On Chicks and Cows

I finally got the video of my chicks hatching uploaded! It is in segments and there is kind of a long blurp of Asher running around our backyard digging in the dirt, showing off his new underpants, and saying cute things like "Cookie Mauker" and "Scripture Powder" (ie. Cookie Monster and Scripture Power). Oh... and please... ignore the brief martial skiff... we aren't perfect by any means.

Also I wrote a guest post at the Gift of Giving Life about what I learned about birth from watching my chickens hatch... and a really great story about cows.

They Hatched!

I'm proud to introduce...

4

baby chicks

as the newest members of our chicken family!

The first one started hatching last Friday night. When I went out to check on them Saturday morning I lifted up the hen and much to my surprise there was a fluffy little chick under her!

It was a wonderful way to start the morning out.

The rest of the day was so much fun because each time we went out to check there was a new chick or one was in the process of hatching.

The birth nut in me LOVED it and Asher was pretty giddy too. I only got to see one of them actually break out of the shell, but I didn't get that one on video because I was afraid I'd miss it if I ran back for the camera. I got some of it on camera but I am having technical difficulties getting it posted, so I will try to do that this weekend if at all possible.

It was really incredible to watch these little babies be born and I found myself learning more beautiful truths about birth and life (which will be have to be saved for a another post).

Life is really such a miracle.

It was kind of sad that three of the eggs didn't hatch but I guess they must not have been fertilized... or were just duds.

It is also really cute to watch our hen mother her chicks. She has definitely fallen into the "Mother Hen" roll and is SO protective of her little babies. She is always clucking at them to make sure they stay near her and when one of them wanders away she chases after it. It is rather sweet. I think my favorite thing is to open up the coop and see her sitting on her nest with all the little chicks under her. Her body just wiggles and squirms with the wiggly chicks who every once in awhile pop their heads out from under he wings. She is a natural mother.

I think we will keep doing this egg hatching thing every year, if we can, because I think it is an incredible way for Asher, and eventually Rose, to learn about the miracle of life, birth, creation, and how to be good stewards of the earth...not to mention it was SO fun.

The next challenge is going to be trying to figure out who each chicks real biological mother is. They all have the same dad but I'm afraid we might have some strange genetic combinations.

Gone Broody

About two weeks ago our little black silkie hen went "broody", which means she stopped laying her own eggs and wanted to sit on her nest all day. When a hen goes broody it is because she wants to incubate and hatch some chicks. Most modern chicken breeds have had the "broodiness" and "motherliness" bred out of them because they aren't desirable traits for chickens you want to get the maximum egg laying capacity out of. Silikies though still have the genetics to be really good mothers and are some of the best "brooders".

So when our silkie went broody I was really excited because I've been wanting to hatch some of our own eggs this Spring and get little chicks. I had her sit on golf balls and ping pong balls for a few days to make sure that she was serious about being a mother and wouldn't get up and desert her nest.

She remained faithful and so about a week ago I moved her into her own little coop away from the other chickens and gave her 7 eggs to sit on. She has been siting on the eggs for about a week now and I am starting to get really excited. I just hope that some of them hatch. I might try "candling" some of them in a few days to see if I can see any developing embryo's', but I've realized that broody chickens are kind of like laboring women and that they do best if just leave them alone... the more you mess with them the more likely the chances are of something going wrong. So, maybe I'll just leave her alone and let her stay in her rhythm... or maybe I'll be like an annoying nurse and keep "checking" her to see if the eggs are making progress. It would be really cool if we could see the little chickens developing inside!

Check back in about two weeks for some exciting egg hatching... hopefully... Jon might be out of town so he's made me promise I'll get it on video!

The Smallest Egg

One of our ladies laid this little egg last week. The one on the right is a normal sized egg... and this is a normal sized quarter.

We haven't broken it open yet to see if it has little yolk inside of it yet, but weird... huh? I'd heard that the first egg a chicken lays is sometimes really small but all of our ladies have been laying eggs for at least three months. Maybe somebody was just tired and didn't want to give the egg laying thing their full effort?

In other chicken news...

... it is about time to start thinking about getting some new chicks. So wonderful. Babies are the best.

.... our rooster, Mr. Featherstone, is out to get me.

No really, he is.

Every time I walk out the chicken coop he follows me around... strutting. Then when I turn my back to him he runs at me and trys to peck my heels.

It hurts!

If I turn around and yell at him he puffs up his feathers and starts dancing around like he wants to fight me...

and lately...

don't think less of me

...I've taken to throwing rocks at him to keep him away or even giving him a good kick in the tummy when he comes at me.

It doesn't seem to phase him at all and he still tries to take me on.

I don't really know why.

He doesn't bother Jon at all.

I think it might be because I'm a woman...

and he thinks he can pull something over on me.

Ha. I don't he knows what kind of woman he is dealing with.

Guess What We Had for Sunday Dinner?

I've known for awhile that we had too many roosters (3) and too few hens (7) and that I would probably have to do something, eventually, before my boys started fighting each other or stressing the ladies out with their friskiness. I really didn't want to get rid of any of them and I guess I was hoping that they would all find a way to coexist in peace.

But alas, my dreams of chicken coop peace were shattered several days ago when Jon came back from the chicken coop with a bloodied up rooster. I guess there had been quite the cockfight in our little coop because the other rooster was pretty cut up as well. So we had to get rid of a rooster. I was all for selling him on craigslist but Jon was pretty adamant that we should eat him.

We'd half joked about eating our chickens when the time came but weren't really sure if we could do it. When the time finally came Jon said that if we couldn't kill and eat our own chicken then we had NO business being able to buy it nicely saran wrapped at the grocery store. He said that we only had two choices that wouldn't make us hypocrites... we'd either have to kill and eat the chicken or become vegetarians. He was dead serious about both.

So we ate the rooster.

Jon killed it and did most of the cleaning. I offered to help, cleaning birds doesn't really phase me much because in High School I had my falconry license, but I think he really needed to do it by himself. I think he was kind of testing himself. I really believe that if he couldn't have done it or if it had been too traumatizing for him that he really would have become a vegetarian.

Jon said the experience was emotionally draining but that it wasn't as bad as he expected. The only weird part was that the chicken's skin was blue. I guess Silkie chickens are an exotic breed that have blue skin under their feathers and are considered to be a real delicacy in China. It kind of weirded Jon out but I didn't really mind.

It was actually a really humbling experience to eat our chicken. When I said the prayer over the food, for one of the first times in my life, I sincerely felt grateful. I was deeply grateful to this chicken who gave its life for us and grateful for the privileged to have food. Seeing first hand the sacrifice that went into my meal, and all the hard work involved to get it to the table, really changed the whole eating experience for me. Instead of being a blob of saran wrapped flesh at the grocery store that I was totally disconnected to, this was a living creature that I owed something to. I found myself less willing to let any of the chicken go to waste. We ate as much as we needed and then we boiled down the rest to make chicken soup with. Throwing the left overs in the garbage somehow seemed completely and utterly wrong. I think that if I was to be this connected to all my food, especially my meat, that I would eat less and be better at eating all things in moderation. The scripture in D&C 89:12 keeps coming to mind:

"Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly."[emphasis added]

When our other chickens reach the end of their laying days (usually about 2 or 3 years old) we will probably eat them too. It really isn't the most fun job or one that we really look forward to but it seems like the right thing to do. This experience has really changed how I feel and look at my food and I don't think that I will ever be able to eat chicken, from the grocery store or my own yard, the same way again. I just feel so much more grateful and aware of the sacrifice animals make and our responsibility to be wise stewards over the earth and the animals God has given to us.

I'm a Four Chicken Coop Woman

In the classic LDS movie "Johnny Lingo" the village women are sitting around talking about how many cows their husbands paid for them. There is one woman's whose husband paid 2 cows, while another brags that hers paid 3 cows for her. So imagine their surprise when Johnny Lingo pays 8 cows for Mahana, commonly thought the ugliest woman in the village. By the end of the movie this ugly, shy girl has blossomed into a beautiful and happy woman. Johnny says that it is not being beautiful that determines a woman's worth, but that what a woman thinks she is worth that makes her beautiful (or something like... I kind of paraphrased :).

Well, if Mahana was an 8 cow woman, then I am a 4 chicken coop woman.

In the last several months my husband has built me 4 chicken coops. I haven't asked him to build any of them, he's just done it. I'm sure there were other projects that he would have like to have gotten done before, but he knew how much the chickens meant to me (yes, I'm kind of a weirdo) so he's worked like a madman to get them done. Basically... he loves me.

Coop #1 -- The Raccoon's McDonald's

First there was this one

which he surprised me with after coming home from a trip. But because we didn't put a cover on top of the run all the chickens got eaten by a raccoon. It was awful, and I think it has been his motivation for making me increasingly better and more raccoon proof chicken boxes.

Coop #2--- The Mini-Cooper

Not long after the chicken incident I got 6 new chicks. Once they out grew their cardboard box in the basement Jon built this one for them.

It is quite ingenious for being thrown together from the scraps we had lying around our yard.

Coop #3-- The chicken cathedral

After all our chickens got eaten by a raccoon (sob) he decided my chickens needed a better home. So he built this one, which he just finished last week. One side is a chicken coop and the other side is a shed.

He has really done an amazing job on this. It is quite the chicken palace, because one the side with the windows the ceiling is 10 feet high. It is big enough for me to have lots more chickens! Oh, and check out Asher in pursuit of the little black chicken. Don't worry he didn't catch her... this time.

Coop #4--- The Magical Egg Machine

This really isn't a coop, it is our nest boxes, but it took Jon about as long to make as did coops #1 and #2. So far it has been working great... eggs magically appear in it every day.

Our chickens are really getting grown up. We've heard some of them crowing in the morning, so I'm pretty sure we have at least 2 roosters. But it is still hard to know which ones are hens and which are roosters. I'm hopping we start getting some new eggs in the next little bit so that we can be 100% sure.

We call our Polish chickens the "Rock stars" because they look SO cool and have the attitudes to got with it. If there was ever a McJagger of chickens, this rooster is it.

This is Mrs. Featherstone, the Cochin

Remember when I thought I had 4 silkies? Well it turns out that 2 of them were actually Cochins. The Cochins are actually my favorites because they have feathers on their feet and look so ridiculous when they run! I'm pretty sure we have a rooster and a hen, so this spring they can have babies... maybe.

Mr. Featherstone, the Cochin rooster, hanging with the older ladies.

And then just because it is so completely adorable. Here is a video of Asher with one of his freshly caught chickens.

My Very Own Elmyra

Do you remember her from your childhood?
(well, depending on how old you are)

Elmyra Duff from Tiny Toon Adventures

The animal loving little girl who, when she could catch one, would squeeze a cat or dog to death and say things like:

"I'm gonna hug you and kiss you and love you forever "

or

"I love cats, I love kitties, squeeze them into itty bittys!"

Well I just happen to have a chicken loving and squeezing "Elmyra" at my house

Asher has really become quite talented at the art of chicken catching and when he catches one he doesn't want to let it go. He gets so excited that he finally has one (it usually takes him awhile to catch one) that he goes a bit crazy on the loving and squeezing. He also likes to carry them around and rock them like babies. The poor chicken in these pictures is the one who seems to gets caught the most by him. I think she just gets tired of running and gives up. I'm amazed that she has made it out of his grasp so many times alive and with... most... of her feathers.
She is a really patient chicken.

This chicken chasing fetish probably isn't great for our chicken's mental health, but it is really hard to keep him away from them or to get him to put them down once he has them. The other day I had to chase him around the backyard for 10 minutes before he would put one of his "chicken captives" down. I'm sure I looked like a lunatic chasing after a giggling toddler with a squawking chicken under his arm and yelling "Drop the chicken, do you hear me! Mommy said DROP THE CHICKEN!"
I'm glad our neighbors work during the day.

Chick Update

The six little chicks I got a few weeks back are currently going through their awkward adolescent stage. They really look weird. The Polish ones look especially strange with their big tufts of black and white feathers on top of their heads. I've taken to calling them Beethoven and Mozart because of their crazy hair dos. I think they are just going to get weirder looking as they grow up-- FUN!

We still don't know if any of them are roosters (we will in a few months when some of them start to crow) but I think I am making a pretty safe guess that one of the Polish is a rooster because he is FEISTY. He's always the first one out of the coop and patrols it like a drill sergeant. I just hope the other one is a hen so we can have babies next spring :)

The Silkies are starting to get their fluff feathers and they look kind of awkward. It is strange because the other chicks went from fluff to feathers while the Silkies have gone from fluff, to feathers and now are going back to fluff. I really LOVE the white one, I think she (he?) is beautiful.

I thought we were going to have two white ones, one black and one gray, but one of the chicks that was white when we got it has now turned black. So it looks like I have one white, two black and one gray.

I think they still have some more awkward weeks ahead of them ( I can't wait to see what happens when the Silkies start getting their head feathers!) but I'm hoping they turn out to be pretty when they get out of puberty-- most of us do :)

The Saddest Morning

This really has been the saddest morning. Around 8 o'clock Jon went out to the backyard and found that ALL of our chickens were dead. They were all laying in a line along the inside of the chicken run. Some of them had obviously been chewed on by some sort of animals, while others looked like they had just tipped over dead out of sheer fright. Before Jon came in and told me he put them all in a bucket and covered it with straw and spread straw all over the inside of the chicken run to cover up the blood and the feathers. When I went out there was just an empty chicken coop. I bawled.

We think that a fox or a raccoon must have gotten into the chicken run and had a late night snack. The sides of the run are too high for a dog and a cat wouldn't have been able to wreck that kind of havoc. We didn't have a covering to the top of the run because we figured they would be safe. Our neighbors two houses down have a whole bunch of chickens who just run free around their yard, and they don't even have a fence. They have had them for years and said they never have had anything get at them, except for people who are walking their dogs along the street. Their chickens were out pecking around just fine and dandy this morning, while ours are all gone. Sob. Sob. Our coop is really close to the house and we just assumed that they would be safe, but we were REALLY, REALLY wrong. I feel so bad about the whole thing because I feel like they were trapped in there and couldn't run away. I feel like we have been bad stewards of our chickens and that we put them in danger. If we had just put chicken wire over the top then they would have been fine (maybe). I know that I shouldn't beat myself up too bad, because honestly-- how could we know what would happen? Life is always full of new lessons to be learned, even if you have to learn some of them the hard way.

I just can't believe that ALL 8 of them are gone. I mean it is one thing to have one or two get eaten or to get sick and die, but to have all 8 gone at once is tragic. I told Jon this must be what it feels like to have your dog get run over by a car, and he said "Yeah, but only 8 times worse." I didn't realize how attached Jon and I had become to those chickens over the last few months. We really loved them. They had become a big part of our life and our family. We saved money to get them, we planned and worked together to get place for them to live, we cooed and adored them as chicks, watched them grow and their perosnalieis develop, and were looking forward to having our first eggs in about month! Sob.

Asher doesn't really understand yet what has happened, and I don't think he will-- I hope. He hasn't even noticed they are gone yet. I am sad for him because he really loved feeding, petting and chasing the chickens. I hope that we will be able to get some more chickens in the next week or so that will take the place of the ones we lost. Then maybe he won't even realize what happened. This weekend we are going to build an new an improved chicken run and I've already found someone who has month old chickens for sale. I might even be able to get the Silkie chickens or the Frizzles that I wanted so much last time. This means I won't have eggs till about the fall, but at least it will be better than nothing. But still, my heart aches for my little chickens and I feel like there is a gap in my heart. I can't even write this without crying. Sob. But I will get over it. It has just been a rough morning. Bye Bye my chicky babes-- Do you think chickens go to heaven?

A Quick Update (Part 2)

So this part of my update doesn't involve any pictures of Asher, but it does involve some drastic changes to our little Cottage Cheese Cottage. The first being this new little building

A CHICKEN COOP!

A few weeks ago I went to Idaho to "babysit" my younger sister while my dad was on a trip, when I got back this little chicken coop was waiting for me. Jon built it out of some of the scraps he tore off the old shed in our backyard. It is wonderful! The chickens love it. Sometime we'd like to build a fancier one, but for here and now this one is going to have to work. It may be a little small for how many chickens we have (right now it is the perfect size but they are still only half the size they will be) but I figure they will survive and plus-- then they will be able to keep each other warm during the winter.

Okay, so I lied there is one picture of Asher. He likes to try to feed the chickens things through the wire-- like pieces of wood, metal pluming fixtures, dandelions, grass, balls, markers, and what ever else he has handy. It is a good thing for the chickens that they are behind the wire because Asher LOVES to chase them and try to pick them up-- which usually ends up with him whacking them instead. So I think the chickens are happier in their chicken run. But I can ALWAYS make Asher happy if I say "Go get your shoes on, lets go see the chickens" then he stops crying almost immediately, runs to the door, and sometimes makes "bock bock" noises. The chickens are worth it just for that!

The other big change at our house is that last Saturday we tore down the 100 year old shed in our backyard. The thing was monstrously huge and it took a crew of about 10 people with axes, hammers and crow bars to tear it apart. We filled two dumpsters and made 4 trips to the dump with all the scrap and junk. It was a big job and we just want to thank EVERYONE who helped us get it down. It was about to fall down any day and it is such a relief to me to know that I don't have to worry about it falling on Asher.

Here it is before the demolition

in the middle of being demolished

and after being demolished

Okay, I know it still looks junky, but it will get better. Our backyard feels HUGE now, I didn't realize how much space it was taking up. It will be such a nice space once it is fixed up-- but I've realized that I need to be patient. We can't do everything all at once and just like the rest of the house the backyard will be a work in progress.

So now you are officially updated on our life. Hope you have a beautiful day!

Just Practicing

This is what I found when I went down to change the laundry over.

One of my chicks (the one we call Checker) had flown/ hopped to the top of the feeder and was roosting on top of it. I was so surprised and was very glad that Jon had insisted on making a cover for our brooder box. I guess that she was just practicing her roosting-- chickens anciently use to roost in trees and it must be in her blood somewhere. My other guess is that she was escaping from the other chicks, who for some reason have singled her out to pick on. Maybe she is just a bit smaller or not as aggressive, but for some reason they all tend to gang up on her. When I found her all the other chicks were staring up at her in amazement and curiosity. I better make sure we keep the lid on the box or I might have chicks all over the place!

Chicken Day!!!!!!!!!

At 4:16 PM yesterday afternoon I became the proud mother to these eight little ladies...

Lets just say I am in love.



The chicken lady (Cindy) at the farm store called me yesterday afternoon and told me that my chickens were in and could be picked up anytime. When Jon got out of school at 4:00 we went straight to the store to get them. I was SO excited, I felt like a little kid right before Christmas-- which was fun because it has been along time since I've felt like that! Cindy got our chicks out of the brooders (where they were with about 300 other chicks and turkeys) and put them in this cardboard "Happy Meal" (that is what it looked like) box for us to take home. I didn't end up getting the Silkies or the Frizzles (sob) because they don't hatch till the end of April (double sob) and it is really hard to mix chickens of different ages-- an established flock doesn't take kindly to new additions. So instead I was going to get Marans-- which lay really really dark brown eggs, but when we got to the store Cindy told me that the Marans didn't hatch out and wouldn't come until the end of April. So we decided just to get two other types they had extras of-- a Buff Orington and a Barred Rock. I'll have to try Silkies next year. I'm over my disappointment and am really excited about these new types we got. In fact, I was just thrilled to finally be getting chickens! I was almost giddy. I tell you it was like being six years old again.



Me with the best "Happy Meal" box I've ever gotten in my whole life. Except the chicken in this box was a bit more wiggly than the type you get at McDonald's.



We got the little girls home and put them in their super duper fancy cardboard chicken box in our basement. They seemed to like it right off and immediately began to peck and explore each other. Chickens establish a "pecking order" (yep that is where the phrase comes from) of authority from a very young age, and these chicks wasted no time. Actually, the reason they are under a red heat lamp is because if one of the chicks gets pecked and starts to bleed then the other ones will peck it to death, but if the light is red they can't see the blood and won't peck at each other mercilessly.



It took us a few attempts to get the heat to the right temperature, they need it at about 90 degrees because they don't have feathers yet-- just fluff.



They have such personalities already, there is one who is a HUGE bully and I think has already worked her way to the top of the pecking order. One who is super lazy, in fact we thought she was sick or something because she just laid on the ground all the time. She would even lay right in front of the feeder and eat instead of standing up like everyone else. But we've discovered that she isn't sick, just a snoozer-- so that is what we call her. There is also one who likes to jump and will hurdle the other chickens to get where she wants to go. I'm sure they will all develop more personality as they get older. We could spend hours, and have, just watching them and laughing. They are such cute babies.





Asher is fascinated by them. He doesn't understand that he needs to be soft with them and sometimes he gets too rambunctious. Actually, one of the very first things he did when we got them in their box was to throw a rock in a them-- I think he thought he was sharing it with them! It is fun to see his face light up whenever they are around, and how he tries to make chirping noises back at them.







Oh, really... I am in love. Every once in awhile as I'm doing other things in the house I'll hear one of them chirp and I get happy tingly feeling just thinking that I have a box full of little chicks in my basement. They have been so much fun and I can't wait till they get bigger and start laying eggs! I kind of feel like a new mother again, because I am always worrying about them and have to go and check on them at least every hour or so-- you know-- just to make sure they are still breathing. Jon got some great shots of one of the chicks (Goldilocks) trying to jump out my hands. She nearly did too! These really aren't the most flattering pictures of me, but well... no excuses sometimes you just don't look your best :) But the chick sure is cute!







Stay tuned.
I'm sure there will be more adventures later:)