The Chicken Whisperer

The Pecking Order

2010-07-22T08:22:00.003-04:00

It's been a long time since I've posted to this blog, and I know I should probably just close up shop. But my chickens just keep showing me things. Not all of them very nice. Today's lesson: the true meaning of: "pecking order," "ruling the roost" and "birds of a feather flock together." Not pretty.

This week we are integrating a new flock of six teenagers, a mix of Araucanas and Barred Rocks. I'm looking forward to having a few new Barreds, because I love how their look as they mature: their bosomy bearing and black and white toned feathers. They're very matronly and New Englandy. Stocky, sturdy, no nonsense. They are the Sisters of Notre Dame of chickens, only without the rosary beads.

My friend Pat got them to teenagerhood for us, and we brought them home Sunday night. From the minute they arrived, they wanted to hang with the big hens, who, of course, wanted nothing to do with them.

I think I heard a little Barred run up to a rather large Araucana and say, "WAZZZUP MAH BITCHES?"

Needless to say, that did not go over well. Anyway, I've kept them separate for a few days but last night, at roosting time, I decided to try some integration. But the little ones all tried to crowd up on the roost and the big Araucana would snap at them. I mean, nasty, Jaws-type snaps.

It was like a Harry Potter movie, this gigantic hen snipping and snapping at these cowering little teenage chickens. They'd take a licking from her, hop down, then pace back and forth on the ground looking up on the roost for a hole in the lineup where they'd be safe.

I stood outside the coop an hollered at the Araucana to BE NICE! She pulled back when I did this, and eventually everybody tired of the whole thing and they settled in. in.

But these hens are brutal, and I hope we don't lose a teenager in the coming week.

Any advice about peaceful new flock integration?

Savannah chicken coops we love

2009-07-20T13:11:00.001-04:00

Okay, here's a great idea.

Forget the local garden tour.

In Savannah this year, they're doing the chicken coop tour.

The artist and her poultry

2009-07-16T13:11:00.002-04:00

Okay, I don't know why but I found this piece in today's New York Times kind of irritating.

Actually, I do know why.

It smells a little bit of bullshit.

Feral rooster found in woods. Gentle enough within a day to be pecking mistress on the cheek?

I don't think so.

The things a mother puts up with

2009-07-10T11:31:00.005-04:00

Is this the cutest, or what?

Watching the Araucana hen with her chicks, I've realized her body is totally shaped to take care of little ones. Her wings expand to cover them up in the nesting box in the evening, and now that they're bigger, and roosting at night, she's still protecting them.

You may not be able to see it here, but there's actually another chick tucked onto the roost between her legs. After I took this picture at dusk, I went back when it was nearly dark, and found her neck feathers had ruffled up over the remaining chick to keep her warm. (The other chick went under her wing to sleep. )

Now that's gotta hurt

2009-07-06T10:08:00.001-04:00

World's biggest chicken egg.

The chicks are hatching

2009-06-26T14:02:00.003-04:00

We let an Araucana sit on the eggs and a couple have finally hatched. Hen very protective, but I shushed her out of the box for a quick picture.

The kitten and the silkie

2009-06-16T19:43:00.005-04:00

People have told me silkies are extremely gentle and fun to have around, but I'm convinced after seeing this kooky video of a Chinese Silkie who lives in Silver Lake, Cal., that has taken a kitten under her wing. Read the story here.

View more news videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/video.

And the Academy Award goes to....

2009-06-15T14:14:00.004-04:00

There's a whole genre of chicken-flicks over at YouTube; here's a particularly fun one from Small Time Pictures.

Mad City Chickens!

2009-06-15T13:59:00.002-04:00

There's a new documentary out about urban backyard chicken farmers. Check it out here.

Bulls, bears and flying chickens

2009-05-18T12:31:00.003-04:00

The Wall Street Journal is now using the term "flying chickens"
as some kind of metaphor for investors believing in false recovery of the economy.

This led us to wonder a little bit about the whole idea of flying chickens. We know they can do it when they want to-like when they want to get inside the vegetable garden to hit on the lettuce, or nibble fresh dahlia shoots (I have always said that a fence is just a suggestion to a chicken, something to be followed, or not.)

Here's what I found. I'm thinking Letterman should do a whole show of Stupid Chicken Tricks and invite us all to New York. Dave! Llamame!

Watch out for that bonus bird

2009-05-11T11:05:00.005-04:00

A friend and his wife are getting their first flock and asked for bird recommendations. The best way to figure this out is to think about what you want them for (eggs, meat, pets), and then choose, based on what they look like and what their temperaments might be. You can really get into it all day at the Murray McMurray site.

I suggested barred rocks (above), because they are real handsome birds. They seem to me to be traditional New England Yankee hens, and they're pretty sweet and mellow. In the evenings when they're settling onto the roost, they actually sound like they're purring. They are the old ladies of our flock now, and I just love them.

Araucanas are another recommendation, because of their blue eggs and nice, even manner. Someone once told me Araucanas were like puppies with feathers, and some are even trainable.

I have one of my Araucanas trained to come from anywhere in the yard when I'm picking Japanese beetles off the roses. I call out: "Who wants a beetle?" And she comes running. I've actually considered trying to get on Letterman with Stupid Chicken Tricks, but I know she wouldn't do it in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Also, we had a nice buff orpington rooster who arrived in the Murray McMurray order as the bonus Mystery Bird. This was my other advice to my friend: Watch out for that bonus Mystery Bird. It's nearly always a rooster.

Birds we have tried, but didn't work out: silver laced wyandottes, which are lovely to look at, but not as sturdy as the other two breeds. We also tried the blue andalusians--they didn't survive the early weeks. And we've had some of the exotics in rooster form (those Mystery Birds again) and found some of the exotic breeds were temperamental--the silver-spangled Hamburg actually attacked my daughter once. Off to the pot with him.

So if you're just starting out, I'd go with the tried and true, less exotic breeds.

Do you have any chicken recommendations? Share them.

For those chilly spring mornings

2009-04-23T12:35:00.002-04:00

For all you knitters with just a tech of too much chicken love, here's the pattern.
We particularly like the Monet dining room-at-Giverny color scheme this bird has going.

No cages PLUS green toys!

2009-04-02T18:07:00.005-04:00

These cool chicken videos come from successwithpoultry.blogspot.com, which has a link on the right. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who talks to my chickens.

Cage-free eggs at McDonald's?

2009-04-02T18:02:00.002-04:00

Yes if the Humane Society has its way, Gourmet blog reports.

Aloha, Oy!

2009-04-02T17:52:00.002-04:00

I thought I was getting punk'd when I walked past a hedge in the parking lot of a CVS on Big Pine Key in Florida, and heard a rooster crow from inside. I got down on my hands and knees to look, and sure enough, there was a rooster and a hen tucked inside a tightly-branched boxwood.

Chickens are all over the Keys, apparently, not just famously in Key West. Now it appears there's another island with a similar fate. The Wall Street Journal reports on poultry problems in Paradise.

Blessed are the peacekeepers

2009-03-30T15:31:00.001-04:00

Another reason why we love chickens.

Happy Holidaze

2008-12-21T17:12:00.001-05:00

We call this rooster, bought at a tag sale for a couple of bucks, The Dude.

In summer, the hens sometimes roost on the porch next to him. We're not sure what that means.

Rogue chickens in California!

2008-12-10T10:39:00.002-05:00

Here's a news story lede we love:

FAIR OAKS, Calif. - San Juan Capistrano has its swallows. Rome has its starlings. Fair Oaks has chickens.

And here's the story, by Eric Bailey of the L.A. Times.

Fall brooder

2008-09-05T10:57:00.002-04:00

One of the Araucanas has started sitting on the eggs--something that has only happened in spring around here. I looked up Fall Brooding on the web, and found this great chicken link.

It will be nice to have some chicks around, but not sure it's going to be so easy keeping them going when the weather gets cold.

In defense of chickens

2008-08-21T11:17:00.001-04:00

Okay, now this is just wrong.

Which came first, the chicken or the Peep?

2008-06-09T16:21:00.001-04:00

I meant to post this awhile back: It's downright amazing what people can do with a coupla boxes of Peeps (besides eating them.)

Chicken news of the weird

2008-06-09T16:14:00.001-04:00

Sometimes when I'm roasting a chicken I wonder whether the hens out in the yard know what's going on in the house. Wonder what was going through this hen's pea-sized brain as she roosted outside a McDonald's.

Roost-er-Rama

2008-06-05T08:22:00.003-04:00

As I may have mentioned, many changes coming to the mountain, with the slicing and dicing of the farm down the road (now they've put in a flagpole), and new residents at the house up the road. Yesterday I heard something interesting: another rooster crowing in the distance. Could it be a rogue travelling rooster out in the woods?

Dan heard it, too.

"What did you do to that extra rooster?" I asked--I knew, but--I didn't know. Rooster reduction is the man's job. The rooster left one day in a pillowcase in the backseat of Dan's car and didn't return. Call me Carmela.

"I took him to the 'farmer in Vermont,'" he said. (This is the expression we used to tell our daughter.)

"You sure you didn't just drop him in the woods?"

"No, I'm sure," he said. So the mystery continues.

More on the topic of roosters today from washingtonpost.com's Celebritologist, Liz Kelly:

Also, my favorite tidbit from today's Morning Mix was the fact that Matthew McConaughey has a brother named "Rooster." I mean, why don't we just go one step further there? Also -- David Sedaris fans might be interested to know that Sedaris also has a brother who goes by "Rooster" and one of his stories about The Rooster's relationship with their dad is one of the funniest things you'll ever read. I'm linking to it now here, but trusting that you'll hold off on reading it until after the discussion: You Can't Kill the Rooster (David Sedaris, 1998)

Check it out. It's one of the funniest things I've read in a long time.

Eggistentialism

2008-06-04T13:03:00.004-04:00

Sold a dozen eggs yesterday to a passerby who'd seen the sign I just put up at the bottom of the road. Three bucks a dozen. Then I get a copy of this week's New York magazine and see that we're at the low end of the pricing cycle!

Here's an interesting take on eggs at the supermarket.

And here's another take from Gourmet on eggs.

Urban cowgirl

2008-05-19T11:23:00.003-04:00

Years ago when I wrote a story for the Boston Globe about our foray into farming via a backyard chicken flock, I heard from lots of people, including a woman who had her "backyard" flock in her Jamaica Plain apartment. She must not have had a rooster, or the jig would most certainly have been up.

Since then, I have noticed that the chicken-human link has only grown stronger, as more people start to grow their own food, etc., and it's apparently happening even in urban areas.

We've been on this mountain for 25-plus years, but we're thinking about moving to a more urban spot, given the price of gasoline and the fact that the old farm down the road is being divided up for houselots.

Every day, we pass this place, and the view is different. Oh sure, it's always mountains, but the colors are always changing, depending on the seasons, and the mood changes with the weather--some morning severe-clear, and at other times, it's like a Chinese scroll painting--the clouds nestling in among the mountains.

Now, though, the blood pressure goes up when we pass this place and watch, as the falling-in barns are torn down, the driveways go in, big old trees are hauled out, and the hayfields are tamed and manicured into lawns. (This weekend's development: an "island" plunked into the lawn, which will soon probably host rhododendrons.) Goodbye Winslow Homer, hello Thomas Kinkade.

This fate is the end of a several-year-long story, however. Live in the hills long enough and you know this: for all our romanticizing of the New England family farm, it's an endangered species that faces impossible odds.

The farmers are getting old, the kids may be uninterested or too inept to take over. It takes as marketing skill as agricultural skill to survive now, and a lot of farmers just don't have it.

Sunday's New York Times Business section had an article with the astonishing data that the number of dairy farmers has declined from 99,000 in 1997 to about 59,000 last year, according to the USDA.

"Small dairy farmers east of the Mississippi River and in the UPper Midwest are increasingly being replaced by huge dairy farms in the West, in places like New Mexico and western Texas. Few dairy farms are even left in the Southeast."

Here in New England, we've got what those places don't: water and proximity to lots of consumers. Given the oil crunch, it is only a matter of time before smaller-scale, local farming could be economically viable again. Meantime, trust funders are slobbering over these big pieces of land (so close to Whole Foods Market!) and the siblings in farm families are feuding over how much they can sell for. Ten-20 years from now, will there be any land to come back to?

This is the stuff you don't read about in those Gourmet magazine local produce articles!

Anyway, one topic when we talk about when we discuss leaving the countryside is whether we could raise chickens in anyplace but here. That, plus, what would we do with the tractor?

Stewing about the aging bird

2008-04-02T16:08:00.002-04:00

The Times Food Section answers a question we've asked several times in the past: What do you do with an extra rooster (or two)?

The roosters I've got, but where will I find the dandelion greens this time of year?

And here's a story on what to do with an old hen, past her prime.

Which One of You Bitches is My Mother?

2007-12-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

I have always loved that line, spoken by the great Phoebe Cates (Mrs. Kevin Kline), in an old Judith Krantz mini-series about three rich girls who go off to a boarding school in Europe, one of whom gets pregnant and they all cover for each other. I can't remember what else happens, except that Phoebe Cates is the baby, and, grown up, tracks down the three now middle-aged women to find out the answer to above question.

Of course, never did I dream that I would be able to use that line, but now, in my daydreaming, I imagine one of the four little chicks going up to the big hens and posing that question--which, of course, would lead us to the first chicken-based mini-series, hopefully in prime-time, which will pay for the feed.

For the first time, we actually had a hen sit on the eggs last spring--she sat for two weeks, and out of ten eggs, four hatched. It was fun checking them out each day, and even more fun watching them gradually break their way out into the world. But it was an Araucana who did all the sitting, and it's now apparent that the babies are Wyndottes,the offspring of a hen who met her unfortunate end (along with the one-eyed Barred Rock) when an animal burrowed into the coop one night last spring.

And so, as our daughter prepares to "fly the coop" (as in: "I'm 18 now so I can do whatever I want!") and we try to manage two different new flocks--the "teenagers," three Araucanas and two barred rocks, which we ordered from Murray McMurray, and four "babies," we try to remain zen.

Like water.

Yeah, right.

It's time again for The Gift of Nothing

2007-12-10T11:37:00.001-05:00

Wondering what to give and what to receive this year?

Consider The Gift of Nothing!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

2007-12-10T11:23:00.000-05:00

Ah, isn't that the eternal question, though?

This was sent along (compliments of the Internet) by Ana Abbasi, a very bright Smith College student taking my class through the Five College Program. She knows we love chickens, and she obviously has our sense of humor.

DR. PHIL:
The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.

OPRAH:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH:
We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

COLIN POWELL:
Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road...

ANDERSON COOPER - CNN:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

NANCY GRACE:
That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART:
No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die in the rain. Alone.

JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth?' That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA:
In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

JOHN LENNON:
Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

BILL GATES:
I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra...#@&&^(C% ........ reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE:
I invented the chicken!

COLONEL SANDERS:
Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY :
Where's my gun?

AL SHARPTON:
Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

A rooster too far

2007-10-08T22:05:00.000-04:00

What to do with three extra roosters? That's what we have now, as a result of letting an Araucana hen set on the eggs last spring.

We've been through the reverse-poultry-polygamy, ie the more-than-one rooster thing in the past, and we don't want to repeat that.

The first time around it was okay; the beta rooster was an amiable Jerry Zipkin type (you remember him, the guy who "walked" Nancy Reagan to parties when Ronnie was too addled to leave the house?). He got along nicely with the ladies, and seemed content to play second fiddle to the big buff orphington.

But mostly, it's a hassle. These ones are already fighting. In fact, they were only a few weeks old when they started chest-butting each other. We considered putting them up on Craigslist (category: SUCKERS WANTED)

Then I stumbled on this idea, from the it's-so-crazy-it-just-might-work file of warfare. I'm surprised that the Bushies haven't thought of this.

Even chickens get the blues

2007-10-01T13:19:00.000-04:00

We get blue eggs every day, but we haven't heard of blue chickens.

The five mile diet

2007-09-22T16:58:00.000-04:00

Not to get too twee about things, but the Saturday hunting and gathering expeditions don't get any better than they are in late summer early fall in western Mass.

What a good food day it was today. I realized that, combined with our own eggs, we are able to eat a lot of locally-generated food.

The corn is, remarkably enough, still really good, and we're talking yellow corn, not just Silver Queen. Tomatoes and eggplant from Deerfield, shiitake mushrooms from Colrain, of all places, and potatoes dug this morning from Hicks's Farm on the Mohawk Trail. Goat cheese spread from Goat Rising in Charlemont, maple syrup from Norman Hicks and Davenport's in Shelburne.

Half the places I bought all this stuff didn't even have cash registers, just a cash box where you left the money.

Not many places you can still do that.

The Times Hearts Chickens

2007-09-19T13:09:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has definitely discovered chickens. What took them so long?

Not long ago there was a piece on the growing popularity of free range chickens, now today comes a piece about urban coopsters....

The eggs are back and so am I

2007-04-04T16:57:00.000-04:00

We are back in the happy situation of having two dozen eggs in the fridge: Angel Cake! Popovers! Fritattas!

Yes, the gals are laying again--even the blind Barred Rock at the low end of the pecking order. Thank God. You know that book The $64 Tomato? Well, I was about to send out a book proposal for The $18 Egg. Chicken-keeping reconsidered.

This year, we are ordering four Araucanas and two Barred Rocks from Murray McMurray. Our days of going for the puffs and polish and brahmas may be gone--we just want sturdy girls who get along.

Meanwhile, all the world loves a chicken--at a workshop last week at Storey Publishing in North Adams, I got to check out the hundreds of books they publish, including this terrific book on chicken coops.

Also, a book called Keep Chickens looked like a lot of fun.

Google sent me this chicken nugget from the website GoVeg.com:

Bird Brain’ Is a Compliment
Several recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals, able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats or dogs and even do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, “As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys.” Dr. John Webster of Bristol University found that chickens are capable of understanding cause and effect and that when chickens learn something new, they pass on that knowledge (i.e., they have what scientists call “culture”).

How does your IQ compare to that of a chicken?

The interpreter

2006-12-07T14:12:00.000-05:00

When we first started keeping chickens, I would hear these screeches coming from the henhouse and go running out to see what was going on. They sounded so awful, I was certain they were under attack by a fisher or a fox.

I'd get out there, and I'd find one bird in the laying box and the other one (the screecher) wanting to use the occupied one rather than the empty one right next to it. Said screech was not a call of DANGER!, rather it was the equivalent of "Come on, hurry up bitch, I gotta get in there!"

Over the years, I have come to know what the different screeches mean (one more clue as to just how pathetic my life has become). Sometimes they're out scratching around the woods and one will get separated from the flock. There's a screech that says "HEY, WHERE'D EVERYBODY GO?" That always results in a callback from the flock.

There's another that tells you: the pellet bowl is empty, and would you please get off your duff and fill it?

Now I know when something is really wrong in the henhouse, and when it's just a little hen-fight going on.

As you read this, another bird call may come to mind: cuckoooo!

But! I offer you this from a brochure a nice young Vegan gave to me today outside the Student Union:

"Contrary to what one may hear from the industry, chickens are not mindless, simple automata, but are complex behaviorally, do quite well in learning, show a rich social organization, and have a diverse repertoire of calls. Anyone who has kept barnyard chickens also recognizes their significant differences in personality."

Bernard E. Rollin PhD
Farm Animal Welfare
Iowa State University Press, 2003

A fellow traveler. Here's the site: OpposeCruelty.org

The price of eggs

2006-12-07T14:01:00.000-05:00

Years ago I wrote a story about a third generation Franklin County dairy farmer who was going out of business, one of hundreds of New England dairymen who sold off their herds in the past two decades.

As he sat on the porch of his ramshackle house looking out over a million-dollar view, over hayfields toward the southern hills, he mentioned what, 'til that point, was the strangest part of the whole thing: for the first time in either of their lives, the old timer and his wife had to go to a store to buy a gallon of milk.

I have thought about that guy every time I've gone shopping over the past month or so, because the ladies have stopped laying.

On strike.

The Big "No Hay" on the huevos.

We haven't had an egg in at least six weeks.

They do this every year, of course, but still. They keep eating their pellets.

"Maybe we need a new flock," says Dan. "Time to get rid of them."

Nooooo! I say in my most Mister Billish voice.

I was in the egg section at Foster's Supermarket the other night when I heard a similar exchange between a husband and wife.

"Ticks me off that we gotta buy eggs," says the guy.

"It' just temporary, they'll be back," says the wife, perusing over the whites and browns.

Listening to the food chain

2006-10-07T16:07:00.000-04:00

This morning, just after the rooster started crowing, we heard a different sound from the woods down below: coyotes howling.

The rooster crowed again.

The coyotes howled again.

Crow.

Howl.

Crow.

Howl.

Rooster. Coyotes. The call and response of the food chain.

Life and death, part II

2006-10-07T15:45:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday we figured we'd be down one hen by this Saturday, and we are.

Remember that sign Michael Moore comes across in a Flint, Michigan backyard in "Roger and Me," that reads: "Rabbits for sale: for pets or meat"? When you've got backyard chickens, that becomes a question: Which is it, pets or meat?

Years ago when we realized we had two alpha roosters who kept fighting each other, my friend Pat offered a solution: Coq Au Vin. I was horrified! But then I realized: keeping chickens may be chic, but it is not for sissies.

This has come into full relief in the past few days, as we debated the fate of the one-eyed hen in the cellar. We're only half-joking when we muse over whether our local glassblower Josh Simpson would accept a commission to create a tiny glass eye for her.

Could we get her a tiny chicken eyepatch?

We were thinking we'd have to put her down.What to do? Take her out into the woods and leave her there? Ring her neck? We couldn't do it.

Then she started to rally. The antibiotics might have kicked in, or maybe just relaxing in the cellar window--the hen spa. She's still missing an eye, but she doesn't seem to bump into things as much.

Then I brought her out to the flock and, the rooster took after her again. We could be facing the poultry version of "Lord of the Flies."

This leads us to the term "pecking order." From Merriam Webster's: "the basic pattern of social organization within a flock of poultry in which each bird pecks another lower in the scale without fear of retaliation and submits to pecking by one of higher rank" (Hey, sounds like your last job, right?)

But here is the strange thing: we lost a bird this week, but it wasn't the Barred Rock who got the crap pecked out of her. It was a Blue Andalusian who, yesterday, seemed fine.

What the chic-est chickens are wearing this season

2006-10-04T17:29:00.000-04:00

I was joking about finding a tiny eyepatch for the one-eyed hen, but apparently, accessorizing your chickens is not a new idea.

Egg Scrambler sent this along:

This from one of my loopier design web sites:

In 1936, Diana Vreeland began a column in Harper’s Bazaar titled “Why Don’t You…” which dispensed inspirational tidbits in her typically broad style.
Such bons mots included:
“Why don’t you…tie black tulle bows on your wrists?”
“…raise chickens and let them wear tiny bowties around the barnyard?”
“…wash your child’s hair in champagne?”
“…build a private staircase from your bedroom to your library and cover the stairs in needlepoint?”
“…have your bed made in China?”
The column was widely read, ridiculed and imitated.

Life and death

2006-10-01T14:51:00.000-04:00

"You're not going to put this in your blog, are you?" my husband asked.

"Nah!" I lied.

He was working in the cellar when one of the tough old Barred Rock hens came up to cellar door and started to come in; he shooed her off before he realized that she had a huge gash in her head, in fact, much of the skin on the back of her head had been stripped. And one eye was either missing, or so bruised that she couldn't open it.

Dan thought the rooster had done it--he's prone to rough sex in the driveway--actually, he's one of the most sexually active roosters we've ever had. But he figured it out too late. After he shooed her away, we went looking for her around the yard and the woods, but couldn't find her anywhere.

We resigned ourselves to the idea that she'd gone off into the woods to die. We've lost five or six birds since we began keeping chickens four years ago, and it's still a sad event. I once held an injured Blue Andalusian chick in my hands and felt her last jolt of life. Other times, you find them out in the coop.

Sunshine, our big old Buff Orpington rooster, just keeled over one day out in the yard. Sometimes birds die and you don't even know why.

So we went to some friends' house for dinner with the thought that we'd never see that Barred again.

Then we came home around 10:30, and there she was, sitting on top of the coop, looking like something out of a bad cartoon, one eyelid bloodied shut, the back of her head and neck a black ooze of blood an pus. All that was missing was the little crown of stars rotating over her head!

We brought her into the cellar and made her a box, fed her some water and crunched up pellets, and she started to come around a little. Today, she's still a scraggly mover--we don't know whether she'll make it, but she has at least survived another day.

I thought: sometimes, this is what your life becomes: midnight on a Saturday night and you're down in the cellar, nursing a one-eyed chicken.

She's doing it for the chickens!

2006-09-24T21:50:00.000-04:00

Jerry's kids have Jerry.

Chickens? Well, they have...Oh, you won't believe who.

As career moves go, this one's brilliant.

But if you're going to eat 'em, don't name 'em

2006-09-24T21:36:00.000-04:00

I was sick last week, but when I was finally able to eat, my kid made me supper: French toast with our own eggs and maple syrup made up in Newfane, Vermont. Now that's a meal that can bring you back from the dead.

This is one reason why I love having chickens: the fantastic eggs, rich and bright yellow. And people are figuring that out, as an eagle-eyed reader from Oklahoma noted this piece from USA Weekend:

FOWL FAD

The year's trendiest pet comes with breakfast.
Chickens cost between $1 to $5 each and can lay up to six eggs a week.

It seems the "Old Farmer's Almanac" was correct when it predicted that chickens would be one of the hottest pets of 2006. Demand for the birds is up in urban areas because of their low cost, minimal care requirements and the benefit of cheap, fresh eggs every day.

"Our average order keeps getting smaller, which means we're selling to more hobbyists," says Bud Wood, co-owner of Webster City, Iowa's Murray McMurray Hatchery, one of the country's largest rare-breed hatcheries. He notes a "significant increase" in sales to large cities.

Egganic Industries in Ringgold, Va., reports a 15% jump in sales of Henspas, chicken coops that range in cost from $300 to $9,000. Linnton Feed & Seed, suppliers of farm products in Portland, Ore., sold just 200 chickens in 1996; last year they sold 800.

"People raise chickens [mostly] for their eggs," says store owner Dan Cadmus. "They want to know where their food comes from. There's no better way than to have it pecking around in the yard."

Chickens cost $1 to $5 each and can produce up to six eggs per week. They need about the same care as cats: food, water and a daily scoop of the coop.

Seattle Tilth, a non-profit group that teaches organic gardening, now offers City Chickens 101, a course covering the basics on raising chickens in urban and suburban settings.

Still, check local zoning requirements before buying a flock. Regulations vary widely for hens, but roosters, which don't lay eggs, often are banned.

"Once you've tasted an egg that a hen has laid that morning," says Seattle Tilth's Karen Luetjen, "there's no going back to supermarket eggs."

-- Jodi Helmer

Know your eggs

Don't want to raise chickens to get the eggs you need? Then get the eggs you want at supermarkets, which stock an increasingly wide variety.

We consulted the U.S. Department of Agriculture and United Egg Producers to clarify egg carton labels.

Conventional: Hens live in stacked "battery" cages, usually four to eight chickens to a cage, with at least 67 square inches of floor space per chicken.

Cage free: Hens live on the floor of a barn rather than in cages.

Free range: Hens either live outdoors or have unlimited access to the outdoors.

Organic: Hens are fed vegetables grown without any antibiotics, commercial fertilizers or growth hormones.

Omega-3: Hens are fed a diet containing ground flaxseed, which produces eggs containing slightly more polyunsaturated fatty acids.

-- Kristina Stefanova

Chickens today, people tomorrow?

2006-09-14T08:38:00.000-04:00

"We have to eat happy eggs from happy chickens."
Thich Nhat Hanh

Apparently, Ben and Jerry's have come around to this sentiment, having now agreed to use humanely-produced eggs in their products.

The Times article also pointed out that Whole Foods Market was making accommodations to make their lobsters "more comfortable in its stores."

Er, before people buy 'em, take them home, and plunk them into pots of boiling water. But I digress.

I'm all for ethical treatment of chickens. But jeez, if only foodies would get as riled up about ethical treatment of humans.

A few years ago I heard then-Dateline NBC producer Andy Court speak at a journalism conference about a story in which he and his camera crew followed a migrant farm worker from Texas as he made his way north with his family for the picking season.

After thousands of miles of travel, long days and weeks of picking, lots of problems with the broken-down van, the family arrived back in Texas, with no more money than they had when they left.

Viewers were so moved by the report, that they sent the network thousands of dollars in donations to help the family.

But that story is the norm in our food production and distribution system. Pick up the book Fast Food Nation and you'll see it also applies to meat production. It was big news last year when Taco Bell increased payments to its tomato pickers by a penny per pound. But this step almost doubled the wage; according to the Washington Post, pickers had to pick two tons of tomatoes to earn $50.

If Americans are willing to send a farm worker a check for 25 or 50 bucks, would they pay an extra quarter for a jar of pickles if they knew that the cucumber pickers had been paid a decent wage?

Why not a Certified Humane label that indicates that the farm and food factory workers are treated at least as well as the chickens?

La Reine de Palais de Poulets

2006-09-12T13:22:00.000-04:00

What, you were thinking Marie Antoinette?

Here's a pic sent in as a chicken blog "must have," from Peter down in Connecticut, who had the good fortune to sit behind Martha at a showing of "Capote" at the local movie theater earlier this year, and pronounced her "better looking in person than she is on t.v."

I can't be sure, but that might actually be a guinea hen in her arms.

I used to make fun of Martha, but as I get older, I like her more; her magazine is beautiful, and okay, if she still gets a little over the top with the stencils and projects, well, that's just Martha.

One year she had a great story on fancy Christmas wreaths--too much work. I just cut the pages out and hung the pictures of the wreaths up around my house.

You decorate your house with the army you have.

My sister Sandy thinks it was Martha who started this whole chicken thing, and then I remembered her first book and the Palais de Poulets (for you unwashed, that's palace of chickens in French), which she had in her backyard. She also single-handedly pumped up the market for Araucanas, who lay those lovely blue eggs and, who also, I think, happen to be among the smartest birds in the flock.

Coops are a subject of endless discussion among chicken owners. We are on our second one now, and recently ran into the couple who bought our original coop, and were glad to hear they were still happy with it.

They had set up a laying box, using the green luminescent shell of an I-Mac, and said the birds LOVED laying in it.

Now that's recycling.

Chicken Lit 101

2006-09-07T17:14:00.000-04:00

New York Times readers are probably familiar with Bill Grimes's My Fine Feathered Friend, his book about the chicken who showed up one day in his Queens backyard.

Grimes's work is but one piece of a growing body of chicken lit.

In his book, Living With Chickens, Vershire, Vermont, author Jay Rossier writes almost as much about the metaphysical value of chicken ownership as he does nuts-and- bolts information.

British author Martin Gurdon, in his droll poultry-memoir, Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance: Reflections on Raising Chickens, sums things up nicely:

"Having a few hens at the bottom of the garden was supposed to be a bit of fun, a mild distraction, but it was fast becoming a life-changing experience."

Can a Woman Love Her Chickens Too Much? (Holiday rerun)

2006-09-07T16:53:00.000-04:00

Go ahead and laugh, but it's a question worth asking. When I published this essay asking that very question in the local paper recently, I got a lot of responses.

For a couple of days, at the grocery store, at the post office, everywhere I went, people would come up to me and say, "So, how are the chickens?"

Then they'd tell me their own chicken stories. There are a million of 'em.

The big, brawny police chief in the next town told me that, when he was a kid, he lived next to a chicken farm that had several thousand hens and 500 roosters.

It made me think of a fortune cookie: Man who lives next to 500 roosters (fill in the blank).

But today I heard the capper, sent to me from my friend Bill, a closet chicken lover who lives in Santa Monica:

Cops: Chicken dies, wife shoots husband

September 6, 2006

CHESHIRE, Ore. --A woman shot her husband in the back after he killed her pet chicken, the Lane County sheriff's deputies said. Deputies said they were sure that Mary Gray, 58, intended to shoot her husband, Stephen Gray, 43. They weren't certain if the husband meant to fire at the chicken.

"We don't know if it was an accident or if it was on purpose," Sgt. Clint Riley said. "It depends who you ask."

Riley said the couple had been drinking for much of Monday while they did yard work at their rented home in the town northwest of Eugene, and they began arguing after Stephen Gray shot the chicken with a .44-caliber handgun.

Deputies said he was then hit with a shot from a .22-caliber rifle, and is recovering. Mary Gray was arraigned Tuesday on an assault charge.

Hmmm.