The Chicken Lady

I have officially been referred to as a "chicken lady", as has R. Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to Crazy Chicken Lady...hmm. Here's an update on our lovely ladies.

The chickens spend most afternoons out of the coop, wandering around the yard with the dogs. They eat bugs out of our compost, chase each other around, and they've even learned how to walk up the back porch stairs. Lucy discovered the dog house and decided it was a great place to build a nest and lay a little egg.

Lucy in her dog house nest!

Lucy came to get her food off of the back deck. Cheeky little bird!

Pip helping Amelia clean up the food Lucy dropped.

The biggest news of all is that Nappy laid her first egg yesterday! At first we thought it was Lucy who wasn't laying. Then we found her in the dog house having just laid an egg. Now we know for sure that Nappy hasn't been laying, because the 4th egg was soooo tiny compared to the others. Nappy is a Silkie, which is a bantam variety. Bantams are smaller than standard chickens (hence her name, which is short for Napoleon) and thus lay much smaller eggs.

And in other news, the vegetable garden is growing! We were a little late in planting the spring plants, so we'll have to see how they do. It was almost 90 degrees yesterday, so hopefully it's not too hot for all the tiny plants. Pretty soon we'll be harvesting all our spring goodies.

What can I say? Life is good here on our little backyard farm.

Fresh Eggs for Sale!

The time has come: our eggs are officially for sale!

Last night my friends Halley and Mizey stopped by to say hello. They hadn't seen the chickens since they were just little chicks, so I proudly showed off what our girls have been up to (laying eggs, namely). Seeing that we had close to 2-dozen eggs, Mizey asked if we needed to get any off our hands. And thus our first egg sale transpired.

Halley & Mizey with fresh eggs!

Want to buy eggs? We're asking $4 per dozen or $2 per half dozen, which is what the going rate is for fresh eggs in Durham. The girls are laying around 20 eggs per week, and we do like to use them ourselves, so we won't be able to sell more than 1-1.5 dozen per week.

Note: We cannot ship eggs, so you'll need to be able to come to Durham if you want them.

A Chicken Gallery

I have been so caught up in the excitement of egg-laying that I have neglected to post photos of our lovely layers. We're reliably getting 3 eggs a day, which means nearly 2 dozen eggs per week! We think one little girl is only laying very intermittently, so hopefully we'll be at full production soon. :)

On to the good stuff, a little photo gallery of the chickens!*

Lucille Ball
(AKA Lucy)

Suzy

Amelia Earhart

Napoleon Bonaparte
(AKA Nappy)

Meandering...

What's up? Chicken butt!

Amelia in the afternoon sun

The lovely ladies

*Sorry about the lower quality pics, these were taken with my phone and the light was not great.

Chicken Update

It's been a while since I've put anything up here since school has been so busy, so I figured it was high time to post an update about the chickens.

First Egg Excitement!

The girls have been growing like weeds, and look like adult chickens now! Even more exciting, they started laying about 3 weeks ago, right on time at 5 months old. The first week we got about 1 egg per day, lately we've reliably been getting 2 per day, and occasionally 3 per day. Chickens can produce 1 egg every 25 hours, so eventually we should be getting 3-4 eggs per day from our 4 chickens.*

The celebration over the first egg was perhaps a tad gratuitous. What can I say? We've been waiting for this day for months! The egg was a nice tan color, and about 3/4 the size of a standard, Grade-A, large chicken egg.

It's a little tough to split an egg, but we decided to share the first one anyway. Below are a few photos of our glorious first egg, followed by a shot of this week's egg production.

Frying away!

Arranged in order of size, with the biggest up top.

*Yes, we have only 4 chickens now. Sadly, Theo turned out to be a rooster. As we are not allowed to have roosters within the city limits of Durham because of the noise, he had to go.

Why Raising Chickens Isn't Crazy

If you've been reading this blog lately, you've read a lot about how my roommates and I have decided to raise chickens. So far it's mostly been the "how" of this equation, and I figure it's about time for the "why".

The girls in the run section of their chicken tractor, 8 weeks of age.

First let me say that my roommates (C & R) and I are pretty conscious eaters. We are all vegetarians, and we buy as much of our food at the farmers market as we can, especially eggs. The three of us have already been sold on the health and environmental benefits of eggs from sustainable farms in our area. That made raising chickens kind of a no-brainer for us, so we just went ahead and did it.

However, as was the case with me becoming a vegetarian, we have since learned about many other benefits to raising chickens in your backyard. They actually are good for your yard (when your dog doesn't turn the area around the coop into a muddy racetrack). With the chicken tractor, which gets moved every week, the waste is spread around the yard relatively evenly, so it acts as a fertilizer. Also, the chickens peck and scratch the yard, which promotes grass growth. Given our recent dry spell, our yard could use a little help. Additionally, chickens eat bugs like ticks and spiders (but not so many as to disturb the overall system).

Another slightly less quantitative benefit is the sheer joy I get out of having them around. Their chirps are delightful, and there is something mesmerizing about watching them peck and scratch at the ground. It is becoming habit to have my breakfast on the back deck, watching the chickens. I never expected to get so much out of my new feathered friends!

Chicken Coop, Part I

My roommates and I journeyed to the Habitat ReStore and Home Depot today to collect supplies to build a coop for our new baby chicks. A the ReStore we found the following:

5 2x3s, each 16 ft long ($2 each)
1 2x2, 12 ft long ($1 each)
Shingles, 16 sets of 2 ($0.10 each)
Total spent: ~ $13

We headed to Home Depot for the rest of it, since the ReStore didn't quite have everything we needed. We got 2 sheets of plywood, 25 ft of chicken wire, hinges, hasps, locks, and door pulls, for a total of about $95 (ouch).

Tomorrow we're getting together with a friend who has a saw and some carpentry knowledge to help us build our coop. I based the design off of a very popular style, the A-frame chicken tractor. A chicken tractor is a coop that is attached to a run and is movable. This way the chickens are fully-enclosed so that they will be safe from predators, but we can move them around the yard periodically to spread the love (ie: fabulously nutrient-rich chicken poop).

Once we're finished building the coop/tractor I'll post photos, detailed instructions, and the plans that I made. If you're thinking about building a coop or tractor, my plans will be for a very simple design that will work in a variety of areas. Until then, check out the Backyard Chickens website, it is a wealth of information!

The chicks have arrived!

This morning I got the not-so-long-awaited phone call from the nice man who sold us the chicks. They hatched yesterday (8/21/10), and he felt he had observed them long enough to know that they are all healthy little chicks. R & I drove out to his house, which is just south of Raleigh, and picked out our chicks.

Now originally we wanted 3 chicks. On the phone the other day this guy convinced me to get 4. By the time we had picked out our 4 chicks and were getting ready to pay (a whopping $1 per chick), he had decided we needed at least 5, so he tossed in a 5th chick for free. These are our little ladies in their brooder, which we set up yesterday with the materials we had acquired (see previous post).

Settling in to their new home!

L-R: Theodora, aka Theo (Silkie); Suzie (Araucana); Lucy (Araucana); nameless, for now (Barred Rock); Napoleon, aka Nappy (Silkie)

The Silkies are a Bantam breed, which means they'll be quite small--only 1.5-2 pounds when fully-grown. The others are standard breeds, so they'll be around 5 pounds fully-grown. Right now the Araucanas and the Barred Rock are just 1 day old, and the Silkies are 2-2.5 weeks old. The farmer suggested that we get Silkies that are a little bit older, so the standard ones don't trample the bantams.

The girls are adjusting pretty well, and the dogs don't seem too curious about them yet. Here are a few photos of the newest members of our household in wine glasses. (Don't call PETA on me, they were only in there for a minute or two.) I think it turned out pretty darn cute...

Theodora, aka Theo, 2.5 weeks, Silkie

As yet unnamed, 1 day, Barred Rock

Lucy, 1 day, Araucana

Suzie, 1 day, Araucana

Napoleon, aka Nappy, 2 weeks, Silkie

All 5 chicks in a row! Lucy, no-name, Theo, Nappy, Suzie

Chickens!

So, it's been a while since I've posted because I've been traveling, moving, and getting settled. However, this is a pretty exciting post--my roommates and I are getting chickens! Laying hens, to be exact, and we're pretty excited about it.

For those of you who know me, you are probably not surprised that I want to have laying hens, but you might be wondering about the logistics of this proposition given my current pets--2 Border Collie/Cattle Dog mixes who love nothing more than chasing birds (ok, maybe chasing squirrels, but birds are a close second). Well, our lovely little laying hens are going to live in their own fully-enclosed "chicken tractor", which will have a roost, laying boxes, and a run. The exact design is yet to be determined, but I do know that it's going to be on wheels so that we can move it around the yard every week or so. The tractor will keep the dogs out, as well as other predators, like hawks and foxes.

With the help of Craigslist we found a farmer just outside of Raleigh who has chicks for sale. He has a group that will be hatching tomorrow or Monday, so we'll be driving down there Monday or Tuesday to pick out our four little babies. He has several varieties, but we're planning on getting at least one Ameraucana (also known as an Easter Egger, since it lays blue/green eggs) and at least one Bantam (a small breed that lays eggs 1/3-1/2 the size of an average egg). Beyond that we're going to talk to the farmer and just see what he has.

So far our purchases for the new arrivals have been the following:

-Chick Feed (un-medicated), 5 pound bag, $6
-Chick Waterer, 1 quart size, $2.50
-18 Gallon Plastic Container (this will serve as our "brooder", home for the chicks for the first 6-8 weeks), $6

Things we had at home were:

-Lamp suitable for keeping the chicks warm (my Ikea drafting-table-style lamp, which has a shiny metal shade to amplify the heat from the bulb)
-Incandescent light bulb (gasp!)
-Food dish (ie, a small plate)
-A shelf high enough to keep the chicks away from the dogs
-Newspaper (bedding)

Once we get the chicks in place I'll post some photos. I'll also be sure to post photos of the chicken tractor as we build it.

And now we wait with bated breath for a phone call from the farmer with good news!