Chicken Coop News

Dear Friends (co-op members and Cindy),

As we prepare to be gone for 9 days, starting tomorrow morning, a few thoughts.

Cindy will be doing some of the garden watering, but others should feel free to lend a hand if you see dry things. Only pick green beans in the garden nearest to the coop side gate. All the rest of the beans are dry beans for later. Help yourself to any beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers you want. Please leave any broccoli ready to be picked in a plastic bag in the fridge. Also if any of the cantalope looks like it can't wait until we return, please put it also in the fridge. Do not overwater the squash please. Bare ground has new plantings, so please water.

Only one of the new hens is laying so far. The rest have days of pure sloth. We have been leaving them in the pens until about 1 or 2, so we get a few eggs. Then we let them out until the end of the day. those who want a treat will line up at about 6:30 and go in. the few new ones with attitude will have to stay out until it gets fairly dark, then they are willing to come in also. You have to be really alert in the morning, as they try really hard to break out early.

We are leaving both kinds of food in the big coop now, trying to finish up the baby food. We need scratch and another bag of pellets. they can all eat the pellets now.

We generally open up the side and back pens for their use early in the day, then let them go back in both at the end of the day and leave the little inside door open. We usually put some water outside near the rain barrel, in the shade for their day time use. They are very spoiled.

Please keep them out of the gardens if you can, particularly the vegetable garden. Some of the little ones get trapped in the garden by the side shed door. The only way to get them out is to guide them with the hose to the small opening near the solar panels. They can also fly quite well and at times go right out over the top.

When you walk the back meadows, there is some water there in case the garden is really dry. Water around on the dirt, not on the stems please.

Also there are tons of blackberries which need picking, all over the land. Help yourselves and enjoy. We do not need any more.

Sean will be here Tuesday cutting trees. Anyone who wants to can check to make sure he is not under one by himself. He gets here around 2. His phone number is by the phone if he is needed for anything.

The emergency number where we are is 780-719-8587. Use only for emergency. We return on the 29th. Sean can use email now and his address is at the top, as is Cindy's.

Thanks to all. Have fun with the feisty little girls. The Auracanas are particularly stupid, but cute.

Peggy

Chicken Coop News

     Our little girls were saying they were ready for the big digs today. Even though they are only 4 weeks old, and two of them only 3, they were outgrowing their box. So, since they predicted warm weather today, we finished cleaning out the little coop, which Matt and WEndy had mostly done, put wire fence around the bottom so they can't get under and drive us crazy trying to catch them, and moved them in.

     We left the side door open and have water and food inside and out. It didn't take long before an adventurous rhode island red went down the ramp. Actually I think she jumped off the side and then figured out how to walk up. Six or seven followed her by jumping off. Kind of like watching a bunch of teens jumping off the high rocks into a stone quarry, as we did when young. They are hanging out in the corner by the small gate, eating and scratching in the dirt. It is not cler yet if they know how to get back in the coop. The first one was seen jumping straight up onto the porch. No problem for her. Let's hope she isn't a rooster.

     We don't see a way of putting a light into the coop without burning it down, but for now it is just as warm as the garage was with the light and they seem happy. They are not bunching up to stay warm. Even the little ones have gone out to explore. They are rather frightened of humans however, and I think at least for a few days until they get used to us and the place we should leave them alone as much as possible.

     We will attempt to get them back in the coop before leaving this evening, and let them get used to it while there is still some light seeping under the door.

Peggy, teenage babysitter

Spring 2011 Chicks

The new chicks are here! Fourteen of the cutest little fuzz balls you've ever seen. Since their arrival coincided so nicely with the return of cold weather, they are currently living in the loft at Matt and Wendy's. You'd be amazed at just how much noise these little gals can make at 3:00 AM!

Chicken Coop News - 2010 summary

The girls have done a great job this year providing for the Coop and its friends.They are now settling into the winter routine. this group is a bit less adventuresome than last years gang, and they seldom want to put their feet in that nasty white stuff. Even the compost pile cannot lure them out when the snow is blowing around. Only a few make it over to the bird feeders to forage. Most stay in the coop or huddle in one corner of the pen. A few have found the overturned garden cart, and have made a dust bath area there, so we have to really check when putting them away. One is having trouble understanding the idea of going inside when it gets dark. She will sit out in the pen in the dark and wait to be placed in the coop by hand. We also have at least one egg eater. It might be Twitchy, who can't seem to get with the program most days. In general though, this is a peaceful bunch, engaged in only minor pecking order fusses. They do get bored easily however, so we try to get them interested in stepping out in the pathways a bit.

I am happy to report that there have been no losses to predators this year, and no unexplained deaths. Even Twitchy seems to be surviving, though she can't get up on the roosts and is often wandering around lost and confused. The others don't seem to pick on her.

The Coop as a whole has done well this year, in all aspects. We expanded beyond chickens to growing gardens together, sharing meals, and playing music. the work flow is fairly seamless and requires almost no real organizing. Everyone just does what needs to be done when they can do it and it seems to always fall into place around work and travel schedules. We have an increasing network of friends and neighbors who buy our eggs and appreciate them. We have begun to barter also, trading eggs for apples, squash, butchering services (and a Thanksgiving turkey which Jeanne & Peg will pay for with eggs and then pay the egg jar.) 

I'm sure Matt will turn this information into lovely graphs, but for now here is some data from 2010:

Total egg production: 5,234 eggs, or 436.2 dozen

     eggs used by coop members:  1884, or 157  dozen

     eggs sold:  2988 or 249 dozen

     eggs bartered: 13 dozen

If you look at the math on this, you will see that there are 206 eggs unaccounted for. 98 of those were either broken or had been eaten (by chickens, not by us). That leaves 108, or exactly 9 dozen, which is exactly the number of eggs we collected money for, but no one wrote it down, so we had extra money in the jar to account for. My guess is that more than one of us just threw money in and forgot to indicate where it came from. Better too much in there than not enough.

We began the year with $29.50 left over from 2009. Our income from egg sales was $715.26. Our expenses were $709.37, leaving us with $35.39 going into 2011. We actually only have $35.31, so I have misplaced 8 cents somewhere in this math, but do not feel a need to torture myself over it. The total accounting speaks well for our success. We are keeping  income and expenses fairly even. If anyone wants to see the month by month figures, they are in the notebook kept here by your friendly accountant. We are experimenting with new food sources, since the feed store we used has gone out of business. We have two different kinds right now, and will see which the girls like best. It may be time to take the plunge financially and move to organic food. That's what they get out in the yard, but we haven't used the feed yet, as it costs twice as much. The coop will need to decide if we want to move to it now that we are holding our own financially and there are no immediate construction needs.

We had talked about adding some Buckeyes to our flock in the spring, as an endangered heritage breed that just happens to eat tent worms. But we have just learned that the supplier of these is also going out of business and moving out of state. They have given up their flock and are no longer breeding. So we are now without a source for chicks on two fronts and will need to work on finding new ones in the spring. Some of our old girls are nearing the end of their production. We are still getting one blue egg, usually every other day, but she pecks a small hole in each one, so we have to eat that one ourselves. We are also thinking the New Hampshires may not be a real strong breed, and we will want to try something else next time. 23 seems to be a good number to hold over the winter. We could probably hold 25 comfortably. Some of us are starting to think about maybe adding some meat birds to our operation at some point, since we are learning how to process them and it would make us more resilient as a community. Just a thought for now. It would be easy to do in the summer with the existing coops, particularly once we build the chicken tractor we have talked about.

Happy New Year to all our fans,

Peggy, amateur chicken accountant

Co-op News

The Global Work Party sponsored by 350.org has an event here on Homestead Rd. Check it out. Our newest Co-op member, Sean Case, is digging a root cellar near the chicken coop. It will easily hold the storage food produced by members in our gardens, as well as anything we stock up on at the farmers markets. Sean is counting on other coop members to give him advice on the actual building once the hole is completed. Since we are meeting today for a potluck and discussion of our up-coming workshop at Bioneers, we can all take a look at th site and add our two cents.

Today, 10-10-10, also happens to be Sean's 35th birthday, so in addition to welcoming him into our community, we are celebrating that event this evening. Wendy is baking the cake. The girls are celebrating by tearing into the spent veggie garden. They are loving Frank & Jennie's left over corn. For a chicken, heaven is a pile of dirt to bathe in or a disturbed place where the bugs are hiding. Most of the new hens are laying now, still putting out pullet eggs. But some are getting bigger ones. We have had the occasional one with no shell. I falsely accused the girls of eating a few, then discovered one dropping a shell-less mess. With this fantastic weather, the girls are in bliss out in the yard.

Happy Birthday Sean, and welcome home. Of course you will all have to write to him by snail mail or call him, as he can't be on a computer yet.

From happy mother Peggy

Flock Reduction News

Well, today was the final day for eight of our old hens. It has been a long week, trying to decide which ones we need to say goodbye to, but we had to do it. At the Co-op potluck last Friday we agreed on a few that had to go, the egg eaters and slugs brooding in the nest boxes all day, old baldy who would not survive the winter without feathers and one araucana with a similar problem. We enjoyed our group meal, honoring the little rooster by consuming him, and left the decision up to me to finish the list of those to go.Matt and Wendy have gone off for a much deserved vacation to the northeast. It's not easy to transition from raising chickens who are treated like pets to being a real chicken farmer, but it really had to happen eventually. Chicken farmers butcher chickens and people eat them. Those are the facts. With luck the chicken has had a good life and is put to rest humanely. This was true for our birds. I had isolated 8 of them over the course of several days and put them in the little girls pen and coop, transferring the new ones into the big coop at last. Lots of adjustment problems and pecking order issues of course. But they are settling in finally. The young ones are still mostly keeping to themselves, generally in the back pen, but they all come in the main pen at night together and all are roosting together now. Frank and I got the cage from Matt and Wendy's place. Jeanne and Keith guarded the hens in the cage after we caught them, and Frank and I captured them one by one and took them to the car.

We took eight to the Emu ranch this morning. The white, two buffs, one barred rock, two rhode island reds, and two araucanas with few remaining feathers. The hardest decision involved Esmeralda. She has been such a survivor, but she is so nasty and anti-social that it began to seem she would not work well in the coop this winter with the rest. It is very likely she would have ended up attacked again, or she would continue to attack others. I decided to let her go, and Frank agreed. Then we tried to catch her. She was of course the last to be put in the travel pen, after scratching Frank in the head when she flew up in his face. She was determined to the end, which made it all the harder. We drove them to the farm, put on aprons (Jeanne and I went) and Patty and Irvin taught us what to do to assist them. They want to barter their services with us for our eggs, since they don't keep chickens anymore. So they will come get about $25-30 of eggs as they need them. They have a very clean and humane indoor operation there. But I had to stay outside while Esmeralda was being processed, I must admit. She really got to me. Four of them gave us one final egg each, and of course Esmeralda was one of them. I will honor her by eating her last egg myself. She bit everyone often, was scrappy and mean, but she won our respect and I feel terrible right now just writing about it. But if not now, in the spring, and we had to look to the communal needs of the whole flock over the winter. They had good chicken lives. We were told they looked healthy and well cared for.

We now have 23 left for winter, and will of course add more in the spring. All was peaceful this afternoon and they roamed the yard doing bug patrol. Total of 12 eggs today, but four of them were post-mortum deliveries. Only one little one laid, at least we only found one. Hopefully they will settle down now and get going. All went into the big coop together without hassle tonight and settled down to the usual bickering about roost space. Matt had put in an extra roost, but I took it out as they seemed to be more secure and quieted down better when closer together on just two. Plus with three it was hard to get to the nest boxes to check. We shall see what works. I've been turning off the red light at night the last few days to get them settled in faster, but left it on tonight as they seemed quiet earlier.

Peggy, chicken farmer

Goodbye to Little Pete

Last Friday, Little Pete travelled by box to The May Farm, where Paul May was kind enough to dress him out for us and explain to me the process as it unfolded. It was as merciful as we could expect. I was told he looked like he had been well fed and cared for, and he weighed 3 and a half pounds once dressed. He is currently in the freezer and we will honor him by sharing him with the coop members at our up-coming potluck and workshop planning session, tentatively scheduled for September 10. It was not an easy decision to make, taking him in. But the fact is that we have to face our food someday, and all of us eat chicken as well as their eggs. We are also faced with limited space for the winter months in the coop, must integrate the ten new layers, and some have to go. Little Pete was the obvious choice for the first, as he was beginning to attack all the hens and they were not happy. Although he was only being a regular rooster, we have decided we cannot have one here, for the health of the hens and safety of members. We will be saying goodbye to at least six more in a few weeks. They will be taken to the Emu farm where Patty has agreed to help assure it is as painless as possible. We just have to decide who goes as a group. We want to keep good layers, of course, since we aim to produce food with this operation. We also want those with friendly attitudes and a willingness to not eat eggs or peck at the eggs of others. There are a few with rather bad habits who will most likely be leaving us.

Now that the rooster is gone, we are mixing everyone up in the daytime, and they are sharing all three pens and eating the same food. The older hens tend to take over however. The young ones are a rather polite lot, and wander off by themselves rather than engage in turf wars. All the new ones are trained already to return to the coop when we bring the old ones in. At night they sort themselves out for the most part into the two coops they are used to, though now and then one ends up sleeping in unfamiliar territory. None of the new ones seem to be laying yet. A few are peaking into the big coop and showing an interest.  Hopefully they will get the idea and lay there rather than out in the woods.

Total egg production for August was 379 eggs, down from 387 in July. Only one hen is brooding now. The other two have gone back out with the rest and may be laying again. 20 dozen sold to our regular customers this month. They are grateful to have healthy eggs these days.

Peggy