular are gamey (and therefore best used for facials...).  The first egg we ate was incorporated into an omelet with store bought eggs, the second made into a béchamel sauce.  Both dishes were delicious, but don't tell us much about the individual eggs.   Neither of the first two eggs came from a Silky.   I can't find the "Silkies lay gamey eggs" claim anywhere else, but we do have two more Silky eggs in the fridge, so we will see.


Silky

Meanwhile, the same blog claims "even touching a Silkie Chicken will bring about good health to a woman’s reproductive system".  As pet-able as they look, the Silkies have so far been some of our least interactive chickens.  Still, I'm sure my mom will be glad to know.

Aaaand....two more eggs

There was much drama in the hen house last night.  The chickens had what should have been a pretty good day yesterday- an extra cup of feed, a 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds, an entire bowl of scraps, about an hour outside foraging, and it was warmer so their water never froze. 

However, when we went to give them their evening rations, the feeder was completely empty (sometimes its not)  and the chickens were practically jumping into the food bin when we opened it to get more food.  This is the most aggressive we've ever seen them.  Everyone was crying and fighting for a spot at the feeder.  The Brahma territorially guarded an entire quarter of the coop where we scattered sunflower seeds to break up the melee, jumping on and ripping out the feathers of almost anyone that came too near.  The Golden Comets pecked at our boots while growling like a dissatisfied Marge Simpson.  The poor Auracana, terrorized by everyone, was not allowed at the feeder until the lights were out and everyone else roosting.  All she could do during the scuffle was flee from one hiding spot to another while making a squeaky cluck that almost sounded like crying.

But in the morning everything was back to normal.  We opened the door to find everyone happily wandering around the coop and two cold abandoned brown eggs- one in the nesting box where the first one was laid, and one on the floor in front of the bike wheels.  These eggs weigh in at a whopping 100 and 75g.  An extra large egg is 63g or more, a jumbo 70g or more.  Beyond that, we have run out of egg sizes.

Another egg

One of our Silkies laid an egg yesterday.  We know it was a Silky because she was screaming her head off and running in and out of all of the nesting areas and cardboard boxes early in the morning, the same as the Golden Comet did before the first egg appeared.  In the evening, we found the Silky standing guard and clucking in front of one of the cardboard boxes.  This egg is pink and small (45g), which further confirms that it was a Silky.

Two eggs is infinitely more eggs than we had last week.  At this rate, we should have world hunger wrapped up in no time.

Egg!

For the last two days, we noticed one of the orange chickens strutting around and squawking loudly around the chicken shed, while testing out different places to sit. Something important was going to happen, and today it finally did. Giving the chickens their evening feed, Lisa spotted something in the shelf: our first egg. We took our prize and gently carried it home.

So, after a week of waiting, we got an egg.  Why now? We'd been told by our neighbours that the chickens for sure wouldn't lay until April, if it happened to be a warm spring. Maybe the chicken just wanted to prove her wrong. Or maybe it was because we'd just bought 18 eggs from the store and chickens have a fine sense of irony. 

Regardless, this is no ordinary egg. It is much larger than our other eggs. In fact, it barely fits in the old egg carton we put it in. 

It weighs in on our kitchen scale at somewhere around 65-70 g or around 2.5 ounces. This puts the egg firmly into Jumbo territory. It really is massive.  By contrast, the "large" eggs beside it weigh in at around 45 g. 

And the chicken that laid it is walking around, absolutely fine as far as we can see. Assuming the chicken weighs about 2.5 kg, the egg would represent around 2.5 to 3% of its body weight. I personally would not be hopping around the next day if it happened to me. So I have new respect for the chicken. 

Winter reading

"...One unversed in such matters can have no notion of the many and tragic things that can happen to a chicken.  It is born out of an egg, lives for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see pictured on Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of your father's brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies.  A few hens and now and then a rooster, intended to serve God's mysterious ends, struggle through to maturity.  The hens lay eggs out of which come other chickens and the dreadful cycle is thus made complete.  It is all unbelievably complex.  Most philosophers must have been raised on chicken farms.  One hopes for so much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned.  Small chickens, just setting out on the journey of life, look so bright and alert and they are in fact so dreadfully stupid.  They are so much like people they mix one up in one's judgments of life.  If disease does not kill them they wait until your expectations are thoroughly aroused and then walk under the wheels of a wagon- to go squashed and dead back to their maker.  Vermin infest their youth, and fortunes must be spent for curative powders.  In later life I have seen how a literature has been built up on the subject of fortunes to be made out of the raising of chickens.  It is intended to be read by the gods who have just eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It is a hopeful literature and declares that much may be done by simple ambitious people who own a few hens.  Do not be led astray by it.  It was not written for you.  Go hunt for gold on the frozen hills of Alaska, put your faith in the honesty of a politician, believe if you will that the world is daily growing better and that good will triumph over evil, but do not read and believe the literature that is written concerning the hen.  It was not written for you."

- Sherwood Anderson, "The Egg"

Fair warning.

At least one of these actually was crushed under a wagon wheel.  RIP all.

It is cold

When I requested to move anywhere south of Montreal a year ago, I was picturing something like Suriname, or Mali, or maybe even Tuvalu.   But, as so often happens with wishes, the literal desire was granted and intent ignored.

The only real personal knowledge of Delaware I had prior to moving was:

1. There is a Chik-fil-A somewhere off of I-95 near Wilmington.
2. As a child, we once visited family friends who lived in Delaware.  I slipped on a patch of ice in their driveway and hit my head.  This is actually my dominant childhood memory having to do with being cold.

So somewhere deep down I knew there would be ice.  And maybe snow.  And a lot of highways.  And fast food.  Yet I held out a desperate hope that the Delaware of my childhood had  been magically transformed into a pristine tropical paradise.  The sun would sit high in the sky year round and the ocean would be just around the corner.

 

It became clear pretty early on that some of my expectations would not be met.  However, I still held out a small hope that we'd finally escaped winter.

Ice on the car.  Just like Canada.

But two days ago it snowed and our morning and evening ritual now includes pouring hot water over the chickens' water to melt the ice.  The chickens, however, seem to be doing fine- not huddling or even very puffed up.  They have a heat lamp, but are only interested in it when they're figuring out where to perch for the night. 

The flock is finally getting used to us and displaying their personalities.  Surprisingly, the three Silkies (the smallest of the group) are emerging near the top of the pecking order, followed by the four Golden Comets.  These are the only breeds that we have more than one of and its hard to tell them apart.  There seems to be one Silky that is smaller than the rest and lower on the pecking order.  However, she is the only one small enough to fly up to and perch on a board nailed half way up the wall of the shed.  We had hoped that the chickens wouldn't be able to get up there because its where all the electric outlets are, but it seems just the one Silky can barely manage it.  She takes a flying leap, hooks her beak onto the wood, and flaps wildly until she can get her foot up.  The other chickens appear very jealous.  We're still not sure how she manages to hang on to her narrow perch, so we've taken to calling her Fluffernutter.

In the middle of the pecking order is the Brahma and Barred Rock.  If a chicken can be obese, we think Brahma qualifies.  When she hops down from her perch, its with a loud thud.  She's very pushy and always the first in line for treats but will take a back seat to at least some of the Silkies and Comets.

At the bottom of the group we have Turken, Rhode Island Red, and the Auracana as a very distant last.  The poor Auracana is pecked by everyone and we barely see her because she's always under the wheel barrow.  When she does have to cross from one place to another, its at a run and squawking wildly as though to say, "Please don't peck me! Please don't peck me! I'm only passing! Please don't peck me!".  The other chickens nevertheless try to peck her as she goes by.

The pecking order is a harsh regime.  At first there was fighting over who got to sleep on the very center of an iron bench we put in the shed.  The back of the bench is slightly curved, so the center is maybe 2" higher than the sides, making it, just barely, the highest easily accessible perch.  To stop the fighting, we nailed a long shelf to the wall just higher than the center of the bench.  We figured they could all fit up there, all at the same height, all at the highest point in the room (we didn't know Fluffernutter could (sort of) fly), and order would be restored. 

But no.  The right side of the shelf is better than the left.  Chicken 1 hops on to the shelf, and moves all the way to the right.  Chicken 2 then does the same, pushing against Chicken 1 to make her move farther over.  Chicken 3 then hops up and pushes against Chickens 1 and 2, and so on.  Eventually Chicken 1 falls off the right side of the shelf, all of the chickens move over, and Chicken 1 circles around to re-enter from the left.  As far as we know, this goes on all night. 

The last few nights we've had the heat lamp on and that creates a second area of interest.  Some of the chickens still prefer the high perch even though it isn't as warm.  We're taking this as a sign that they aren't too cold.  The chickens have only really been outside once since we got them, and that was the last non-freezing day we've had.  Every other day its been raining or cold, and the most they'll do is walk to the end of the ramp outside the door and peck at the water or snow for a few seconds, as if to say "Still?".  I can relate.

Embracing the unkowns

There were quite a few unknowns when we closed on the house last month- like the painted shut cupboard wedged behind the refrigerator that we couldn't move without damaging the plumbing.

This is why we couldn't move the refrigerator.  Who thought this was a good idea?

We ultimately decided that there probably wasn't anything in the cupboard bad enough to deter us from buying the house.  But what was in there?  Dead mice? War bonds? A 100 year old fruit cake?

Door to Narnia

It took us a little while after move-in to get around to it, but finally, with the help of a screwdriver, a butter knife, and a little violence, we were able to pry the cabinet open.

And...

Surprise!

 ...a solid wood ironing board fell out.  Neat!

Unfortunately, as much as Jan enjoys ironing and Lisa appreciates the space saving aesthetic, it didn't take long to decide it had to go.  A couple more weeks of getting around to it, a power drill + more low-level violence, and here is what we have now:

All the things that usually get lost in the back of the cabinets.

We bought a variety of plastic shelf pins to hold the shelves in place because we didn't know which ones would be best.  They all ended up being about the same.  We drilled the holes one drill bit size smaller than the pin size to get a snug fit.


The best part is that Lisa can reach all of the shelves! Every house should have an in-wall cabinet like this. The upper cabinet shelves in the rest of the kitchen have been officially relegated to Jan's personal storage.  He will use them solely to cache old bread and open jars of jam.  Lisa doesn't care.  As far as she knows the top shelf is where dragons live.

Jan likes this.

As for the refrigerator, we capped off and removed the line to the icemaker, so the fridge sits flush in the corner now.  Its still spray foam city underneath, but that's a project for another day. 

Now, who wants a wooden ironing board?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Actual conversation:

J: Hey, you got a lot done in here!

L: Well, I was cleaning and had the drill out...

_____________________________________________________
http://www.pinkwhen.com/diy-sunday-showcase-131-favs/
http://www.niftythriftythings.com/nifty-thrifty-sunday-188/
http://www.ablossominglife.com/2015/02/frugal-crafty-home-blog-hop-113.html
http://diyshowoff.com/2013/07/21/that-diy-party-26/

Pea-Can or P'Kahn?

 

We are picking out trees to order.

 

 

Advice/comments welcome.

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

– Alexander Pope, “Ode on Solitude”

Taken from http://www.brianhayes.com/

Chickens!

There's been a lot of interest in our newly acquired chicken flock- demands for updates, pictures, egg production statistics - so we thought we'd start a blog to chronicle their (and our) adventures.
So here's the story:

Just before Christmas we found an ad for twelve free chickens- complete with feed, accessories, and whatever else we can haul away before spring (including their entire coop and run).  The boy who previously owned the flock was more interested in building their very elaborate coop than in caring for them, and now that it's winter and the chickens aren't laying much, the boy's father felt it was best to give the whole setup away.

Hence, last Tuesday night we drove out to the borderlands of Amish country and, with the aid of the very helpful father and two little yappy dogs ("aid" might be the wrong term for the dogs), wrangled all twelve chickens into a bunch of moving boxes, loaded them into our Honda Fit, and brought them home to live in one of our many sheds. The "Grande" shed, if you're a Starbucks fan.  The catch to all of this is that the chickens are kind of old.

So, the main questions we are getting:

Can our already 2-year old chickens still lay eggs?
Shouldn't they all be dead by now? 

And the answers:
Probably, and no. 

Chickens naturally rely on daylight to regulate their laying cycle.  As days shorten, the chickens will take a break from laying and let their bodies recover a bit before they go back to laying in the spring (hence, spring chicks).  Commercial operations keep chickens laying as long as possible by tricking them into thinking their days are perpetually getting longer with electric lights. They also choose breeds that lay early and a lot.    By the time caged commercial hens are 18 months old or less their bodies are so depleted in calcium that 29% will have experienced at least one broken bone and their spent bodies can't even be used in soup[1].

How long chickens lay under natural conditions depends on the breed and the quality of their lives.   According to various backyard chicken forums, egg production will begin to decline around 2-5 years of age, but will continue at a slower rate for some time after that.  Some bloggers report chickens producing a couple of eggs a week up until 7 years or later.  Breeds that take longer to start laying and lay fewer eggs per week supposedly will keep laying longer than a high production hybrid.  We got a of mix of breeds, so we're not really sure what will happen. Given that they were still laying a little bit up until we stressed them out with the move, we expect them to go back to laying a couple of eggs each a week in the spring. 

At any rate, so there's no mistake, here is their egg production so far:

Feel free to tell us we're crazy.  In the meantime, they're doing a good job of eating our scraps and producing compost for our future garden.  We've been turning the lights on and off in the shed at pretty random times over the last few days (we built them a window today), and they're generally pretty stressed out from moving.  Its funny to watch them when we switch off the lights at night.  They'll be busy eating and scratching in the straw, but as soon as the lights go out, silence...then gentle clucking as they scuttle around looking for a place to perch.

Anyhow, pictures:

Golden Comet, Barred Rock, Turken, Brahma, and Rhode Island Red (from bottom to top).

Golden Comet and Barred Rock

 



Silky and Brahma. Despite provision of nesting boxes and roosting poles by a benevolent creator, the chickens'  favorite spot is under the wheelbarrow.




Brahma explores the far corner of the shed, and the mysterious boxes that took them from their only home. 



Silkys hiding in the corner. The chickens love this corner.

From left to right: Silky, Golden Comet, the delightfully ugly yet practical Turken, Brahma, Golden Comet.

Closeup of Turken eating some grit.

First trip outside.



Everyone else is outside in the rain, so the Silkys and Turken take the opportunity to eat some chicken feed. Does this make them the dumbest or the smartest of the flock?



It's wet, let's go back in.



Horses: "Looks like the neighbors got chickens"
"Well, there goes the NEIGH-borhood"



Lisa dropped her phone on the way to take more pictures, and now the touch screen only works with a mouse.   These will have to do until the new screen arrives.

1. Hester, Patricia Y., et al. "Can Lighting Programs be Manipulated in the Growing Phase to Improve the Skeletal Integrity of Commercial Egg Layers."