Hen Obsessed.

Keeping house with my indoor and my outdoor flocks.

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Feeders and drinkers.

This evening, I opened two enormous boxes from Amazon. What a thrill.

First, a two-gallon four-nipple water bucket that has a hole in the top so you can fill it directly with a hose! The previous waterer was a disaster. Like an annoying conversation that refuses to get to the point. You fill a bucket with water and flip it over and click a tray onto the top so that when you flip it back over, the water pours into the tray. This convoluted notion caused me nothing but heartache. The screw-on mechanism was a bunch of bullshit and I found myself trying to grip the water-filled bucket with my knees whilst screwing on the tray and the whole thing would drench me and was just ridiculous. Then the girls would knock it over, anyhow, and I’d find them without water on a sweltering 99 degree afternoon. No good. I’m deeply excited about the new watering prospects. It’s also a possibility I’m getting my hopes up.  

Behold, in all her glory:

The second box, drum roll please, was one hell of an investment: ladies and gentleman, a Grandpa’s feeder! Hurray! The Cadillac of feeders! The creme-de-la-creme! We will impress all our poultry friends and neighbors! (Beat that, chicken Joneses.) Picture a stainless steel (rodents can eat through plastic, those nasty marvels) breadbox with a step in front. Food goes in the breadbox. Breadbox opens when the chicken presses on the step and the chickens dine but not the mice. Ingenious. And it only takes 3 weeks to train the chickens to eat out of the thing!  

(I told Jesse, at this rate, I might as well teach them to also play the Star Spangled Banner on Ruthie’s kid-zylaphone.)

Here she is, the feeder of dreams:

But I don’t want to be one of those people who acts all cocky about a product before I even have it put together, who thinks an actual item-for-sale can buy me happiness, but the reviews on this item were nothing less than powerful. This feeder changes lives!

Anything is better than the one we have now. The girls like to climb into the bowl where the food is stored and use it as a poultry toilet. Yuck. The waterer is the exact same concept, except the water goes into the top part, which is closed at the top while this one is open at the top.

We’ll start the official feeder-training regiment when we return from a trip to Breckenridge next week. 

I’ll report my thoughts,findings and opinions then. 

(And I’m quite sure countless people will be sitting anxiously on their hands until then.)

(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016AO5GAI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TXW0UQK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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Nothing says “Backyard Elegance” like a tarp-covered chicken run.

It’s obviously not perfect, but at least the girls are safe to run and frolic without becoming hawk-food. Jesse ordered a more sightly netting to install, and we are waiting for that to arrive.

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With the loss of their natural habitat, more wildlife are entering urban settings. Some of these wildlife are predators of poultry....

Stay away from my girls, predators. 

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This is our sweet Florence who died about a week ago from a hawk.

She looked like a golden retriever who was reincarnated as a bird. She was, by far, the classiest of the four. It was like she's always judging the other three for being too spazzy.

What we learned from her is this: the chicken run DOES need a roof, goddamit.

As rookies, we asked a ton of questions as we were getting set up, and the feedback was mixed about whether or not we’d need a roof on our run. (To be clear on the lingo, a chicken ‘coop’ is pretty small, at least ours is. It includes an enclosed area ‘upstairs’ where the hens sleep, as well as a fenced-in bottom area, that’s like a playpen and holds their water and food. They can eat and drink freely during the day, but when we put them to bed in the evening, around 7pm, we store the food elsewhere so it doesn’t attract rodents and such during the night.)

The girls also need a run to roam around and play and scratch and peck and do all their wonderful chicken rituals. So we fenced off a nice wide space in the corner of our yard that connects to the pen-part of the coop. It is nestled in the shade and safety of our Russian olive tree. Lots of rocks to climb on and leaves to tear up. We put sand down for them to dust-bath in and to make poop clean-up a little easier.

(You can see both sides of the coop in these photos. We climb over the fence into the run using two iron chairs pushed back-to-back. I have the tarp pulled back when I am sitting right with them, but close it again when I am not out there on predator-duty.)

We were told by a handful of experienced chicken-goers that predators are only really a concern during the morning and in the evening hours, so that’s when we’ve had our girls in the bottom of the coop.

Not so. We didn’t think about the aerial predators. (And neither did anyone we asked.) 

Last Wednesday, we left the girls out in the run for a few hours to go to the library. When we returned, Opal ran out back to check on them and that’s where she found Florence, very dead. She stood and stared for a good, long stretch before it hit her what happened. (Later, she told us that she thought one of the girls had just lost a bunch of feathers. Until she saw Florence’s foot.) 

Luckily, the gore was underneath and Opal really only saw the feathers on top. After giving it some thought, I was surprised that the hawk didn’t just take Florence completely, snatch her up to leave us perplexed and wondering. And also that it didn’t get any of the other girls.

Needless to say, Opal shed many tears in Florence’s honor. We held her and told stories of the sweet bird that we had the good fortune to know for ten days. We buried Florence’s mangled body in the rose garden by the chicken run and put a garden statue of a sleeping kitten on top, to keep squirrels from digging her up.

For the rest of the evening, the hawk perched on our fence, bullying the other hens with it’s threatening stare. But we kept them safely in their coop while we made a plan for a roof. Eventually, he got bored and left. 

A few days later, while we were swinging in the backyard, I looked up and saw the hawk was floating above. He was so far away I thought he was a plane at first glance. He barely moved his wings. I wondered if he could possibly see from that far up. How remarkable his eyes must be. 

As Opal said, “I hate that hawk. But at the same time, he’s a really beautiful bird.” And smart as hell.

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This is Harriet at nine weeks. (Notice: the eyes.)

She is the one I fell in love with first. 

We drove to Keanesburg, CO, on June 4th (coined “Chicken Day” from here on out) to buy some young hens from a woman at her private residence that sat on an expansive farm property. Everything was covered in a layer of dust and the air smelled distinctly of hard work. (The feed store we planned to go to for our chickens was closed on Sunday, a fact that we didn’t realize until Saturday night. And we put all our money on Sunday being THE DAY so thank god for Facebook and the Colorado Chicken group for connecting me with this woman and saving the day.)

The woman brought out a handful of older birds—12 weeks?—to choose from, carrying them unceremoniously by their ankles. She put them in a pen for us to have a look. 

My first thought was, oh no. None of them were speaking to me at all. None of them had the character or personality I was hoping for. But there was Opal standing next to me with these huge, expectant eyes and we drove almost an hour to get here and what a disappointment to go home empty-handed after three months of preparations and Chicken Day was finally here...

The woman said she had some younger ones, too. She disappeared around the corner and returned with the one we now call Harriet. She plopped Harriet on top of the crate the older ones were in. Harriet lied her body down in the sun, placid and relaxed like a cat in the window. 

That’s the one, I said. Thank all that is good and wonderful.

Do you have more from her flock, same age? 

(It’s important to get them at the same age so there is no dominance issues. It’s also important to get them from the same flock so there is no cross-contamination of germs.)

Yep, she said. Sure do.

And thus, a feathered family was born.

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Welcome to my new life with chickens!

These four chickens, to be specific. Well, now there’s three because the gold one in front got eaten by a hawk, but more on that later. (RIP, precious little Florence Nightingale.) 

Our three girls are named Harriet Tubman, Temple Grandon and Frida Kahlo, from left to right. Since we are only allowed hens in our town—six hens per yard, and no roosters—you can expect some wonderful, powerful female names to come into our coop. All named by Opal.

The two weeks since we got these little ladies have been a crash course. I researched for months before we actually got them—I read everything I could find online, I took a class, I talked with the staff at Jax ad naseum—but, as with everything, nothing compares to the actual doing of it. 

Now they are eleven weeks old. In that gangly teenage phase between fluff and real feathers. But the good thing about being a chicken, at least I presume, is that you don’t have to be bothered with the self-judgment that runs rampant throughout the human teenage years.

Harriet, far left, has a perpetually anxious look on her face and tail feathers that are laced with gray. She's our easter egger and she’ll lay green eggs once she’s old enough. (Egg laying happens at about 20-25 weeks.) She’s the tallest and seems to have the strongest opinions. Like a female gym teacher that always wears a whistle.

It appears that Temple and Flo are in the middle of a bro-hug in the photo here. Temple, on the left, looks like she's about to get caught for embezzling funds. Not sure what breed she is, but Flo was a Buff Orpington. Frida, who is in the back being an 'artist'—as in, eccentric and a bit of a loner—is a Rhode Island Red. 

Much to learn about caring for these sweet babies. And while there are a ton of resources out there about having backyard chickens, I found myself totally overwhelmed by all the perspectives and opinions. Much like with parenting,  we live in an era of information overload. So I’m justing taking it one step at a time.

Hopefully this blog can be a place where people can come for discerned information, helpful links and facts, but ALSO to observe and appreciate the world these little creatures help to create. 

There is real poetry in the act of having a closer look.