January cold

The chickens are fully feathered out now that the cold weather has set in. With the days so short and cold weather, they have completely stopped laying eggs. This is normal, although many people give chickens artificial light so that they keep laying all winter. We're following the idea that if they are allowed to take a break in the winter, they will lay eggs for more years.

Moulting feathers

Two poor birds are moulting their feathers right now. Fancypants Johnson (pictured) started a few weeks ago. It's a cyclical thing -- they moult about once a year and stop laying eggs during that time. It's supposed to take a month or so for them to grow back. You can see the new shafts coming in on Fancypants. Looks itchy! Their roosting area is filling up with feathers and they've brought some of the big ones into the nest.

About washing eggs

In a previous post, I mentioned that we don't wash or refrigerate the eggs from our backyard chickens. People occasionally express concern, so here's a recent article about how eggs are naturally protected from bacteria, etc.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129472951

Chicken tractor

Here is our new chicken "tractor" -- a portable enclosure that we can move to different spots around the yard. With this, they'll be able to get their fill of grass and bugs, and we'll still be able to enjoy the backyard. Yesterday was their first day in the tractor -- they spent about 5 hours out there and the rest of the day in their regular run. Penguin even laid an egg in the little nest box.

Richard built the tractor earlier this week when we were wanting a place to separate Vulture for a while to cure her of her early morning crowing. She had started at 7am Monday morning, so Tuesday she spent several hours away from the others and hasn't crowed since. They say that separating a chicken takes them down in the pecking order, which I think would be good since Vulture can be pretty mean. Anyhow, I hope that a change of scenery will be good for all of them!

Crowing hen!

Without a rooster around, Vulture has taken up crowing. This video was taken this morning.

She has always been the top hen; she's a couple weeks older than the others, will sometimes peck on Penguin or Fancypants, and won't let me pet her like the other hens. I hear that it does happen occasionally where a hen will crow as part of the dominant role. In some cases however, crowing's a sign of a hormonal imbalance and a hen may even stop laying eggs. Hopefully she's just doing her thing and will continue laying eggs for us!

Broody - with update

Must be time to hatch some eggs -- Fancypants Johnson won't leave the nest. When we come near she puffs up her feathers and growls. Should we get some fertilized eggs for her to sit on?

Update: We decided not to hatch new chicks right now. So after a few days in a separate cage with no bedding, she came out of her broody state and is back with the other chickens.

New chicken run

The chickens eat every blade of grass that grows in the yard, so I was losing hope for a vegetable garden this year. The solution we came up with was to move the coop to behind the shed and fence off a run for them beside the deck. In this area they'll have the compost piles, raspberry bushes, and a dust bathing area. With any luck they'll eat the dandelions and raspberry shoots that were going wild back there. The top of the coop still backs onto the deck so that we can collect eggs and refill the food and water drippers from up top.

Urban chickens are getting a lot of local press these days since Vancouver passed a bylaw allowing chickens. There's controversy around a city proposal to build a wing of the animal shelter (at $20,000) for abandoned chickens.

First Spring Photos

-Walter and Fancypants deciding who gets to go in first to lay an egg.

-Penguin on the nest box.

-The flock of 4 demolishing our lawn. With all of the rain and chickens scratching around, parts of the backyard have turned to mud. We're going to fence them off to the sideyard later this month so I can plant the vegetable garden.

Eggs!

The hens are finally laying eggs -- this past week we were getting 3 a day. Mary gave me this antique egg basket which I love sitting on the counter. Fresh eggs don't need to be washed or refrigerated.

The first egg!

Happy New Year! We got our first egg.

Are you wondering about the golf ball beside it? They say that if you put a golf ball in the nest box it gives the chicken the idea of where to lay their eggs. How amazing that the chicken got it right the first time. (Update - the hen first to start laying is Fancypants Johnson.)

Snow day

Vulture and Walter are taking a snow day and roosting at 10am. They usually go in at dusk, and usually all stay together as a flock. The other two chickens ended up being quite distressed out in the snow without them.

Their roost is a 2 x 4, which is recommended instead of a dowel in cold climates so that their feet can be completely flat and covered by their bodies when they are sleeping.

It's our first day of snow this winter and the chickens don't seem to like it so much. In this photo, Fancypants Johnson is trying to figure out how to join up with her friends under the deck without stepping in the snow.

For the past two weeks, we've had temperatures below freezing so I had Richard make a heated water dispenser. In the photo you can see the white dispenser sitting on a square cookie tin which has a lightbulb inside.

Also this month three of the chickens had their wing feathers clipped. They are now able to fly up as high as the fence, and we can't have them escaping our backyard. Richard clipped each on one side which discourages them from flying since they can't go straight. Only Penguin hasn't been clipped since she doesn't fly much and seems to be lowest in the pecking order. In this picture I'm holding Walter who is about to have three inches cut off her left flight feathers.

Flock of four

It's been a month since the last post -- we've now got our four hens. They are Vulture, Fancypants Johnson, Walter and Penguin. It was easy to get a picture of them since they come up to me hoping for table scraps every time I go outside!

The next big milestone will be when they start laying eggs which could be anytime now.

Here's our flock of six chickens -- we started at fourteen chicks and are working our way down to a manageable number. It's been a hard process -- four little bantam roosters were sold at auction in September. Next we sold two bantam hens to a family through craigslist. Then two standard-sized roosters went in the freezer last weekend :-( We'll keep these six as long as none of them start crowing...

Summer's over... I'm preparing the coop for fall weather.

Richard built a feeder out of PVC piping and wood that we can fill from the outside. It holds several days' worth of food.

Today I made some curtains that can be let down to keep rain out on really bad days. Keeping the coop somewhat dry will be healthier for the chickens. All of the bedding will be allowed to build up in the coop over the winter to compost and provide heat. (This is called the deep litter method) I dig it up and add fresh wood shavings and diatomaceous earth on top every week. This week I used our first fall leaves for bedding.

The chickens in the foreground of this picture are Mohawk and Fancypants Johnson.

Here's a recent picture of Stinky (see my older posts to see this one hatching from an egg). He's looking like a rooster -- hens don't usuallly get red combs this early.

The chickens are big enough to run out freely in the backyard now, although one of us stays outside still when they're out of their coop. One of the neighborhood cats seems a little too interested in them and stalks them right in front of me.

We're down to 8 now -- yesterday I sold the last two small black bantams (probably hens) to a family who lives on a farm. This was through craigslist and we had a much better feeling about this sale than last week's auction experience. So the remaining chickens are Stinky, Mohawk, Vulture, Fancypants Johnson, two Penguins, and the two large dark ones now named Walter and St. Elmo. We'll wait til we know which of these are roosters before we decide which 4 we can keep long-term.

We're down to 10 chickens now. At the rate they're growing, the coop was getting too crowded with all 14. So Sam and I went to the poultry auction this morning with the four small roosters. It was a terrible time to take them -- twice as many birds were for sale as usual. Someone was saying that people try to get rid of lots at the end of the summer. Anyhow by the end of the auction, full sized roosters were going for $2 each. Ours were so tiny they went for $1 for all four! We really had no choice but to get rid of these guys, but I was just sick that nobody really wanted them. Here's a picture of Sam saying goodbye to "Ninja".

The chicks have been in the coop for a week now. (They were in the kids playroom and the house was starting to smell way too chickeny...)

Fourteen chickens will soon be too many for our coop, so the bigger they get the sooner we'll have to make some tough choices. This weekend I may take a few roosters to the auction. Anyhow I thought I'd take pictures of them all in the same groupings as last month so you can see how much they've changed. First - Stinky who we hatched from an egg. Hen or rooster? I still can't tell.