We have a rooster named Boots.  He’s a Brahma and therefore has feathered feet.  He’s actually a very good rooster as far as rooster’s go.  He’s relatively quiet and docile.

Sassy appears to be Boots’ favorite hen.  This has it’s up sides and down sides.  When Boots gets a tasty treat he shares with Sassy first.  Sassy suffers from too much “love” from Boots though, so Sassy gets a saddle.

When roosters mate with a hen they step up on the hen’s back, dig in their talons, and often grab the hen’s comb or head feathers in their beak to hang on.  The unfortunate effect of this, if the rooster-to-hen ratio is off or (as in Sassy’s case) he has a particular preference, is that the hen can suffer from missing feathers which can eventually lead to actual wounds.  In order to prevent this, many chicken farmers leverage a “saddle”.  They are reportedly easy to sew, but I suffer from occasional bouts of laziness.  I ordered Sassy’s saddle from Hen Saver. (You know you talk chickens too much when the Gmail targeted advertising shows you things like this regularly.)

The saddle was simple enough to put on. When we closed the hens up that night we simply picked up Sassy and slipped her wings through the straps and set her back in the coop. She immediately became confused and proceeded to thrash around the coop trying to walk backwards to get the thing off. I became increasingly distressed during this behavior as I was trying to help her, not hurt or scare her. She settled down for the night and we turned off the coop light to ensure she got no undue attention from the other hens. The next morning she was much better adjusted and only had a couple moments of trying to walk backwards. Once she had a chance to stretch her wings a bit more the saddle seemed to settle and she seemed entirely unphased by it.

So far it appears to be having the desired effect and Sassy’s back is protected from the aggressive affection of Boots.

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.

“Shall I have naught that is fair?” saith he;
“Have naught but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,
I will give them all back again.”

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.

I realized that when deciding to raise animals as food, death was inevitable. I had assumed that those deaths would be primarily the premeditated, planned, humane efforts of our own hands. Death can never be taken lightly, but the death that we do not understand or can not name is by far the most challenging to come to terms with.

When we lose an animal to a predator I’m able to reconcile my grief with thoughts of the greater circle of life. If it wasn’t my chicken it would be one of the pheasant escapees from the near by game preserve, or perhaps worse, someone’s companion pet. Either way those wild animals have just as much right to exist as we do, and my loss may be just what another needs to continue life.

As Bengt is in the process of detailing, when we choose to take a life it’s with every effort of compassion, sympathy, and consideration… and perhaps above all else, gratefulness and thanks.

But when we lose a life and feel we have no choice or control over the matter it is the hardest. It’s harder still when that life has barely just begun.

The first flock of chickens we purchased from the feed store, rather than direct from the hatchery. I watched over them fastidiously to ensure that I made no errors in my ignorance. We lost no chicks.

The second flock we purchased was directly from the hatchery. Of the 27 that arrived, one died in the first days. I had assumed I’d failed at my diligence to ensure they weren’t “pasting up”, even though once I cleaned her up she continued to decline. Not knowing what else to do, when we came to the determination that she was beyond recovery, we broke her neck to hasten the end in case she was suffering.

The third flock arrived this past weekend, direct from the hatchery. Of the 26 that arrived, three have died with in the first few days, the third dying Saturday night. One by one they’d become lethargic and less active. They could be roused occasionally but they would immediately sit down and drift back to what appeared sleep, as if they had no energy left. They would move less, and less and therefore stop drinking and eating. It all happens quite quickly, in less than 12 hours.

With the second chick we debated how to intervene, but when she started to droop it was nearly midnight and we have no medications on hand. We left her where she seemed to be happiest, snuggled in to the fluff of the other chicks, sleeping. By early morning she had passed sleeping among the flock.

The third we tried to coax in to drinking water by putting droplets on her beak or dipping her beak. She’d drink occasionally, but continuously tried to drift off. We decided to try separating her because the other chicks were active, awake, and kept climbing right over her. We put her in to a small box with water, under the warming light with openings she could see through. She laid down with her face towards one of the openings, occasionally crying to the rest of the flock. They would come over and peck like mad at the box, occasionally pecking at her, forcing her to move a little further away from the opening. Chickens can be cruel.

I checked on her every hour, trying to entice her to drink water until she couldn’t be roused at all. At this point we had a conversation about suffering and death. Was it better to let her drift off to sleep while her body slowly gave way and her breathing became more or more shallow while nestled among her flock sharing their warmth, or was it better to end her journey quickly and judiciously?

I questioned my role… Was I doing something wrong? Was I failing my little charges in some way? As I pondered the three flocks we’ve raised, I realized that when purchasing the chicks from the feed store I was essentially externalizing the mortality rate. I have no doubt, now, that it existed with those chicks as well, but it wasn’t under my watch.

We opted to leave her isolated for fear of being trampled, but where she could see and hear her flock and remain under the warming light. I continued to check on her regularly and her breath became fainter and harder to discern with each hour. She passed on in the night.

There is relatively clear guidance on humane slaughter, but not so much on humane death in general with livestock. It’s considered humane to slit the bird’s cardiac artery to render them unconscious while their heart pumps the remaining blood from their body in slaughter. It’s hard to understand how much they suffer during this procedure. A sharp knife and a skilled hand brings on a dark sleep quickly, but what about these little birds? The chick mortality rate is estimated at anywhere from 10-50% depending on the situation. Real world mortality rates for similar animals (ducks, geese) are more harsh, with disease, predators, or defects claiming a larger portion. A mother duck doesn’t spend much time on a sickly duckling. She can’t count to ensure that all of her babies are with her. If you don’t follow and fall behind, you don’t survive. It’s mother nature at work culling her creatures for the strongest and smartest.

Ultimately the crux remains… I feel helpless, and my guilt hinges on that. There is little I can do. There is little to even attempt to do. I’m left feeling like I failed this little life, being rendered helpless. There are all sorts of practical reasons for not nursing a weak chick, but “Failure to thrive” seems like such a cruel, yet indeterminate answer.

For now I think I’ve come to terms that they appear happier when allowed to come to their end naturally, with mother nature gathering them in her sweet embrace as she sees fit. We wouldn’t hesitate to end a creature’s suffering if appropriate, but it’s not clear to me that they are suffering.

“My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,”
The Reaper said, and smiled;
“Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.”

“They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear.”

And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.

O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
‘T was an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The “new girls” are now nearly indistinguishable from the “big girls” and have begun laying in the last week or so.  They’ve started out laying peewees which was a first for us as last year’s girls started out strongly from the beginning.  We are waiting for them to grow a bit and size and for a few more to start laying.  Right now our highest daily count was six eggs, but it won’t be long before they’re producing 9-10 eggs a day.

We are having some challenges with some of the girls hiding eggs.  We’ve found several wayward nests and destroyed them, but when we let the girls out early in the morning (as we typically do on work days) we consistently find about half the number of eggs in the nesting boxes as we do on days where we don’t let them out until noon.  I’m hoping with the weather turning they’ll give up this habit since we haven’t yet located the new hidden nests.

Our re-homing was 93% successful after a few days.  We managed to get two of the three “tree chickens” to home to the coop, even the Araucana named Lady that we thought we’d never get to home to the coop (she was our first “tree chicken”).  One of the other Araucanas is still flying in to one of the evergreens out front and is very sketchy.  We’ve gotten her in the coop once but she went right back to the tree after being kept inside for two days.  We’ll have to work on her again at some point, but it’s been challenging.  We find her roosting on the window box of the chicken coop each morning waiting to be let in for food and water, but at that point the girls inside are bursting out.  Maybe this weekend we’ll try to catch her in the coop again, but we’ll see.  She’s pretty safe in the tree as she’s easily 15-20 feet up in the branches, but I do worry about her laying a mess under the tree and succumbing to some nasty weather this winter.

We still haven’t moved the chickens back up to the pasture by the goats. We tried once and they managed to nearly all escape so we gave up for the time being. We discussed just moving them in to the ‘big girls’ coop like last year and letting the fencing idea go considering that this time last year we’d already lost several chickens, but Bengt was insistent that they should be moved. I’m not entirely sure why he has gotten so insist about it because he wasn’t particularly keen on it originally. I was the driver out of my concern for their well being and struggling with losing so many.

Our revised plan is to clip their wings (or flight feathers really) so they can’t fly since we think that is how they are escaping. Clipping their wings necessitates providing them a protected area as well though since they can’t fly to escape predators.

On Sunday we set out to clip their wings in the afternoon before realizing that catching chickens during the day time is still challenging at best. I managed to catch the first one and we clipped her feathers and turned her loose again. The girls were determined to catch the rest (we have 15 total) and set about stalking the chickens. Celeste managed to catch the same chicken with the already clipped wing several more times. I was starting to think she liked being handled. Eva even walked up to her and pet her a couple times. Celeste continued to pursue the chickens long after Eva had given up and apparently managed to catch a second chicken yesterday and they clipped her wing.

It’s so much fun to watch these normally protected, suburban girls jump right in to the rural life. Once they realized the chickens weren’t going to thrash or try to hurt them (and are actually quite soft to the touch) they were all about picking them up. Interestingly the girls are much more successful at getting close enough to the chickens to grab them as well. I think for some reason their smaller stature makes them seem less threatening or something.

We still need to finish the chore in earnest and move them up to the pasture, particularly since someone accidentally ran over their water fount down by the house. They’ll be much happier up there.

Layers on range

After the loss of yet another laying hen we went back to the drawing board with regards to our free range chickens.  It was still very important to us that our chickens are able to range and be chickens, but the loses are hard to sustain.  With thorough consideration, and following our relative success with the broiler chicken’s house, we decided to build two range houses for the new (and old) layers.  The plan was (and still is) to move the layers in to the goat pasture, once we get the pasture fences up.  For most months out of the year this will work well for us.  For the few very cold months we sometimes get we are keeping the coop down by the house that also has the heater installed.  We can relocate the flock during the harsher weather if need be.

We stuck with the same design as the broiler’s range house with some minor modifications.  We raised the peak of the roof from 3 feet to 4 feet to create more room. 

Nesting house

In the first house we built in as many nesting boxes as we could fit which turned out to be eight.  We also put in exterior egg doors as well as hinged the roof as we had planned for the broiler’s range house.  Eight boxes is enough to support 24-32 layers so that gives us some room to grow.

In the second house we reversed the side the door was on so we could get the maximum space for roosts.  By doing so we could build in three tiered roosts which creates enough roosting space for about 15 chickens, which is how many layers we have in total.  On this house we also added heavier handles for mobility.  The nesting house shouldn’t need to be rotated often, but the roosting house will need to be moved to prevent manure build up.

Roosting house prepped

We stopped by the local hardware store and picked up some exterior “oops” paint in a bright miami teal green.  Once completed and painted we started the task of moving the houses up the hill to where we anticipate the goat pasture to go.   We got the heaviest, the nesting house, moved with some serious effort.  Unfortunately, building the range houses took longer than expected and we didn’t get the pasture fences up as well.  Since then the calendar has kept us busy and we still haven’t had a chance to put up the pasture fences.  Instead of moving the roosting house up the hill we moved it to the yard with the broiler’s range house and moved the new layers out in to the yard as well.  It’s an acceptable hold over location until we can get the pasture fences up which will probably still be a couple weeks out.

Here’s the cost breakdown:

We used scraps that we had already, which aren’t included in the price list, for the nesting boxes as well as some of the scraps that resulted from the project .

And for paint and supplies:

Our grand total including paint and hardware came to approximately $70 per house (plus tax of course). Overall it’s still a very good deal.

This year we are only slaughtering for personal use, but we’d like to be able to consider slaughter for on farm sales in the future.  In order to comply with the Temporary Permit to Slaughter Pastured Chickens the chickens have to spend at least half of their life span on “pasture, range, or ground covered with vegetation that is suitable for grazing”.  The average broiler raised for slaughter is around 8 weeks of age so we targeted our broilers to go out to range at 4 weeks of age.

The chicken coop for the layers isn’t well suited for the broilers not to mention the full-grown layers wouldn’t look on it kindly.  We also didn’t really want the broilers free-ranging since they are pretty fat and slow moving.  Our range solution was pretty simplistic, but could be adapated pretty easily for a few layers if you wanted to do so by adding flooring and a nesting box.

Broiler Range House

We simply took two sheets of plywood and cut a 3 foot x 4 foot section off the end of one sheet to form the front.  We trimmed an additional 6 inchs off the 4 foot side so we would have roof overhang on the sides and cut a 1 foot by 1 foot door.  For the remainder of the sheet we cut diagonally across from the 2 foot and 3 foot marks creating the two side panels (3 feet tall in the front and 2 feet tall in the back).  We cut a 2 foot x  4 foot section off the end of the second sheet to form the back and then trimmed an additional 6 inches off of the 4 foot side so we would have roof overhang on the sides.  We used 2×2’s to brace all four corners and for braces for the roof.   We also used the 2×2’s for two roosts.  We trimmed down the door cut out and attached it with cabinent hinges and added a hook and eye latch.  We also drilled air holes under the eaves in the front and back to help regulate the temperature and air flow.  With the remainder of the second sheet forming a 4 foot by 6 foot roof we positioned it such that it formed a little “porch” on the front.  We originally wanted to do that so we could put the food and water under it, but quickly realized that the food would need to actually go inside.

Everyone inside

We put both the layers and broilers in the little “pasture” with the range house while we cleaned out the brooder box and removed the divider before moving the layers back in to the brooder box.  You can still watch the Baby Chick Cam.  They both clearly liked the range house because after a few hours of wandering the yard they all climbed inside for an afternoon nap.

So far the broilers seem to be doing quite well despite the overnight temperatures dropping to 40 degrees the first night.  I stuck a thermometer in one of the ventilation holes and it registered at least 10+ degrees over the air temperature despite it being overcast and drizzly.  We open the door during the day, but when it rains they only come out to enjoy the proteced area under the porch before eventually heading back in to the comfort of their range house.  It seems to be working great though. 

Enjoying the fresh air

After this season we plan to hinge the roof (we screwed it down) so we can access the inside of the range house if needed.  It would also allow us to prop open the roof if the day got particularly warm.  We also plan to try to add wheels and handles/supports to lift the range house so we can easily move it around making it more of an actual chicken tractor.  We’ve already had to move the house once this week because the broiler hens have been spending most of their time inside generating waste due to the weather taking a turn for the worst this week.  You will notice we have a small tarp on top of the range house.  The only reason for that is because the hardware store was out of actual plywood and only had OSB which won’t withstand the rain we get in the spring.  We plan to replace the OSB with actual plywood and paint the entire range house with exterior paint when we do.

I’m very pleased with how it all worked out and you can’t really beat the cost or the fact that it took less than an hour to assemble. 

Parts list:

• Two 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of 1/2 or 3/4″ plywood (don’t recommend OSB even though you’ll see we used a sheet) – ~$20 each
• Three 8 foot long 2″x”‘ boards – $2 each
• Pair of inexpensive cabinent hinges – $4 to $7 total
• One hook and eye latch – $2
• Draw pull door handle (optional)
• Roof hinge (optional)

Our total came in around $60 dollars.  If you were to add a single nesting box (good for up to 3 hens) you’d add another $10-15 dollars.

One of the Araucana chickens many colors

I unintentionally “recovered” a chick. Originally we had thought I had one less layer and Bengt had one more broiler. As his broilers have been growing like weeds we’d noticed there was a small one in the bunch. I made Bengt come take a look because I thought we should move it in with the smaller layers. I was worried it wasn’t going to do well competing with the rest of the broilers since they are pretty aggressive around feeding time. As we were watching it, I realized that it was exactly the same size as my layers next door. So we moved it over with the smaller layers. Once it was under the white heat lamp we realized it had green feet which means it was my missing Aruacana/Americana and not a broiler at all. Woops! It was a bit upset at being separated from the flock it had come to know and spent the better part of the evening making alarm like high pitched chirps and the broilers would respond back. Fortunately she seemed to settle in after awhile and she is now acclimated to her new flock. She’s the whitest Aruanca I’ve ever seen, but I’m glad we realized the situation. So now we have 14 broilers, 11 layers, and our “free rare chick”. I really need to get some updated pictures.

I was home sick on Monday and when checking on the baby chicks I noticed one of my layers was pasted up and not behaving well.  I brought her inside, cleaned her up and returned her to the brooder box.  Her posture was a little odd still, but she was active so I didn’t worry. 

Yesterday morning she was standing but kind of stunned as the other chicks whizzed around her (they are very active at this stage).  When we got home last night she was clearly doing very poorly.  I came in to the house on the verge of tears and told Bengt she was dying.  There was no question that it was better to end her suffering at that point and Bengt handled the unfortunate task.  He had already poured me a glass of wine and I took it out to the back patio where the sun was setting and sat on the ground while the full grown hens milled around trying to decide if I had a snack and what to make of me being at their level. 

Afterwards Bengt and I talked about the responsiblities for the lives of our animals, the decisions we have to make, and as usual I was pretty emotional about the baby chick.  We talked about how it’s supposed to get easier over time, but that while we hope it does get easier we also hope we never lose the connection.  I reflected on how each time we lose an animal or choose to end a life the emotional reaction causes me to do a full evaluation if we are doing the “right thing”.  The right thing for us?  for the animals?  for our family?  for the earth?  Despite the heartbreak and emotional toll it takes on me, I haven’t yet come to a different decision than the ones we have made leading up to this point.  We also discussed about how at the point at which I don’t cry over a lost life anymore, that maybe we would need to reconsider our decisions as well.

This will only be the first of many lives lost either by design or unfortunate circumstance for the season, but I still find it challenging regardless.  I struggle to describe to someone else how I can make the decisions we do despite my strong affinity for the animals in our care, but I still think offering them a grieved, humane life is better than faceless killing.