The numbers keep changing. We got back from Christmas break up in Gig Harbor and the count had gone back down to 13 chickens. This time, it was a Rhode Island Red that was missing. We kept our thoughts positive, hoping she would magically turn back up as our last missing bird did. After the events of last week however, we are pretty sure that isn't going to happen.
I called Keith from work as I usually do on my dinner break the middle of last week, and he answers the phone with something clever, like, "Keith's butcher shop." After some confusing back and forth, I finally clued that he was in process of plucking one of our chickens. Apparently when he pulled up into the driveway in the late afternoon, he noticed a large bird fly away from off the driveway, leaving behind one of our dead chickens. The bird was a red-tailed hawk that we have seen lurking around lately, and the chicken was our one and only Speckled Sussex. It was a clean kill and a fresh bird, so Keith did the practical thing and took it in and saved it for our dining pleasure. He was nice enough though to save the actual gutting and cleaning of the insides for me since I was so "experienced" at it. What a fun task to come home to.
It was interesting how skittish the chickens remained for the next couple days after the Speckled's demise. Any little flutter or even movement by us, and they were skittering all about in a tizzy. Maybe this will teach them to not hang out in the wide open so much and instead stick to the trees. Not likely.
She gave us lots of eggs and a nice meal the other night, so it wasn't all for naught. The meat was a bit on the gamey side (as Keith said, "these birds are athletes compared to what you buy in the store") but good nonetheless. The question remains as to how much longer the rest of our ladies will last. The word in this neighborhood is that once a predator finds your chickens, it doesn't take long for the rest to get picked off. Aside from shooting the hawk (which isn't allowed), not letting the chickens out of the coop, or putting a net above our property, there isn't much we can do except wait, watch and hope for the best.
We have officially stopped counting the eggs. We are just taking a mental note each day as to how many they are giving us and keeping a rough total. With the 12 remaining birds, we are getting about 9-10 eggs a day. Which brings our total to about 1300 eggs, and the cost per egg at $0.75 and thus the cost per dozen at $8.96.
These birds have lived up to their reputation and have done very well in the many cold snaps we have had this winter so far. We've had several nights dipping into the 20's and they did fine in their relatively large coop with no heating light or anything. The only hard part was trying to keep their water thawed.
All has been well with the chickens. We have been averaging about 10 eggs a day and even had one 13-egg day. The containment of the chickens to their side of the fence has proven to be a complete failure. They continue to walk around, poke through, and jump over. We have given up for now as the only solution will be a properly constructed fence that runs all the way down the hill and we don't have the time or energy for that right now. So, now I have to leave the gate slightly open so that they can find their way back to the coop to lay their eggs, as they can't seem to manage to go back the way they came.
The issue with the chickens laying in random nests in the woods has taken care of itself. The rains finally hit a few weeks ago, and we gradually started seeing more eggs in the coop. Getting 11 or 12 eggs a day with only 14 chickens, we figured we pretty much had them all laying inside. I guess they prefer not to lay in the rain. Fine by us. Our nesting boxes have been halfway successful. We built four - two stacks of two. While they used to sit in all of them and even on top, they have not laid any eggs in the upper two boxes. Instead after placing a bale of hay in the coop to use as bedding, they promptly started laying in the corner behind it and then on the floor in the corner right next to the nesting boxes, and then in the two lower boxes. So I guess four is the right number, but maybe access to the upper two is too hard.
The sad news, however is that one day about two weeks ago, in putting the chickens away for the night, we only counted 13. She was nowhere to be found in the immediate vicinity of the coop (as they sometimes are....waiting to be carried in), so we gave it a day. And another day. Finally we gave up hoping and wrote her off to a random predator, making the count 13.
Until yesterday. Yesterday Keith comes in and says, "You have to go look at the chickens.". So I walk out and stare at the chickens eating their scratch and say, "What? I don't see anything.".
"Keep looking".
"That one has some chicken scratch on her back, but that is nothing new."
"Keep looking."
"...........I'm going back in."
"Keep looking."
"She's back! We have all three black ones!"
That's right, the missing chicken came back. But it was very interesting because the other chickens were being very mean to her and treating her like an outsider. They were pecking at her and chasing her away from the food. We were happy to see her back, but alas, it did not last. When we did the chicken count at the end of the day, she was gone again. Didn't see her today either. They do say that some chickens "get broody", which means they make their own nest and sit on their eggs, trying to hatch their babies. Kind of sad really - she's been out there in the rain for weeks waiting for her babies to hatch. Or it just emphasizes the brain capacity of a chicken. After they've gone broody, they will not lay eggs again for a long time. So we have a bit of a choice to make - catch her and lock her up for a while hoping she turns back to the ways we desire, or......well maybe you wouldn't like the other option. We'll do some searching for her nest and see what we come up with.
In the stat department, we have received over 500 eggs now (517 to be exact). The cost of an egg is down to $1.52, making it $16.85/dozen.
We moved out to the "country" back in May, and one of the first things we did was buy 24 chickens. It was something we knew we would do at some point, and it was something Jenn and I and Pat and Keith have talked about on many occasion. I didn't expect it to happen so soon, given we had a house to sell, a trip to Hawaii to take and a behemoth of a project to take on at this "new" house. But one day Keith and Pat went out and came home with 24 chickens (Jenn and I were expecting somewhere along the lines of 12) - "but we got 6 of them free!". Ever since then it has been one story and saga after another about what we have to do this week to tend to the chickens. Some of the situations are so comical and exasperating, I thought it might be fun to start chronicling our experience.
It is October now, and we have been getting eggs for one month, but a lot has happened to get to this point, and there is still work to do. So I'll try to get from there to here as quickly and succinctly as possible.
24 chicks are actually pretty easy to take care of. You keep them in a box and give them food and water, and they pretty much take care of themselves. The first two weeks of our chicks' life, they spent at Pat and Joan's as we were away for a week, and then had to move into our new place. When we were finally settled into our place, the chicks were getting big and starting to peck at each other, so we had to find something bigger than a box. We have a shed attached to our house that we quickly converted to a temporary coop (please note, there is no coop even under construction at this point). They did well there for a while, getting some time out in the grass once a day.
We only had one mishap. I was on my way to work one day and noticed one of the chicks didn't look quite right - she was lethargic with all the other chicks kind of checking her out as if to say, "What's wrong with you?". I called Keith, and his first reaction was to separate it. So I put her in a box and put a screen over the box and put her inside next to the wood stove. Then I put Gracie, our golden retriever (rest her soul) inside, as we weren't comfortable leaving her outside alone yet. And went to work. I did not put anything to weight the screen down.
When Keith got home, he called me at work and said, "I thought you said you put the chicken inside".
Me: "I did. In a box. By the fire."
Keith: "Well she's not there now".
Me: "Hmmph."
Keith: "Oh wait, there she is. But she's just laying there. Not moving. In the middle of the living room. And there is garbage all over the place."
Me: "Ooops."
I guess Gracie got a little bored. Chicken tragedy #1. My fault. But she was probably going to die anyway, right?
The next challenge was getting a coop built in time. The chicks now had free reign of the yard during the day as they do their magical return-to-home-to-roost-at-sundown trick. We would leave them to roam during the day and close up the door at night after they all got inside. But they were getting bigger and pooping EVERYWHERE. All over the deck and all over Camden's only paved play space. And they were quickly outgrowing their shed. So after many schedule conflicts, we finally got a weekend on the calendar where Jenn and John and Pat could all come over and lend a hand to get the coop underway. Keith did a lot of prep work upfront, but by the end of the following weekend, the chicks had a new home. And not a bad one at that if I do say so myself.
To detail the rest that has happened, would bore you to tears, so I'll summarize via the major challenges we have faced so far.
Challenge #1: Keeping the chickens in their "yard".
Between then and now, we've added doors and gates and fences and they continue to elude us and come on over to "our side" and poop on our deck. Jenn and I have clipped all of their wings (twice) and now instead of flying over the gate, they walk all the way down the hill and around our fence. This weekend we did some reinforcing of the fence and some brush clearing on the chicken's side (as they clearly like the open areas better). So we'll see how that goes. Challenge remains unsolved.
Challenge #2: Getting rid of the roosters (and other breeds you don't want).
When you buy chicks you can pay a little more and get "sexed" chicks, which means that you should get all females (as our goal is eggs and not meat). When you get "6 free chicks", they are not going to be sexed. So, in and amongst those 6 free chicks, we ended up with 3 roosters. In addition, these free chicks were of a breed that were for mostly ornamental purposes, not practical purposes. We are all about practicality, and did not want to pay to feed chickens for their looks and their itty bitty eggs. The roosters were OK for a while as it was hilarious to hear them learn how to crow, but it didn't take long to tire of being awakened at 5:00 each morning.
This was an easy problem to solve, and when my family was here visiting, they were all about doing a trial run. The hardest part of course is catching them.
My dad did the honors of laying this chicken to rest, and I will spare you the details (and the video). I'll just say he did the spin the chicken by the neck method, and it was less than quick. We cooked it up right away, which we later learned is not the best (it's better to let the chicken sit for a couple days in the fridge, so the muscle fibers can relax again).
Round two was with Jenn and was a more organized affair. There were still three roosters remaining and one female bantam. We managed to leave only the lucky four in the coop in the morning, so catching them was no big deal. We crafted a cone out of a milk carton, sharpened our knives, got some buckets and gloves and went to work. (Warning: The next few sentences are a little graphic!) After reading a little about the best way to do it and watching a couple YouTube videos, we thought we shouldn't have too much trouble. We wanted to bleed the chickens first, so the plan was to stick the chicken's head in the cone, slice the jugular, let it bleed for a few seconds, then insert the tip of the knife through the roof of the mouth and into the brain to bring death on a bit quicker. Nice plan and it worked great for the folks in the video. For us, however, it was a bit more challenging. The skin is way tougher than you think and that brain is surprisingly hard to find. Those birds took way too long to die. Even when we thought they were dead and went ahead and dunked them in the scalding water (to make feather plucking easier), we quickly found out they weren't. It was quite the learning experience for us, and while we won't be afraid to do it again, it was a while before either of us had a desire to eat chicken.
One way or another, Challenge Solved.
Challenge #3: Finding the eggs.
We received our first egg on our anniversary. Awwww. The production was slow at first, and the eggs small, but we quickly worked up to about 5 or 6 a day (yes, we tally the egg count every day - nerdy, I know). All of these eggs were left nicely for us in the nesting boxes, with a couple chickens choosing to lay the eggs on the floor. Then production stalled. We figured we should be getting about an egg a day from most of the chickens. We've heard about free range chickens having the tendency to lay eggs elsewhere, but besides finding some in Keith's shop and behind some plywood on the shop deck, we couldn't find any elsewhere.
Until last weekend, when my mom and I were trying to add some fencing. We stumbled on a couple stray eggs laid in strategic places in the woods, then came upon a nest by a tree that had 7 eggs in it. Jackpot. The next day, I looked there again, and there were six more! The dilemma then, was to leave things as they were because at least now we know where to look for them? Or do we try to train them to use the coop somehow? The only way we could think of to do that was to try locking them in for a couple days. We haven't tried that yet, but we're close to that point. Because then, over the next few days, production suddenly dropped off again and all of a sudden there were no more eggs at all in the nest in the woods. They were either laying somewhere else again, or the cold weather was getting to them (we are giving them artificial light to try and keep production up throughout the winter). Then, yesterday, I heard suspicious cackling coming from way on our side of the fence, looked around in the brush, but couldn't find any eggs. Today, after again only getting four eggs this morning, I went on a more thorough search and found this:
I guess they have a new spot and are not appreciating me raiding their nests! Challenge remains Unsolved.
Challenge #4: Teaching a 2 year old how to be nice to the chickens.
I'm sorry. There is no hope here. He loves the chickens. He grabs them. He kicks them. He grabs them by the tail and lifts them up off the ground. Then they peck at him when he taunts them with the chicken scratch and he cries. Then he goes back for more. He laughs in hilarity as he watches them scratch around on the ground with their feet. He yells "Here chicken, chicken" in the cutest voice you ever heard. I even caught him lying on the ground hugging one the other day. To his credit, he is the one that is able to get them to hunch down the quickest - he holds them down, and then we can pick them up. But my biggest fear is that he will get pecked in the face one of these days. I am trying so hard to teach him the appropriate ways to handle and be around these birds, but you know what? He's 2. Challenge unsolved until he turns 5?
And there you have it. We have fourteen beautiful birds that are smart enough to get around a fence but have no clue as to how to get back around it when they want to go home. (24 minus 5 does not make 14 you say? We had one unknown loss. The one Gracie got. And we gave Pat three. That should get you to 14.) We get handfuls of beautiful brown eggs everyday that are so much tastier (and hopefully better for you) than even the organic ones you buy at a store. I doubt the eggs will ever be cheaper than the store (especially if you were to factor in time spent) - after 218 eggs gathered, we are sitting at about $3.46 an egg (again, nerdy!) - but we are glad we have undertaken this little venture. More stories to come.
