Too Many Chickens!

(Broadcast 5/31/13)

I’ve talked a bit before about how I’ve fed my chickens their own eggs. You can scramble them up, and the chickens go nuts for it. It’s a nice way to get them nutrition and cut down on the ever growing pile of eggs on the counter. The key part is that you scramble them. If the chickens make the connection that the eggs they lay in the coop contain food, then you may have a problem on your hands. I have had an episode or two with this sort of egg eater, and I’m trying to work it out.

Artist’s rendition of crime scene

The first incident happened when I went to clean the coop. The chickens like to watch me do this for some reason. I assume it’s that they feel superiority over me because I am touching their poop. You know what chickens? Everyone feels superior to me, so you’re not special. Anyway, once I’ve cleared out the smelly stuff and put in new bedding, I usually toss some treats in there so they scratch around in the shavings and mix up any poop that’s still in there. Their excitement is probably due to the expectation of treats. I’m sure it’s not that they enjoy my sparkling conversation.

Hey, Housekeeping’s here!

One day, when I opened the back door to get cleaning, there was an egg in the shavings, and a chicken in the coop. The chicken ran over to the egg, pecked it, it broke, and she began to chow down on the goodies within. I grabbed the broken egg as fast as I could and tossed it in the compost, but I was a little alarmed. “Why would she do that right in front of me?” I thought. I posted on a messageboard what had happened, and within five minutes the first “you have to kill that bird” response came in. I seem to get these a lot. I don’t think I’d have any chickens left if I listened to them all. I understand that if this is your livelihood, you don’t want a chicken eating the profits. But I’m an experimenter, and I wanted to figure out why this happened. This was just the first time, and while maybe this was the start of a bad habit, maybe it wasn’t. I wanted to see if it happened again. I began to suspect that maybe the excitement over treats had something to do with it. Maybe the chicken saw the egg, thought it was a treat, and acted accordingly. I posed this to the forum, but no one had any input on it. “Kill it,” they said again.

A clue that stood out to me was that the egg in question was one of the pale, flimsy ones that sometimes appear. I’m not sure which one of them is doing it, but someone lays very thin shelled eggs now and again. Maybe every couple of weeks. I give them calcium, but sometimes this still happens. I thought that maybe the chicken happened to peck at the egg just to see what was up, and it was thin, so it broke, and “oh hey candy!” I decided to not bring this up with the “kill that chicken” set, but this was the theory I went with.

Weird egg on left.

Over the course of the next several months, I found two more eggs that had been cracked open. Neither had been entirely eaten. Both were pale, thin eggs. I felt my theories were being borne out, but at the same time, I was a little worried that they might move on to eating the other eggs after a while. There is the chance that one egg eater will teach the others the skill, and then you’ve got trouble. I looked up how to handle this end of it, and chose my method.

Chickens apparently don’t like mustard. If you blow an egg out of the shell, and then fill the shell with mustard, Lady Eats-Eggs-A-Lot will come along, try to eat the egg, get a mouthful of mustard, and that’s the end of that. The problem was that since this was only happening with one type of egg – the pale, weird variety – I wanted to use that type of egg to do this. I actually had to take back an egg I had given my parents in order to get the right kind. They don’t happen that often. I went to fill it up with spicy brown mustard, but we had two bottles that weren’t that full, and didn’t help much. So I supplemented that with yellow mustard, which we had a lot of, because apparently no one likes yellow mustard. Then, for a tiny bit of perverse irony, I put a shot of rooster sauce in there, even though people say chickens can’t taste hot sauce. Just let me have my fun, people.

Gravity was no help.

I taped up both ends of the egg to slow leakage, and put it in the coop. Not even duct tape would stick that well to the egg, but I did my best. The chicken I suspect of being the egg eater, a Mandrell Sister, was the first on the scene. She approached the egg, and rolled it back towards herself a couple of times. Chickens sometimes scoot the eggs along the floor with their chins. I guess when you don’t have hands you have to make do. She then began to tap it a little, as if to test the strength. Then she found the tape, pulled it off, and “oh hey candy!” She got a mouthful of mustard, did a little head twitch that seemed to indicate that she didn’t like it, but went back for more anyway. By now others had shown up, and a couple gave it a taste. I figured I’d let them all in on the idea that egg eating is wrong. They all had more than one serving, even though they twitched after every bite. I decided I might be making it worse by letting them continue to feast, so I took the egg away, and hoped they got the message.

This totally looks like a normal egg.

The big thing I took away from this was that the first chicken seemed to be doing some sort of quality control on the egg. She tapped it a bunch, and with these pale eggs, the shell is pretty weak. I’m now thinking that the eggs that have gotten eaten, or at least cracked open, can’t withstand a gentle peck, and that’s why they broke. I don’t know if they do this to reject bad eggs, or if they just like pecking the eggs. I don’t think the eating is habitual, at least not yet. As I keep saying, those eggs are few and far between, and sometimes they’re tougher than others. I gave the chickens the mustard test, so we’ll see how it goes. We got a weird egg on Tuesday, but it was in one piece. Meanwhile, no necks will be wrung over this. I just want to understand, man.

(Broadcast 5/24/2013)

Now that Spring is here, everything has begun to bloom. If you have allergies, you probably noticed this already. My wife and I usually get excited when the weather finally gets nice, go outside, and get so thoroughly attacked by mosquitoes that we wonder why we ever leave the house. But with a little homemade insect repellent (witch hazel and lemon eucalyptus oil) it gets better, and so I can sit outside and take in all of Nature’s glory. For better or for worse, Nature’s glory contains weeds. It used to be that I would just mow them, or ignore them altogether. I don’t take pride in having a pristine lawn, and mowing the lawn actually tends to fill me with existential dread. Oddly enough, weeding doesn’t bother me as much. I actually kind of like it, even though it’s very time consuming. I’ve heard that the hand motions used in weeding are hard wired to some sort of evolutionary rewards center, which is why gardening is so enjoyable. It gets us in touch with our inner chimp. Just keep the dung throwing to a minimum, please.

Did somebody say “dung throwing?”

Aside from any sorts of feelings of getting back in touch with our primacy, weeding is also a good way to supplement your chickens’ diet. We actually get so many weeds that we even have too many for the chickens. Luckily, we also have a compost heap for the overload. I found when they were baby chicks that they loved dandelion greens, but those seem to be pretty popular across many species, save for the homo perfectlawnicus. I’d pull them out, rip them into tiny pieces, and watch those goobers go nuts for greens. It also helps give them variety in their diet, which improves egg flavor. Everyone wins. I’ve read that if you pick the weeds and give them to the chickens, rather than letting the chickens pick the weeds on their own, there is some risk of the weed getting stuck in the chickens’ crops. The crop is where they store their food right after eating, before it heads to the stomach. If things aren’t torn into pieces, there may be a bit of a digestive traffic jam. Like people, you need to take sensible bites. What I usually do is either toss a pile into the run, where they rip them to shreds in a frenzy, or I poke them through the hardware cloth, and again, in the competition for the weeds, they rip them into smaller chunks. The chickens don’t seem so interested in eating the weeds on their own, so I have to do the work of pulling them out, and then do what I can to insure clear crops.

Lawn perfectionists quake with fear.

Weeds aren’t the only plants chickens like to eat. I have heard chickens referred to as “living compost piles,” as they’ll eat all sorts of vegetable scraps. I prefer to call them “Nature’s compost piles,” since that doesn’t really make any sense, and that’s how I roll. But when the farmer’s markets start opening and I find myself buying more kale than I can handle, it’s nice to know I can give the extra to the chickens as a treat. We’re growing our own kale this year, so I suspect even more excess than usual may find its way into the run. Most vegetable scraps can be fed to chickens as long as they’re raw and oil free. There are a few that are off-limits, so it’s not a bad idea to check online to be sure something is o.k. before tossing it into chicken town. Green potato peels can be bad, as well as the leaves of tomato plants. The list goes on, so be safe, rather than sorry. (Here’s a good list of acceptable treats and things to avoid.)

Be sure not to poison your birds by accident.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t tell you the one crop chickens excel at eating. As you know, every summer our nation squirms in the grip of what has come to be known as “The Zucchini Problem.” Our gardens, homes, and workplaces sag under the weight of this most prolific of green beasts, and friendships can be strained by being overly generous in an attempt to be free of the surplus. My friends, the chicken is here to help. Last summer, my coworker brought in a crop of zucchinis that were the size of human legs. I brought one home out of politeness, but had absolutely no idea what I would do with it, save for possibly beating an intruder to death. I thought to myself, “well, maybe I’ll cut a hunk off and give it to the chickens.” You may have heard stories about piranhas skeletonizing a cow in seconds. I can assure you that in this part of the world, the chicken is the piranha and the zucchini is the cow. Chickens will skeletonize a zucchini in record time, and act as though they want more, even if it was a small green blimp like the one I had. We do need to be cautious of overfeeding, so let’s not go nuts with our extra veggies. Think of them as treats, and we’re all set. But woe be to the inexperienced zucchini who innocently wanders into the chicken run.

The real green monster

(Broadcast 5/10/2013)

I know I like to come on here each week and act like having chickens is totally cool, and that’s because, frankly, it is. When we got chickens I didn’t really know what to expect, and I figured there would be parts of it that were kind of a drag, but I have enjoyed it far more than I expected to. I even prefer cleaning the coop to cleaning the litter box (though, if you knew our cats and the butt crimes they commit, you’d understand why.) But I don’t want to paint an unrealistic picture of what chicken keeping is like. There are a few disappointments I’ve had so far, and so I thought I’d share them in the spirit of openness.

The first thing that people with chickens were always saying was to keep them away from your garden. “They’ll eat all your plants!” they said in horrified tones. I had already encased my garden in fencing prior to chickening thanks to the huge number of pesky rabbits that seem to live in our yard. They were hot-pepper-on-the-ground resistant, so I sucked it up and got some chicken wire. It’s not pretty, but it allowed some vegetables to make it to maturity last year. This year when the weeds started popping up in the yard, I figured this was the chickens’ big chance to do their thing. I know they like these weeds, since I have often plucked them and tossed them into the run, and a fight breaks out over who will eat them first. Come on out in the yard, chickens! There’s plenty for all! Plenty of weeds popping out of the ground, sure, but how many of those weeds are pulled up and being brought to their feathery highnesses? I apparently have created some real dandies who insist that their weeds be brought to them. They’ll scratch up the yard like crazy looking for bugs or worms, and every so often they’ll eat some leaves from a nearby pricker bush, but all those dandelions? No interest, unless they’re already out of the ground and presented to them. I’m hoping they’ll come around as the season progresses, otherwise I’m going to have to trade them all in for a goat, and I think goats will have a hard time laying their eggs in the buckets I’ve provided for nesting.

Get ’em while they’re fresh, ladies!

Fresh eggs are a high point for keeping chickens. I had some random eggs at a restaurant recently and I thought they had slipped me scrambled cardboard. I had a feeling I would be let down, and I was right, but pancakes just don’t fill me up, so I gave their eggs a shot. I’m totally spoiled by how great our eggs are. I may have to start bringing my own on the few occasions I go out for breakfast. That’s acceptable, right? The one way these eggs fail is that fresh eggs are terrible for making hard boiled eggs. You might not think that’s a big deal, but I like bringing a couple of hard boiled eggs in my lunch as snacks, since they are good and filling. The problem is, since our eggs are usually no more than two weeks old, they just don’t do it right. They’re hard to peel like you wouldn’t believe. I had two this week that by the time I got all the shell off, there was really only the yolk left. Everything else had stuck to tiny shell bits. I’ve tried different methods of preparing them, but the sticky shells almost always get me. I finally found a website saying your eggs had to be at least a month old to work well with hard boiling. We eat them too fast, I suppose. I’ll allow the slight chance that maybe I just suck at boiling eggs, but I think there’s something to this “old egg” business. I can live with something else in my lunch, if I have to.

Those are freshness lines, and I needed stink lines.

A final disappointment has to do with my Miracle Broody Hen cure. I had a hen go broody a while back, and I managed to snap her out of it in a day by isolating her in a bird cage. It was great. I now have one that is like a broody yo-yo. She gets broody, I put her in the cage, she snaps out of it, so I put her back with the rest of the chickens in the morning, and by evening she’s broody again. For most of the day she’s fine, but for some reason going to bed and seeing those nesting buckets sets something off, and she’s back into it. It’s like gambling addiction for chickens. It’s more annoying than anything, and this is really a problem with this specific chicken, not chickens in general, so maybe this doesn’t count.

Chicken solitary

These aren’t really horror stories I’m relating here. It’s more a series of bummers, and not even a very long series. My disappointments are themselves pretty disappointing. We’re coming up on a year of having the chickens, and I’m sure in the years to come there’ll be more let downs, but right now I’m not about to go seeking them out. I dig raising chickens, and I aim to keep it that way.

(Broadcast 4/26/2013)

Reintroducing a chicken to the flock is a tricky business. You have to ease them back in. Boss Chicken was separated from the flock back in the winter when I found her suffering from some sort of leg ailment, which may or may not be Marek’s. Many people might think it’s a bad idea, but we have decided to try to reintroduce her to the rest of the flock. Even with the stuffed animal in the crate with her, she’s obviously very lonely, and squawks all day. She should be outside getting fresh air and daylight, just like the others. We do let her out in the yard from time to time, but it’s not enough. We also don’t 100% know she has Marek’s, as there’s no test, and someone who has a lot of experience with Marek’s wrote to me and said that even if that’s what Boss Chicken’s problem is, there are varying degrees of the disease. On top of that, the other chickens have already been exposed to it, since she was living in the coop when she became ill. She doesn’t seem to be getting much better, but she certainly isn’t getting any worse, so we’re giving it a shot.

If only it were this easy.

An issue that has come up is that Boss Chicken obviously used to be the boss, but in her absence, Suzy Creamcheese has taken over. Back in the days when everyone was healthy, the two of them used to have a real rivalry going. Nothing terrible, but there was a lot of chest bumping, and Boss Chicken was usually all up in Suzy Creamcheese’s business, reminding her of who was Boss Chicken. Suzy Creamcheese doesn’t rule with an iron beak the way Boss Chicken did, but it seems like she hasn’t forgotten her old rival.

Once the weather got nice, we’d take Boss Chicken out in the yard and then let the rest of them out in a different part of the yard, so everyone got some free time, but they weren’t in such close quarters as to cause strife. Of course, the minute I turned my back, in comes strife. Luckily my wife was there to break it up. Suzy Creamcheese had made a beeline for Boss Chicken, and feathers would have flown, had a human not intervened. We kept them outside, but I resolved that from then on I would remain ever vigilant. These chickens were not to be trusted, especially since Boss Chicken’s legs are wobbly and she can’t just run away. Not that she would, but she has a big disadvantage.

I decided the best way to get everyone reacquainted while providing safety would be to keep Boss Chicken in her crate and put the whole thing in the run. That way they could get up close and personal without there being a worry about them having at it. This was a great idea until I was reminded how easily chickens freak out about change. A crate in the run is a huge change, and it led to 4 chickens cowering and squawking with fear in a corner across from the intrusive item. Until they realized they were cowering at the bottom of the coop steps, and just went up into the safety of the coop instead. Henny Penny was trapped under the coop, unwilling to walk past the crate to escape, and paced frantically until I took the crate out, let her run into the coop, and then put the crate back. Then it took a little while, but they eventually got used to this new addition to the run and went back about the business of being chickens.

The plan in all its glory.

It seemed like a great setup until I let them all out into the yard again and noticed that Boss Chicken had blood all over her head and comb. My theory is that she stuck her head out of the crate and got a good peck in the head by Suzy Creamcheese, as there’s nothing in the crate that could cut her. Collin held the patient while I put Bag Balm on the wound, and we put her back down on the ground to make the most of what was left of chicken recess. She’s gotten very friendly since she’s been sequestered, and hung out with us, even sitting on Collin’s lap for a while. After a few minutes of lap time, she went back on the grass and promptly laid an egg, convincing me that Collin is some sort of fertility goddess. Collin is less convinced of this than I am, but I’ve never seen results like that before. I’m feeling a little fertile even just talking about it.

My new reality show.

We’ve been putting her out in the run all week, and will see how it goes this weekend when they’re all in the yard. My hope is that everything will be smoothed over, but I haven’t found much information on reintroducing a former alpha hen back into a flock, especially a compromised alpha hen. I did find a lot about how if a chicken isn’t well, the other chickens may not accept her no matter what. If this turns out to be the case, I’ve been checking Craigslist for rabbit hutches and will move Boss Chicken into one of those so she can be outside near the others, but safe from avian mean girls. It’s less ideal, but she’s been inside all winter, and we’re not a house chicken family. As long as Collin goes out every day to radiate fertility and insure bountiful eggs, I think whatever arrangement we come up with will be a success.

I’m running low on the oyster shell chunks I bought a while back, so I thought I’d give making my own calcium supplements from our eggs a shot. I’m happy to report that if you do it right, there isn’t much of a smell. I’m less happy to report that I didn’t do it right on my first attempt, and there most definitely was a smell, and that smell was not good. Our oven is still out of commission, so I thought I’d try baking the eggshells in the toaster oven. Whenever I adapt a recipe to the toaster oven, I usually knock a bunch of time off, since the smaller oven heats up way faster. The eggshell baking recipe I chose said to bake them at 350 for 20 minutes. I figured I’d be safe and set the timer for 10 minutes. That seemed like way more than enough leeway. Until I heard the timer bell go off in the other room, and one second later got hit with a waft of smoking eggshells. They smelled a little like burnt egg, but with a real metallic tang to it. I, of course, had also tried this experiment on the coldest day of the week. I opened the window for a little while, but it was just too cold to air things out. I had also been home sick that week, and was in no mood to deal with any of this. The whole house reeked, even though they weren’t all that burnt. The stench was impervious to both scented candles and incense. Only time was able to bring down the hideous aroma.

Eggs waiting to be eggshells waiting to be supplements.

I am not one to take defeat lightly, so once I was feeling better, I decided to set out to find the best way of baking shells for my current kitchen set up. I sheepishly returned to the toaster oven for round two. This time I decided to just try toasting them, rather than a full bake, and I set the timer to “medium” to really be safe. The toaster tends to undertoast, so this seemed o.k. I also did this while I was doing other things in the kitchen, so I would notice if things started to go south again. The medium setting did the trick. They were a little bit browned (this is a toaster, after all), but not burnt, and the shells were nice and brittle, so mashing them up was easy. So the toaster oven wasn’t totally evil, I just needed to be careful with the magic it contained.

Like everything involving chickens, there are about 100 different opinions on how to do anything, and preparing eggshells as calcium supplements is no different. I decided to try microwaving next, since that seemed like it would be super convenient, if it worked. I tried microwaving a couple shells on high for 20 seconds. There was a bit of a crackling sound, which made me a little nervous until I remembered I wasn’t nuking a light bulb. (Don’t ask me about how I know what a light bulb in the microwave sounds like.) I think the crackle was just moisture being cooked out. There was a bit of an eggy smell, but nothing too toxic. The quickness of the process couldn’t be beat, but the shells themselves didn’t seem as easy to mash as they had with the toaster. Which is better: quickness, or a mild degree of difference in the ease of crushing? Tough call.

Various stages of the mashing process.

Things that stink up your house come in threes, so I decided to try boiling the shells also. I put them in a pot of water and let it come to a boil, and then took them off the heat. The good news is that there was no smell, save for the general smell our burners give off (which is yet another reason we need to replace the stove). The bad news is that there was a really creepy foam on top of the water, which I didn’t like at all. Also, the whole thing boiled over when I was taking notes. Yes, I was taking notes. This is science we’re dealing with here. The other bad news is that you have to let them dry afterward, which seemed to take a lot longer than I thought it should, and I think that’s just one step too many.

It’s supposedly important to cook the eggshells in some way in order for the chickens to be able to absorb the calcium. Raw ones will not do, though some people claim they just let them air dry over time and then grind them up. That seems like an invitation to fruit flies and mice. It also seems time consuming (though mostly involving waiting). And then on top of it all, it may not even provide nutrients to the chickens, depending on who you ask.

I suppose if you want to go the DIY supplement route, experiment and see what works best for you. We’re not all chained to our toaster oven. (And we actually just bought a new stove, so I may have to break it in with another test.) Of course, the internet being the internet, there are lots of arguments to be read about whether or not feeding the eggshells back to the chickens creates chickens that eat their own eggs fresh from the cloaca. I suppose this leaves me some room for yet more experimentation.

Or you can just give them yogurt.

(Broadcast 4/5/2013)

Are you taking any vitamin supplements? I worry about you, dear listener, and want to be sure that you’re getting all the nutrition you need. Sometimes we don’t get all the necessary nutrients through our food. Even chickens can use a little help every now and then. The days were getting longer, but egg production seemed to be tapering off. Some of the eggs that were getting produced were kind of pale, and the shells felt a little thin when I cracked them. Something wasn’t right, and I had a feeling I knew what it was.

It wasn’t quite this bad.

Even though I feed them a complete layer feed, I suspected the chickens needed a little extra calcium. This is fairly common. They can get it a couple of different ways. You can give them a supplement, usually made from ground-up oyster shells, or you can grind up their own egg shells and, wait for it, feed them back to the chickens. So you can feed them back the whole egg, if you are so inclined. I was somewhat tempted to try this, but I had to go to the feed store anyway, so buying the calcium seemed easier. To prepare the egg shells to go back into the chickens, you need to bake them, and our stove is broken. Even if it wasn’t, I was a little unsure of what sort of smell this might produce. Who knows, maybe it smells nice. But at the time, it was too cold to open any windows if it stank, and since I couldn’t open any windows I was pretty sure it was going to stink. I’ll try it when we have a new stove and the weather is nice, and report any olfactory disturbances. But for the immediate problem I bought some oyster shell fragments.

Gnaw on this, chickens!

The way I’d read to administer these fragments was to leave them out where the chickens can pick at them as they see fit. This sounded to me like you needed a dedicated container to put them in. What should I use? A regular feeder seemed too big, a chick feeder could get knocked over by full-grown birds, and I had no idea what it should look like, so DIY seemed out. I asked the guy at the store, “How do I give these to the chickens?” He looked at me for a minute, and then said, “You throw them on the ground.” So while perhaps a little embarrassed, I left there with more money in my pocket than expected.

The problem I ran into with throwing them on the ground is that if I open the run and throw something in, it’s usually a treat, so they went nuts and started fighting over the shells when I first threw them in. But then the next day they all laid eggs, after several days of only getting 3 eggs, so maybe they all needed calcium? To try to keep them from eating it if they didn’t need to, I would dump a pile of the chips on the ground before I let them out. That cut out the thrill of eating gifts from the master. They continued to eat them all, but egg production was back at capacity, so I stopped worrying.

Or I did until I came home and saw only two chickens walking around in the run. There were others in there, but they weren’t standing up. Why not? Had I given them calcium poisoning? Is there such a thing as calcium poisoning? Did something get in there and eat their legs? What had I done? I hustled over to the run and they all stood up and ran to the door and clucked to be let out. Oh right. Sometimes chickens just like to sit in the dirt.

I got a small bag of calcium chips, which had no seal, so I dumped it all into a plastic bag and left it on the table with some of my other chicken devices. Now, I’ve never seen an enormous bag of crack before, but if I had, I have a feeling it would look exactly like this Ziploc bag of oyster shell chunks. I should probably move it away from the window, but I suppose if I leave it there and the cops show up, I’ll know the pizza guy ratted me out.

I hope I don’t dump the wrong one in the coop.

The last thing about these chips is that they get kind of dusty. They’re sort of made of chalk, so that makes sense. One morning I had forgotten to put any in the run, so I grabbed my bag and a cup of chips, and thought, “I’ll put my bag in the car, and then give the chickens the calcium.” This was my fatal mistake. I put down my bag, and in doing so put my hand with the cup down enough that half the chips fell out onto the seat. My car is three months old, and has black upholstery. Now my car is three months old and has a gray passenger seat. Oh well. That makes it unique, right? Sure it does. Chicken customizing! I’ll be sure to work that angle when it’s time to trade it in.

(Broadcast 3/22/13)

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and hear a tale about a chicken that would not leave the nesting box and the miracle that restored her to normal chickenhood. Yes indeed, you or someone you know and possibly love may have also had a chicken that would not go about her daily business due to a possibly unfounded desire to hatch an egg that will not hatch. Don Quixote had his windmills, Ahab had his whale, roosterless chickens have their eggs. For one full week this chicken of mine sat on unfertilized eggs clinging to the vain hope that if she tried hard enough and believed in herself she could overcome the obvious obstacles to her success, but let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, there is a point at which belief in one’s self crosses over into delusion and this chicken crossed that line miles ago and never even looked back. I may have mentioned that I don’t have a rooster, and so these eggs were unfertilized and you know what that means. If you don’t, you may want to do some research and come back later, because you’re missing a key point of what I’m talking about.

No loitering.

For the rest of you, I’ll tell you that when a chicken gets it into her head that she’s going to hatch an egg she is going to hatch that egg even if that egg isn’t going to hatch. From a keeping your chickens alive standpoint, this will not do. Chickens need to eat and feel fulfilled in their work, so I was able to obtain a device that set this chicken back on the road to sanity and going around doing regular chicken stuff with satisfying payoffs.

Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify, I do not wish to discriminate with this message), you or someone you know or possibly love may have such a device already in their home. You see, ladies and gentlemen, my mother used to have a cockatiel. Not a cockatoo, that’s a different thing. She’s out of the cockatiel as a pet business and so for years her birdcage has lain dormant. When I expressed to my mother my need to take this broody chicken away from the source of her temptation and put her into some sort of solitary confinement until she saw the light my mother said to me, “Son, I believe I have just the thing, if you think you can fit a chicken in there.” I looked at the bird cage and I said, “By gum, mother, if I can’t fit a chicken in there, I don’t know what I can do with one.” It had a dish for food and a dish for water built right in, and a perfectly chicken sized door. So I put that chicken in there, and I said, “Chicken demons, begone.” The first thing this chicken did, and this is in keeping with accounts that I have read, was produce the largest, smelliest, nastiest stool I have ever seen come out of an animal, and I once lived in an all boy dormitory, but I believe, ladies and gentlemen (or other), that this was in fact the demons leaving her body. And I’ll tell you what, one day later she was cured. I went in and this chicken that refused to stand up, as it would mean an egg was not being covered, was standing up and clucking, and was that same old chicken I remembered from about a week prior. I returned her to the coop where the other chickens were totally cool about acting like she hadn’t been weird for a little while and everyone was happy, cue the inspirational music, and roll credits.

In solitary.

Now, ladies and gentlemen (etc.), I have to tell you that a day and a half or so of keeping a chicken away from the nest is a pretty fast cure from what I have read. Some people will say three days, some may say a week, lord help you if they say more, but I know that I was able to deliver this chicken away from broodiness with what can only be described as “the quickness.” As they say on the internet YMMV – your mileage may vary. But I can tell you should you experience broodiness yourself, that your mother’s used cockatiel cage is just the thing you need to set that bird back to righteousness. Not available in stores . . . or actually they are, but they’re pretty expensive, that’s why I’m saying go used. I provide this information as a public service because I like you, dear listeners, now go out there into the world and share what you know with the keepers of the broody chickens and tell them Erik P. Kraft sent you. They won’t know who that is, but if you say it enough maybe it will begin to make sense. Do try this at home – the chicken you save may be your own.

Catching up on gossip.

(Broadcast 3/15/2013)

We had just gotten back from a trip to New York City, (where, by the way, everyone was totally thrilled to hear tales of chickenry) and the first thing I did when getting home was say hello to the chickens. A kid from the local 4-H group had looked after them while we were gone, so I knew they’d be fine, but I had missed them. I stuck my head in to say goodnight, and as is my habit since Boss Chicken got sick and spent a night outside, I counted them to make sure they were all there. With Boss Chicken in quarantine, there should be 5 on the roost. I counted 4. I counted again. Still 4. Third time’s the charm, right? Not if you were counting these same chickens. I was about to look under the coop, fearing a repeat of the Boss Chicken Incident, when I noticed a small head sticking out of one of the nesting buckets. There was the missing Mandrell Sister, but what was going on? Immediately I thought I had come home to another sick chicken, but since she was in the nesting bucket, I quickly changed my mind to thinking that she may have gone broody. Sure enough, she was sitting on a bunch of eggs. I removed her from the bucket, and she remained puffed out and squat, and was making a very weird noise. The best way I can think to describe it would be “power cooing.” It was like a coo put on repeat and sped up. This was weird, but I decided to not freak out, and instead put her back in the bucket, since that’s where she wanted to be. I then turned to the internet.

Took away the decoys, just to remove any temptation.

It seems there are a lot of different ways to snap a hen out of being broody, or, as some people put it “break a broody hen,” which sounds a lot harsher. The most natural way would be to get some fertilized eggs for her to hatch. When the eggs hatch, she stops being broody. I suppose I could talk to the farmer down the street about buying some fertilized eggs, but you may have noticed that I call this “Too Many Chickens!” not “I Think There Must Be Ways To Get More Chickens,” so I am going to hold off on this one for now. Not that I wouldn’t like to have baby chicks running around, but I can’t do this every time a hen goes broody, or we’ll fill up the coop post haste. This is my first encounter with broodiness, but in my reading I’m finding that Buff Orpingtons get broody a lot, and we have three of them. I could double or triple the size of the flock before summer is over.

Unhatchable, due to lack of rooster.

Another method of beating broodiness is to dunk the hen in cold water. This seems somewhere between trying to prove the chicken is a witch, and waterboarding. Neither suits my tastes. I think it works on a similar principle as scaring away hiccups, but it’s still pretty chilly at night around here, so I’m not too thrilled about leaving a soggy hen out in the cold. You also may be familiar with the saying, “madder than a wet hen,” and I’m not sure I want to see just how mad that is. Since we have a good amount of snow still, I did try putting her in a snowbank while gathering the eggs. The dunk technique seems to work on the idea that you need to lower the bird’s body temperature, and snow seemed better than dunking. It did seem to convince her to go out into the run to eat, but at night she was right back in the bucket. What’s interesting is that everyone seems to have heard of the water dunk method, but I didn’t read any accounts in which it actually worked.

Mixing it up by sitting between the two nesting buckets.

The technique that best fits my lifestyle would be to take her away from the bucket and put her somewhere she has no opportunity to nest, like a dog crate, or an unused rabbit hutch. I could do this, except Boss Chicken is already convalescing in our dog crate. I don’t think putting them both in there is a good idea, but I may have to figure out some way to isolate her for a few days to see if it can do the trick. I may have to just put her in a box and see what happens. Substitutions don’t always work though, as evidenced by my failure when using snow instead of a bucket of water. Chickens want the real deal.

Es Occupado.

There’s nothing wrong with this behavior, it’s actually totally natural. My worry is that she might not ever come out of it if there are no eggs that will hatch. When a hen gets broody, they don’t leave the nest, so they don’t eat or get water. It takes three weeks to hatch an egg, so after that, they may start to fade away from malnutrition. I don’t want that to happen, so the best plan would be to make this stop. How to do this remains the issue, but I have muddled my way along this far, I’m sure I can do a little more muddling, even without waterboarding anyone. Or at least not any chickens.

(Broadcast 3/8/2103 while riding in a car on the Merritt Parkway)

You’ve probably figured out that I will do a lot for my chickens. If you remember, when I thought Boss Chicken had bumblefoot, I was ready to go to the store to buy hemorrhoid ointment to rub on her feet, if that’s what it took. Sorry, embarrassment, I’ve got an injured chicken at home. I don’t know why butt ailments are so embarrassing, but they are. But I was willing to put myself through the terror of buying butt medicine when my butt was fine for this chicken. In fact, maybe I even would have thrown some adult diapers into the purchase just to say, “Hey cashier, nothing good’s going on down there!” Luckily, it didn’t come to that, so cashiers of America, be thankful.
That might be the most extreme example of what I might have had to do in terms of chicken husbandry, but like any pet, sometimes you find yourself in a position where you are doing something you never would have imagined even a short time prior. I personally had never even thought about the term “chicken physical therapy” until I found myself with a chicken that, well, probably could do with some physical therapy. Yeah, I’m not really sure what this entails either, but I gave it a shot. We finally have had enough warm-ish days that the driveway was ice-free, and so I decided Boss Chicken could do with some fresh air and a chance to stretch her legs. I put her down on the ground outside, and her mood was immediately better. Her loud squawks became gentle coos, she seemed to really enjoy eating snow, and she was looking around at the yard as though it had all been a distant memory. This was great. What wasn’t great was that she seemed pretty content to not move around much. Come on, chicken, walk around, it’s for your own good. When she did try to walk, it didn’t go as well as I had hoped, but I think this is mostly thanks to us having a gravel driveway, which was tough for her to get decent footing on with her leg issues. Inside on the cement floor, she can get around pretty good, when she wants to. I didn’t press the issue too much, since this was her first time back out since I discovered her illness, so I figured I should just let her enjoy it, and we could get down to the hard work of recovery another time. She was probably an easy target for anything other than some sort of large, carnivorous slug, so I stayed close, taking my eye off her only to throw the occasional snowball over the swingset, where my son was playing. She didn’t like that much, but I think she’s gotten pretty uptight from being inside for so long. No horseplay!

Am I supposed to do something?

I’ve already touched on the creepiness I feel at feeding chickens their own eggs, and I can report that it’s not getting that much easier. I think what’s preventing me from letting it become a normal thing is the zeal with which they eat them. If they were just cool about it, I’d be fine, but they totally lose it. It’s like when you see footage of big sales and everyone is tripping all over each other to get to the junk first. Except imagine those people eating themselves, and they are all chickens. Maybe that’s not the right image, but you get the idea. Excitement bordering on psychosis. It could be worse, though. A friend of mine mentioned that you can also feed them cooked chicken, and they’ll go even more bonkers for it. I’m not even cooking chicken for myself, so if they want it, they’ll have to take a trip to see the Colonel, and I’m not driving.

Don’t tell them I microwave the eggs.

I’m sure everyone has interests that they allow themselves to get a little carried away with, just because they enjoy them so much. As long as no one’s getting hurt, I think it’s important to have something you care about. I will give you a suggestion though. Depending on what this interest is, think about what internet searches you do, and who else may be using your computer. Recently I had to look something up at work that started with the letter B, and the first suggestion that autofill put in was “butt pecking.” When the chickens were small, there was a bit of this going on, and I was worried it would result in injuries, so I looked it up. Everything was fine, save for my search history. Now imagine if my boss had been looking over my shoulder. Could I have explained my way out of this? Most likely. Is that a conversation I want to have? Maybe, but probably not with my boss. With you? Yeah, I’ll talk to you about butt pecking.

No butts, just eggs.

(Broadcast 3/1/2013)

There is a certain question that people will ask when they find out I have chickens. Well, actually, there are two. The first is usually, “Can I have some eggs?” Depending on who asks, the answer is sometimes yes, but I don’t give these out to just anyone. The other question is usually something along the lines of, “Who’s going to kill them?” This is a pretty terrible question, for a number of reasons. If you’ve listened to me talk about chickens before, I think you’re aware of the lengths I have gone to to keep my birds alive. I hope you at least aren’t going to ask me this, but let’s explore this question.

An obvious answer would be that if I kill them, then I don’t have any eggs. The main thing everyone gets excited about is the eggs. No chickens, no eggs. I get a lot of my food from the grocery store. Would I blow up the grocery store? No. Maybe that’s an extreme analogy, but you need to think about the supply chain here. Say I did want to kill and eat the chickens. (I assume they think I am going to kill them to eat them, or else I need to worry about the people I come into contact with). I can get one or two meals out of one chicken, and then I need a new chicken. Or I can keep getting eggs every day for years, and eat those. I’ve got a pretty good deal going where for very little money I get about a half dozen eggs a day. The cost of eggs vs. the cost of chicken feed is not even a question. Eggs are not cheap, and the ones that want you to think they treat the chickens well are even more expensive. I know my chickens are treated well. And maybe I wouldn’t be buying several dozen eggs a week, but when I have them, I don’t need to eat them. I once saw a post on the internet that said, “Never underestimate what you can trade eggs for.” Sometimes it’s just good will, sometimes it’s something more tangible, but eggs, especially home raised eggs, have a definite value.

I’m rich!

A larger aspect to why this question upsets me is that I am a vegetarian, and try not to kill anything. We even have a catch and release policy towards bugs in our house. (The mosquitoes the size of small bats that inhabit our area are the notable exceptions). My reasons for this decision are complicated and personal, but a big part of it has to do with not wanting animals to die on my behalf. I don’t wear a scarlet letter V on my shirt, and I generally keep my beliefs to myself, so people probably have no reason to suspect I don’t eat meat. It still seems an invasive thing to ask.

A face only a mother could eat.

Taking this line of questioning a little further, someone even once asked me if I’m going to kill them once they stop laying eggs. I think this person must be the type who on the first date talks about what it’s going to be like after the two of you are married. Hold on a minute! You only just found out I have chickens, and now you’re already years in the future speculating about their fertility and what it means to me? Let’s back up a bit. If we look at this solely in terms of what the job of these chickens is, I’ll remind you that we got them to eat the ticks in the yard. That is their first purpose. Eggs are a nice perk, but even after they stop laying, they will still be be able to wander around eating ticks. I’m not going to fire someone because they used to make coffee in the morning when they got into the office, but then stopped. And if we killed everything that outlived its usefulness, we’d have no Congress. (*rim shot*) But these chickens are also our pets, and we don’t kill our pets. The cats haven’t caught a single mouse, but we allow them to live, the least we can do is extend that lax attitude towards job performance to the chickens.

Itchy yet?

I actually think some of it may have to do with people just not having much exposure to chickens outside of the grocery store or drive-thru. You don’t think of chickens as a pet-style animal until you meet them and see that they have as distinct personalities as any cat or dog. And it’s true, chickens are generally thought of as a food animal, so I get the reasoning, even if I don’t like it. But please people, we’re trying to have a society here. Let’s have a little tact. The answer is no one is going to kill them. And since you asked, no, you can’t have any eggs.