Meet the New Poster Child for Urban Chicken Farming

Yesterday, I let a guy from Getty Images come take some photos of me and the farm. Today, I wake up to find my face all over the internet! I'm in the Star-Telegram (photo #7), Jezebel, and even the Washington Post (photo #8). Then I Googled my name, which I like to do from time to time to keep tabs on myself, just to see where else I might turn up and holy sheep shit, I'm practically viral! Okay, not really, but I am on NPR, Zimbio, Tree Hugger, Life ... the list goes on and on. Amongst my interweb meanderings, I also stumbled upon this article about myself. If you could peer through your computer screen and look at me right now, you would see a slack jawed woman, who hasn't even bothered to get out of her jammies, completely confused as to what has just transpired over the last 24 hours.

In almost all of the captions, you'll notice that they read "many Americans... have started to raise chickens in their urban yards to try and save money on food costs during the economic downturn..." The pure irony of this is that in most images, I'm holding Miss Golden Toe herself. And just so you can fully appreciate this sardonic moment, I'm going to cop to the amount I paid to have that toe "fixed". $200. That's right ladies and gentleman, I paid $200 for a vet to essentially clip off the chickadee's nail and supply me with outrageously over-priced meds. You see now how she'd have to lay a couple golden eggs to actually earn her keep around here?

But lesson learned. When this past week I accidentally ripped the dog's toenail off by stepping on his foot while wearing clogs, I didn't bother with the vet. With a little hydrogen peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment, Mr. Tinks was right as rain. However, I should warn you that if you do stop by the farm for a visit, please keep your toenails as far away from me as possible. I seem to be on a roll.

I Love the Ladies

My parents were in town this weekend visiting from Nebraska, but that didn't stop me from pursuing Mission Pick Up Chicks. Nothing was going to stand between me and some new cluckers, not even family obligations.

On Sunday, we packed ourselves into two vehicles for a gorgeous drive up to Petaluma. The air had the crispness of fall, yet a skin tingling warmth from the sun's rays. I was excited to bring my parents along for this adventure; I wanted them to catch a glimpse of some of the more exciting moments of my urban farm life. My mother had grown up on a dairy in Southern California and clearly remembers her mother, Gertrude, raising the farm's chickens while harboring a seething disgust for the creatures. I suppose they are not for everyone. Though I am quite enamored with them, which was evident to my mother by my more than jubilant mood on the hour plus journey.

I had made an appointment to pick up four ladies from Split Rail Farms, which is nestled just outside of Petaluma in a town called Penngrove. In a rare moment of promptness, we arrived exactly when I said we would. Those who know me well will know that this is nothing short of miraculous. The farm headmistress, Jane, had our birds in cages, all ready to go to their new home. Everything seemed so efficient and neat. My mom made some offhand comment that hopefully these chickens would... you know... live. I told Jane that we had lost 6 out of 7 birds. Shocked, she asked if we had lost them to predators. I explained that the birds died of Marek's because of having purchased unvaccinated birds from a lady in - "Cotati", she abruptly answered for me. It seems Jane fell prey to the same swindle I had. Our stories were similar except that she chose to make the trip in person to UC Davis with a live bird. She said a dead bird in the refrigerator made her squeamish. I assured her that I double bagged mine in the fridge before I sent via Fedex.

Split Rail also has a herd of Nigerian Dwarfs. We asked a load of goat questions, which the folks on the farm were more than happy to answer. They were so young for farmers, at least a decade younger than me and my DF. And so incredibly... sweet. I hate to sound so sappy, but they were really really nice folks who kindly took the time to show us around a little and answer any weird query we threw out. We spent a good 15 minutes watching the chickens roam freely through the garden, the goats trot about with one of the farm's dogs, and the flock of wild turkeys frolicking in the background as if they too belonged to the farm.

After a bit of chit chatting we found out that the Split Rail farmers both had jobs off the grange. And then it dawned on me why that magazine, which I always thought should be called "Small Farms", is called Hobby Farms - you can't really make a living as a small farmer. Some folks might be able to scrape by, but they are probably more of a rarity in this day and age. I'm glad to see the younger kids giving it a try. I wish them the best of luck. And if these chickens live and actually lay eggs for me, I will recommend them to all my friends in search of poultry partnerships.

I know, I know, enough with the rambling. You're thinking, "Get to the chickens lady!".

This is Cocoa Puff, the Disgruntled Farmhand's bird. She is a Cuckoo Maran, like Pearl, and will give us those dark chocolate brown eggs.


Here is Ute's lady Fruit Loop, a Welsummer like Miss Lorraine, who will also lay dark brown eggs. She is loud, feisty as all get out, and can take to flight more gracefully than any of the other chickens I have owned. I can only catch her if I corner her under the goat deck stairs.


This white beauty also belongs to Ute and is named Eggo, an Ameracauna who will hopefully give us green eggs. She is the same breed as Petunia, "the Asshole", just a different color.


And finally here is my baby, Pop Tart. She is a Silver Laced Wyandotte and so far seems to be the tamest of the birds. I'm not surprised. Check out her tail feathers. It definitely looks as though she's met with some hen honcho who has been at her like a bully on an elementary school playground.


Speaking of bullying, Sweet Pea is not taking to her new flock mates as well as I had expected. I witnessed her deliver some seriously severe pecks to Eggo, and she chomped down on Pop Tart's behind, holding onto that one scraggly feather she has sticking up back there. I guess the ladies are establishing their pecking order and that's never pretty. Sweet Pea is being territorial, puffing up her chest feathers whenever she gets the chance, and uttering her low, kind of spooky, squawky noises. She appears to want the others to know that she was here first.

Itty Bitty Is on Civil Eats

Check it out.

The Results Are In

Wow, that was fast. I wasn't expecting to hear back from the California Animal Health and Food Safety Lab for a couple more weeks. Glad to know that something in our great state is running efficiently. Arnold could take a tip.

This entire chicken ordeal has had me vacillating between various diagnosis, armed only with my online vet education. It's like the blog version of "Stump the Chumps" with the Magliozzi brothers, except I know way less about chicken diseases than they know about cars. Let's see, I started with Coccidiosis, an easily treatable disease so if any chickens had it, it was gone in a week. We could rule that out as my mysterious bird killer. Then I went on to Marek's since the cluckers all seemed to suffer from some kind of paralysis before they bit the dust. This seemed plausible, but since the ladies were supposedly vaccinated and most of the birds died after 17 weeks of age, I began to believe that they had Avian Leukosis, which is symptomatically similar to Marek's but has a 16 week incubation period.

Well somewhere along the line I was right and in typical Tom and Ray fashion, I'm going to blow the brass horns and claim victory. Gertrude died of Marek's, plain and simple. No Cocci, no Avian Influenza, no Leukosis. This was not my fault. Clearly, I was misled. The chicks had not been vaccinated and my hens died of one of the most common and virulent diseases that exists in the poultry world. This is fantastic news! I know you're wondering why I would make such an outrageous claim with 6 dead bodies on my hands. I'll tell you why; I'm not going to have to temporarily depopulate the farm, warn my neighbors, don a hazmat suit with NIOSH/MSHA approved respirator, and decontaminate my property with a turbo anti-pathogenic spray. Marek's is absolutely everywhere and the only proven effective method of controlling the disease is through vaccination. That in itself is a huge load off my mind. And it means I can get new chooks! That is as long as they've been vaccinated as Sweet Pea will remain a carrier for life.

Guess where I'll be this weekend? That's right. Out cruising chicks.

It's That Time

This time of year in the greater Bay Area, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a pumpkin patch. There's Farmer John's, the Great Pumpkin Patch, Lemos Farm, Arata's (that really great one that has a giant hay bale maze and real live sword fighting), and dozens more littering the highways and bi-ways of our neck of the woods. And of course we have so many since this IS home to the the mother of all pumpkins, the Atlantic Giant, which can weigh in at well over 1000 pounds. Anyone with a kid will find themselves making the yearly trek to one of these festively orange carpeted bonanzas of squash delight. Ironically, I have yet to grow my own pumpkin. It's not like I haven't tried. But something always seems to go wrong. So our little clan joins the hoards in this yearly pilgrimage to pay homage to the gourd.

And what a mighty gourd it is!

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.

I'm Famous!

Well not exactly. But I did get a little bit of press from SFSU's newspaper Golden Gate [X]press. Take a look (it's titled "Urban chickens a growing Bay Area trend"):