A whole new level of backyard chicken keeping

Fair warning.

This post and the accompanying links may not be for the squeamish...  It is all about our family taking a new step into keeping a backyard flock of chickens.

Chickens lay eggs and they are food too.  That is your last hint...



In the last few weeks I have become more convinced that one of our newest chicks was not a potential egg laying hen (which are really called pullets), but a potential noise maker and hen hassling roo (which are actually called cockerels).  In a backyard flock of 10 (now 9) birds, roosters aren't really desirable especially by the neighbors.

A few days ago The Boss Lady bought a magazine about different chicken breeds.  The suspected rooster was an Australorp and he had huge, long tail feathers.  The magazine all but confirmed my suspicions.  But conventional wisdom says that you don't know for sure until the bird gives you either a crow or an egg.

That noise I heard this morning when I was walking to the car?  Yeah, that was NOT an egg!

I posted an ad on our local chicken message board, but I knew that this guy needed a new home quickly if we were not going to make the neighbors mad. Yeah, their four barking chihuahuas?  That is another story...   No nibbles on the ad, AND Wednesday is trash day which would make it a lot easier to get the "leftovers" taken care of quickly.  It was looking like the rooster's fate was sealed.

This evening The Boss Lady and I decided to butcher the bird ourselves. So, like all good urban farmers, I hit up Google and found this link:

How to butcher a chicken in 20 minutes or less... 

After a few hours of reading up on how to best process and butcher chickens, I decided that this was the best method for us to try for our first time. We would skin the bird, instead of scalding and plucking all of the feathers and there was not even a small chance I would eat the livers and gizzards...

Cut to the chase.  We did the deed and it took less than an hour, including the times that we stopped to read the instructions I printed out.  Now the bird is in the freezer and we will cook up some chicken and dumplings later this week. 

When we started with backyard chickens, I promised the kids we would not be eating their pets.  But this seems like we are kind of coming full cycle with having chickens and growing our own food in the garden. The Boss and I decided that we will tell the kids about the roo and give them a choice when it come time to eat the chicken and dumplings.

First Egg!

Flower has finally started earning her keep. She laid her first egg today!


I got home from work and turned the chickens out of the coop. There in the nest box was M&M's egg as usual. Yesterday we got none. Zero. Nada eggs. So I was sorta bummed to find a less than spectacular yield today, until I looked again and saw the tiny little egg tucked into the corner of the nest box.

I am assuming it is Flower's since she has been checking out the nest box since this weekend.

After letting the birds run for a few minutes I noticed that Gold Diamond was wheezing a little bit. I set up our old Hen Pen in the storage shed and isolated her for the time being just in case she has something contagious. Hopefully it is nothing too big and she will be feeling better soon.

News from the coop.

It has been a while since I blogged anything about the chickens. I took a little time this afternoon to get the birds a little better set-up for our brutal :) winter weather. And of course, I had to snap a few pics of the girls.

This is Flower, she is a 5 month old Australorp and based on the way that she has been hanging out in the nesting boxes all weekend, she should start laying eggs any day now.

A couple of shots of Thing 1 (Or maybe it is Thing 2!?!) One of our 5 month old Buff Brahma pullets (with the gray feathers). The other bird is sometimes called Alarm Chicken, and sometimes called Nameless Bird or Butterscotch Jr. I guess the kids should get decided on a good name for her soon.


Flower is NOT camera shy.


The "Winter-ized" Coop.

In an effort to keep the birds from getting too hot during the summers, our coop was built with wire fencing around the lower 2 feet of the entire perimeter. This allows air flow all summer long and keeps my from having to run a fan in the coop. The extra ventilation is also good for the birds, because they are not as susceptible to passing around respiratory illnesses in an open coop.

Anyway, it is already getting cooler at night and I want to keep the birds comfy. Happy, comfortable birds lay better eggs you know. But I also want to keep to the original low budget theme of our coop, so today I am trying out a canvas tarp, cut to fit, around three sides of the coop. Hopefully this will block most of the wind, while allowing a lot of airflow, too, since I am keeping the front of the coop open.

I'll probably come back and add a few more photos, but my dinner is ready. So go away.

Eggs for sale, (way too) cheap!

This morning, while the neighbors were having a garage sale, I took the 4 baby chicks out to play in the front yard. I was just hanging out, chatting from my side of the street with the neighbors while I was watching the birds to make sure no hawks, snakes, falcons, dog, cats, turtles, PETA members or organic chefs caused them any harm.

The birds were going nuts and having a great time when a garage sale customer pulled up and started heading up my driveway. As he was heading this way, he yelled out "Hey, you got any eggs to sell?" I knew we had a dozen and a half in the 'fridge, but I never have sold any eggs. I just give them to our friends and neighbors. So I hesitated and responded with some epic response like "Uh, I don't think so."

While we chatted for a couple of minutes I learned that he lives in one of the original ranch houses nearby. This neighborhood used to be divided into a couple of goat ranches and this man and his wife sold off some of the last of the property for neighborhood development. He told me that he kept ducks and chickens in his yard until a few years ago. He seemed genuinely thrilled that one of the "newcomers" to the neighborhood was raising chickens in the front yard.

After I learned a lot more about my neighborhood from the old guy, he headed over to the garage sale. I ran inside and grabbed a dozen eggs to send with my new, old neighbor. He was not going to be dissuaded from paying for the eggs so he gave me a couple of bucks.

As he walked back to his truck he was laughing out loud while he told me "I think I'll go home and tell my wife that since she won't let me keep chickens, I had to buy eggs at A GARAGE SALE. Then she won't want to eat any of them!

I think my new egg-customer is my kind of guy!