22 chickens bleeding out. This was easily our best chicken harvest yet. We had a good rhythm going, and we ROCKED that plucker. Randy and Wally got the chickens off the fence, Abby and Randy switched off dunking them in the hot water and running the plucker, and I handled pulling off any errant feathers after the plucker was done. Inside, we fell into a nice routine of Randy cutting off tails, heads, necks, and feet, and me handling the removal of the guts and washing of the birds. Since he finished before I did, he also took care of getting them into zip close bags. Even with an hour or so break due to rain, it only took 6 hours, including the time involved in getting the turkey fryer set up and boiling, getting the plucker in place, and cleaning up afterwards. Pretty good.

Um, the 7 year olds dissecting the chicken heads. They got a closeup look at eyeballs, brains, and various other parts of a chicken head. This was a cool educational moment, but it also kept them happily occupied for an hour or more. And, well, there were voices involved, too. The chicken heads apparently were talking to them. I don’t know.

In early July, I decided to redo the rabbit setup just a little. We were having this problem with the buck. He likes to be crazy and run around his cage really fast. I am pretty sure he’s communicating something to me, but haven’t been able to nail down what it is, other than, “I smell does and I want at them.” But while he’s showing off his great manliness, he had also been managing to knock his cage partially or completely off the stack. So sometimes I’d go out to check on them, and his cage would be dangling by one corner, and the water tank would be completely empty because the swinging cage had torn one of the connections loose. And putting the cages back is not really easy – there’s just not any space on the sides.

I was also beginning to have problems with the poop trays. Since they were part wood, and very thin wood at that, they were starting to get soggy and misshapen in the humidity (and with pee). The top part, that was being peed on, was formica, but the underneath part was wood. And as it got soggy, the hooks started tearing out. And I was afraid they’d start to grow things.

So I switched things up a little bit. Before, I had the cages and poop trays all hanging from each other. The top cage hung from the ceiling, the middle cage hung from that cage, etc. You can see pictures here. Now, I have one long chain that is pulled pretty tightly between the ceiling beams and the poop tray on the ground. The individual cages have smaller chains hooking them to the main chains. This way, no cage is directly attached to any other cage, giving them all some degree of independence from the mood swings of the others.

The cages are attached both top and bottom. At least, the buck’s is. This minimizes the amount of swing his cage has and really holds it pretty stable. You can see that it’s just cheap chain from the hardware store connected with S-hooks that I then squished shut with the pliers. They’re still open a smidge – just enough to slip them off if needed – but not enough to pull out on accident.

And then the poop trays are different. They sell this stuff for posters and whatnot, it’s like plastic corrugated cardboard. Might be called corrugated plastic, lol. It’s very lightweight, but not as bendy as thin wood in humidity, and there’s obviously nothing there to absorb moisture, either from the rabbits or from the air. I poked small holes in them with some scissors, then attached the FRONT edge only to the front edge of the cage with a pair of round clips – the type you might use on paper.

I then actually spaced the cages a little further apart vertically to give the poop tray a better angle. And last, I did not worry about attaching the back end to anything. It just rests on the back of the cage below.

On the left here is where the chain hooks to the bottom poop tray. And on the right is where the chain hooks to the top beams. The beams are actually held in place via some L-brackets that just brace them into place. They are not actually attached to anything themselves, making them easy to remove if needed.

And a few more pictures of how the whole thing works. You can also see the zip ties on Black Doe’s feeder. Yeah. She has a habit of knocking her feeder onto the floor, the little booger. Now she just sits there and tries and tries and tries to get it knocked down, but she can’t. <insert evil laugh>

Looks like chicken dinner to me! I’ve tentatively scheduled Chicken Dinner Day for August 28. That’s only 2 more weeks of listening to the new head rooster show off his manliness to the whole neighborhood.

And this is Black Hen. The one who has been sitting on the next for the last 18 months. Not laying eggs. Just eating, being a B to the other chickens, and actually eating some of the eggs she acts like she is hatching. I have come to believe it’s all a ploy. She’s not really broody. She’s lazy. This broody gag lets her sit on her butt all day, not produce eggs, and gets her free yummy egg meals whenever she “accidentally” breaks one. mmmm hmmm. I’m on to you and your ways, Black Hen. Our family is having chicken stew on the 29th… guess who’s going to be in it?

I’m sorry, does that sound cruel? Animals are food around here. Farm animals are not pets. Dogs and cats, they’re pets. Chickens are food. I’m not mean to her in person, but she does drive me insane. And while I’ll be a little sad to be butchering my oldest chicken, I’ll be glad to be rid of her at the same time.

So, Sunday was mating day at Boulevard Farm. I’ve never really, um, forced two animals to have sex before, so I was a little uncertain, but as it turns out, the buck needed no encouragement. At all.

From what I had read in books, I had expected some period of mutual sniffing, and of the doe familiarizing herself with the buck’s cage. Even though, you know, it’s the same as hers.

In reality, I put her in with the buck and while she seemed to want to sniff  around a little, he really just wanted to get down to business. Like, immediately. Oh, good heavens, the poor guy was humping furiously, but never seemed to be able to actually get it in the right place, because Sabrina (the white doe) simply wanted nothing to do with him.

Eventually, she resorted to sitting on her haunches wedged into the corner.

And the poor buck seemed to be trying to woo her. He was sniffing her and cuddling her and licking her face and whatnot, but she was having NO PART in this. So after about 10 minutes, I took her out. I think she was tired of having her back humped. I know I would be.

So, we tried the other doe, the Black doe (sans a name). She is my favorite of the two does. She played this game of Run Away, which resulted in a merry game of chase for the buck. Round and round and round the cage, and eventually, he just stood in the center and watched her. Reasonably assured that they wouldn’t hurt each other, I went inside for a minute and came back out to find her sitting along the back side of the cage with the buck spread out in front of her, as relaxed as can be. He could have been smoking a cigarette.

She was calmer, too, though of course, two calm rabbits don’t necessarily mean that he actually impregnated her. I reached in for her and kind of wagged her backside at the buck a little, but he had absolutely no interest at all, which I took as a good sign. I put her back in her cage, but checked out her girly parts first, and they seemed to be, um… well, it seemed like he found the right spot. So, I’m considering it a job well done by Mr Buck, but we’ll find out in a month, I guess. I’m going to try palpitating her in a few weeks, to see if I can feel anything, but I have no experience and no confidence.

So the picture above is the buck, pleased with himself. The picture below is the knocked up rabbit.

My goodness, I’ve neglected this blog. Here’s a quick update.

People: We’re expecting another baby at the end of December. Yay us.

Rabbits: The rabbits are doing really good! They’re all grown up now, and could have been bred in June, but since we were planning a vacation for mid-July, I decided it would be best to wait until we returned. I will be breeding them in early August, so hopefully it won’t be quite as hot when they kindle in early September. That should still give the babies time enough to grow up sufficiently to allow me to butcher them in early December, before the new baby comes. If I can do a reasonable job of sexing the babies, I’ll probably keep one doe and one buck from this batch to bring the flock up to five breeding adults. Depending on how warm I’m able to keep the rabbit shed, I might breed the does again in the winter, or I might wait until it warms up a bit in March.

Hens: The hens are doing OK. The second-year hens are pissing me off, though. Black Hen still thinks she’s raising young. She isn’t. What she is doing is terrorizing the rest of the flock. White Hen isn’t laying any more. Of the other four one also isn’t laying. I’d like to say that their personalities make up for this, but they don’t. And for the first time, flies are becoming a problem around their coop. A quick search of various backyard poultry message boards shows that many people around the country are having a bad year for flies. We’re getting so darn much rain, I suspect that’s 90% of the problem. I believe I’m going to dispatch the second-year hens as soon as it’s cool enough to want to consider standing over a pot of boiling water.

Meat birds: Due to the excessive amounts of rain, the meat bird pen is STINKY. I’ve tried lime. I’ve tried wood shavings. I’ve tried Sweet PDZ, which is what I used last year. Nothing’s helping. I have a few roosters crowing their hearts out, not just in the morning, but whenever they feel the need to establish their manliness, which is often. I’m going to take care of a few of the roosters – at least the two noisy ones – when I do the hens, and then I’m planning to butcher the rest of the flock in early October before it gets cold. I’m thinking that I’m going to take a break from meat birds next year. Give the pen a chance to air out, toss some seeds back there and let them grow a bit, maybe till some DE, sand, and peat into the ground back there. Give the neighbors a break, lol.

Garden: At our place, the herbs are doing well, the garlic’s growing, and the horseradish is doing great. We lost all three fruit trees last year, as well as the grapes, but we replaced the apple and the grapes this spring and they’re looking good.

And this may be my last time raising them, unless we do kill them at 30 days. Cornish are really really annoying.

I mean, last year, someone called the city to complain that we hadn’t mowed. And actually, we HAD mowed. What they meant was we have a hill that’s covered in nontraditional lawn materials (mainly short groundcovers, but also taller plants). Yes, it looks a little messy. No, they’re not planted in clumps and arranged in groups of three with little tiny fences around them. Bite me. The city clarified for me that they consider anything that is not Kentucky Bluegrass to be a noxious weed. Yes, they really did. I wish I were kidding.

So this spring, it’s that I trimmed up the hill (in an honest attempt to keep everyone happy) just before it rained for 2 weeks, and we haven’t had time to run the trimmings out to the dump, so they are in a VERY NEAT pile against our fence FAR AWAY from the public. I was actually going to take care of it this weekend, but technically the citation from the city gives us 21 days, so we decided to put it off, lol. Yes, I fight back in my petty ways.

But all this extreme watchfulness has made me decide – somebody is unhappy with us. I don’t know if it’s because of the chickens, or what the deal is, but we’ve pissed someone off and that person has decided to take revenge on us by calling in anonymous complaints to the city. (I actually half suspect it’s someone not even in the neighborhood.)

The result of this is that I’ve decided I probably need to be more cautious about keeping the animals in compliance. I’m already MORE in compliance than most urban chicken keepers I know. I keep them inside their coops/runs at all times. I try to keep them quiet. Their feed is kept in metal, rodent-proof bins. Etc. However, we’re getting close on numbers of birds allowed. Actually, we’ll end up just exactly where we need to be, but not necessarily on purpose. We have the six layers, then 25 meat birds, which gives us 31, 1 more than allowed. But then one of the chicks died, so we’re down to 24 meat birds… which gives us 30 – our legal limit.

But then add in our second species of animal – the rabbits. We have three. That bumps our total number of animals to 33. While I was initially unconcerned about this, I’ve decided to play it safe and shuffle some of the chickens off to Swinging Goat Farms’ rural half to live out their lives with Sally, our goat.

You know what’s funny, though. The city will not allow birds in the front yard, even if penned up. But if they would let me put a few birds in a portable run on the steep part of our 42nd hill (that the city made too steep to safely mow), the birds would take care of that area’s tendency to be weedy. Even funnier is that I’m sure the city would cite us, but the 42nd street side is NOT our front yard. We have a Kingman address. The front yard is the yard that faces Kingman. 42nd is the side yard, and the law says NOTHING about chickens in the side yard. Once we sell our house, I’ll test out that theory with the city, lol.

They’re growing! When I moved them to the outside coop, it was still pretty cold and they still hadn’t completely feathered out, so I kept the door to the outside shut. This week, however, it’s been warm enough, and they’re old enough, I thought they could use some sunshine (or, um, you know – vaguely bright) time. I had to literally throw them outside once I opened the door, but now they go in and out all the time, and seem to prefer it outside (I know I would).

I’ve been surprised at how quiet they are. I don’t know that I’ve heard them make any noise since I moved them out. Even when I’m messing around in their coop, they don’t protest too much or squawk at me. This is a good thing right now, though, since the egg birds are being super noisy. I think they’re undergoing some sort of change in the pecking order out there, and it involves a lot of verbal banter.

Our original plan was to purchase another six cornish when these cornish were about 4 weeks old, but that’s about the time our mail-order chicks arrived*, and I’m still trying to think through the logistics of this. The cornish are in the coop right now, and the chicks inside. The chicks will be ready to move outside a few weeks after the cornish vacate the coop, freeing up my indoor brooding boxes. However, if I get six more cornish at that time, I’m not sure about where they’d finish growing up. I need to decide if I think there would be conflict if I throw them in with the other meat birds while they finish.

Anyway, the cornish are growing fast, and I think they’ll be ready to harvest in a few weeks. Looking forward to a nice meal of Cornish game hen!

* Most people who order mail-order chicks choose their delivery date. What we actually do is, when we place our order with Sandhill – or, more accurately, when Abby places our joint order with Sandhill – we order their “end of the week special.” Essentially, when they have enough leftover chicks at the end of the week to fill our order, it ships. So we don’t know exactly when to expect it, and we don’t know exactly what we’re getting. I order chickens-only, but Abby orders Whatever You Got, which is always fun to see what comes.

But apparently he likes chew toys, lol. I did buy them each a wooden chew treat as a Welcome To Your New Home present, and his was pretty chewed on this AM.

Then a black female:

She discovered her hay right away, and absolutely went to town. When I went out this morning, she had spent all night, apparently, munching on the hay, as it was all gone.

And a white female:

She is super curious, and is exploring her cage vigorously every time I see her.

Generally speaking, the red eyes of the whites freak me out, but this one is so soft, I forgive her.

We got them settled in last night, and this morning, they seemed to be doing good. They had all pooped and peed all over the place, and their water cups were empty, and there was feed missing, so I’m assuming all is well. They’re a little jumpy this morning, but they’re in new surroundings, so I get it.

Are you considering keeping chickens, but you’re not sure what to do with baby chicks? They’re actually not hard to keep alive, as long as you give them their (pretty basic) needs.

- Food. Chicks need chick food. Chick food is specially blended for the needs of baby chicks. You can get medicated feed if you prefer, which contains a Coccidiostat to help guard against coccidiosis, which is an illness that baby chicks can get. I do not personally use medicated feed, but that’s a decision I’ll leave up to each individual chicken farmer. It’s easiest to give chicken feed in a chick feeder.

- Water. Chicks need water. If you’re buying new day-old chicks via mail-order, you’ll probably need to show them how to drink water. (Just dunk their beak in the water.) Never let your birds run out of water. They’re so little, and they can’t handle dehydration. Many people recommend feeding them sugar water the first day or two. It’s easiest to give water to the chicks from a waterer, since they can’t tip it over. They will still make a huge mess with it, though.

- Heat. Most people use a heat lamp for this. Chicks need to be kept warm – about 95 degrees for the first week, then lower their temp by 5 degrees every week until you get down to ambient temperature.

- Safe space. Give your birds plenty of room, and give them more room as they grow. We have our 25 chicks in one giant Rubbermaid bin, but as they grow, we’ll move them into two separate bins, and then divide them further as needed.

- Litter. Though this isn’t strictly required to keep your chicks alive, it will make keeping your birds from getting all super nasty and dirty. Change the litter (and clean the feeder and waterer) daily if possible.

Isn’t this one adorable? I hope it’s a girl.

- Basic care. Check to make sure they’re not pasting up, which means that their poop sticks to their butts. This should be removed gently with a warm, wet rag. Make sure they’re not picking on each other, which often results from being too crowded, too hot, or not having enough water.

- Toys. They don’t make chicken toys. They’re chickens. Their brains are the size of a pea. That said, though I don’t know that it does much for the chickens, I personally find it highly amusing to provide some sort of high contrast toy for the chickens. And by “toy,” i mean like a dark spot on the side of their box. First one chick will run over and peck at it, and before you know it, they’re ALL over there pecking at it. Maybe I’m just easily amused.

But that’s it. Chicks are not hard to care for. If you’re ordering mail-order, it’s not unusual to lose a few, which is why most mail order places will send a few extra in every shipment. So, don’t stress about it unless you lose more than 1 or 2.