Thumbing Your Nose at the Dairy Aisle – Contemplating a Backyard Flock

The decision to raise a few laying hens did not come easily to our family. It was a hardship decision. Out of work, we needed food. It turned out to be a cool, educational experience.

Now, we keep kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner.

I was not particularly fond of chickens. Okay, I was afraid of chickens. I knew nothing about raising any kind of livestock. I couldn’t hammer a nail to build a coop. I knew no one I could ask for advice. Did I mention I was afraid of chickens?!

They kind of look at you sideways. They might not be happy to see you like a dog. They are not independent like a cat. Right?

Maybe.

Well, peeps aren’t scary. If you watch them grow daily, oddly enough they grow into non scary chickens with individual personalities. Who knew? I always thought those people who wrote about enjoying their chickens as a bit loony.

Some hints for the fearful:

1. Know your zoning.

Raising chickens is allowed in more places than you might think, but it is best to double check. Live in an apartment? What about a rooftop chicken coop?

2. Research the different breeds.

Do you want lots of eggs or a few? Is it cold where you live? Consider a small combed breed. Do you have little kids or are you afraid of chickens? A calm breed for you. Do you care if they fly around a bit? I wanted a heavier bread so they might not scare the s*&% out of me flying about. Of course, not so heavy as to have the advantage. (shiver) What about egg color? There is not just white or brown. There’s white, cream, pinkish, light brown, chocolatey brown, blue, bluish green, khaki and so on. Guess what? They all taste the same. Wonderful!

3. Figure out how many eggs you might want per week.

Once you choose the breed, look up the hen’s average weekly production. That can be found online somewhere. Use that number to help you determine how many chickens to get.

For a beginner, I suggest a minimum of two, so they have a friend. They are a flock animal after all. A maximum of a dozen. If you’ve never had chickens or any kind of livestock before, more might become overwhelming.

4. Figure out how to house them.

You can build your own, buy a pre-made coop, modify an unused shed. Two can usually live happily in a slightly modified, large clamshell doghouse. They need a draft free, well ventilated place to lay, roost and be safe from predators.

To be healthy and happy, assume 4 square feet per bird. Coop sellers often over estimate how many chickens their coops can healthily hold. Try your favorite search engine for more specifics.

5. Do your homework.

Learn everything about what you should and shouldn’t do to keep your girls healthy. Read about their life cycle, common illness and what you can do to prevent them. You wouldn’t want to confuse molting with illness or worse…the other way around.

For the most part, if your chickens have enough space, you keep up with any cleaning, you supplement what they forage for themselves and keep them in fresh, clean water, they do fine. For us, they take 5 minutes a day and a 15 minute cleanup, once a week. Very easy.

6. Buy “day-old” chicks from a seed and feed store.

They usually show up around Easter, but you might want to go on a recon mission to pick the brains of the seed and feed people. Are they getting the breed you are hoping for? Can they? No? what might they suggest instead.

“Day old” chicks at the seed and feed store are inexpensive, but have the benefit that someone with a clue is handling them in their most tender days of life. Also, I would rather the natural culling happen there, instead of here. About the last thing I need is my six yr. old discovering the corpse of a tiny fluff ball that just wasn’t ready to give this life a try.

Besides, you usually must order 25+ chicks to get them mailed to you. That’s a lot of chickens for a beginner! Again, scary.

7. Have fun.

They grow so quickly. Soon enough, you will discover they actually have fascinating personalities. Some days, you’ll look out the window, only to walk away shaking your head and chuckling to yourself.

Lousy economy? Raise some chickens. Ask your favorite Great Depression survivor for more advice.

You might be interest in:

• The Egg Challenge-Store Bought Vs. The Backyard Flock

or the ready-for-chickens article in the Backyard Flock series:

• The Beginner’s Flock
  

or Entertained by: The Cock and the Granny Nightie

And come back tomorrow night for the weekly Waiting-for-Payday recipe. If your hungry tonight try: Egg Drop Soup for the Hungry or Stale Bread Comfort Food

Alternative Food Sources

There are more ways to get food than simple gardening. Let’s look at some other ways.

Honey- bee keeping is relatively straight forward, rewarding, and recent studies show that it just may be the backyard keepers that save our pollinators from Colony Collapse Disorder. It can be done in the country or the city….like the guy who does it on grand scale on the rooftops of New York City. While it is a bit of work, you end up with all that wonderful, valuable honey. Oh yeah, and bee’s wax!

Mushrooms- either take a foraging class or start with a kit, learn as you go. Eventually, your skills will allow you to try special spore plugs in fresh hardwood logs for quite a gourmet harvest. I will be starting with the kit, myself sometime in the spring.

Fish- if you never fished, it is probably a good time to learn. Anyone can do it. Get a license, grab a pole and a friend with experience…or worst case scenario…a fishing book. Fresh fish that you caught yourself just tastes so much better than from the store. Is it the freshness, the fact that it is low cost, or the sheer pride you feel?

Maple syrup and maple sugar- Super easy. Inexpensive start-up. We spent $7 to yield our year’s worth of syrup. $7 that we don’t have to spend again, ’cause now, we’ve got the taps and tubes.

In the Spring when the days are above freezing and the nights below, it is time to tap a maple tree, boil down your sap and enjoy your own maple syrup. This is a nice project for kids. It is surprisingly easy and rewarding. It makes a good science fair project, too. Just one or two trees are a simple start.

Click here, if you want to try a tree or two or twenty.

Where else can you get food? Could you trade a farmer some work?

Low Budget Gardening

So, the family needs to eat, but so many gardening books recommend methods way beyond your budget?

You could start with sprouts.

Have you bought spices lately? Try a 10 cent seed packet from You-know-whatMart in a sunny window. Oh, the huge amount of money you’ll save! In my humble opinion, nothing saves more money than growing your own herbs in a sunny window.

My best friend sees it as entertainment. Her Rosemary and Oregano are like little bonsai trees. But as previously mentioned, she belongs in the Boobie Hatch. I just let my herbs do whatever they please and take snippets, as needed.

If you would like to start or expand a garden, may I recommend:

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times by Steve Solomon. Published by New Society Publisher. copyright 2005.

Okay so I would get it at the library, but if you want to support the author…

I hate gardening books, love the pictures, hate the text. I actually like this one and read it cover to cover.

There is loads of great advice: from whom to purchase your seeds and why, preparing your soil on various degrees of tight budgets, getting the most bang for your buck.

I find the book well organized, very informative with the occassional touch of humor. His authority comes from years as a seed grower/supplier, so he knows his material.

Check it out.

Grab a bag of potting soil this week, save those egg cartons and yogurt cups. Like this…and grab a 10 cent seed packet of your favorite herb.

Next Monday, we will start a sunny window herb or two or twenty. Just the basics. Nothin’ hard about it.

Getting By with Recession Depression

Oh dear, you have become a statistic? You have been “downsized.” There are no jobs and you are feeling like S*&%. It’s okay. You are not alone. Let’s try to give you some purpose…make you feel useful again.

Or perhaps, the pension that was supposed to reward your years of service was eaten alive.

If you are really down, start here.

Since there are no jobs out there, I’ll give you one. You are the new CFO of your household.

Job Description: budgetary cut backs, finding alternate sources for everything from food to clothes, increasing your skills set to reduce household out sourcing.

Yes, I know you have an advanced degree in mathematics, biochemistry, maybe an MBA, and this doesn’t seem like rocket science, but…

“Hope doesn’t come from calculating whether the good news is winning out over the bad. It’s simply a choice to take action.”- Anna Lappe

Try to look at it as a learning experience. You will come out the other side of this recession, more knowledgable, stronger, more independent.

For example:

Learn to grow any kind of food. Sprouts, herbs and tomatoes in a sunny window, your first garden. We will learn together, eat our successes and then laugh at our mistakes.

If you already have a garden, expand it. We’ll can the extras or “root cellar” them so that you can take those fresh flavors into grocery store season, also known as winter.

Eating doesn’t get anymore local.

We are trying to put healthy, fresh, delicious foods in your family’s tummies, as inexpensively as possible. We’ll figure it out together, learn and laugh. Right now, here is what I’m thinking:

Sun-beauty, at home spa, health, mental health. For now try: You are Going to Do WHAT with That Egg?or Starting Your S*&% List

Mon- growing food, planning, purchasing, getting it started. Try this

Tues-backyard animals for the super beginner or city dweller (where zoning allows) and the funny stories that go with them. Like: The Cock and the Granny Nightie

Wed- books to help and entertain us, random hints and ideas

Thurs- waiting for payday recipes. For now try Egg Drop Soup for the Hungry or Stale Bread Comfort Foods.

Fri- personal finance, Trimming the Fat from your budget, tricks to help you move forward financially.

Sat- fashion, shopping, maybe baking…maybe For now try: French Toast Club, or Recon at You-know-whatMart

Email me: kitewrite@gmail.com …with your tips, questions, ideas, concerns, thoughts, rants, things you need more info about. I’m an idea whore…I’ll write about anything. One thing I am good at is getting by and laughing at my own method.

Cum grano salis, folks!

The Cockerel and the Granny Nightie

I am now going to reveal some things about my secret, at-home sense of fashion and my general lack of sanity.

One Christmas, my hubby’s grandmother gave me a blue plaid, flannel nightie, in the stylish granny cut, including eyelet ruffle.

During the night, this particular nightie gets all wrapped around me and itches a little to boot. Instead, I throw it on to cover a very respectable portion of my body. After adding a pair of black rubber knee high barn boots, I am ready to let the rabbits and chickens loose for the day.
We accidentally ended up with a rooster. Allegedly, this is rare when you buy day-old chicks at the seed and feed. Oh, we made our share of growing cock jokes and became quite fond of him.

However, since we have just the right amount of chickens, I had no desire to let him go after “the girls” and fertilize any eggs.

No chicken sex.

He lived in his own covered run. While the hens were inside laying in the morning, he got full run of the property. At noon, he went in, they free ranged.

One morning, just before dawn, he welcomed the day, signally he was ready to get out and play. I put on my stylish attire and headed outside, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Just as I let him out, a swift breeze made my fashionable nightie billow. Well, chickens have very poor vision, and he was sure that he was under attack.

He attacked back, sending me cursing and gullumping back to the house in my noisy barn boots. After every five strides, the bugger came at me talons first. Again and again he came at me.

Slam!

I leaned with my back against the front door panting. What fresh Hell was this? After I caught my breath, I looked up to see my loving husband. He was just about convulsing trying to keep the laughter back as he questioned my well being. He figured out I was okay, when I spouted a string of curses so thick that a sailor would have blushed.

I changed into my gardening grubbies and set about my day. After a bit, I went to check the mail. The rooster seemed fine, his normal calm self. But after I walked past him, I noticed he was strutting behind me. F*&#!

At the mailbox, he let me have it. Again, I sprinted and cursed. Was I glad my then 5 yr. old was at day camp!

I kept one of those foamy pool noodles with me for the rest of the day in self defense.

Now what? He can’t stay. What about my son? I have no desire to butcher the rooster myself…not that anyone in my family could have eaten him, after loving him so.
Maybe, I could cry my way to the slaughter house? Nope. “We only take large batches.” The usually so helpful extension agent actually suggested taking him for a ride and setting him free! I’m not kidding.

Hm…don’t know anyone else who keeps chickens. I called my best friend, who works at a local classifieds magazine. After she spit her coffee all over her key board and shared my story with her coworkers, they all put their heads together trying to come up with a plan.

By 5 pm, I had decided to put the young rooster on Craig’s List. At 9 am the following morning, a local beef farmer came for my old friend, now arch enemy. Oh yeah, he and his son laughed like hell, too.

Now, the rooster lives on a nice farm, where his whole job is to increase the backyard flock.

Keeping chickens tip #1. If you don’t want to increase your flock or have chicken dinner, get rid of the males….before they hit adolescence.

The Frugal Egg Challenge-Store Bought Vs. The Backyard Flock

I used to wonder: Why is it that the eggs I buy from the store and cook never, ever look like the pictures in magazine or my old cooking textbooks?

The first egg I got from our 6 hens last summer was immediately cracked, fried and eaten next to a “fresh” store bought egg. Like one of those soft drink “challenges.”

Here is what I discovered:

1. Super fresh eggs from your own chickens taste much, much better.
From the appearance of the egg white, it seems store eggs take no less than a week (if not longer) to get from chicken to dairy section. I later was informed by a farmer that it can actually take two weeks.

2. The yolks are more nutritious.
Because our girls spend their afternoons roaming around the yard eating whatever strikes their fancy, they get a more well rounded diet. Darker, more nutritious yolks for us.

3. The whites are fantastic for baking.
Due to the freshness, the white creates more lift in anything you bake. Fluffier cake, beautifully textured cookies.

4. Cheapest meal there is.
Backyard flock Egg Drop Soup for the Hungry about 16 cents for two servings.

5. Fresh eggs separate more easily.

Need to separate an egg with out it breaking the yolk? The backyard egg is the way to go. Again, freshness.

6. An $11 bag of chicken feed turns into no less than about 20 dozen eggs.
You do the math.

Thanks girls.

Other articles in the Backyard Flock series:

Chicks Checklist

The Beginner’s Flock

Coop Considerations

Contemplating a Backyard Flock

Choosing a breed

The White Egg Layers