Today marks the first 6-egg day of the season! That means that all 6 of my ladies gave up an egg today! Good job, Turka, Princess Buttercup, Houdini, Sprinkles, Henery and Not-Henery.

I went to the local Wilco the other day…shouldna. Chick Days are DANGER. I came home with not only cat food and foxglove seeds, but two more chicks.

Cute, huh? I’m not even sure what kind the larger one is. He had “Pecked Hieny Syndrome”. It’s sadly common in the big stock tanks they keep the chicks in, and they are careful to keep an eye out for it so they can separate the wounded. I happened to be there on a day, at a time, when there was a little black chick with a red, bleeding butt. I pointed it out to the lovely lady working that area, and seeing as we know each other, struck up a deal. Something like, “You want it?”, “Sure!”. Of course, she knows that I can’t get just one, and she knows that I already get my feed and everything there…so her $2.50 loss will probably end up making her a bundle off of me. Starting with a frizzle bantam as a buddy, and a bag of baby chicken feed.

She had me spray the wounded area of the chick with Blu-Kote, and off I went. I think the roommate was a bit miffed, and I haven’t exactly told the landlord…but since I don’t even know if I can keep them yet, I’ll worry about that later. Since I don’t remember which bin I plucked the hurt one from, I don’t know if that batch was straight-run or what. If it’s a boy, I’ll end up finding new homes for them both. I’m pretty sure, judging by wing shape, that the banty is female, but not the larger one there. It was already getting “real” feathers in when I got it, so…no telling.

Until next time…

Thursday, Turken started laying again. Today, I’ve got two green eggs along with the two brown. That means that the Aracaunas are laying as well, or at least one of them is. Buttercup is molting, finally, so no white eggs right now.

And it’s perfect timing, since I was intending to make breakfast for dinner tonight.

I got a present in the mail today. A present nothing like the present I got from my cats the other day, except that both involved birds. Take a look:

This is great. It’s the perfect size for curling up on the couch, and better yet, it’s covered in secret (and not-so-secret) chickens!

This was made by my mother-in-law, she says it’s her first attempt at a lap quilt. Not bad at all, no. This might be the thing that keeps me from doing the rest of my chores today. Oh well, the chickens are fed and clean, the rest can wait until after my nap.

Underside view:

The slow-down season, that is.   The ladies are starting to take turns molting, and egg production has slowed somewhat.

The first year I had them, the molting came as a surprise to me – I’m not sure what I expected, but that wasn’t it.  This year, I’m a little more prepared.  And amused.

Houdini (Barred Rock) went first and has no tail feathers left.  Not-Henery is almost done – but she’s got that one last hanger-on:

The next step will be cleaning out the coop for the winter, getting the heat lamp set up and hunting down a way to keep their water from freezing. I’d read about using bird bath heaters for smaller waterers, I may try that. It’s much cheaper than the heaters made for actual stock tanks, and I really don’t need anything too powerful.

I also will be trying to weatherize the coop a bit more. The door that is now attached leaves an 8-inch gap at the top, which was fine during the summer but will leave them with a large draft once the weather starts turning. I really am considering doing the unthinkable the next time tax-returns roll around: buying an actual coop. Maybe not my dream coop, but something that is a little more right-angly and less drafty.

Although…I could just knit them all sweaters…

I’m ashamed to admit that I gave in and went with the kid to KFC last week.  I’ve been sort of avoiding them, because of all I’ve heard about their crappy oversight of their suppliers, who apparently treat their chickens poorly.  I’m not a vegetarian, but I just don’t think it’s necessary to be cruel to the animals before you eat them.  Whether or not we consider them intelligent isn’t the issue; they can still feel pain, and they can still be distressed by living in crappy conditions.

Anyway.  I was punished – the food wasn’t even that good.

In fact, I can honestly say that I can do a bucket of chicken much better than the Kolonel could ever dream of.

A slight departure from chickens today.

I hate wasting things. Unfortunately, it means that sometimes, but trying not to waste, I end up wasting even more. Don’t throw that away, it might be useful someday! And of course it never is, and what is more wasteful than having a possibly useful item sitting in a box in the garage? Yeah.

We all have neat things, things we see value in, but which have no real value in our lives. And we ask ourselves, “Why am I keeping this? It’s useless to me! But it’s so neat, and it still has uses…”, so we keep it. In a closet, in a box in the garage, hell, in extreme cases we keep them in storage units because it’s just too hard to get rid of it.

This is where donating comes in. It’s a way of letting these ever-so-useful items become useful again – to someone else.

A lot of us shop at thrift stores, but we don’t consider that we could donate just as easily. We see things that we need, things we didn’t know we needed until we saw them…so why can’t we do that for someone else? Give them a chance to see our neat things, and let them see how much they need neat things.

Last week, I had a few things I wanted to donate. Not much, but a few things. Some clothes my daughter let me pry from her hands, mostly. I put them in a box in the living room, and told my roommate it was there, if he wanted to add to it. And miracle of miracles, he did! He added a jacket he’d had since the 80′s. Some shirts he’d had almost as long, things he’s had in his closet because they were too nice to throw away, but didn’t fit him anymore. They did have some sentimental value, they were from peak of his youth and all that. It was hard. But knowing that someone else can use them, that made it possible. It made it a good thing, not an angst-driven purging.

And what that means, is that somewhere out there…there is a person who will find that jacket. That jacket that looks like it was made from the upholstery of my grandmother’s couch…and think it’s neat.

And that is why we donate.

Today, some Egg news and a silly little chicken video.

I have six hens, and they have been pretty consistant layers. Every now and then one would skip a day, but no big deal. Recently though, I’ve only been getting 4 eggs a day, every day. For about two weeks this happened. Part way into it I realized that one of the “missing” eggs was actually being laid soft-shelled, and was sat upon by a hen and squished into the bedding. Sad little eggy. The other, I don’t know.

But today, all of my brown eggs where there – including one very odd shaped egg. I’m used to getting the occasional double-yolker, but today it was not the size but the shape that made me go, hmmm.

The odd egg, shown here with a typical egg.

As you can see, it’s not a normal egg. My heart goes out to the chicken who laid it. It can’t have been comfortable. It’s got me wondering now though…I saw a video once where they had an egg inside an egg. Maybe that’s what happened! I supposed I’ll have to have eggs tomorrow for breakfast…and have the camera ready just in case.

Now for the silly chicken video. Every time I go out back, the chickens come running. And if I wander around the yard, they follow me. So today, I walked backwards, camera in hand, to show the world how cute my ladies are. Turken is missing, she was busy having an egg.

I found out today that my hometown just passed an ordinance allowing 4 chickens (hens) within the city limits. What makes it more fun is that the mayor who signed it, he used to be my Social Studies teacher. His wife is now my brother’s teacher.

Bonus: Checking Facebook not an hour after I found this out, I see a post from someone who went to that same school with me, graduated in the same class, is now a teacher there. His post? ” I am the proud papa of 4 chickens now!”.

Fantastic.

Via Community Chickens, I came across this today.

That’s a short trailer for a full-length video, which I’ll likely be ordering on DVD. It’s for a good cause!

The website associated with this is pretty clever – and as we know, if it’s not clever, it won’t get much attention.
The Chicken Revolution

Now, where I live the laws are a little…ambiguous. I’m in unincorporated country territory, between a 2-hen city and a completely unknown quantity (chicken-wise). I’ve attempted to look up the rules for this area, but there is nothing that makes sense that I can find. A very old zoning ordinance says that I’d need something like 4000 sq ft. per chicken – my kid doesn’t even get that. In fact, she doesn’t get 1/10 that. So why would a chicken need that? They don’t, but as you can see in this blog, that’s likely not the point.

No livestock, but large pets are acceptable. Reason: Ostensible reasons are health based, a few even broadly grounded in fact, real reason is that pets, which have no purpose other than companionship and cost money, are broadly a sign of affluence, while livestock are a sign of poverty, because they provide economic benefits.”

It’s kind of crazy. I imagine that if my neighbors have a problem with it, they’d say so. But so far, after having 6 chickens in my back yard for more than a year now, I haven’t heard a peep. Hell, they didn’t even complain when I had the rooster.

It’s not because I’m such good friends with my fence-neighbors, either. I don’t even know their names. We don’t get together and BBQ, or have block parties, or gossip about the other neighbors. I know they have some dogs, because we share a fence. I know they have a couple kids, because they found our bunny and brought it back one day. So really, there is no reason for them *not* to turn us in, should they desire to do so. I haven’t even brought them a dozen eggs! I should do that, now that I think of it.

I figure that chickens are a pretty good type of “pet” to have, actually. They keep decent hours, go to bed at dark and get up at daylight, they aren’t noisy, no barking, no worrying about finding them roaming the streets at all hours terrorizing small children and old people (like my cats do). They’re pretty easy on the neighborhood.

Point is…well, I guess it’s that there aren’t any good reasons to not allow them, legally. Like I said, the town next to us has a 2-hen limit, which is ok, but really, why not 4? Or 6? My 6 ladies are terribly happy in my back yard, having the run of it with the cats and dogs. Depending on their moods, I get between 4-6 eggs a day, which is enough to feed us plus have plenty left over for bartering. It’s how I paid to have my leaves blown in the fall, and the nematodes spread in the spring. It’s age-old – remember, Mrs. Ingalls used to pay Doc Baker in eggs sometimes!

Anway, support your local chickens. I won’t deny that there should be limits, just like on other domestic animals, but c’mon, why should we not be able to keep a couple chickens, give us that one area where we know where our food comes from?