Waiting Game

At this point, the Josh had not built the run yet (the long enclosure that attaches to the coop) so the chickens were totally free range in the day, putting themselves to bed in the roost at night.

We had 2 garden beds and the chickens happily helped themselves to most of our tomatoes.

We had recently driven Geneveive down to Murfreesboro to give "her" away and we were left with 4 hens.

They were just about at laying age. Which also means they were mating age...which meant every time I bent down to pet them, they would squat into uh, "position" and then ruffle their feathers.

I was unpleasantly surprised to learn this was their mating stance and hoped I was not inadvertently pleasuring my chickens. As if keeping backyard chickens wasn't scandalous enough.

For those of you who are wondering (and for the majority of those who are not) here is a bit of chicken sex ed:

-Just like human females ovulate with every cycle, hens ovulate - almost daily.

-As is the case with human eggs, chicken eggs are the result of that ovulation.

(If you aren't grossed out enough to stop eating eggs, WAIT I've got more!)

-The egg is ovulated and discarded whether or not it gets fertilized.

-The egg MUST be fertilized by a rooster in order to grow a baby chick.

-How this happens, I could care less about and honestly, I don't want to know.

Even with all of this disturbing knowledge, I still longed for a farm fresh egg.

This was all part of the experiment of chicken keeping.

I wanted us to KNOW where the eggs came from, and to be a little more grateful and a little more reverent about our food sources.

It was time to start checking the nesting box for eggs!

Reunited And It Feels So Good

Cup, Amelie's chicken, staring longingly inside, wishing the girls would never leave again.

Backyard playdates with friends:

Summertime, And The Chickens Are Easy...?

There we were, July 2009 with young chickens newly moved out of their brooder into the backyard.

They had been socialized (and by "socialized" I mean cuddled, sang to, fed yogurt from a spoon, and a host of other things 99% of the world's chickens have never experienced) and successfully "tamed" by my young children.

They had been given names, given a house, and given free reign of the backyard.

Yes folks, it was a good time to be a chicken.

I was about to go on my first solo tour, and take along my girls (uh, my human girls that is - the road is no place for a hen) and we would be gone for 6 weeks, leaving the chicks home with my husband.

My husband who was not *totally* on board with the idea of chickens when we got them.

My husband who possibly, maybe, didn't actually *know* we were getting chickens until I called him on my way to the Tractor Supply.

The kids gave each chicken a hug and a salmonella spiked kiss, told them to be good chickens an that they'd be missed and thought of often and we hopped into the rental car and zoomed off to California.

During this time we got updates from Josh.

The chickens were doing well, and they were getting bigger.

Now Geneveive was crowing so we had a 2nd rooster to re-home....

And despite ALL my begging and pleading Josh for some reason would not stick any of them in front of the computer during our video chats.

(And I really did beg...and plead... a LOT.)

So the girls and I finished up our vacation in Cali where the temps were in the 70s and the smell of the sea was in the air, and back home...in 90+ degree and humid Nashville, Josh had a GREAT opportunity to bond with my our chickens.

As we rolled into our driveway at the end of August, the kids weren't even interested in going inside. First stop. Backyard.

Goodbye MJ, Goodbye Jo.

We knew all along we wouldn't keep any roosters.
Now that Joseph was crowing (thanks to ..uh..well, me, and some YouTube rooster sensation) we had to act fast.
I wrote notes to all our neighbors promising to get rid of him ASAP.

On June 25, 2009, we sold Joseph on Craigslist, to a used car salesman for $10.
I know the exact date, because it was the same day Michael Jackson died.
Interestingly, his new owner named him Elvis.

We handed him off, drug deal style, smack in the middle of the car lot, as he looked back at us with his beady little chicken eyes as if to say,
"YOU did this to me, YOU DID THIS TO MEEEE!"

But like I said, we knew all along we wouldn't keep any roosters and besides, he would have learned to crow on his own inevitably.......... right?

He is now spending his days on a farm with several other Blue Andalusian ladies, where he is no doubt, the King.

There "She" Crows...

It's hard to sex a chicken.
Yes, I just said, "sex a chicken" and no, I have never used that sentence before.
Anyhoo, using official farmer jargon, it is hard to sex (determine the gender of) a chicken.
Because of this there is no 100% guarantee on the gender of the chick you are purchasing, but there are many, many wives tales.

The tractor supply employee told us:

"Pick up the baby chick, if it curls its feet up to it's body, it's a female."

Another blogger mentions this:

"Hold your chick on their back in your hand. If they stop kicking after a short time, it's a pullet, if they keep kicking it's a cockerel."

To that I would like to add a third option, "If they stop kicking after a long time, they might be dead."

So with no way to accurately know what we were getting, we went ahead and bought a mix of pullets (young chickens that are almost 100% positively sexed as females) and a couple of straightruns (50/50 chance of winding up with either gender).

I got the pullets because I wanted egg laying hens and I got the straightruns because they were interesting, and I thought I'd take a chance on some exotic chickens, hoping they would be hens and not roosters.

Growing up, I would often visit my grandmother in Monclair, CA (southern CA) and I have fond memories of feeding the free range chicken in her neighbor's backyard.

Man, how I'd love to go back in time and tell that old woman (the neighbor, not my grammie) how progressive she was in her urban backyard chicken-keeping and how I'd one day aspire to do the same.

So, in tribute to Josephine, the first urban chicken I ever met, I passed the name down to the little grey fuzzball with grey legs and a spunky attitude.
This chick had a name to live up to, and big talons to fill.

"She" filled them all right...along with other chicken anatomy that shall remain nameless.
(Frankly, because I have no idea what it's called or how it works and I'm happy to keep it that way.)

There were gender clues I tried to ignore in wishing Josephine to be a hen.
A large comb.
Huge waddles.
Mounting the other hens.
Then one day I heard a God-awful shriek.
It was like a short bark mixed with the blood curdling scream of a child.
Sort of a loud cluck - it definitely did not sound like crowing.

Maybe it was time I accepted Josephine for who he was and let him reach his full chicken potential..?
Perhaps all the gender identity pressure got to him and he was trying to stifle his crowing.
This went on for days and I couldn't take it.

I brought him inside, sat him on my lap, and pulled up the ol' YouTube.
I actually played for him, over and over again, footage of a crowing rooster.
This blue roo was gonna learn to crow.



A couple of things to add:

1. Yes, that was me lovingly holding and stroking the chicken (not a euphemism, I swear!) and yes, it seems weird in retrospect.
2. What did roosters do without YouTube??

"My First Place" Chicken Edition

The chickens were fast outgrowing their cardboard box in the garage.
Josh (the hubs and resident urban farmer/carpenter) built a larger brooder out of wood and chicken wire (which would later become Popcorn's indoor suite) that could be rolled outside and back in at night to keep the chicks safe, yet allowing them sunshine during the day.

Meanwhile, he built them a home of their own and we had a 6' wooden privacy fence installed in the backyard.

New fence!

Roosting on the top of the coop

Stay tuned, for the next installment in which we discover Josephine (pictured) is in fact...a Joseph.

And They Grow...

It doesn't take long for things to get ugly.
One second, the baby chicks are sweet cuddly puffs of downy fuzz, then they begin to get their feathers and turn into gangly teenagers.
It is an awkward time to be a chicken.

Because I am a crazy bird lady a photographer's wife, I snapped a few pictures to capture their growth.

Josephine - Rare Blue Andalusion
(later renamed Joseph in light of some proper gender identification)

Genevieve - Cornish (A meat bird)
(Genevieve also turned out to be a rooster, but we kept the name because, 1. We were lazy. 2. We we sold it on Craigslist, and 3. It's just a chicken)

Popcorn - Sultan Hen
(also very rare, decidedly the kids' favorite. She is docile, and sweet, and when she runs around in those feathery bell bottoms, it looks like a scene from Saturday Night Fever)

Cup, Rainbow, and SweetiePieDaisyRosyFlower (yes, that was one name)
Unknown Red Variety, perhaps Brown Sex Links
(They all look the same. I don't know which is which. The girls do though. They are hardy egg layers)

And that concludes the Spring photo shoot '09 with the ladies...and gents.