Ever seen a chicken in a boat?

What good's a fishing boat in the winter?

The chickens sure like it!

KJ

Chicken Integration

If you recall from earlier posts like The halfway house aka chicken tractor and chick love, Whitney and I raised 5 more chickens this year. These Silver Laced Wyandottes came to us as day old chicks and we brooded them in the house until they were old enough to go outside. They lived in the chicken tractor for several weeks while becoming accustomed to the outside world. After they became comfortable, we began opening the door in the afternoons so that the pullets could roam the yard like the hens do. But even though they were all out together, the two groups would not mix. They were two groups tolerant of each other but not interested in meeting. Eventually the pullets became too big for the chicken tractor, so it was time to move them into the coop.

The Five Pullets

I guess I thought Whitney would just chicken whisper them right into the hen house, but it didn't exactly work that way. It turned out more like a game of Chase the Chicken every night for a week. The books all say that it is as simple as placing the pullets in the coop at night, and the next morning they will wake up knowing that's home. I'll tell you how it went for us: One night Whitney and I moved the pullets one at a time into the coop and placed them on the roost. The next morning, when I opened the door to the chicken yard, the pullets tumbled out and hid in the corner. The hens scratched and pecked like normal, but the pullets continued to huddle off on the side. That afternoon we opened the door to the big yard and the pullets ran back to the chicken tractor! We rounded them up and got them back in the coop, but they were clearly not happy about it. For about a week every time we opened the door, the pullets ran out to return to the their old home. It was sad, and we even worried that they might not be eating but after several rounds of chicken wrangling they did start returning to the coop at night. It's taken a while but I'm happy to say that the flock is now fully integrated. Sure the hens have a pecking order and the youngsters are not yet on the top roost, but they aren't a separate flock either.



The Integrated Flock

To top the news, this week Whitney found a couple mini eggs in the nesting boxes, suggesting our little Wyandottes have started laying! So, it's official we've got 19 layers and 1 rooster (although one of the Wyandottes is showing some rooster-like tendencies, more on that later).

Sometime soon we will try honey extracting for the first time, so stay tuned for that.

Until next time, as always, thanks for stopping by.

KJ

Celebrating the wild side of chickens

Our rooster Colonel Sanders is starting to show his heritage. More and more these days he is acting like a rooster, crowing and strutting constantly, "servicing" the hens every few minutes and at times pecking and flapping at our legs. His antics have cost him some friends, one of our neighbors even blogged about her bad encounter with the Colonel (when they visited our chicken coop while we were out of town). Whitney generally talks softly to him when he's like this and picks him up to calm him. Together they walk around the yard, while she talks softly and pretty soon his eyes are shut and she grins at me with the napping bird in her arms. My own reaction to his chicken dance is a little less compassionate: generally I tell him to buzz off and keep going about my business.
However, I recently read a really neat article in Smithsonian Magazine: How The Chicken Conquered the World which has me rethinking my attitude towards our Colonel. The chicken's lineage it turns out stretches back an estimated 10,000  years to the  Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus) of Southeast Asia.


Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus). Source:Wikipedia.com

In the wild, the rooster acts like many other male critters, defending his harem, fighting other males and declaring himself the baddest of the bad to all that can hear. One interesting point about the chicken is that the hormone that causes most creatures to only mate at a certain time of year seems to be suppressed. This means the hens can reproduce (lay eggs) year round as opposed to say turkey and geese which only mate in the spring. This also means that the lucky rooster has to mate his hens year round to keep them fertilized and thus build the flock. This is probably a key to why the chicken was domesticated long before other fowl, since their eggs were available all year long. The eggs it seems were utilized long before their meat, which didn't become popular until relatively recently.
Another item I found fascinating is that long ago Roman armies would travel with a rooster, or cock as they are historically known. The cock was observed before a battle, and only if he had a good appetite did the army go into battle believing a victory was likely.
The rooster's courage was so revered in fact, that where it is still practiced cock fighting is the oldest form of sport. While in the US it is considered inhumane and cruel, in many places cock fighting is a traditional sport, and the victorious rooster is celebrated.
Like I said, it's a neat article and worth the time to read, but enough about the ancient chicken. Today the chicken is prized for it's mild meat and it's ability to lay eggs consistantly. Also the chicken produces more meat per pound of feed than almost any other domestic livestock, save only the rabbit. We have adapted the chicken to our needs so entirely that even in "free range" chicken houses often the birds don't range at all, choosing instead to remain by the feeder waiting for the next timer controlled ration.
So, after all that when I go outside and see our hens foraging about the yard, clucking with joy at the discovery of a worm or seed, and watching the rooster mount the compost pile to crow for the umpteenth time in a row, I am filled with pride. For these chickens, after all these centuries of domestication and human manipulation still know what it means to be a chicken. Could they survive in the wild? Probably not, but at least now when the Colonel puffs his neck and dances at my legs I have to stop and smile because, after all, he is doing exactly what he should be doing. Acting like a rooster.

The Dude: Colonel Sanders with his hens.


KJ

Little Dinosaurs

Gone are our cute and fuzzy little chicks, now we have Little Dinosaurs.

Their legs and necks are getting long, their feathers are coming in, and they are very energetic. They often run from one end of the brooder box to the other and kick wood chips everywhere. They have also taken to flying up at us, so we have a piece of fence over the top of the box to keep them contained. Finally, this week I gave them a roost to stop the perching on the feeder. I'm happy to say the roost is a hit!   

That's all for now. KJ

Springtime!

I can't lie, I was pretty excited to see the honey bees flying. Running towards the house yelling "The bees are flying, the bees are flying"! I probably looked ridiculous but oh well, it was exciting dang it!


The bees are flying, the bees are flying!



This weekend, we hit fifty degrees for the first time this spring, and just like I hoped they would, the bees became airborne.This was exciting on a couple of levels: one because I haven't seen the bees fly in months, but also just knowing that they are alive and I didn't let them die this winter was very satisfying. 

Leaving the hive, after months in the cluster must be the most amazing thing. A bee can store 1/4 of it's body weight in waste while confined to the hive, so "cleansing" is priority number one when they do fly. Note to self: next time don't stand in front of the hive when the bees fly for the first time in the spring!

Whitney's flock was also out enjoying the warm weather. With the ground thawing, the chickens finally get to scratch and hunt again. Finding an earthworms or other tasty tid-bits sends them into fits of excited clucking.   

I decided to lift the lids off the hives to see what the bees had done with the sugar I fed them back in December. Blog Post: mid december part 2: emergency feeding

This (above) is the stronger colony, the one that was vacuumed out of the house. They didn't make use of the sugar all that much, telling me they must have had more honey in there than I thought, but I'm still glad to have fed them.

This is the smaller colony, the swarm we collected off a friend's fence post. You can see they used the sugar a lot more, telling me I was right to be worried about them. I bet without the sugar they would have starved. You can also see evidence of another hard lesson learned. The dark blotches on the frames indicates the bees were "cleansing" in the hive. This is not a good thing, and may be a sign of dysentery. With the entrance reducer on the smallest hole, the bees got hive bound due to heavy winter losses and weren't able to get out when they needed to. Next time I need to watch that better because dysentery and it's assoceate Nosema (bacterial infection) are good ways to loose a colony. This is more common when you do a lot of feeding like I did, so I'll have to watch and see if this colony contines to show signs of stress. We're not out of the woods yet.  



Bees eating sugar



I'll leave the sugar there, and they'll keep working on it for a while yet. The dandelions will be our first bloom, and I think that's a ways out yet. The next thing on my list is to decide if I'm going to re-queen (a new queen would dramatically increase our chances of having honey to harvest) and to feed pollen (the bees need the protein from pollen to get them ready for the busy season) but more on that later. 

For now, I'm just excited spring is here. The birds are singing, the bees are flying, the smell of mud and skunk on the breeze. It's exciting dang it, time to go outside!

KJ  

Two steps forward and one step back

The week has been a little bumpy around here, just when things seemed to be going really well we've had some unfortunate set backs.
In the coop, our hens have been doing great. Since the winter has been mild thus far, they are super active and are getting lots of sunny winter afternoons foraging in the dormant garden. We are gathering a dozen eggs a day regularly and have developed a great group of friends and neighbors who gladly purchase or trade for our eggs every week. The egg money has been covering the cost of feed and things seemed to be just grand.
In the hives, things seemed to be going well also. Both of the colonies are still alive despite my lack of knowledge and the many opportunities to fail. The bees have been making use of the sugar I provided (blog post: mid-december part-2: emergency feeding) and and appear to be wintering well.

Then came the setbacks. We were hit with a nasty wind storm one night which blew the top off one of the bee hives. In hindsight, it's obvious that I should have had rocks on the lids, and I had also mentioned building a windbreak which had not gotten done. I was at work when Whit called to tell me the hive was open, so more than likely it was that way most of the night and all the morning. Bees cluster to keep the queen 92 degrees f. and death from exposure is very common in cold climates like ours. That's why experienced beekeepers never open their hives when it's below 50 f. (the temp when bees can no longer fly). That night it was in the teens and it was in the low 30's when I got home. The other major concern in the winter is moisture. High humidity in a hive is a bad thing and can lead to a bacterial disease called Nosema. When a hive gets Nosema the likely hood is the hive will die without an aggressive treatment with chemicals. So needless to say, the cold wet condition I found my hive in that day was very concerning. I rushed to put the lid back on, and fashioned a lamp in the hive for the afternoon to try and warm/dry things a bit. When I removed the lamp that evening, there were bees were moving about, but there were also many dead bodies scattered on the top of the frames. Since then I've seen bees moving about by peeking in the cracks but have not had a good day to look in and check on them. From what I've read, a shock like that is not always a death blow, but certainly didn't help anything. Of course now there are rocks on the lids and a straw bale wind break in place... learning is hard sometimes.  

As I was still kicking my self over the hive incident, Whit came home one afternoon and found a dead hen. One of our araucanas we called "Grousie" (because she looked like a ruffed grouse as a chick) was laying dead on the coop floor. We looked her over but could not find any marks or anything out of place at all. The coop and run had not been broken into and there was no blood. She looked for all the world like she was laying on the floor asleep. After a sad good bye, we started looking into why this could have happened. There are actually a number of ways a chicken can die unexpectedly from heart attack to calcium over douse. Since we believe little Grousie was a new layer and her vent appeared swollen, Whitney suspects an impaction of the oviduct, a birthing complication you could say. Chicken reproduction is really fascinating, check out this great blog: http://eggcartonlabels.blogspot.com/ how hens makes eggs  if your interested. This is our best guess, but for now the death remains an un-solved mystery.

Grousie is the furthest rear hen in the above photo, we'll miss her around the coop.

We remain positive of course, speed bumps like these are all apart of the journey.

I hope my next post brings better news. Until next time.

KJ

Mid December- Part 1: An Egg update

So what's going on around here the week before Christmas?

After adjusting to the newness of snow, the chickens are doing really well and enjoy getting out in the yard every chance they get. One of us goes out every morning around sun-up to check the girls and open the coop, and by that time they are very ready to be up and about. The cold doesn't seem to bother them a bit, only the really windy days keep them cooped up. We've opened up the chicken run to the garden and they really like pecking and scratching around and in the garden beds.

The coop is a much calmer place since we removed the two other roosters, these days it's downright pleasant. The hens are laying about a dozen eggs a day thanks to the heat lamp which keeps them warm and lighted despite the cold short days. Some people say that the hens need a break in the winter, but we've yet to read a good reason for that and ours seem to be doing fine. We did notice that there were very few hens using the upper boxes, so we added a perch to give them a place to climb in. That seems to have fixed the problem for the most part.

We collect eggs once or twice a day, often reaching under the hens to get them. The hens are generally agreeable to this, although at times one will let you know she's not happy with a sharp peck.

Selling the eggs is going very well too.  Thank you very much to everybody that has bought eggs from us! Lately we've been able to buy chicken feed and scratch using the egg money which was a goal of ours. 

 As near as I can tell, the honey bees are wintering well also. I check them every few days by putting my ear to the box and giving it a quick tap. The bees buzz in response and then go back to their business. What is their business? Keeping the queen warm! The colony forms a tight ball and everybody works together to make heat. The ball moves gradually as the bees consume honey for energy and cycle from the inside to the outside of the ball. Both colonies have access to sugar syrup, but the consumption has gone way down since the fall. Since it's hard for the bees to move far this time of year, I need to switch from the syrup to sugar cakes or dry sugar feeding for the winter. I need to check on them, but hesitate to open the hives because exposure to the cold can kill them. In a well established hive there is enough honey that you don't need to feed, but mine are not that well prepared since we got a late start. 

 Feeding sugar cakes involves making hard sugar rich patties and placing them in the hive, while feeding dry sugar can be done by placing newspaper on the frames and pouring a few pounds of sugar on newspaper. The humidity in the hive will cause the sugar to harden and form a cake.

 I found a very good beekeeping blog with lots of pictures and how to's at http://mudsongs.org/. These guys keep a very neat blog devoted to beekeeping in St. John's, Newfoundland. I am encouraged by reading about their success in a climate worse than mine. Last year they made and fed sugar cakes and I may need to do the same. Mudsongs.org/making-candy-cakes.

Also, http://www.beesource.com/ has a good (lengthy) USDA text explanation of winter feeding at http://www.beesource.com/resources/usda/supplemental-feeding-of-honey-bee-colonies/

I'll keep you posted on my bee's progress and what I decide to do about feeding.

Update: Mid December - Part 2: Emergency feeding 

Until then, Happy Holidays to everybody, Merry Christmas, keep warm and stay safe. 

KJ 

Snowbirds and Blue Eggs

These past couple of weeks came as a surprise to the chickens, as this has been their first taste of winter. With daytime highs only in the mid teens and a healthy 6" of snow on the ground the girls turned quickly in to coop potatoes. It wasn't until the weather warmed up some and I shoveled a bare spot in the run that they would venture out. The weather has been a learning process for us too, as the shortened daylight and cold weather meant less eggs and frozen water. We overcame these obstacles by adding a heat lamp to the coop and a heated stand for the water. Now we are back up to 10 or 11 eggs a day, and have recently celebrated the first of our Araucana eggs!

These are the smaller multi colored hens that have been the slowest to develop. They are special because each has a unique coloring and they lay eggs that can vary between blue and green.

Besides trying to keep the chickens from freezing, we have been very busy butchering the two mule deer and one whitetail that we got this year. More on that coming later.

Until then we hope everybody has a happy, warm and safe Thanksgiving!

Kyle and Whit. 

3 Roosters is 2 too many

Today was a sad day for our flock. Two of our "girls" had to move on.
For a while now we've had a couple larger chickens that we were watching, hoping they'd be hens. Because there was supposed to be two breeds of black and white chickens, our hope was that one breed was significantly larger than the other, and that we only had two of that large breed. It seemed reasonable. Also, while the Colonel has been crowing and acting quite rooster like for months, these other big birds were rather docile. But sadly, recently these other two have shown their true rooster natures. They grew combs and spurs and began harassing the hens. This apparently caused Colonel to harass the hens with renewed vigor. All of a sudden the chicken yard was getting pretty out of hand, and some of the hens were getting pecked to the point of bleeding. This can become a real problem because chickens are very attracted to red and blood can cause chickens to peck one another to death.
So as a solution first we thought maybe somebody local would like a 4H rooster. Youngsters often show roosters at the fair and we know a few families that do, but they were not interested. Next we hoped somebody may just like to have a rooster, but that turned out to be a long shot also. Finally it became clear that our two barred rock roosters were enough of a problem, they were leaving one way or another. While this was going on, we had also heard about the recent trend of using chicken feathers for earrings and decorating girl's hair. Chicken feathers are quite valuable it turns out, and one of our local hair stylists has gotten in to feather dyeing. Whitney and her are good friends, and they will use these feathers to try some different earrings and things.
I asked around and found a friend that was interested in having the meat, in exchange for skinning the birds. The usable part of the skin is called the saddle, and extends from the back of the head to the top of the vent (Google it if your not sure what a chicken's vent is).  He has a lot of experience with this because at one time he raised chickens for meat and feathers, although at that time the feathers were for fly fishing flies. This option worked well for us since we weren't prepared to butcher and skin our roosters, but didn't want to see the birds wasted. The meat for a clean saddle was a fair trade.
So, tonight I went and learned how to dispatch a chicken. This didn't turn out to be nearly as traumatic as you may imagine. None of the chopping block and cleaver and headless chickens running around that I was imagining. A simple, quiet slit with a small kitchen knife while holding the rooster upside down was all it took. A few seconds later and they were done.
Sad as it is, that turned out to be the best option. The meat will be used, the feathers will be used, the hens can take a break and we don't have to feed extra mouths. Sometimes it's not fun but as animal owners we had an obligation to do the right thing for the hens. Also if we are going to take these chickens seriously at all, we can't feed extra birds for no reason.
On a lighter note, the hens are producing 6 - 8 eggs a day now. And as it is now honest to gosh winter (19 degrees the other day) we've put a heat light in the coop to keep the water from freezing. This should help with our egg production to, as we should be closer to a dozen a day and right now demand is exceeding supply!
Thanks for reading. KJ

The First Egg!

Today was a big day!

While Whitney was busy canning salsa and plum preserves in the kitchen, one of the hens was hard at work in the chicken coop. I  was outside at the time splitting wood and started hearing the tell tale noises coming from the coop. I got Whitney and we went out to investigate. What we found out there was pretty amazing. One hen, a little barred rock, was sitting in a nesting box. Her beak was open and she looked more than a little upset. She was clucking loudly, but even louder was the rooster, pacing and squwacking in front of her. Ridiculous as it sounds, it really looked like a nervous father waiting for a birth! This show went on for quite a while, so after a time we went back to what we were doing and left the chickens in peace.

After a while things got quiet and we went to take a look. At last there it was! Our flock's first egg!

It's pretty small, and may not be good to eat, but it's an egg and our first. Whitney figured it out and the chickens are 18 weeks old now. Seems amazing that just about 4.5 months ago these little fuzz balls showed up in the mail, and now we have laying hens (well, one at least).  We're pretty dang excited.

So much so in fact we decided to open a bottle of Mead (honey wine) to celebrate the occasion. If you've never tried Mead, I highly recommend it. Mead is a very old drink that is made primarily of honey water and yeast. The website says that mead predates grape wine by one thousand years! This bottle came from a Montana mead maker and features Montana honey. Check out http://hiddenlegendwinery.com/ 

And there they are, the happy chicken farmer and not quite as happy hen. Soon all the other hens will follow along and have eggs, but for us this hen will always be special.

That's all for now, I hope you all had a wonderful day. KJ 

Feeding the Bees, and Making Salsa with Help in the Garden

The first of our pumpkins and squash.

With the first day of Fall this week, it's time to harvest and start thinking about the coming cooler weather. I've been reading a lot about honey bees these days, and I learned it was time to check the honey in the hives. Bees make honey for food to survive the winter, but if they have enough, we can harvest some for ourselves.

The other day, we opened up the hives to check on the girls and see what was going on in there. While we did get to see one of the queens, mainly what we found was a not a lot of honey. It looks like they have been focusing on increasing thier populations and so have not packed away much food stores. This is a problem since they will need the honey for the winter, so I now have to feed the bees.

Generally from the frost until the bloom, I'll be feeding the bees a syrup of sugar water so they can make honey and survive the winter. Old honey works well too though. I had some old honey comb sitting in a bowl from when we vacumed the bees out of the house, so I decided to feed them that in the mean time. The bees went nuts for the honey, as you can see, and had all that old comb cleaned up in a few hours. Now the comb is clean wax that I can melt down for another project.

Salsa Time! Whitney's tomatoes, peppers and onions all did pretty well this year. While this is only some of the harvest, this bunch will be enough to make several gallons of salsa that we'll can and use throughout the year.

Our garden did well this year,  but we did add some Jalapeno peppers and cilantro that were grown locally.

Since canning cooks the salsa, this first jar of fresh salsa went to a Griz game party and was a real hit (though, sadly the Griz lost). The rest of it will get canned and put away to be enjoyed later.

While we were at work in the kitchen, the chickens were also at work in the garden. My corn as you can see didn't amount to much, the potato bed is turned under, and the peas and herbs in the far bed are dead or gone to seed. So, we decided to give that part of the garden to the chickens for a while. I put temporary fencing up to keep them where we wanted them, and then turned them loose. The hens were in heaven and clucking happily as they explored this new area. They especially liked getting into the pea trellises and over grown cilantro and basil.

That's all for now.  KJ

Hopper Hunters, Brood Boxes and River Rafters

Sitting in the backyard on a quiet Sunday afternoon. The chickens have taken a break from the heat to nap in the shade of the willow. Soon their lives will change as they will start laying within a few weeks, but for now they are our hopper hunters. Combating the destructive insects that eat our garden plants and fruit trees, the chickens run about chasing down the hoppers and snapping them up in a gulp. The young rooster we call Colonel Sanders crows occasionally, still trying out this new found talent. He seems to be calling to the rooster next door who answers with a confident crowing of his own.

Earlier today we added a new hive box to each of the bee hives, so they are now each two boxes high. The first (bottom) box will house the brood and the newly hatched bees as they build the colony. The second box will be critical for food storage as the bees have to store enough honey to make it through the winter. Now is the honey making season and they are frantically gathering nectar to build their stores. As our northern winter wears on, I will check the hive to make sure they are fairing well. When the stored honey starts to dwindle, I will feed the bees syrup to help them along. Winter starvation is a common way to loose your bees. If I am successful and the bees survive the winter, next summer we will add supers to each hive, so the bees will fill them with honey for us to harvest.

In the photo above you can see the brown capped brood cells, from which the next generations of workers will hatch. You can also see teh white capped honey cells, food stored for winter.

August is also time for one of our favorite summer pastimes, floating the river. The spring runoff lasted so long this year that we've only recently gotten out in the raft, but the wait was worth it. Here are a few shots of a float trip we took while my Dad was here, his first time down the Clark Fork.

Cheers!

KJ

Bedtime for the ladies.

The hens are appreciating the roost Kyle and I built last weekend. Sleeping on the ground was so undignified :) You will also notice how much they have grown, they are just about half grown.

We got the Queen! (and chicken update)

We got the queen!!
I went out to the hive this morning to check the bees and remove the cardboard box. My Dad and bee advisor had suggested that I go ahead and check on them to make sure they were adjusting well to the hive. When I lifted the cardboard box off the hive, I was happy to see bees working in the frames and I noticed that the old comb seemed to be abandoned. The next job was to open up the cardboard box and dump out any remaining bees into the hive. When I opened the card board box I was totally blown away by the bees, for the second time this week. They had nearly filled the box with new comb! There was a complete functioning hive in the cardboard box. After my initial surprise, I turned the box over and dumped comb bees and all into the hive. The bees got some what upset by this, so now I am just hoping they don't pickup and leave because of my messing with them. But right now I am just so happy that we got the queen and she's taken to the new location! Here are some long over due pictures of the chickens and garden. This beauty of a Buff Orpington is one we call Colonel Sanders. We're pretty certain that he's a rooster, but he's super friendly and had quite the personality.

Here is last night's harvest. The garden is in full production and we are enjoying the bounty every day. Part of the fun is giving all the scraps to the chickens. They go nuts for lettuce leaves and beet tops. Also in the bowl not seen are sugar snap peas. Mmm!

Some times in the evenings we open up to coop and let the chickens roam the backyard. They like to nap in the shade on the east side of the coop out of the hot afternoon sun, and so does Rosco.

Under the willow is another favorite scratching and foraging place. And the post pile makes a great place for the hens to nap.

Here again is the Colonel, our friendliest chicken by far. The flock is now nine weeks old and doing very well. Although we lost one to un supervised dogs, the rest seem very happy and healthy. Whitney is expecting our first eggs in about three weeks. I can't wait for that, but it really is a lot of fun feeding them scraps and watching them become chickens. One of our favorite ways to relax now is to sit in the shade with the chickens in the evening.

KJ