Our Little Boy is Growing Up

Stewie the Rooster

Our little rooster, that is!  Stewie is our first rooster and he is just over 4 months old.  I was wondering when he was going to start crowing, and then yesterday he did!  He crowed three times and I haven't heard anything since then.  Guess he was just trying it out!

I first wrote about Stewie in August when we first realized he was a "he."  At the time, he had nipped at me and I was hoping that he wasn't going to be nasty (as many roosters are).  As it turns out, he seems to be a sweetheart.  If anything he is very timid and skittish.  Some of the chickens are more comfortable around us than others, and he is definitely one of the timid ones - he is even jumpy around some of the hens!

He's a good little boy and I hope he stays that way.

A Tiny Egg!

This morning as I was going out to let the chickens out, I found the tiniest little egg out in the chicken yard!

We have 3 batches of chickens.  Our oldest batch are over a year old and lay normal sized eggs (on the left).  Our second batch are about 5 months old and have just started to lay.  Their eggs are smaller; their eggs will increase in size as they mature.  They are called "pullet eggs."   The third batch is only 3 months old and shouldn't be laying yet ... but then who laid this tiny thing on the right?

I checked over at one of my favorite blogs, BackyardChickens.com, and found that this sometimes happens but the egg is not fully formed.  Sure enough, when I broke it open, there was not a typical yolk inside.  The young pullet probably wasn't expecting this to happen, since the egg was in the middle of the grass and not in a nesting area!

It was a cute little surprise from one of those 4 youngest pullets!  The family cracked up when I showed it to them.  You learn something new every day!

Spawn of Crazy Chicken!

Looking down into the brooder - you can see
Crazy Chicken in her time-out corner!

A quick story.  Last year when we ordered our first batch of 12 chicks, I ordered two Salmon Faverolles.  They are a bit different from most breeds of chickens because they have muffs on their cheeks, feathered legs, and 5 toes instead of 4.  They are also supposed to be pretty shy, docile, and easy to take care of.  Unfortunately, one of the babies arrived very weak and died a couple of days later.  The other one seemed fine at first, but after a few days, she started beating up on the other chicks!  Literally poking at their eyes, and she drew blood on one chick.  The recommended approach for a naughty chick is to isolate it within the brooder for a while - kind of a "time-out" corner!  Well, I tried that and it didn't work. I ended up trading her for another chick from a friend of mine who had a batch of chicks that were older. We thought that if she were with bigger chicks, she wouldn't be able to beat up on them (for one thing, they could fly and she couldn't!).  It worked and she kept the bird.  She still had a weird personality and they called her Sammy, the Crazy Chicken.

Fast-forward to this year ... I mentioned in a previous post that my favorite hen named Hickety went broody this spring and wanted to hatch out chicks.  We don't have a rooster so I got some fertilized eggs from this same friend ... and it looks like Crazy Chicken was the mom of one of our babies!  I was pretty excited this morning when I realized that ... I kept looking at this chicken and trying to figure out why she looked familiar to me ... then I realized that she looks just like a Salmon Faverolle!  She has the right coloring, the side muffs, the feathered legs, and yes, she has 5 toes!

This is a typical Salmon Faverolle

The pullet on the right is the Spawn of Crazy Chicken!
This was the best picture I could get of her because she kept running away ...

It's funny too, because this chicken is definitely "weird."  She hides a lot and won't let anyone near her ... same thing her mom did over at my friend's farm.  We decided to name her Hedwig because she kind of reminds me of the snowy owl from Harry Potter.

I'm also glad that we got one of Sammy's babies because she was killed by a fox a few weeks ago :-(.  My friend has a few of her babies too, so her memory will live on!

My Christmas Gift

I got the BEST Christmas gift last year from Tim and the kids!  They hunted around all of the antique stores in our town (there are quite a few of them) and found this!

What woman wouldn't LOVE a rooster weathervane?!?  Tim snuck it into the house and wrapped it to drive me crazy since it was such a funny shape.  Una, who is a TERRIBLE gift secret-keeper, let it slip to me that it was "something to do with chickens" but I still didn't know what it was.  I was so surprised and I just loved it ... but we didn't get to install it until July.  Now, every time I walk outside, I am reminded of what a thoughtful hubby and kids I have!

Reducing your household waste

When we got chickens last year, I was so happy that our leftover or scrap food could be fed to them.  I really hate wasting food, and I didn't realize just how much food was routinely thrown out until we started saving the leftovers for them.  (Mind you - we eat leftovers for lunch during the week, so I am talking more about scraps).

Composting was another challenge.  Over the years, we had tried to be true to composting uncooked kitchen waste.  We bought the cute ceramic container that is supposed to make it so convenient to compost.  It ended up not getting dumped often enough (yuck!) and then one day one of the ceramic knobs broke off. We tried different types of containers but nothing really "stuck."  Usually each spring, we would compost for about 1-2 months and then give up.

This year was different.  We did a couple of things to keep us motivated - maybe some of these ideas will help you too!

• First, we moved the compost pile closer to "home."  We used to have one large pile out in one of our back fields and it was a good 8 minute trek round-trip.  Now we have three smaller bins right near the chicken coop.  Since we walk out to the coop a few times each day anyway, it is no big deal to take the compost out.
• I keep two small containers in one of the wells of my kitchen sink - one for the chickens, and one for the compost.  They are open so that I can see what is inside and they get emptied when they are full or have been there a while.  The rule is they get emptied at least once a day!  Nothing is left there overnight.  This keeps the grossness factor way down!

Here is a list of things that you can typically put in your compost pile from the kitchen:

• fruit/vegetable peelings
• coffee grounds
• tea bags
• overripe fruits and vegetables

This compares to what you might give to your chickens:

• leftover raw or cooked vegetables or fruits
• dairy - yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream, etc.
• breads
• cooked meat - beef, pork, fish, chicken (yes, it sounds gross, but they love meat ...)

You can see that between the two bins, hardly any food is thrown away!  There are a few things that you shouldn't feed chickens - onions and peppers (strong flavors might affect the taste of the eggs) and avocados (makes them VERY sick), to name a few.  They also don't usually like citrus fruits, but maybe there are some chickens out there who do.

When there is something from the kitchen that could go in either bin, I always choose the chickens, since it has a more direct benefit to me.  Feeding them kitchen scraps lowers the amount of commercial food that they eat, which helps to save money!

It's funny ... because now that we have greatly reduced the amount of unused waste from our kitchen, I am struck when I am visiting other people's houses at how much is thrown away.  I can't help but think "if only my chickens were here!" 

It's a Boy!

Meet Stewie

At least, I'm pretty sure he's a he.  My favorite hen, Hickety, is an Australorp who keeps going broody (meaning she wants to hatch out chicks).  Since we don't have a rooster, that just wasn't going to happen!  A friend of mine gave me some fertilized eggs to set underneath her.  Hickety hatched out 5 babies in June and was a great mama hen to her babies.

So when you hatch eggs, you get a straight run - some male, some female.  Out of the 5, I think one at least is a cockerel.  He is huge compared to the other babies, and I'm pretty sure I can see the beginning of the spurs that they get.  I found out yesterday that he's got a pretty good bite to him already, too.  My prediction is that he ends up in a pot by the end of the year!

We named him Stewie (after the obnoxious baby in Family Guy) but as I'm typing this, I see that the name is also very likely his destiny. Now that's funny!

Raising chickens is really easy!

"Before"

Last year we decided to get chickens.  We had an old chicken coop on our property - it hadn't been used in probably over 25 years.  It is a very large building, as far as chicken coops go.  We installed new siding over the old siding, replaced some floorboards on the second floor, and dug out quite a bit of old "organic matter" from the first floor.  It was about 1 foot deep with old corn cobs, hay, dirt, and rocks. We predator-proofed the place (we hope) by installing wire screening all along the bottom perimeter.  The bottom edge of the screening is buried about 6 inches deep in concrete.  Then we painted the whole first floor to give it a brighter, cleaner look.  Love it!

New Siding

Up until this point, we were basically just cleaning up an old structure on our property - we could have used it for lots of different things.  Actually, my husband suggested to me a couple of times that just because we were fixing up the coop, it didn't mean that we actually had to get some chickens!  I will admit that I was the one who was gung-ho about getting the chickens - I just loved the idea of having our own farm-fresh eggs.

Roosting bar with droppings board

 The next steps were the chicken-specific modifications.  The inside dimensions of the coop are 22' x 15'.  The chickens' living area is 16' x 15', and the remainder is the entry way, stairs to 2nd floor, and storage space.  DH built a great roost with a droppings board below for easy cleanup.  He also built nesting boxes with access from the rear to collect the eggs.  It was funny that he wasn't too keen about getting the chickens, because as he was designing these things, he built them for twice as many chickens as we have because "next year we'll probably get some more!"

Nesting boxes

Most of the ideas for our roost, droppings board, and nesting boxes came from the "Chicken Forum" at www.backyardchickens.com.  This is a great website and if you are thinking about getting into chickens (or even if you've got them already), you should check it out.  They are a wealth of knowledge and you'll find everything you need to know!

Yes, the baby chicks arrive through the mail in a box!

Neither one of us had ever even come in close contact with a chicken before, but we went ahead and ordered our baby chicks.  It turns out that it really is quite easy to take care of chickens.  They're great pets (yes, all of ours have names) - they provide food, eat excess kitchen scraps, and one day, they'll end up in the pot!

The coop today - with enclosed run and larger fenced-in chicken pasture

An Introduction.

My husband and I live in Upstate NY with our three children.  Ours is an old house, built in 1775, with 12 acres of land.  When we were house-hunting 15 years ago, I wanted a big house for large family gatherings and visits from the grandchildren you know (talk about long-range planning!) and my DH wanted land for hunting ... and so we purchased our property which met both requirements.  As the years have gone by, I have developed another passion, and that is for self-sustaining living.

Why?  Many people wonder about that (mostly my family!).

Well, for a lot of reasons.  I have always been the kind of person who loves "living off the land."  That used to mean camping, fishing, and hunting, all pastimes that DH and I did a lot of early on.  I think that as I've gotten older, I realize that there was a reason that our ancestors settled down from "hunter-gatherer" to farming!  A properly run homestead is more reliable and stable than depending upon just fishing and hunting.  We dabbled with vegetable gardening for a couple of years and then last year (2010) we started to get more serious.  We had a kick-butt vegetable garden and I started to learn about the best ways to preserve food ... and we also got our first chickens!  This year we've expanded the vegetable garden, gotten more serious about composting, installed 4 rain barrels for watering the chickens, compost, and gardens, and plan to experiment with root cellaring this fall and winter.  Later posts will expand upon all of these topics and more.