City Chickens in Windsor, Ontario

This just in from CBC News!

A new city committee will study the possibility that people in Windsor, Ont., should be allowed to raise chickens in their backyards.

City council decided at a regular meeting Monday night to strike the committee in response to local resident Steve Green's 15-page letter extolling the virtues of urban chickens.

The benefits Green listed in his letter dated Oct. 19 include better food security, increased access to protein and reduced greenhouse gases due to reduced food transportation costs.

Also, Green wrote, "Chickens make great pets."

I sure hope Mr. Green is successful: chickens really are awesome critters, and with nothing more complicated than a chain link dog run, a dog house type shelter and a couple of Rubbermaid-bin nesting boxes, they can be kept quite easily in a city back yard. They’re quieter than dogs, easier to contain than cats (not exactly *easy* to contain, but really, not too bad if you’ve got decent infrastructure), and … they lay eggs in return for their food!

A frequently mentioned concern is that their food will attract mice – but mice like dog and cat food, and nobody complains about that. A garbage bin for feed storage solves the problem nicely, anyway. Then there’s the manure … again, no worse than what dogs and cats leave behind, and in fact, it’s easier to deal with since it can be composted and used on the garden (not something you want to do with pet wastes).

Best wishes to Mr. Green in Windsor … Apple Jack Creek’s rooting for you!

A new chicken coop, made entirely of scraps and leftovers!

Chickens are wonderful animals. They don’t need much in the way of infrastructure or daily care, they give you eggs every day and chicks every so often, and chicken meat when you get around to butchering the roosters. They eat your kitchen scraps, devour grasshoppers and other bugs all summer, and are terrifically entertaining to watch. They’re so much fun, I think everyone should have a few. :)

Now, while chickens don’t need a whole lot in the way of infrastructure (especially when they are able to free-range safely, as they are here, protected by the guardian dogs), they do need a place to be warm and out of the wind, and a spot to lay eggs. We have the chicken tractors, which work quite nicely in the summer, but last winter we had some frozen toes and we wanted to come up with something a bit warmer for the hens in the cold of winter.

Some of the materials for our house construction project were delivered in a big 8x8x4 packing crate / pallet. We had covered it with wood ‘siding’ and a metal roof, and it has served as a wood shed/cat shelter/storage spot for the past four years. However, it’s not particularly attractive, and it wasn’t in a really good spot for a permanent structure so … it got repurposed as a chicken coop.

While the structure was still upright, we added some 2x4 boards for perches (I’ve read that in cold climates, chickens do better with flat perches so that they can tuck their toes under their bodies for warmth), a nesting shelf, and some access hatches. It was very peculiar working ‘sideways’: knowing the finished structure would be tipped over made perspectives a bit weird!

When the interior work was mostly done, the entire structure was  lifted (very carefully) on the bobcat forks and moved next to the garden, where it was tipped over onto a pile of old hay (we are big believers in the deep bedding method). Last but not least, the finishing touches were added: an access door (made of plexiglass, so that it serves as a window as well), sheathing on what used to be the bottom of the structure, and metal roofing on what used to be the back and is now the top.

 

The whole thing is actually big enough for an adult person to squeeze into (without standing up!) – it’s about 4 feet tall. I crawled around inside and spread out the hay bedding, then stuffed gaps with straw. It was nice and warm, out of the wind!

The north wall is insulated with straw, which is stuffed into the gaps in the pallet floor. The south wall is made of brown metal roofing, so hopefully it will warm up a little in the sunshine – we may upgrade it to a proper thermosiphon in a year or two. The bucket feeder hangs just inside the plexiglass door, so it will be easy to check and refill, and the chicken access door is on the west side, away from the prevailing winds.

 

It’s no Taj Mahal, but it is an excellent use of marginal scrap materials that might otherwise have been unusable. Chickens, fortunately, aren’t particularly hard on their housing (unlike sheep and cows, who rub and bang and crash into things fairly regularly), so that meant we could get away with somewhat less sturdy materials: we had some seriously warped and wonky wood that was suitable for the perches and various internal supports, and the egg and chicken doors are made from leftover bits of laminate flooring. The nest box floor is made from a leftover piece of engineered floor trusses. Those wooden I-beams, when laid sideways, have a nice raised edge, front and back, built right in. The roofing is left over from house construction, and we were able to use up some very odd shaped pieces and still cover the whole coop. Even most of the nails and screws are salvaged from other projects.

Once the siding on the house is finished (and it’s almost all done!), we will sheathe this structure with the leftover bits, so that it looks better and is more durable. 

One more addition will be a light: a light encourages egg production, and also provides a bit of extra warmth. We will install a canning jar ‘light fixture’ in the side of the coop and put it on a timer so that the hens get longer days and a bit of extra heat on chilly mornings. We had them in the chicken tractors, so this is something we already know how to do quickly (in fact, we may just move one of the lights from one of the tractors over).

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have eggs in the nest box … and not in the hay at the bottom of the coop!

Hatchlings

The mama hen that went broody a few weeks ago now has three baby chicks peeping under her warm feathers. :)

When the hen went broody, we put her in a large cage in the barn, where she could have darkness and quiet and warmth, and gave her five eggs to sit on. As of this afternoon, three had hatched – two fluffy yellow chicks that look like the drawings of baby chicks you see at Easter, and one little black chick. The other two eggs may yet hatch, we’ll see in the next day.

It’s always exciting to watch new life arrive!

(And yes, we’ve been very careful: the mama hen has a water bottle … there is *no* water dish in the cage!)

Learning as we go

Well, the hatchlings didn’t make it.

One died in the shell – we think it was stuck to the shell and couldn’t get loose, as the second one was definitely stuck to the shell – we helped him, though.

The second one made it out of the shell (with help – I know, you’re never supposed to help them, but it’d been 24 hours already and he was gonna die if we did nothing, so we figured it was worth a shot) and seemed to take forever to dry off and get going. He was cheeping loudly, though, and seemed very determined to live …

… until he drowned in the water dish.

Duh! We knew that could happen, but he was so slow to get up and moving that we just didn’t register that all of a sudden he *would* be up and moving and the dish was right there. Poor guy.

None of the other eggs show any signs of hatching, so we figure that given how many troubles we had sorting things out in our first run, probably no more will hatch … but we’ll give it until tomorrow to see.

The Reluctant Farmer is already investigating some modifications to the Eggabator to make it more successful next round – and we’ll be sure to take the water dish out at hatching time!

Hmm, maybe a sponge would work …

Whaddaya know, the eggabator works!

The Reluctant Farmer went to check the temperature on the eggabator just a bit ago, and noticed one of the eggs was tipped on it’s side a little.

“Hmm, it wasn’t like that before…”

A closer look showed a crack in the side and a little beak working it’s way through the shell. A few minutes later, a second egg started the same process.

So, we have two eggs in the process of hatching … very exciting!

TRF's DIY Eggabator

(The Reluctant Farmer's Do-It-Yourself Chicken Egg Incubator)

The Reluctant Farmer is the Chicken Guy around here: we all enjoy the eggs, we all enjoy having the chickens around, but they are his thing, really.



So, when he took it into his head that we need some more chicks (mostly to replace aging layers, and some to sell, or eat, as well), he also figured that the most cost effective way to go about this was to use an incubator and hatch out some of the fertilized eggs we have here. No need to buy day old chicks when you have a ready supply of hatchable eggs sitting in your hen houses!



However, incubators are expensive devices.



So, the obvious thing to do was to build one!



After much Googling, a trip to Canadian Tire and some digging around in the basement treasure trove of useful stuff, we have a functioning incubator:



It is a styrofoam cooler with a light fixture installed in the lid (from a damaged lamp), a computer fan (from Princess Auto, although I am not sure why it was purchased), a 12 volt adpater (of uncertain provenance), a thermometer (Canadian Tire), and a dish of water (from the Tupperware drawer). Oh, and a CD case.



The light fixture keeps the temperature inside warm enough to allow the eggs to develop: holes poked in the sides of the cooler allow us to adjust up or down - we poke more holes if it's too hot inside, and we stick tape over the holes if it gets too chilly. The water dish keeps the humidity high enough, and the fan circulates the warm air to keep the temperature even. The CD case became a window so we can check on the temperature (and, in 3 weeks, watch for hatching eggs!).


Pretty good for under $15, eh?



Check back in 3 weeks to see if we get hatchlings!

Chickens and food security

I just finished listening to a new audio book - One Second After, a story about what could happen if the United States was hit by an electro magnetic pulse weapon (a nuclear strike designed to knock out sensitive electronics). Communication goes out, vehicles that have electronic starters and components stop working, the power grid goes down. Fixing it takes months or years, not days.

Suddenly, people are not able to just go to the store to get what they need.

The book is a really interesting look at what could happen in a prolonged outage of 'normal services' - there are interesting characters and they find themselves in a difficult situation. The story has a fairly heavy focus on weaponry, but then, it is an American story after all, so that's understandable.

Still, one thing I noticed was that in this story, nobody had any chickens.

Chickens have to be one of the easiest routes to food security I can think of. If a household had say, one or two hens per person, and a rooster, that'd be a guaranteed supply of protein no matter how the rest of the world might go kablooie. Our chickens fend for themselves quite nicely most of the summer, eating bugs and weeds and such, and a little bit of grain or food scraps thrown their way rounds things out for them. A broody hen will give you chicks, some of which are bound to be roosters and therefore stew meat. With a very small investment of feed, you can ensure you've got eggs all year. If grain isn't available, well, chickens are omnivores - they'll eat mice (it's disgusting to watch, I admit), bits of dry bread, the crumbs from your dinner plate, and weeds you can gather in summer and hang to dry for a winter treat.

More and more cities are allowing urban chickens - no roosters, but a few hens can really make a big contribution to your household and with very little effort on your part.

Do you have a chicken in your yard? :)

The compost is steaming!

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last evening, it was pretty chilly outside (around 5 degrees C) and I looked out to see steam coming off the compost heap. I put on my shoes and went outside to hold my hand over the steaming spot, and sure enough, it was very warm!

This is great news - the compost pile is cooking nicely! That means we'll have good quality dirt from our barnyard waste. Way cheaper than getting it in big bales from Canadian Tire, and obviously the mix is richer this year than last - I think the addition of the cow manure has optimized the mix.

We've also started feeding the chickens on the pile - a scoop of grain is scattered along the top of the pile, and they scratch through it adding their own manure while helping to turn the top layer of the pile. And, they get to keep their feet warm while they are doing it!

Daily humour from The Reluctant Farmer

We had a broody hen hogging one of the nest boxes, and as a result chickens were laying eggs in other mysterious locations ... which we could not locate easily.

This was The Reluctant Farmer's suggestion:

I think we need to buy helmet cams for the chickens so we know where they're laying their eggs.

We'd need a pretty big screen to watch all the feeds simultaneously though.

The circle of life

We have too many roosters.

Last week, we actually had a hen killed by the roosters ... there were just too many of the boys interested in her. After putting the poor hen out of her misery, we decided that it was definitely time to reduce the rooster head count.

So, today we did our first butchering. Three roosters had their heads suddenly removed from the rest of their bodies, then they were hung up to drain and were partially plucked, skinned, and the best parts of the meat removed. It's not as efficient as fully plucking the bird, eviscerating it and roasting it whole, but it is a workable process.

The result was about 2 pounds of ground chicken and two chicken breasts (cut into bite sized pieces) in the freezer, and enough cubed chicken for supper for the three of us, with leftovers for someone's lunch.

The meat is definitely tastier than store bought chicken - there's much more flavour to it. We cubed the meat, marinated it in olive oil and spices and then fried it up, dredging with flour at the last minute creating a nice crisp coating.

Rooster for Sunday dinner.

The Reluctant Farmer and his Chickens

As you can see from the photo, the Reluctant Farmer is anything but reluctant when it comes to his chickens. :)

The new junior hens that he purchased are doing really well outside, the gray and white ones are Barred Rocks, and there's an Ameraucana hen who is very friendly and has the oddest looking green legs. There were three lovely Isa Brown hens, but we have only been able to locate one recently ... although we have had sightings of a hen that could possibly be the second one.


Egg production has been very low of late, which is normal come winter, especially with older chickens. The new junior hens are just about ready to start laying, and the Reluctant Farmer has rigged lights in the coops, so we are hopeful this will improve the rate of production.


The Reluctant Farmer is most interested in two breeds: the Ameraucana and the Barred Rock. We have 18 barred rock chicks still inside and doing well (we lost one to a bad case of 'eye guck', but everyone else is growing like crazy), but we've only got the one Ameraucana hen. We had talked about finding a rooster, as well, and in doing our research, we found a photo of an Ameraucana rooster in the colour pattern called wheaten brown ... and it looks just like our Sherman, and our other unnamed rooster (Sherman Junior?).


You tell me: here's the link to the Ameraucana website, and here's our two roosters:

The Great Chicken Venture

The Reluctant Farmer has decided that he really likes chickens. They are great fun to watch, poking around the yard and scratching at the dirt to get to the bugs, and as long as we provide them with basic shelter, access to water, and a scoopful of feed now and then, they are perfectly happy.

Our current flock of chickens is made up of hens we acquired from friends who were downsizing for one reason or another, and we really aren't sure how old most of them are. As chickens get older, they lay fewer and fewer eggs ... so although we have around 15 or 20 hens outside, we have only been getting one or two eggs a day. That's nowhere near enough to meet our own needs, never mind the few regular customers we have managed to acquire.

This is what got The Reluctant Farmer looking for chickens: we need more layers. Now, when you start looking for chickens, you are confronted with a huge variety of choices: there are so many different breeds, and they're all good for different purposes. The Reluctant Farmer found all this really interesting, and he's been researching different heritage breeds, and watching for someone in our area with the types he likes.

Last week, he picked up three lovely Isa Brown hens who are in prime egg laying condition, as well as several almost-old-enough-to-lay chickens of a few different breeds: Barred Rocks, an Ameraucana (they lay green eggs), and a couple of cross-breeds. They look so very tiny next to the full grown hens, but in another few weeks they, too, should be big enough to start laying eggs.

The core of the Great Chicken Venture, however, is the batch of nineteen Barred Rock chicks that were picked up on Saturday. These tiny little peeping creatures are presently housed in a large cardboard box under a heat lamp, eating chick starter like there's no tomorrow and making a constant happy racket. The Reluctant Farmer is hoping to raise purebred Barred Rocks, and sell them to other people who want to have chickens of their very own.

The whole Chicken Venture seems to be a 'guy thing' in this house: The Reluctant Farmer is the ringleader, and both of the boys are crazy about chickens too. I think it's just great ... they have so much fun looking for eggs and watching them grow, all the rest is "just jam on toast", as my kid would put it. :)

Chicks

We had two hens go broody awhile back, and so they were put in cages to sit on their eggs undisturbed for a few weeks. A little while back, the first hen hatched out a single chick from the two eggs we'd given her to set on, and a week later, the other hen hatched out all three of the eggs she had!

We have four little peeping black chicks out roaming around and pecking at the ground in their mama's wake.

The Boy did notice today that the first hen had been in some sort of fight - perhaps the other mama thought she'd stolen her chick or something. Whatever the cause of the altercation, she came out somewhat the worse for wear: she had some damage to her head and her eyes were stuck shut! We caught her and rinsed her head off, and her eyes opened up just fine once the guck was washed away. She and her baby are back in isolation with food and water ... and peace and quiet. She doesn't seem to have sustained any serious injury, we'll keep an eye on her for infection but I think she'll be okay. Good thing The Boy is observant!

A chick hatched!

After two unsuccessful attempts, we finally had a hatching!

Okay, so there are still about 15 eggs sitting in the nestbox, and none of them have pipped or made any noise, so our success rate is still pretty darn low.

However, we do have one live chick, hopping around following it's mama.

Of course I have no idea how to tell if it is male or female, other than to wait and see if it starts to crow or to lay eggs!

With our luck with animals lately, I'm not overly hopeful that this chick will live long enough for us to find out ... but we can hope! I've set up a few 'hiding spots' that the chick can get into but nobody else can, and he (she? it?) has run in and out and seems to be checking things out. Mama Hen gets VERY irritable if you get close to the chick - she fluffs up so big she looks like a turkey!

In the heat of the day today, they were in the shade, with the little chick nestled under mama's wing.

Psalm 91:4

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Sheep that want to go to school, and a broody hen

We had a Sheep Escape yesterday! Actually we've had a couple of these incidents due to loose spots under the fencing. We knew they were there, and the plan is to put barbed wire along the bottom of the page wire as this keeps coyotes from digging in and sheep from pushing the wire up and escaping to the longer grass. Anyway, the previous escapes had ended with the sheep just a few feet away, munching on the longer grass: a handful of oats rapidly convinced them to return to the pen. Yesterday, though, they were out of the pen and nowhere in sight. We called, we went down by the creek, we walked over into the hayfield next door ... no sheep. Union Guy even drove up the road to see if by some chance they'd wandered farther away, but no luck. I walked up the road, grain in hand, calling to them and listening. Just at the corner I heard a clomping noise behind me - I turned around, and there they were, peeking out from The Boy's bus shelter. They must have gone in there for shade, as it was a hot afternoon! One look at the grain in my hands and they came trotting right over for a taste. They followed me back to the pen and went right in - I was having visions of Little Bo Peep, with two lambs trotting behind me down the road.

We put up the barbed wire, and they've stayed put today. :)

Today's adventure is the discovery of a broody hen in our coop: The Boy went to get the eggs, and one of the hens was still sitting, which is odd at 4 in the afternoon. I went out later to check on them, and sure enough, she was still there. The feeder was empty, so I filled it and she hopped down for a snack. While she was off the nest, I took the other eggs that had been laid today and tucked them in where she'd been sitting in an effort to increase the odds of getting chicks should she truly decide to brood. When I went back to check a little bit ago, everyone else was up on the roosts for the night, and she was sitting in the nestbox, spread out over the eggs. So, maybe we'll have chicks!

I think I'd better research broody hens now!

The rest of the week has been a blur: work has been rather overwhelming, and this weekend was Mom's moving day - my parents have sold their condo and a house is being constructed in a tiny town 30 minutes from here where they can live mortgage free and near enough to come for dinner! Dad is still in BC, holding down the fort at their volunteer job, so Mom was coordinating the move here. Union Guy and a friend of mine from work carried the heavy stuff (a non-trivial job, as one of the heavy things was a huge side by side fridge that had to go down a stairwell that had a medichair in the way...), and Mom managed all the boxes and lighter things (amazing, really!). We got the truck loaded Saturday night, then unloaded at the storage unit Sunday. It's a relief to have that done! Tomorrow morning Mom has to get her toilet fixed (don't you hate it when your toilet breaks the day before you are moving out?), then she'll pick up The Boy from school and we are all meeting for dinner in town (Mom, The Boy, my sister and her husband and me ... Union Guy is busy with his kids that night). Wednesday morning, The Boy leaves for BC with his Gram for the summer!

My goodness, time flies.

The chickens are here!

The chickens arrived today!

We had a busy day - we had to go load flowers for the 4-H flower sale, then we came home, kicked the dog out of his kennel and hustled over to Cousin Neighbours to pick up the chickens. Three grownups and two kids climbed into their coop and chased and captured birds. Nine chickens were then stuffed unceremoniously into a beagle sized dog kennel! The dog is going to really wonder why it smells so weird in there...

We unloaded the chickens back home in the new coop and they started wandering around exploring their new digs. They came with a feeder that hangs from the ceiling, and water jugs and golf balls to "suggest" to the hens that they lay their eggs in the nest boxes and not wherever they find a patch of straw, so we got everything set up, took a bunch of pictures, and got out of their way.

Of course, city raised girl that I am, I have no clue what breed any of these are. I'm going to have to look at a chicken book and see if I can figure it out. Cousin Neighbour just said they are black chickens, and red chickens, and a white chicken. Helpful! :)

The rooster sure is gorgeous though, eh? He looks like all the pictures of roosters in story books. Now if THAT doesn't sound like something a city chick would say....

Here they are, all up on the roosts for the night. I hope they have a good rest and Rooster Man doesn't decide to start crowing at 4 am!