Tag Archives: backyard chickens

How to keep your chickens warm in the winter

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A lot of people wonder what I do with my chickens in the winter. Don’t they get cold? My short answer is that they stay warm because they wear little down coats. My long answer is that it is more the cold wind/draft that bothers them more than the cold.

Neil wrapped a plastic tarp over the open (wire) part of the run. The green part is insulated and even has a little door that I can close. If the temperature drops below about 25 degrees F, I will close the little door at night. They generate enough body heat to keep themselves warm.

During the day they walk around in the covered run, which is kind of like a mini-greenhouse. I open the door to the extended run, so they can decide if they want to brave the elements or not.

I also have an electric water dispenser, which keeps their water from freezing. But that’s basically it. I don’t heat the coop and I haven’t knitted them little sweaters. I don’t put vaseline on their legs and combs to prevent frostbite. I would do that if I lived somewhere *much* colder, but it’s never been a problem here.

Call me what you will, but I don’t think we need to extend helicopter parenting to our chickens.

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Trade Off

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grape-tomatoes

My chickens are in the final stages of their molt. At least all signs point to that. Chickens begin the molt on their heads and kind of work their way down to their tail and wing feathers. Edie looks gorgeous and fluffy instead of mangey like she did after her bout with mites. I’m not walking into their coop to find loads of feathers these days. I think they should be well insulated for winter with all their new feathers.

However, when I check their nest box all I find are little fluffy feathers. No eggs. It’s been about 2 months with NO EGGS. I have to buy eggs from the store, which doesn’t suit me at all anymore. So instead of staring at an empty egg holder, I have decided to fill it with the gorgeous grape tomatoes that are still coming out of my garden. They are getting smaller and smaller as the days get shorter and cooler, but they are still coming. Winter is a mourning time for me when I don’t have tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, so I’m enjoying each and every one of these little treasures.

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Adding Compost

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The other day I did some work in my garden to prepare for the winter. I cut back and pruned a few bushes and cut down many of my tomato plants. I didn’t cut down my grape tomato plants because they are still producing. Fall is in full swing here in Brooklyn, so I took out my trusty Toro leaf vac/shredder and sucked up a bunch of leaves. The act of shredding the leaves makes them take up much less space than traditionally raked leaves. One bag of shredded leaves could be as much as 5-8 bags of un-shredded leaves.

I dug shovelfuls of beautiful compost that’s been cooking all summer and spread them out on my flower and vegetable beds. The soil looks so dark and rich, which is in contrast to the dry, lifeless, glass-filled soil that mostly exists in my yard. I still have straw and hay from fall scavenging, so I decided to add all of the shredded leaves to my compost bin. This is the one time of year when I have an abundance of “browns” in my compost bin. They will break down quickly though with the help of the amazing chicken poo. I swear that stuff is like steroids for the compost bin. I showed a friend my compost bin and she just kept saying, “Yeah, but where’s all the stuff?” She couldn’t believe she wasn’t looking at a bin filled with egg shells and broccoli stems.

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I am not a compost maniac. I think that everything will break down on its own without a lot of fuss that many people suggest (shredding everything before adding to the bin, frequent watering, no cooked food, etc.) and my bumper crop of compost was evidence of my success. You can read my previous post about having an easy and successful compost bin.

My plants will be happy to have the added nutrients from the compost. I know my chickens were happy digging through the compost for bugs and worms!

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When the Problems Come Home to Roost

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Check out this article by Kim Severson that was in the NY Times. It’s about people who have joined the local food movement and have gotten chickens. There are a bunch of people who have gotten in over their heads and have dumped their chickens off at animal shelters.

Keeping chickens has been wonderful for me, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. Most recently I’ve had a raccoon in my yard, which actually got its claws on my chicken Edie. She has a nasty gash on the back of her neck, but I guess it could have been much worse!

I wrote a post about why NOT to keep chickens. If you are considering keeping chickens, please take a look at it and see if you still think you want to do it. If you are going ahead with getting chickens, please get in touch with your local animal shelter or pet finder to see if they have abandoned chickens. The photo above is Shirley, who I found on Pet Finder. She’s not even full grown and is available for adoption from the San Francisco Animal Care and Control.

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A Raccoon in Our Yard!

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raccoon

Last night we were having dinner with friends in our garden. It was about 7pm and our chickens had gone inside their coop for the night. All of a sudden there was a commotion and the hens clamored out of their coop and into the run. I have a larger run attached to their secure run that isn’t 100% predator proof. I lock the door between that run and the secure run every night. I hadn’t done it yet and I have to admit that I have forgotten entirely some nights. I had heard that there have been raccoon sightings in our Brooklyn, NY neighborhood, but never saw one myself. Until now.

I walked over to the chickens to see what was going on and standing about 5 feet away from me behind the wire run was a raccoon. It saw me and promptly flipped me the bird. It wasn’t scared of me in the slightest. The chickens ran into the larger run and were totally freaked out. Since I wasn’t scary enough to make the raccoon leave, we pulled out our garden hose and sprayed the raccoon with jets of water. It didn’t like that and climbed over the fence. About 30 seconds passed and it climbed back into the yard. We sprayed it again and it eventually went away. But it climbed on top of the secure run and tried to reach through the wire of the larger run. I’ve heard of raccoons grabbing and killing chickens by reaching into a run. Gah!

Neil threw rocks in it’s direction. He doesn’t think he hit it, but it again casually went away. Actually it scaled the 2-story building that adjoins our yard by climbing up the ivy. It kept peeking over the roof at us. Not only were the chickens freaked out, but our daughter was really upset as well. I was upset because I know that this critter is going to come back. It wasn’t afraid of us *at all*. We also live right along a very popular restaurant row, so there’s really no end to the tasty trash cans filled with food nearby.

I’ve spent the morning reading various chicken sites and doing google searches on raccoon control. I’ve come up with the following possible solutions:

1. Get a hav-a-hart trap and bait it with cat food. There are several unsavory outcomes to this solution involving relocating, drowning and shooting. Relocating wild animals is not a very successful endeavor. You are dropping your problems on someone else and the animal doesn’t know the natural resources, so can just starve to death.

2. Pee around the perimeter of your yard. I’m guessing that the raccoon, who wasn’t at all scared of me, will not be scared of our pee. And besides, I’m already the crazy chicken lady, I don’t need to add another layer to that!

3. Put down coyote urine. Yes, you can buy predator urine to discourage animals. My in-laws ordered synthesized fox urine online for a groundhog that was digging in their foundation. There’s a website called predatorpee.com. Love the internet! I’m not sure any of these raccoons have seen or smelled a coyote for the past several generations, so I’m not sure if the smell of coyote urine would register fear with them.

4. Hot sauce bombs. The mad-scientist/cook in me loves this one. You take jumbo marshmallows, poke a hole in one end and fill them with the hottest hot sauce you can find. (Wear gloves) Then scatter them around the yard. The raccoons eat them and then won’t come back. This option appeals to me for a few reasons. I like DIY aspect. I like that I’m not actually physically harming/killing the animal. And I kind of love the immature 15 year-old revenge fantasy part of it.

In any event, I’ve set an alarm to remind me that dusk is approaching and I need to lock up my hens. Raccoons generally only like to eat the chicken’s crop (filled with yummy grains), so it’s a gruesome death. Plus you get the added bonus of finding a decapitated chicken left behind.

Wish me luck! Maybe I’ll make Rice Krispy treats with the leftover marshmallows.

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Molting Hens Don't Lay Eggs

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It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve gotten an egg from my girls. No, they aren’t all eggbound either! They are molting. Instead of eggs in the nest box there are loads of feathers. There are feathers in their run, there are feathers in the yard, there are feathers in their poop tray. Amazingly enough, there are even feathers on the girls. Sort of. Well they look a little scruffy.

But I’m happy to see feathers growing back on Edie’s neck. She lost most of her beard from scratching at mites. She started to get little porcupine-like quills sticking out of her face. Kind of a 5 o’clock stubble. But now they are fluffing out and she has gotten her hilarious mustache and beard back.

Take a peek at the old, bare neck with the feather quills just starting to peek out and the new fuzzy neck. Doesn’t she look hilariously in her attempt at dignity?

edie-moult

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Chicken Meet up at the Waterpod

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Last Saturday after going to the Greenpoint Food Market, we drove to the Bronx to go to a chicken meet up group being held on the Waterpod. KayCee Wimbush of Awesome Farm in Tivoli, NY came to talk about basic chicken keeping. Her farm pasture-raises chickens and lambs and are committed to taking care of both their animals and the land. While I knew most of the basic information, she did talk about alternatives to chicken feed.

In an attempt to reduce their feed costs and do some recycling, they gathered food scraps from local restaurants. Chickens are omnivores, or miniature goats as I like to call them, so they eat practically everything. Her solution was a win-win in that her chickens were getting high-quality food, she was saving money and the food wasn’t going to a landfill. I guess that’s a win-win-win. Anyway, these things always turn out too good to be true and they found out that what they were doing was illegal. Turns out there’s a law against feeding post-consumer food to agricultural animals. I’m sure I’m not quoting the law correctly, but it’s a way to prevent farmers from feeding ground up animals to their livestock, which can lead to many nasty diseases such as mad cow. Anyway, while it was a great idea, they had to stop.

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If you are in NYC in the next 2 weeks, you should try and visit the Waterpod project. They are a self-sufficient floating farm. They incorporate many interesting ideas for farming, such as vertical farming, mobile farming, recycling graywater, etc. They are showcasing a new type of farming in a time of global warming and overpopulation. If land is too scarce, you can farm on a big barge. They are open to the public for tours and host performances and discussions. They were a great venue for our meeting and even have a few hens onboard.

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We had our meet up under one of their domes. All of the materials have been gathered from salvaged parts. The dome was covered with billboard material (is it fabric, paper??). You can see a watch ad behind Owen, who’s the organizer of our meet up group. If you can’t visit the waterpod, check out their website at the link above. It’s a very interesting project and definitely applies to urban gardening.

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The Good Life

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We’ve become addicts to a British tv series called The Good Life. (When it was brought to the US they changed the name to Good Neighbors). You can watch it instantly on Netflix, or you can piece the episodes together on YouTube.

The premise of the show is: There’s a couple that lives in a fancy suburb of London. He is a designer for a plastic company, who wants more meaning from life after he turns 40. He and his wife decide to try to become self-sufficient, but don’t want to leave their home. So they embark on adventures in urban farming – complete with chickens, a goat, etc.

What’s so amazing about the show is that it was made in 1975 and yet is so relevant to what is going on today. It’s well written and hilariously funny. Get past the first episode where they are setting up the premise of the show and I think you will become addicted too.

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Can you spot the $300 egg?

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Each of my 3 hens lay eggs that are a different color from one another. It’s a handy way for me to know who has laid an egg and who hasn’t. And most recently I’ve been on the look-out for an Edie egg during her egg-bound episode. She very considerately laid her egg the morning we were to leave to go out of town. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her if she hadn’t to be quite honest.

So, can you spot the egg that was stuck inside my hen for over a week?

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The big one on the left you say? Nope, it’s the blue one on the right. Looking for all the world like a normal, smallish egg. So this puppy cost $300 in vet bills and is so full of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories that I just have to chuck it. I’m having a hard time doing that though…

So who layed this 4th egg today?

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I’m a bit stumped. I think I’ll have to wait to see what else is in the nest box today.

So after all of the egg drama, Edie is now molting. She looks like hell with little feather spikes coming out all over her. It’s filling in the bare patches from when she was chomped on by mites. This poor gal has been through a lot over the past couple of months. I think she’ll look beautiful again when the feathers fill in. Phoenix rising out of the fire and all that.

edie-moult

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