happenings 'round the homestead

May 11, 2016 Megan Rodriguez

It's been a full few weeks around this little homestead of ours! With all things baby, a trip out to Michigan to visit family, and spring springing around each corner. Flowers are blooming, perennials are up and filling out, the garden is waiting for seeds and seedlings, and the chickens are enjoying the longer days, the rain, and the sun! I love the softness of the spring blooms--lavenders, whites, and light pinks. The flowers tend to be small and delicate, just like spring.

The busyness over the past few weeks has made it a bit difficult to get the garden up and running as I'd hoped. The soil needs to be worked and there are peas and raddishes to get in the ground. However, it will all get done eventually, it always does! I did get my pots planted on the deck with lettuce, swiss chard, and arugala. The garlic, rhubarb, and herbs in the garden are also doing well! The rain we've had over the past few days has made things really start to take off! We'll have garlic scapes in no time!

We got two new chicks a few weeks back and they are about ready to join the older ladies in the coop. They been spending their days in the yard and nights under a light in the garage, but they are very curious about the older hens and can often be found looking at them through the fence. These two little ones bring us to a total of eight chickens. The time has come for us to begin to stagger our flock and keep it young and productive. We have decided to cull two of our hens this summer/fall for meat. More on that later...but for now, aren't our new little chicks cute?? Their names are Violet (the brown Ameraucana) and Fingers (as in Chicken Fingers...yes...). Fingers is a Maran and she will lay chocolate brown eggs! I'm so very excited!

Next week will hopefully bring lots of sunshine and time in the garden! How about you? What's happening around your homestead?

when keeping chickens doesn't go as planned

February 19, 2016 Megan Rodriguez

When we first got our chickens almost two years ago, we told ourselves that they were not pets, even though we were decided to name them. We planned to raise them for eggs, and eventually meat. While some backyard chicken keepers let their chickens live, retire, and die of old age, we decided from the beginning that wasn't the road we were going to take. We wanted to raise chickens for food and in order to do that, we decided that at some point we would cull (a nicer word for butcher) a few of them in order to keep our flock young and productive.

Well...what I hadn't expected was that the first chicken to die on our watch would not be by our own hands, or by a predator, but instead would be because of the cold. Two weeks ago, we lost our first chicken...Chicken the chicken, one of our two Plymouth Rocks, started molting at the end of January and within a few days she had lost a lot of her feathers. The week that she died was a tough one for us. We were both rather busy, I was coming down with a nasty cold, and the short, cold days left us with little time to really check on how our hens were doing. The morning of the day she passed, we both saw that she had dropped a lot of feathers and we told each other as we left for the day that we needed to check on her later that day and make sure she was staying warm enough. However, by that night she was gone. She had lost many more feathers while we were gone that day and her little body was unable to withstand the cold. Dan found her when he closed them up for the night and we were both so sad to know how she had died and that had we been home that day we probably could have saved her.

It was in that moment, though, where we cried together as we mourned the loss of our first hen, that we also knew that we needed to honor her by trying to save as much meat from her body as we could. Some may view this a morbid or inhumane, but coming from a family of hunters and meat-eaters, we've both learned that if you take an animal's life (or it dies on your watch), then the best way to honor its life is to not let its death be in vain. So, Dan did his best to keep what he could of her body in order to further nourish our family.

Chicken is the one in the front of the picture above and on the right in the picture below.

Since she died we've had a renewed sense of responsibility and stewardship for our little flock. They seem so self-sufficient at times, but we've been reminded by Chicken's death as well as two close calls with a possum and a raccoon that their lives are actually pretty fragile and its our job to ensure their safety and health. Our other girls have all faired the cold very well and their egg production has started increasing again with these longer, sunnier days. With our first hen gone, we've also started thinking about what lies next for our little flock. It might be time to cull a couple and add another round of chicks. We shall see as the next two months unfold. What we do know, however, is that we enjoy raising backyard hens and despite the challenges and expenses, we are excited to keep moving forward and to simply learn from the past. We miss Chicken, the chicken, but we are thankful for the eggs she provided, the meat in our freezer, and the joy she brought to our backyard. Rest in peace, pretty bird. May your life and death teach us how to be the best chicken keepers we can be.

winterizing the ladies

November 20, 2015 Megan Rodriguez

Wow! What a crazy couple of weeks it has been! With mid-semester grading, baby preparations, winter preparations, choir rehearsals and concerts, and my best friend visiting, I feel as though I've been running non-stop! Thankfully, though, we've had a enough time to get a few of the winterizing tasks checked off the to-do list, and just in time as the cold weather arrived yesterday and seems to be here to stay!

One of those tasks has been to get the girls ready for the long winter months ahead. They were in need of a good coop cleaning, but they've also been in need of a bit more space. When we got our two new chicks in the spring, we knew that we'd eventually need to figure out a solution for the limited run space that we have for our ladies. For the summer, we made a makeshift fence that connected to the run and allowed them a bit more space in which to roam, dig, dust bathe, and do their chicken things. This worked great for the summer when we were home so much during the day, but it was not a great solution for the fall, winter, and spring since the ladies had their ways of escaping their confinement. So, a couple weeks ago, Dan made the fence around their chicken yard, as I like to call it, a bit more permanent! He also expanded it to include the space behind the coop next to the covered wood pile. The ladies love it! They have more places to explore, hang out, and escape from any possible predators. It's a perfect solution to our crowded run! Hooray! Over the next few weeks, the opening from the run to the chicken yard will also become a closing door of sorts with a latch to help protect our ladies from possible nighttime predators.

The ladies' water heater has also been returned to them, along with their run light which extends their daylight hours a bit. Once the snow starts blowing, they'll also get a layer of plastic wrapped around the lower half of their run to protect them from the elements a bit more. They seem pleased with all these changes, both in scenery and weather. However, at least four of our five older chickens are in the middle of their fall molt right now and so this sudden cold front may have caught their naked little bodies by surprise. Naked chickens...really, you'd think they'd have more decency!

Alas, it feels so very good to have the ladies ready for the long winter ahead. I know I'm ready for the shorter days and the cold quiet evenings. I hope they are too.

the chicken and the egg

August 5, 2015 Megan Rodriguez

Until I had chickens I really had no idea how valuable those eggs at the grocery store really are. It seems so simple, right?? You have a few chickens, they lay eggs, easy! Yeah....it's not quite so simple. Chickens raised in a natural living environment (i.e. little or no artificial light, no temperature control, bread to reproduce, rather than just produce eggs, etc.) go through many different phases throughout the year that all effect their egg laying in different ways.

As I mentioned in the winter, 3 out of the 5 molted (meaning they shed their feathers and grew new ones), which meant they stopped laying for over 6 weeks as their bodies focused on growing feathers. One of our 5 chickens (the Ameracauna) decided that she just really didn't like winter and so she stopped laying, probably to focus her energy on just staying warm. Then this spring our Buff Orpington, Henrietta, became a broody mother hen, who sat in the nesting box for weeks on end trying to hatch eggs that would never hatch and being crabby towards everything and everyone who came near her. After her broodiness began calming down, she starting molting, which meant she didn't lay any eggs for about 3 months. We now think we've had two other chickens (our two Barred Rocks) who have been a bit broody over the past few weeks and seem to be taking an egg laying break as well.

So over the past couple weeks we've been averaging about 2 eggs per day--from 5 chickens! Today, though, we got three brown eggs, which tells me that someone is back in the swing of things and we should start averaging 3-4 per day now! Hooray!!

And then there are the two little ones, who are getting closer to laying, but are still not earning their keep around here. Soon, though! Bernadette (the yellow one) is starting to have a warm, red comb, which is a sign that she's getting closer to laying her first egg! Maybe in a few weeks!

And so, if you buy eggs from a local farmer who gives his/her chickens a pretty natural lifestyle, don't be surprised when the eggs are not cheap like the big styrofoam cartons in the store. Raising heritage breeds in good conditions can be tough and unpredictable, but the eggs you get are completely worth it.

free-range...for a few minutes

June 19, 2015 Megan Rodriguez

As I've mentioned before, this summer we are doing things a bit differently with the chickens when it comes to their time free-ranging in the yard. In a perfect urban homesteading world, our chickens could freely wander around our yard and gardens at their leisure, enjoying grass, bugs, sunshine, and shade whenever their little hearts so desired. However, we do not live in a perfect urban homesteading world. Rather, at our urban homestead, the chickens eat my carrot tops, trample and scratch up the rhubarb and hostas, kick mulch everywhere, poop on our deck, pathway, yard, pretty much everywhere, and eat my kale. No, it is definitely not a perfect world over here. So, this year, we're doing things differently and it means a lot less grass-time for these ladies of ours. I read a book on my long Texas road trip a few weeks back called Free-Range Chicken Gardens and it gave me a lot more confidence in our decision to give the ladies a more controlled environment. The reason for this is that in order to have a successful free-range chicken garden, your yard and gardens need to be ready to house chickens! The plants need to be chicken resistant and the plants need to be arranged in a way that allows the hardier plants to protect and shelter the more vulnerable ones. There are also times when it's necessary to protect tender seedlings or ripening fruits and veggies from curious chickens. All of these things confirmed our decision to keep our chickens out of the yard and gardens for a bit. With our landscaping only being a few years old, a lot of our perennials are young and in need of protecting until their roots grow deep and their stems and branches strong. And with our relatively short vegetable garden season, it's important to keep the ladies out of there during pivotal points of the season, such as when tender seedlings are sprouting or when tomatoes are ripening. So, for this year, our chickens are getting to free-range for a just a few minutes at a time, and under very supervised conditions. So far, it seems to be working well and everyone seems to be happy! (The cat has also been enjoying his free-range moments!)

My hope is that in the years to come, free-range time will become easier and easier, especially in the middle of the summer when the plants are thriving and strong. Until then, our limited "free-ranging" is working just fine.