how i became a crazy chicken lady

note: i posted a version of this post over on my main blog, but since i've shared most of our chicken adventures here, i wanted to post here as well, since not everyone reads both. i did make a few changes as well, so it's not completely the same.

as you all know, we got nine hens and three roosters last summer. i was a bit skeptical of keeping chickens, since they don't seem to be the brightest animals around, but the lure of fresh eggs was too great. we got two nordic heritage breeds - danish land chickens and black swedish ones. and i got a bit of a kick out of them, way more than i thought i would. late in the winter, several of them became broody. pretty soon, the nest boxes were full of broody hens and the egg production had ground to a halt. husband built an addition at the back of chez poulet. all that early brooding resulted in one single little chick, just in time for easter.

he's now grown into a funny, motley rooster that's clearly a combination of both breeds. until his mother hatched out more chicks recently, he was even still getting in with her at night, sitting on top of her in the nest box, tho' he was getting far too big for that. now he's bottom rooster and has to content himself with a corner of the perch, rather far from everyone else. poor dear.

in recent weeks, the five brown hens have managed to hatch out another 14 chicks - 4 little brown ones and 10 black (which i suspect will be combination chickens like the motley rooster - as one of the brown roosters is top dog). the black hens were clearly very sneaky at getting their eggs under the brooding brownies, getting them to do all of the work of hatching out the chicks. we are consequently referring to the chicks all as SHE this time around, as we want them to be future hens. we certainly don't need another rooster around here. in fact, in the near future, one or two are going to be dinner.

there were 5 little brown chicks, but they killed off the first one that had hatched out. he did seem to be a little bit off in the eyes, so we think they knew something we didn't, tho' i was still unaccountably sad about it when i found him. it has made me a bit worried about the rest, so whenever i need a break from writing and editing and planning workshops, i head out to check on them. at the beginning, i needed gloves to lift the brooding hens, but now i just ignore their attempts to peck me and unceremoniously lift them up with my bare hands to see what's going on with the eggs. i find little peeps and help them find their mama again when they've wandered too far away into the tall grass. in other words, i perform all the duties of a crazy chicken lady. i can almost see the hens rolling their eyes at me.

the chicks are of varying ages, hatched out several weeks apart, but there are four brown hens sharing the tending duties between them. there's still one brown hen, sitting on a nest that's down to 7 eggs - and one more hatches every few days. then, when they're big enough to jump down from the nest box, they go and join the others and one of the tending mamas takes them in. the little motley rooster does a mighty duty in chasing the over-interested cats away and thus far, all the chicks have been safe thanks to his efforts. it really does seem to take a village to raise the chicks.

it's funny, when i rushed in to google all i could about the hatching out, care and tending of baby chicks, i found all kinds of scary scenarios and if i'd believed it, i'd have thought it was nearly impossible to let your hens hatch out their own chicks and have them survive. and i didn't find any advice that said you could let them remain in the henhouse with the others - which we have done (we tried to move them into the addition at the back, but they didn't want that). the chickens manage to do it all on their own, totally naturally. for all my worries and fussing, they don't even really need help from the crazy chicken lady.

nature is cool.

chicken lessons

i've mentioned our chickens before. it's not too long before we'll have had them for a whole year! and what a lot we've learned. i've learned to keep the terrace door closed so that they can't come in and make themselves at home (they also tend to eat the cat food while they're there).

we've not had to buy eggs for months, except for a couple of weeks during the coldest part of the winter when they crossed their little chicken legs and held those eggs inside.

we've had broody hens and tho' we had our doubts, it has resulted in an actual, live chick!  the chick is one of the little black swedish ones (no idea yet if it's a boy or a girl), tho' the mama is a brown danish hen. one of the black hens must have slipped it in under her when she was off the nest. we've noticed that they like to do that. in the end, she was sitting on 4 eggs, but only 1 hatched.

tho' our chickens live in a palace of a chicken coop called chez poulet, they run around wherever they want during the day, totally free range. and with three hens currently broody and taking up 3 of our 5 nest boxes, this has meant stashes of eggs here and there, since the laying hens find it too crowded in there. i found one stash of 12 and another one today of 5, but i'm sure there are other locations i haven't found.

husband decided on the weekend to remedy that by building a brooding addition onto the back of chez poulet. when i got home this evening, it was nearly dark and he was putting the finishing touches on it. tomorrow, i will fill it with straw and move the three laying hens and whatever eggs they're sitting on out there. it will also be a good place for them to be with their little ones once they hatch, as our mama above needed to be separated from the others for about a week and they needed a heat lamp. interestingly, she chose herself when to move back into the main coop. those hens are smarter than they look.

and that's probably been the biggest lesson we've learned. chickens aren't as dumb as we thought they were. they're actually quite organized, have a huge vocabulary, take care of their babies and are a great help spreading out horse and rabbit poo in the garden. i don't know how we ever got along with them.

charming chickens

svensk sortehøns (black swedish chickens) - this rooster (aptly named "blackie") is my favorite.

as you know, we got chickens back in june. and then husband built them a veritable mansion that we dubbed chez poulet, because it's so fancy. the coop has two entrances - one into a totally enclosed area, where we give them table scraps and one into a back yard, where they can fly (and yes, i assure you they can fly, tho' it's not the most elegant sight) over it and get out to explore.

in fact, they were letting themselves out to explore so often, that we've just left the gate open of late, to make it easier for them. it's nice to have them wandering in the garden, cleaning up, tho' i have found them as far afield as over in the shelter belt near our bees. but charmingly enough, they come running from wherever they are when you go out there and talk to them. i hadn't expected that. they're really quite charming. and a bit funny. and their plumage makes a perfect fall fashion statement.

dansk landhøns (danish land chickens)

the three roosters can spend hours trying to outdo one another with their cries of cock-a-doodle-doo. and the other day one hen was a rather insistently clucking midwife to another one who was in the nest and clearly laying an egg. it was as if she were a little chicken cheerleader. later, i realized it may have been more of a complaint, because i found that hen in the same box, laying an egg of her own, so she was probably just telling that other hen to hurry up. there are five nest boxes, but as they've begun to lay eggs, i've noticed that they stick to the first one and the fourth one. it's hard to know what chickens are thinking, so i'm not sure why that is.

we're getting 2-3 eggs a day and they're starting to be a little bit larger now (they were pretty tiny at first). i've already checked an all-eggs cookbook out of the library, as once all 9 hens start laying, we're going to be eating a whole lot of eggs around here! at the moment, we can keep up.

in all, i'm enjoying this chicken thing much more than i thought i would. they're easy to have around. plus, we've cut back significantly on the amount of garbage that goes into our bin on a weekly basis, because so many scraps go to them - the only thing we don't give them is chicken, but otherwise, all greens, leftover rice or couscous, cheese, other kinds of meat go to them, anything we didn't manage to eat all of ourselves. in return, we get plenty of eggs and quite a lot of amusement.

chez poulet

the chicken enclosure was finished this week, so we could finally move our chickens from the rabbit hutch where they were temporarily living over to chez poulet, their posh chicken coop. the outdoor part is lined with zinc, repurposed from an old refrigerated container that was on our property, to make it rat-proof. apparently rats love eggs. we haven't seen any rats here at our place, but we have seen them at the stable next door, so they're in the neighborhood.

i was able to pick up the black swedish chickens yesterday - four hens and a rooster. they're completely black - including their combs. i read that even their meat is black! but we want them for the eggs. they're a bit smaller than the others, but they seem to get along quite peacefully when we put them together.

the dansk landhøns have really grown since we got them. they're nearly ready to begin laying eggs. and now they've got nesting boxes all lined with straw, ready for them to begin.

the black swedish rooster. i think he's actually quite cute.

husband got to indulge his inner engineer on this project and he has built a rather ingenious door that we can lower to let them out during the day.

he was inspired by castles and draw bridges, i suspect.  he didn't even spend endless hours looking at designs online (like someone else in this family would), he said he had a vague picture in his head and he just started building it, modifying along the way as he encountered problems. i do admire that about him.

the chickens were pretty suspicious about going in last evening, but we managed, between the two of us to shoo them in. we want them in at night, so they don't get eaten by a fox, tho' husband has built quite a secure enclosure, so they should be ok anyway.

the door is raised and lowered by this handle on the outside.

here's how the mechanism looks on the inside. the chickens managed to open it sometime last night and let themselves out, so husband has made some more improvements so it can be locked into place and they can't get it open.

i couldn't resist showing you the beautiful door he made, repurposing one of those old round windows we've collected. it really is a cool chicken coop.  on the righthand side of this photo, you can see the turning device for the door that's on the other side, where there will also be a pen they can be let out into. but that will be for another day. you can see he used a bit of a different design on that side.

woody was pretty interested in the whole project. he was wondering if they were a bit big to be an afternoon snack.

let the chicken adventure begin

at last, progress was made on our chicken coop this weekend. it's just been a foundation for awhile, but now it's beginning to look like an actual building with a roof and everything! those poles sticking up at the back are for the fenced enclosure where they'll be able to be outside. according to danish law, you have to have even the outdoor areas completely enclosed, in case there's a bird flu scare - so you can keep your chickens separate from wild birds.  it will also undoubtedly help secure the chickens against the mama fox and her two babies that i've seen meandering in our field in the evenings.

i, of course, couldn't wait to get the chickens 'til their coop was done, so i found an ad in the blå avis (our craig's list equivalent) and went off on a chicken acquisition mission. i think i was also hoping to speed up the building process on the chicken coop a bit by having the actual chickens waiting in the wings, as it were.  luckily, they can live in the outdoor bunny cage 'til their coop is finished.

i went to the chicken farm, intending to get a 1.4 as they call it - four hens and a rooster - but while i was there, i was talked into one more hen and they threw in an extra rooster for free. there was also a possible commitment on my part to buy a very cute little pony, but thus far, we're just whispering about that.  we are going back to get some cool swedish black chickens that are a nordic heritage breed and good egg-layers - they weren't quite big enough (you couldn't tell which were boys and which were girls as of yet). the chickens we got are 2 months old and are dansk landhøns, another old nordic breed. tho' i do still want a couple of araucanas, which aren't a nordic breed (i need those martha stewart blue eggs).

the poultry farm was a marvelous place and next time i will take my camera (how i managed to get out the door without it is beyond me). they're raising all sorts of traditional nordic breeds and contributing to bringing them back to commercial viability. they also had all kinds of turkeys, guinea fowl and even some gorgeous peacocks! they were really fowl people! (sorry, i couldn't resist) i'm always so excited to meet people like that - people who are passionate about what they're doing, have loads of knowledge and enthusiasm for it and are contributing to sustainability. all of their birds had a great life, with lots of fresh air and outdoor space to run around in. they had electric fences to protect against the foxes and said they hadn't had any trouble with them.

it's funny, my high school boyfriend knew all about chickens (he'd been in "country school" 'til the 7th grade) and i remember teasing him endlessly and thinking he was a bit of a geek. and now, some thirty-odd years later, i find having chickens to be cool.