Chickens at Sunset

Holy cluckin' crap am I exhausted. This weekend kick ass urban farmer Esperanza Pallana of Pluck and Feather and I gave a presentation and fielded hundreds of questions on raising backyard chickens.



We asked for it and boy did those questions come. We were a very popular booth,



which may have had to do with the fact that I brought all of my chicks and hens for show and tell. The kids loved it.



And so did the adults. Most were smitten with the vintage camper inspired demonstration coop in our booth designed by John Wright. There were a lot of folks interested in the idea of chickens, but I was thoroughly shocked to meet so many Sunset readers who currently raise their own hens, some of whom have been doing it for years and years.My favorites may have been the friends of Dorothy trio living in Sacramento where one had been raising chickens on the sly for nearly 20 years. Apparently, it has been illegal in Sacramento since the 70s, but they are hoping to change the laws this upcoming month. I wish them the best of luck.

Another highlight from the event was this totally rad chicken coop called the Kippen House (Kippen means "chicken" in Dutch) that had a garden bed for a roof. It was absolutely gorgeous!



I didn't have much time to explore the rest of the festival with all the people wanting to chat chickens. I am so grateful that our friends over at FARMcurious and Dog Island happened to be there too, as they were indispensable in helping out with all the cluckin' questions. By the end of it all we were completely chickened out. I think Esperanza's face says it all.


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Making Repairs and Making Friends

The wire floor of the chicken coop finally imploded this past week, due to Ethel's species confusion - she has a tendency to eat chicken food and perch herself in the hen house. It's incredibly annoying, but goats will be goats... or chickens, as is the case with Ethel. I replaced the old floor made of .5" x .5" wire mesh with a .5" x 1" thicker gauge mesh, hoping that this will make a sturdier landing for the pain-in-the-butt goats and provide a larger opening for the droppings to fall through. Fruit Loop, my Welsummer, was all in a flap about the construction, squawking up a storm and hopping all over the mesh as I tried to pull it out. Apparently, she doesn't like her house being messed with. A few of the other birds also stood in the way of building, curious to see what was going on. All calmed down when they saw that I wasn't going to destroy their home, just fix it up a bit.

The laying boxes were also in sad shape as they were actually cardboard boxes beginning to decompose. Rather than continuing to replace the cardboard boxes with new ones, a perfectly acceptable option, I chose to build proper laying hutches. I soon discovered that my carpentry skills still leave much to be desired. My cuts were all slightly askew, screws poked through creating hazardous conditions, and since I used all scrap materials, refusing to purchase anything new, I sometimes had to use two boards where I really should have only used one. Well, whatever! They're chickens, right? I'm sure they don't care. Here you can see Sweet Pea checking out the new ghetto fabulous digs:



Speaking of chickens, this weekend I went to a get together for chicken owners in the San Francisco area. I found it through Meetup.com. It was great to share information with locals and meet fellow chicken lovers. If you are in the area and are interested in chickens, join the SF Pet Chicken Meetup Group.

By the way, you can now become a fan of Itty Bitty on Facebook.

The Last Hen Standing

As I write this, Gertrude's stiff little body is on its way to the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory at UC Davis. After 3 days of hobbling around the coop mostly paralyzed, using her wings, haunches, and beak to ambulate, my beautiful Brabanter finally passed. Ever since Violet and Petunia met their maker, I had planned to send the next chicken that died off to be tested. I found out that UC Davis provides this service for free to folks who own less than 500 birds. Since these tests can be quite pricey if performed by a private lab, I was more than relieved to find out my pocket book wasn't going to continue to take a beating when it came to the chickens. A few plastic bags, a cardboard box, some gel freezer packs and a Jackson to Fedex were all it took to get Gertrude on the way to her necropsy (animal autopsy).

A few folks have expressed concern about the method of shipment, particularly with the unpleasant possibility of leakage. To everyone who has been worried for the poor folks who deliver packages (and I'm sure they thank you for your concern), that's what the plastic bags were for. I, too, was a bit uneasy with shipping a corpse, but apparently people do this kind of thing all the time. According to the lady at CAHFS, "You can send it Fedex and don't worry, you don't have to tell them what you're shipping." Phew! Though just to be sure, I did double bag the bird with extra large plastic bags which wrapped around the chook's thin frame a couple times. In the end, it was more like a quadruple bagging.

The exchange with the man at Fedex was a touch... odd. He wanted me to change boxes. I told him it was impossible; the box was carefully packed. "It's fragile," I said. That's not really a lie. He then picked up the box and asked me if it was frozen. I felt my Operation Send Dead Animal was becoming less and less covert with every dreaded question. As soon as my money hit the table, I shot out the door like a shoplifter who had just finished stuffing loot down her pants.

So now we wait. Meanwhile, I can't bear to put poor Sweet Pea in the run by herself. Until we get the results back, she will be hanging with the goats. They seem to get along, though the goats insist on eating the chicken food and jumping inside the coop. Sweet Pea tolerates their poor manners, if only for the sake of companionship.

Tragedy on the Farm

It was a sad morning here at the Itty Bitty Farm. We hadn't even had the chickens a week when we lost one to the bitter cold and windy San Francisco spring. Broccoli (nicknamed Bawk-li) was probably too young to be outdoors, even with that light in the coop. We were told that she was about 5-6 weeks old and were assured that she would do fine outside as long as she had a protected box to escape into, but I suspect that she was more like 4 weeks and therefore would have needed a constant 75 degrees to be comfortable. Miss Lorraine and Pearl are more like 8-10 weeks and can handle our spring dips in temperature.

Though Broccoli seemed to be eating and drinking and running about in normal chickish fashion, she was showing signs of "pasting up". This quaint little term refers to what happens when chicks get the runs as a result of being under stress or too cold. The runny stools stick to the down around their pooper and can eventually completely seal them shut. I checked Broccoli's backside post-mortem and feces were stuck to the down, but she wasn't closed off. My suspicion is that she may have been runty, not as strong as the other chicks, and probably could have used a heat lamp or nights spent inside the garage. So I guess all that peeping wasn't just plain chattiness (which I had read is a characteristic of the Houdan); it was really a cry of "I'm freakin' cold! Could you do something about this?" Oh my God, I'm a terrible mother to my poor chickadees! I'm a chicken killer!!!!!!!

Ok, I need to get a hold of myself here. The authors of the book Chickens in Your Backyard say that random deaths can occur in the healthiest of flocks. This may not have been completely my fault. Broccoli could have been weak, and me being an inexperienced hen hostess failed to notice the subtle signs. AND the chicken lady we bought her from said she would be fine outside. Maybe fine in Cotati, but definitely not fine in our breezy corner of the Bay Area. I've learned my lesson. Pearl and Miss Lorraine are enduring daily butt checks. I'm so sorry Broccoli! May you rest in peace.

Ute was quite distraught over the loss of her dad's peep. She was inconsolable for a solid 15 minutes, which is like a lot for a 5 year old. She insists that Esteban get another chicken that looks just like Broccoli. Our dilemma, I believe, is that we will need to get 2 more ladies as it is never a good idea to introduce just 1 chicken to a flock. That's just asking to be witness to the unpleasantness that is chicken cannibalism. Perhaps we'll try our luck with a brooder and get a couple tiny things. That way we can get a Spitzhauben, the mohawked Swiss national chicken, and an Amerucauna, known as the Easter Egger for its green eggs, which were the breeds that I had originally wanted but the chicken queen didn't have any (they came in a few days ago). Stay tuned for pics of building the brooder.

For now, here's a pic of the run that I finally completed.


I probably took out more nails than I put in, built the door a bit off kilter, which will need to be planed, and used too many different types of mesh / chicken wire giving the whole thing an aesthetically mottled look, however I don't think it's half bad for my first project that I built completely on my own. You should have seen me work that chop saw like a real pro! As reward for my efforts? Dry, cracked, bruised, cut, dirt encrusted man hands. There goes my career as a hand model... *sigh*.