Hen Hazards (by Pammy Mae)

If you're considering getting backyard chickens, don't. Just don't. Yes, our Golden Comet biddies are friendly and sweet. Yes, it warms my heart when they happily follow me around the yard because they want a cuddle. Yes, I love the fresh, organic eggs they graciously provide.

The problem is not the hens, my friends. The problem is the greased slope you will find yourself sliding down with no hope of recovery short of hitting Homestead Rehab.

Here is the sad story of what happened after we brought home backyard biddies:

First, we began composting. It seemed like a trendy, "green" thing to do. We dutifully toted food scraps, leaves, and yard clippings to the far corner of our property to decompose and produce earthworms.

Yes, I encouraged decomposition and worm breeding in my yard.

I'm in shock, too. Keep reading.

It became such an obsession that when we passed a building site with felled trees on a field that had been vacant since the Civil War (which means it was chemical-free), I screeched, "Jay! Organic matter for the compost pile!" as he swerved off the road and stripped the brake pads. (To be honest, I'm not sure if the swerve was in thankful agreement of my helpful observation or if my shriek momentarily scared the sense out of him.) The construction crew politely tried to hide their snickers as they watched my husband do their job of hauling away piles of wood chips. 

Jay even bought manure from a man who raises organic, grassfed cows to add to our compost pile. He (Jay, not the cowman) washed the bed of the pickup truck six times after the cow poo was unloaded, but it was months before I'd ride in the cab because of the lingering smell wafting up from the back.

The next logical step was to create a raised garden bed. What else were we going to do with all that compost? And it seemed harmless enough. We made a raised vegetable bed (because you don't have to weed it) thirty-four feet long and four feet wide. To grow food for two people.  

Yes, I said two people. 

By God's grace, some of the vegetables actually liked our compost swill! (I mean, organic soil.) Only half of the GMO-free seeds we sowed actually sprouted, but I was absurdly proud of the abundance we received from the plants with an unusually strong will-to-live. 

Once I realized that our neighbors were hiding when I bounced up their porch steps with armfuls of produce, I figured out how to use a dehydrator. I dried enough kale and basil to last at least 15 years. I may put some of it in little linen bags to hand out at Christmas as "potpourri."

By this time, my husband and I often found ourselves chewing toothpicks and inexplicably referring to each other as "Jay Bob" and "Pammy Mae." It just sounded right.

Before backyard hens

After backyard hens

One morning, while eating some of our biddies' orange-yolked, super-vitamin-charged, free-range eggs, I thought, Fresh bread would taste good with this. So, I began making bread. From scratch. Yes, me. Stop laughing because it gets worse. Then I thought, Organic eggs eaten with non-organic bread just isn't right, so I began ordering GMO-free flour from a local farm.

One night, when I was exhausted from making 137 cups of organic pesto to freeze for the winter (okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but it felt like 137 cups), I accidentally ordered wheat berries instead of wheat flour. Instead of returning it, I thought, Hey, I could grind this into flour myself! It will be cheaper, and the bread will taste even more fresh.  

I discovered that a good flour mill costs $250-350, and since I'm not baking for a family of twelve, I couldn't justify the cost. Which means that I milled the wheat berries in our little coffee grinder. How did this work, you wonder? Well, I could only grind 1/3rd of a cup at a time. Then I had to let the coffee grinder sit for 10 minutes to cool off. So, it took about 3 hours to mill enough wheat into flour for a few loaves. And then I still had to make the bread! 

But am I still doing it? Of course. It's a backyard-chicken-owning thing to do.

Now I'm begging Jay for a goat. Yes, a goat. Goat's milk is rich in vitamins and contains more protein than cow's milk. As if our diet lacks protein. Its calcium can be absorbed through skin to help maintain a natural pH balance. My arguments run along the lines of, "But, Jay Bob, I could make goat milk moisturizer. And goat milk shampoo. And goat milk conditioner. And goat milk cheese!" 

Model: Leroy
Photo credit: Troy Leslie, goatman

Can you see me milking a goat? 

Me, neither. 

And yet, my brain keeps telling me that I need one.

Jay has been the voice of reason rejecting my pleas for a goat. Only because he'd rather have bees.  

Now I'm thinking about making my own soap. Why? Don't ask me; ask the chickens. They started this. One of the ingredients of homemade soap is lye. I discovered you can actually buy lye on Amazon.com. Yes, lye. That I understand, from reading Little House on the Prairie, is made from ashes and animal lard. You heard me right. Ashes and lard! Who is making lye to sell on Amazon?

And why would I buy their lye when I could probably make it myself by rendering fat and collecting ashes the next time we barbeque steak? (Oh, please stage an intervention before I try this!)

Yesterday, I found myself reading about how to make herbal tincture. I don't even know how to pronounce "tincture" let alone know why I'd need some. But I read the recipe with enthusiasm, thinking, Hey, I have some of these ingredients. I bet I could make this! 

Any day now, I expect to look in our backyard and see Ma and Pa resting by their covered wagon wrapped in a quilt (sewed with cloth woven from my organic cotton), eating pone that I made for supper by grinding organic corn into meal between two rocks (and cooked in the fireplace--so I could save the ashes for lye, of course), and waiting for me to bring homemade lineament to ease the ache in their rheumatic joints.

Yes, this post is a desperate cry for help.

Verse of the day: (Proverbs 12:11) "A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies has no sense." And those who are a weird combination of the two will find themselves, surrounded by stacks of dehydrating zucchini chips, rendering lard and fermenting herbal tinctures.

Follow up: Two people took pity on me and gave me a real flour mill for Christmas. The lovely and gracious people at www.pleasanthillgrain.com (awesome customer service!) let me return one, so I exchanged it for a Bosch Compact Mixer. I'm giddy! Possibly from excitement but more likely from motion sickness as I plunge further down the homesteading circular slide.

For two other stories involving chickens, see "Daylight Nightlight" and "Happy Chicken Lady Day." 

Daylight Nightlight

I've never been a fan of birds, but since Jay had to have backyard chickens, I agreed under three conditions:

1. We'd eat their eggs, not them,
2. I wouldn't have to clean a stinky cage, and
3. that they'd get love and care like our other pets.

Jay built a coop (an enclosed house with roosts for sleep and nests for eggs) on wheels with an attached run called a chicken tractor.
 

The coop (with the wee doorway) is in the back and the run (with the gate) is in the front.
It's not pretty, but we were advised to make our first chicken tractor from scrap.

It doesn't have a floor so the chickens can walk on the lawn, eat weeds and bugs, dig for worms, and "fertilize" the yard. We move the coop to a new spot every other day, and there is nothing to clean because the droppings dry and crumble into the grass. 
 

Caleb watching over "his" biddies

Since the chicken tractor is on wheels, it isn't flush to the ground (like a normal hen house). It's built with warped wood so there are gaps between boards in the coop. When the cold weather began a few months ago, I worried that our chickies would be chilled by icy drafts blowing up their tail feathers while they were trying to sleep.

I suggested we buy our hens little capes for warmth (I'm not crazy. They sell them on Etsy. OK, it's a little crazy that I know that.). But Jay had a rather hostile reaction to the idea. It might have something to do with the fact that Zoe, our Bichon-mix, has accumulated at least nine coats of varying warmth (three of which are shown below), as well as several sweaters. At least she, unlike our poor chickens, was well prepared for inclement weather.

"But, honey," I coaxed, "it would help you tell the biddies apart. I could get a white cape for Blanche, a yellow one for Goldie, a pink one for Rose, and a green one for Henrietta! Of course, they'd need two capes apiece: one to wear and one to launder. And waterproof capes for rainy days and fleece-lined capes for snow..."

Jay was not buying it (or capes). Instead, he lined the coop with cardboard to stop drafts and add insulation. I countered by putting a thermostat inside the coop (it's hard to foil me when I'm on a mission) and found it was still only a few degrees warmer than outside. 

After I woke him several times on cold nights fretting about our girls' comfort, he finally hooked up a heat light to pacify me. We attached it to an outdoor thermostat outlet that turned the bulb on when the temperature dropped to 35 degrees F. 

Coop interior--cardboard over gaps & heat lights by the roost.
(That's Miss Blanche's backside in the doorway.)

Rookies that we are, we used a regular white light bulb instead of a red one (that registers as "night" in coops and submarines). Since chickens habitually enter their coop at dusk and leave it at first dawn, they were incredibly shocked when "sunlight" suddenly flooded the interior of their house around midnight. In a flutter, they raced outside only to discover, in cackling confusion, that it was still night.

Caleb, my service dog, was frantic when he sensed that "his" hens were distressed. Zoe (who was in pajamas) determined there was no food involved in the situation, so she turned her back to us.

Jay was at work (of course), so I had to put on my coat and boots and trudge out in a sleet storm to open the coop door so Caleb could see for himself that his fowls were flustered but fine. Shivering, I calmed the hens down enough to roost, and Caleb reluctantly followed me back into the house.

I toweled the icy rain off of my hair and crawled back in bed. Did I get any sleep?

Of course not.

Every half an hour, the hens looked to see if the sun was shining outside as well as inside. How do I know this? Because they'd argue over whose turn it was to check.

Their squabbling was loud enough to wake Caleb. 

And Caleb would wake me. 

The only thing I could see in the dark yard was the square cutout coop door glowing from the heat light inside the coop. I'd see a silhouette of one of the hens fly down into the doorway. She'd look left, look right, look up, and then she'd fly back to the perch to vociferously discuss her findings with the others: 

"It's still night outside."

"But it's day inside!"

"I know! But it's night outside!"

"But it's day inside. How can it be night outside?"     

"I don't know. But it is night outside."

"But it's day inside!"

"I know! But it's night outside."

Finally, they'd argue themselves into a light slumber. Caleb would settle down, and I'd crawl back in bed. But in a half an hour, one of them would wake up and rouse the others, which would wake Caleb, and he'd whimper and whine (ignoring my "They're fine. Go to sleep") until I'd get up. I'd go to the window and hear the chicken version of:

"It's light. We go outside when it's light."

"But it was night outside." 

"How can it be day inside and night outside?"

"I don't know, but it was."

"Go check again."

"You go check."

"The early bird gets the worm.'"

"You can have the worm. I'm not budging until I know it's day. Besides, it's Rose's turn to check."

"But I don't want to. You go, Blanche."

"I checked the first time! Henrietta can check." 

"It has to be day. It's light inside."

"Fine. I'll go."

I'd see the silhouette of the next hen poking her head out the doorway, looking left, looking right, then looking up. She'd fly back on the roost, and then I'd hear their strident squawking of "It's still night outside!" "But it's day inside!"  

All. 

Night. 

Long. 

I called Jay in the morning before he left work to tell him that the only way he'd get in the house was if he was carrying a red heat bulb.

I said, "The white light kept your chickens up. The chickens kept Caleb up. Caleb kept me up. But you'll be happy to hear Zoe snored blissfully through the whole thing."

 Louie Belle the cat is now my favorite pet.

Verse of the day: (Psalm 139:12) "To You the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to You." 

For another chicken story, see "Hidden Hen Hazards."

Poultry Day

Rose (who looks like she's wearing a hat), Goldie, Blanche and Henrietta

Before September 1, 2012, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to celebrate Poultry Day. What a difference six months and nineteen days make! 

I suspect Jay spent too much time reading verses in Psalms about hiding under the shadow of God’s wings, and they made him long for backyard chickens. I thought it was a phase and tried to wait him out. When he brought up the subject, I’d respond cryptically by quoting random bird verses like Job 39:13, “The ostrich flaps her wings grandly, but they are no match for the feathers of the stork.” I’d raise one eyebrow, nod mysteriously, and wander off. 

It didn’t work. 

Gradually, Jay wore me down. I finally told him, “I don’t like birds, and I don’t like eggs, but I do like you. So, if you’re determined to bring chickens into our life...” I generously added, “I’ll somehow try to cope.” Well, he never heard the last part because he was already in the yard building a coop. A couple months later, I became a reluctant chicken mommy to four Golden Comet biddies. 

Recently, I showed Jay a beautiful ring on Etsy.com of a nest with eggs. Even though Poultry Day was clearly marked on our calendar, there was no nest ring waiting for me. 

Is it too much to ask to expect a man to remember my birthday, our anniversary, and Poultry Day?

 

Verse of the day:   (Eph 4:2) "...with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love..." even if they want backyard chickens.