June 8th, 2009

Farming It Out

Steph and I have officially jumped on the city chicken bandwagon.

Some Raleigh residents who keep chickens host an annual tour of their coops called “Henside the Beltline.” We went this year, and seeing how people were set-up and how quiet and non-stinky it is when you just keep a few egg-layers made the endeavor seem within our grasp.

When I started grocery shopping for myself years ago, I came to realization that I had no idea how most of the things I ate were made. This did not mesh well with my DIY belief-system. This is why, as soon as I found myself on a piece of land where I could do as I pleased, I started growing vegetables. It’s also why we’re venturing into chicken land. (That, and the fact that fresh eggs from non-commercial chickens taste approximately 2000 times better than what you get at the supermarket. Plus, in a nice bit of — ahem — synergy, chicken manure is excellent fertilizer for the garden.)

So I spent the last two weekends building a small hutch and run, and researching our available options.

Raising some cute little chicks would have been fun and probably similar to injesting large doses of anti-depressants each time we got to handle them, but you can’t determine the sex of a chick. (Unless you can find someone with a clutch of specific crossbreeds known as “sex-links” where males come out of the egg one color and females another. Sorry, newly-acquired knowledge about poultry causing me to digress.) I didn’t like the 50-50 chances of ending up with a noisy, aggressive rooster. I also didn’t like the unpredictability of how many chickens we’d actually end up with.

In talking to various people who keep them about their experiences I’ve come to the conclusion that chickens are the most inherently-doomed life form on the planet. Apparently, even when they have food and water and proper housing, they just up and die all the time. When a raccoon or a fox or a hillbilly with a hatchet gets the opportunity to put in some face-time with an unassuming fowl, it’s like they receive a magic boost in IQ, allowing them to understand the mechanics of gate latches and stretched fencing. (Thanks to Lilly, I have now seen a carnivore in the throws of “chickenmania.” Lilly’s not the brightest animal, so, even with a bump, her level of intellegence probably won’t get her on the other side of the wire. Still, she wants in. Very, very badly.) And the ease with which even a housecat can eradicate a small flock seems to suggest that these birds just sort of stand there and let themselves get gobbled up. (Then again, if your brain was the size of a watch battery, I guess you would too.) And there are all kinds of diseases and parasites that love their chicken. These predators, as well as genetic defects, kill baby chickens in particular at an astounding rate.

We wanted three chickens, and built the shelter to house this many. If we had gotten three chicks we might have ended up with one chicken. Or we could have played the odds, bought 10 chicks and ended up with 10 chickens.

Thus we opted to get “pullets” or basically adolescent females. They’re a little more expensive, as someone has had to put in the time and effort to guide them through infancy, but, for us, they were the only option. I went and picked up our brood at a breeder on Saturday.

Here they are, in all of their splendor:

This is our largest/most mature chicken, a red sex-link that I’ve named “Gladys.” Supposedly she’s of laying age (around nine months old) but I haven’t spotted any eggs yet. As you can see, she has a chipped beak, which I think might be because she spends most of her time ramming her “nose” into the other two gals whenever they get near her. That “pecking order” thing? Not just a figure of speech.

This one is Steph’s to name. She was out of town this weekend and said she needed to see the thing before she could name it. Kate, Kevin, and I put our heads together and came up with the temporary name “Chicken.com.” She’s about 14 weeks old and is another type of crossbreed known as a “golden comet.”

Bliss has joint-custody of this one. She also got naming rights and chose the moniker “Martha Stewart.” She’s an 11-week-old Buff Orpington. This type starts laying relatively late, so it could be seven or eight months before we’re making quiche courtesy of her.

Finally, here’s a wider shot of the whole deal.

I’m sure I’ll have more to report as our new pets get acclimated to their surroundings and we figure out exactly what rearing these animals entails. Stay tuned!

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