The curious case of Savannah the chicken

Savannah has always been an interesting bird. She is a beautiful speckled Sussex with a knack for getting into trouble. She regularly gets out of the yard and can be located in the side garden digging up newly planted peas and beans. She is also the reason we have had to drape the oh-so-fashionable orange construction netting over the fence as she was making forays into the neighbor's yard almost daily. The netting has stopped her from getting into the neighbor's yard but we have yet to discover how the little Houdini is getting into the side garden. She is also now embroiled in something of a farmyard scandal.

I had noticed a day or two ago that Zaida was MIA, missing in action. Looking around for her I finally found her in the duck coop, sitting on a nest. Sigh. Another broody duck. Looks like I will be breaking out the ceramic eggs yet again to replace the real eggs in her nest so as to avoid having more ducklings. Not that I have anything against having more ducklings, but my parents would have something to say about it, and with my luck they would end up being mostly boys anyway. The boys already outnumber the girls around here and ducks, being the (ahem) amorous creatures that they are, are running the girls ragged with all the attention. 

Cut to this afternoon, where Zaida is not, at the moment, a happy camper. She is wandering around the duck run, mouth open whenever anyone comes too close to her, complaining bitterly. Savannah, on the other hand, was clucking up a storm so I investigated to see what I could do to calm Zaida and get Savannah to quiet down. While I went inside to get the keys to the coop (the coops are all padlocked now at night and when doors are not in use, to prevent marauding raccoons from getting into the coops) the clucking stopped. When I came back out and checked on Savannah, the reason was apparent: she was laying an egg in the coop. In the nest box. The duck nest box. Which is currently holding Zaida's nest. She is now happily sitting on the nest, making her contribution the the nesting effort, while Zaida grumps around outside the coop, waiting for her turn to get back on her nest. I suppose after this episode, it will be even harder to catch Zaida off the nest, at which time I would be able to swap the eggs before we end up with ducklings. And, apparently, chicks.

Zaida, the unhappy camper, herself.

Savannah in the duck coop, making her contribution.

Hello, my name is Houdini

We have, amidst our chickens, an escape artist. One of the "littles" (our most recent batch of chickens, as opposed to the "bigs" who have been here longer) has been getting out of the back yard. At first we weren't sure how exactly Savannah was escaping, but we would occasionally find her in the front yard, wandering through the garden or in the neighbors yards, searching for bugs. Each time, we tracked her down and put her back into the relative safety of the back yard. A couple of days ago we finally figured out how she was making a break for it: she was going over the six foot high fence. All this time we assumed she was going under the fence and we dutifully shored up any holes and gaps but she still managed to get out. When we saw her walking along the top of the fence the other day we had our answer. 

Today, while doing a random head count on the sneaking suspicion that Savannah might have gone on walkabout once again, we came up one short: Savannah was indeed missing. Thus ensued a search that grew more serious and frantic when we failed to locate her in one of her usual haunts. We checked the front yard, the side yard, the neighbor's yard and the other neighbor's yard and yet another neighbor's yard. We searched the little forest across the street and the empty water district lot and the backyard once again. No sign of her. It was on our third or fourth search of the closest neighbor's yard that we heard a soft clucking sound and suspected she was nearby but we still hadn't laid eyes on her. As we turned around to give up and look elsewhere I happened to spot her in the corner of the front yard, behind a pile of wood I had stacked against the fence while I made a catio last year. She was nestled in as if she was planning on laying an egg there and after coaxing her out with bird seed we discovered that laying an egg had indeed been on her mind. Today and for the previous two weeks. She was guarding a nest of 15 eggs, making it evident that she had been escaping to the front yard regularly, for the last two weeks at least, to lay her eggs where she was sure to be safe from the prying eyes of other chickens and the thieving humans who feed, water and shelter her, before slipping quietly back into the back yard to join the flock while the humans remained ignorant of her escapades.

We are unsure as to whether or not she was becoming broody or if she simply didn't want other chickens around while she laid her daily egg. In the event that she was going broody we did move her eggs into the little little coop - a small coop that only gets used when a chicken needs to be quarantined or we have baby chicks - to give her a chance to settle on them should she so choose. She did not choose. She promptly hopped out of the coop and ran off to join the other littles to search for treats or bugs. We'll likely leave the eggs there another day or two to see if she changes her mind, but in the meantime we're probably going to have to consult professor YouTube on the proper technique for clipping a chicken's wings. She simply can't be allowed to wander the front yard unsupervised - there are too many dogs, cats, bobcats, coyotes, and cars for it to be considered safe - and despite what she may think, we do know what is best. 

The pile of wood leaning against the side of the house and the fence

The corner where we found Savannah

Savannah's nest of 15 eggs

More departures on the Unfarm

Ready for your daily dose of depression? I have more departures from the Unfarm to announce, unfortunately.  

First to go was Axel. On February 9, a few weeks ago, we made the ever difficult decision to have Axel put to sleep. Prior to February 9, he had been having some trouble with his eye being a bit teary and goopy so we took him to the vet and got him on eye drops and antibiotics with instructions to return in two weeks for a follow up appointment. At our follow up appointment, however, instead of being improved he was pretty much the same and the vet noticed a small lump on the side of his head. We took x-rays and the results were discouraging to say the least: the upper part of his jaw on the left side of his face was simply not there anymore. It turns out that the bone cancer that we thought we were rid of with the amputation of his front right leg had cropped up in his jaw and eaten away at the bone until there was nothing left. With him at risk of a spontaneous fracture of the remaining portion of jaw and his quality of life taking a turn for the worse we spent one more evening with him at home with all the other animals and took him in to see the vet the next day when Mom could be there as well. Before we left for the vet's office I made him a small batch of carob chip cookies and he had those as his last meal. After that we gathered around him, petting him and telling him that we love him as they put him to sleep. We had him cremated, and placed his ashes into a wooden urn with his picture on the front, reserving a small amount of ashes for a tiny pendant urn that I can wear around my neck to keep him close to me, as we have done with Kita, Maia, and Buddy as well.

Axel was loyal to a fault and would follow me everywhere, barking whenever anyone tried to get near me, even if they were family members. He was always smiling and he just kept on pushing through every obstacle that was thrown at him. He will indeed be a tough act to follow. 

Axel, smiling as ever

Our second departure happened just this afternoon. We lost Penny, our Welsummer hen with the spurs, after a long residence here on the Unfarm (for a chicken, at least.) I was unable to find the photos of her batch of chicks, taken when we first brought her here to the Unfarm, but I was able to find evidence of her being here as far back as 2009, placing her at ten years old at least, which is an admirable feat for a chicken, especially one as low down (at the very bottom, to be exact) on the pecking order as she was. I'm not certain what caused her death - whether it was due to natural causes like age or whether the other chickens beat her up - but I found her today out on the pathway in the back, surrounded by a bunch of her feathers and already passed away. 

Why Penny was so far down on the pecking order is also unknown to me. Of course I can speculate all I like: maybe it was because she had spurs, or because she didn't grow up with the other chickens, or because she broke her toe when she was young and always walked with a limp since then. What I do know is that she was a nice chicken and was spoiled as much as a chicken can be - she got her own coop away from all the others, she got uninterrupted meal times and was free range 100% of the time (whereas the others are closed into the run for half of the day before they are let out), she would hang out in the house with me at times and I even made her a harness to take her for walks out in the front yard. 

Penny in her walking harness

So there you have it; a recounting of the recent departures here on the Unfarm. I can only hope that the next post is more lighthearted. Until then, hug your pets, tell them you love them, and appreciate the time you have with them. 

Chicken harness

Penny, currently our oldest hen, gets picked on. A lot. By pretty much everyone. She is definitely low hen down in the pecking order here on the Unfarm. I don't know if it is because she sports spurs (nothing like Gretchen, the rooster, of course but spurs nonetheless) or because she walks with a limp from an old injury she sustained when she was still young (let it not be said that we neglect the health care of our animals: the vet tried putting a cast of sorts on it but it still healed up crooked) or simply because she didn't grow up with the rest of the chickens and is thus outnumbered. But whatever the reason, she gets chased and pecked at and harassed on a daily basis. This has led her to spend most of her days hanging out in safety zones: the grape arbor, behind the old screens from the failed catio, or up on the deck. 

Feeling bad for her and inspired after a trip to Coastal Farm and Home Supply, I decided to sew our feathered friend a harness so that I could more safely take her out in the front yard to get a break from the constant harassment in the back yard. You can simply purchase ready made hen harnesses from Coastal but Mom vetoed that idea and I was too impatient to order one online and have it shipped so I broke out the sewing machine and cobbled together a harness using whatever we had on hand: mesh fabric, a D-ring, a buckle, and some nylon strapping. After a bit of trial and error, and several fittings which Penny (fairly) patiently sat through, we had a working harness. 

A neck loop goes over her neck and is attached to a back strap and then an apron like piece covers her belly and attaches to two side straps that connect through the back strap, holding the whole harness on her. A D-ring on the back strap allows me to attach a leash and take her for "walks" which don't look like walking so much as wandering around and pecking at the plants, but she seems to not mind it too much. Unless I drop her leash and let it trail behind her, then she runs squawking around the yard in circles until I pick her up again. The only reason for this behavior that I can think of is that she thinks the leash is somehow chasing her and it freaks her out. At any rate, Penny seems to enjoy her newfound freedom away from the rest of the flock and if the neighbors didn't think we were crazy before, they do now that they have seen us walking our chicken. 

Penny sporting her harness, hanging out on the front deck.

You can see the back strap of the harness a little better in this picture. The leash is not attached when she's just hanging out on the deck.

Disappearing chickens

Call in Nancy Drew: we have a mystery. One of our chickens went missing last night and for the life of us we could not find her.

9:30 pm, Sunday night

Usually the chickens put themselves to bed every night as soon as it begins to get dark so imagine my surprise when I wet out to lock them up last night and found Penny perched on the couch on the back deck. Perhaps, I surmised, she tired of the trash can she usually chooses to sleep in. I scooped her up and continued on my way out to the coop with her only to discover Bridget roosting the the dog run gate. And then either Hannah or Henrietta on the dog run fence. Now things were getting unusual.

A quick look inside the coop confirmed my suspicions - not a single chicken to be found. The reason for this lack of chickens was also apparent; the chicken door had fallen shut, effectively blocking entry of all our chickens to their nightly roosts. What followed was somewhat of an Easter egg hunt involving chickens. I deposited Penny into the coop and then set about rounding up the others. I had already noticed Bridget and Hannah/Henrietta so I scooped them up next. Using the flashlight I was able to locate Lucky, Henrietta or Hannah, and Gretchen in the compost bin. While I was rounding them up I heard some scuffling noises in the shed so that was where I went next and discovered Georgia in the trash can usually occupied by Penny, and Lucy perched on the edge of said trash can. That's eight. The only one left was Sophie and as she is a mostly white/light colored chicken I had every confidence that I would soon find her as well.

So I searched. And I searched. And I searched some more. I checked under the deck, in the duck house, in the grape arbor and all over the gardens. My confidence began to waver. I looked behind the bamboo, in the trees, on top of the wood pile, and in the rafters of the back deck cover. It was like she had vanished into thin air and at this point my confidence that we would find her was shot. After searching the whole yard three times over, Mom and I finally called it quits and simply hoped we would find her in the morning when she came out from wherever she had been hiding. As this was not our first case of disappearing chickens (we discovered the last on had been roosting in a tree branch for three nights while joining the rest of the flock during the day) we prayed she would be safe wherever she was and then we reluctantly headed off to bed, but not without setting my alarm for early the following morning.

5:30, Monday morning

I headed back out into the yard to search for our missing Sophie and stopped short on the way out to the dog run as I passed by one of our weeping Japanese maple trees, where Sophie was happily perched on top as if nothing was amiss. Imagine my chagrin: if I had looked on top of the tree instead of just underneath it in the branches, I would have found her. Oh well, another day, another lesson learned here on the Unfarm.

Sophie on her roost for the night

A closer view of Sophie, gloating at having outwitted us simple minded humans

Beware of attack chicken

We have, residing here on the Unfarm, an attack chicken. This attack chicken's name is Gretchen and he (yes, you read that right - he) is our rooster. We named him as a chick when we were told that he was a she and the name just stuck. If you ask either my mom or I our opinion on said rooster you would be told that he is a fearsome defender of (almost) all of his lady hens but otherwise he is relatively harmless and even somewhat comical at times - performing his sidestepping shuffle dance for us in an attempt to either add us to his harem or show who is in charge, depending upon which theory you ascribe to. According to Dad, however, Gretchen is a "mean rooster" who attacks both frequently and without remorse. 

In looking at various threads on the backyardchickens.com website the main consensus seems to be that Gretchen's behavior is dominance based and that he should be culled from the flock. Well, that's just not how we roll around here - Gretchen is family and we just don't go around killing our family members. We just don't. And besides, it's not like Gretchen isn't good for anything. He does protect most of the ladies. Penny is the notable exception - we're not sure if it's because she is older than the rest of the chickens and so didn't grow up with Gretchen and his crew or if it is because she is sporting spurs on her legs - but whatever the reason, Penny is definitely lowest down in the pecking order and frequently gets picked on or chased by Gretchen and several of the other hens. 

Aside from his lack of protective instincts towards Penny, Gretchen is quite protective of all the other hens and no one is too big for Gretchen to go up against when it comes to someone bothering his ladies. Axel, the largest of the three dogs, grew up with chickens and cows on a farm somewhere before we rescued him from the shelter so he generally leaves the chickens alone. Scout and Molly, however, are another story. Scout thinks that the chickens are endlessly fascinating toys of some sort and they only want for the proper persuasion to get them to join in a rousing game of chase. Molly will chase almost anything that a) moves and b) is smaller than her. Being a chihuahua mix not many things fall under category b, although she will join Scout if he decides to chase the chickens. The chickens, for their part, squawk and flap their wings and tear around the yard in a highly disorganized manner that often leads them back into the path of the dogs. Hearing this commotion, Gretchen races to the rescue. He flies into the dog run and heads straight for whatever dog is closest and slams into their side, effectively drawing the attention away from the hens in order to give them time to make their escape from the dog run. The party is generally over at that point. The hens are gone and none of the dogs wants to tangle with Gretchen the attack chicken so for now the good outweighs the bad and Gretchen is staying where he is, "mean" or not.

Gretchen, our attack chicken

Ginger

I took Ginger to the vet the other day to confirm what I had been told, which is that she was spayed. It appears that I was misinformed, possibly so that I would take her off the previous owner's hands. So now I am stuck with a $200+ surgery that I have to pay for in order to get her spayed to prevent any risk of her getting uterine cancer. The surgery will have to wait, however, because the vet also informed me of something I already suspected - that she is overweight and by about two pounds - and needs to lose some of the weight before she can have the surgery.

The reason I wanted to confirm Ginger's spay in the first place was because we recently added another member to the Unfarm - an energetic young male rabbit found as a stray who had only just been neutered - and I didn't want to risk introducing them if there was any possibility that Ginger was not spayed and could therefore still get pregnant as males remain fertile for up to a month after surgery. The last thing we need on the Unfarm is twenty some rabbits hopping around. 

Sprout, as we named our new addition, seems to have potential as a possible mate for Ginger - he is easy going, adventurous, and friendly. Ginger, on the other hand, has been something of a lone wolf or several years now and may not think of the addition of another rabbit as a good thing. She is territorial to say the least. I have tried bonding her several times over the years without much success. And by "much" I mean "any." I would love for her to bond but I am beginning to grow discouraged. Sprout will sit beside Ginger's cage during his time out of his house and wait for her to groom him. Ginger, for her part, will sit beside Sprout and try to bite him through the cage bars. It isn't looking good so far. My only hope at this point is that somehow spaying Ginger will reduce her propensity for territorial behavior. Should I try to bond them I will keep you posted as to how it goes. Or doesn't go. 

By the way, Lucy is still daily to be found in the little coop when bedtime rolls around. We still have not figured out why she is choosing to sleep there. We take her out of the little coop and put her into the regular coop each evening so that she doesn't get too cold by herself. 

Barnyard brawl

With (at current count) 18 animals, noise is something I am quite familiar with. Dogs bark, cats meow, rabbits thump their feet on the ground when they are annoyed at something, roosters crow, hens cackle, ducks quack, and mice run on their wheel. Animals make noise: this I know and generally pay little attention to. The exception to this rule are the typical noises that signal something is wrong - cats that hiss or growl, a bark with a certain tone, or - around here - a frantic flapping of wings. 

This sound of wing beats is what alerted me to something amiss in the backyard the other day. As this sound never means anything good is happening, I ran outside to discover Maggie and Gretchen in the middle of a whirlwind of wings and feathers. After separating them I was able to look them over and Maggie appeared to have gotten the worst of it, with a gash under his chin (if ducks have chins) that was bleeding. As ducks are equipped with very little weaponry compared to the beaks and spurs of a rooster, Gretchen walked away without so much as a scratch from what I could tell. Maggie's gash was somewhat worrisome, but even more than that was the concern that antibiotics would be required and they would need to be started immediately. 

That this incident happened on the Sunday before the fourth of July was even more unfortunate: it meant that our avian vet would be unavailable until Tuesday at the earliest. Our backup vet was also not in the office. The only option left was the emergency vet (one town over, because our emergency vet didn't have anyone who could treat ducks), which probably meant a big wait and an even bigger bill. (I swear the animals conspire only to get injured when it is the most inconvenient timing and all the regular vets are unavailable.) 

This circumstance is how we found ourselves sitting in the waiting room at the emergency vet surrounded by the usual cats with kidney stones and vomiting dogs. Walking in there with a duck made us something of an emergency vet celebrity. Two hours, one stitch, fourteen pills, and $100 later we walked out of there sufficiently patched up and ready to live to fight another day. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time until they do.

A healthy respect

It would seem that after Molly's misadventure with the chickens the other day (see previous post: Gretchen - warrior rooster) she has developed a healthy respect for the chickens. Actually it tips the scales closer to fear. Ask her now if she has to go out to go potty and she'll perk up, wagging her tail and heading toward the door to her territory (aka the master bedroom.) But if it is still light out, that's as far as she will go. She has made the connection that daylight means the chickens are out and could ambush her at any moment, and so long as they are out she has determined that she won't be. Put her outside and she cowers on the back deck, tail tucked between her legs. Even if the chickens are not actually visible, she is certain that they lurk somewhere nearby, ready to chase her the minute she starts to pee. As this is a relatively new situation I am not sure what exactly we are going to do to remedy it. In the short term we have been taking her out to the front yard to go to the bathroom but this is far from ideal as she has been known to take off into the neighbor's yard to chase their cat or run after people walking past the house. Maybe some kind of canine-galline desensitization therapy in which we place a chicken in the same room with Molly for longer and longer periods of time. Or is it that you add more and more chickens in the room? Something like that. Or maybe we need to increase her dosage of prozac. Or maybe some kind of dog therapist. To be honest, she probably needs more prozac and a therapist as a matter of course anyway. She is far from well adjusted. Probably the next big project we'll need to tackle here on the Unfarm.

Gretchen - warrior rooster

The routine for letting the dogs - or rather Scout - out in the backyard has become more complicated now that he is full grown and no longer an eight pound puppy who can be bossed around by the chickens. Before we can let Scout out we have to do a head count of the chickens and establish that they are, indeed, all out of the dog run. This is best accomplished by tossing a scoop full of squirrel food off the deck over by the blueberry bushes. The chickens are, by this point, used to the sound of the squirrel food bin opening and know to come running from whatever part of the yard they are in if they want an easy meal. Which they always do. If all five chickens start pecking the ground for bits of sunflower seeds and corn we know that we are in the clear and Scout is free to go out. If one or two chickens have flown into the dog run we have to entice them out with additional scoopfuls of squirrel food before we can let Scout roam freely. 

It happens, though, that on occasion one of us (cough "dad") fails to do a proper head count and just opens the back door and hopes for the best. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, Scout's exit is quickly followed by a barrage of squawking and a great deal of flapping about as whichever chicken attempts to flee from a rather exuberant Scout intent on playing with them. We quickly intercede on behalf of our frazzled chicken and wrangle Scout, hopefully before any damage can be done. 

Axel and Molly do not require such maneuverings before being let out because Axel was raised on a farm with chickens and has learned to ignore them and Molly is about the same size as the chickens and is too fearful to try and take on any of them by herself. This does not mean that she will not join in with Scout if he is chasing a chicken: she will. Safety in numbers, I guess.

99% of the time when the dogs are in the dog run, the chickens know enough to stay out of it until the dogs return to the house. But there is that one percent. This happened a few days ago when Lucy decided to fly into the dog run while Scout and Molly were still in it. The chase was on. Molly and Scout started chasing, Lucy started running and squawking and then in came Gretchen. Bravely coming to the aid of his wife, he flew over the dog run fence and began chasing Molly. Molly, for her part, was completely taken aback by this startling turn of events and did what any sensible ten pound dog would do when being chased by a full sized rooster: she ran up onto the deck and hid between Axel's legs. While this was going on, Lucy seized the opportunity to fly back over the dog run fence and into the safety of the rest of the yard. Gretchen celebrated his victory by strutting back and forth a few times, crowing, and then flying back into the yard with Lucy. Who would have guessed that under all those fancy feathers lurked the heart of a warrior, ready to leap into action to defend his hens whenever the need should arise? I must admit that I have rather a little more respect for our little rooster-cum-warrior.

There's one in every hatch

Well, it's happened. Again. Our latest batch of chicks, like our last batch, came with an unexpected surprise: a rooster. Gretchen is, apparently, a Gregory. The last time this happened with our "hen" named Buttercup, we were forced to re-home him after he started crowing at a few months of age. With neighbors that complained about nearly everything (our trees, our bamboo, the dogs barking in the neighborhood, the kids playing next door, the fact that the sky is blue and not purple with green polka dots; you name it, they probably complained about it) we knew it would not be long before they came knocking to complain about our little songbird so we regretfully re-homed our rooster. 

This time around the situation is somewhat different. Sir and Misses Complains-a-lot have moved out, along with two other neighbors with the subsequent result that now the neighborhood is full of nine barking dogs, three noisy teenagers, two screaming kids, one shrieking parrot, and a partridge in a pear tree. So the addition of one rooster seems to hardly make a dent in the general noisiness of the neighborhood. Add to that the fact that Gretchen has yet to utter a single cockle-doodle-doo: not so much as a peep has escaped his tiny bird mouth. (Knock on wood.) Should Gretchen decide to start, we are going to try to a No Crow rooster collar (check them out here if you want: http://nocrowroostercollars.com/). At best it will reduce or eliminate the crowing. At worst it will be a fashion accessory to make him look charming while he does crow. As long as Gretchen maintains his vow of silence it looks like we will be keeping our rooster and starting a new adventure here on the Unfarm as rooster owners. He does seem to round out our flock of four hens nicely. Keeping our fingers crossed.

Departures on the Unfarm

I have sad news to report: another departure from the Unfarm. This time it's Beauty that we lost. Over the last few days we had noticed her being less active than usual, and it worried me but then she seemed to recover the next day and was out chasing squirrel treats with the other ladies. Today, though, she was back to sitting around hunched up on the deck or under the eaves by the duck pools which was where I found her this evening when I went out to close up the chicken coop. I brought her inside, wrapped her in a towel and curled up on the couch with her in the hopes that warming her might help as it had a few months earlier when she was under the weather. We sat together for a couple of hours with her softly breathing when she bowed her head and stopped. 

She was always a fairly skittish chicken - we adopted her when she was already four months old so we missed out on the early days and weeks of life when we spend lots of time with the chicks getting them accustomed to us - but she was a nice hen nonetheless and we will miss her. 

With this loss we are down to only two hens now, and going into the coldest months when the girls huddle together in the coop at night to keep warm. I worry about how Sakari and Penny will handle the winter without Beauty, who was probably the biggest, fluffiest of the three. I am afraid I might have to spend the next few weeks knitting chicken sweaters, comb covers, and wattle warmers just to keep the girls cozy. In thinking about it, with all the rain we get I should probably break out the sewing machine and whip up some ponchos and rain hats while I'm at it. Now, where does one look for patterns for the fashionably minded hen? 

Beauty, curled up on the couch with me this evening

Rest in peace, Beauty. We will miss you.

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

The list of things we need to accomplish here on the Unfarm this summer is slightly massive, due in part to several large projects that have been put off for the last few years (or more): paint the exterior of the house, rebuild the back deck, and fix the retaining walls that were built with the wrong material to begin with despite my insistence that said materials were - in fact - wrong. My dad insisted on building them anyway, and now they are falling over. Do you sense an "I told you so" moment? My dad, conveniently, claims to have no memory of my previous advice. Ahh, the convenience of living with ADD.

At any rate, the huge list of summer chores has had me busy outside and neglecting my blogging duties. But today you're in luck, because I managed to find some time to get this photo uploaded. 

Sadly, we are not preparing to raise a new generation of chickens. We were under the assumption that the chickens were no longer laying, in fact. Sakari is ten now and has earned her retirement. Beauty has decided that she will never lay, despite the fact that she is supposed to be a good breed for egg laying. Penny, however, has historically been a fairly reliable layer but seemed to be on an extended strike, having apparently unionized. That was until we caught her hopping out of the little coop that sits empty since none of the girls seem to have taken to it. Checking the coop to see what Penny was up to, we discovered that she had been secretly laying an egg each day and had amassed a dozen eggs in her little nest. Chickens are wily creatures - it is embarrassing to admit that they have outwitted us more than once, and will likely do so again in the (near) future.

Daisy

We lost our sweet little Wyandotte, Daisy, today. She was slow to leave the coop this morning and spent the morning sitting on the deck. I became concerned and dug out our Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow and started searching for causes of lethargy and diarrhea (no one ever said the life on the Unfarm was glamorous). I also double checked the chicken first aid kit supplies recommended over on the Fresh Eggs Daily blog at http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/11/the-all-natural-chicken-first-aid-kit.html and decided that Kocci-Free sounded like it might be what we needed, or at least it couldn't hurt. I started calling around to our local feed stores but no one seemed to have Kocci-Free in stock. I had decided I needed to set out to the feed stores and see what else they did have but I wanted to check on Daisy again first. I went out the the back to see how she was doing and that is when I saw her. She was lying on her side in the pathway, between the honeysuckle and the china blue vines. She was already gone. 

Daisy will be greatly missed, as she was one of our friendlier hens, if not the friendliest, and she was quite sweet and gentle as well. So sweet and gentle that the other hens tended to pick on her and she was usually last to get any treats during a feeding frenzy. I will miss seeing her up on the railing, stealing squirrel food; or running behind the other hens with her funny little gait; or jumping for blueberries under the bushes in the summer. 

This brings our hen population down to only three, none of which are laying. Beauty has never laid a single egg, despite being an Australorp, a breed reputed to be good layers. Penny has historically been a good layer, but seems to have joined a union and gone on strike. Sakari, the last of our original three hens (and my personal hen) is just plain retired having reached the age of 10 years. How this little workhorse of a chicken has made it so long when everyone else has succumbed to one illness or another is beyond me, but I am glad for it - she is the matriarch of our flock.

I hope that we can add a new chicken or two to the flock again soon. I miss going out to the coop to collect eggs, and it seems lonely in the coop now with just the three girls.

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

Beauty and Daisy enjoy a break in the rain and take a stroll through the garden. They may look innocent enough but it will only be a matter of time before they are terrorizing small plants or kicking mulch everywhere except for where we intend it to be. A garden with chickens is never without a little chaos.

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

The chickens will sneak squirrel food whenever they get the chance, so the sight of them walking along the deck railing is a fairly common one.

Who rules the roost?

I think the term "owner" in relation to pets is outdated. I know that many animal lovers prefer the term "guardian" which I don't generally use, mostly because I am lazy: "guardian" has three syllables and "owner" only has two. But the main reason I no longer think "owner" is appropriate is because it seems to carry with it a sense of control over that which is owned. And as almost any pet owner can tell you, we are not the ones holding the cards. 

Maia, for instance, has decided of late that the living room carpet is the appropriate place to go to the bathroom, ensuring, perhaps, that Mighty Mouth, our industrial carpet cleaner (yes - we named him, it seemed appropriate after all the time we've spent together) earns his keep. Do we want Maia to pee in the living room? Of course not. Do we have much say in the matter? Of course not. In an effort to prevent any further affronts to our carpet we have now set up a system of gates blocking both living room entrances. The gates are low enough for everyone but Maia to get over so they have not proven much of an inconvenience (unless, of course, you happen to forget they are there and trip over them.)

The chickens have very little say with what goes on in the house (not that they don't try - they run into the kitchen any chance they get, looking for crumbs on the floor) but they do exert a fair amount of control over the garden. Contrary to what my mom thinks - that I am the one making all of the decisions when it comes to the garden, whether she likes them or not (a large honeysuckle vine is the current bone of contention between us) - the real rulers of the yard are the chickens. Mom wanted rhubarb - the chickens wanted it more. It is now a small, raggedy plant barely hanging on after merciless grazing courtesy of the ladies. I managed to clear enough space in my garden for a winter daphne plant but the chickens were convinced that I had hidden some delicious treat underneath it and scratched around the roots determined to find it. Needless to say I had not hidden anything underneath it but did that stop the ladies from digging my poor daphne out until it was too far gone to save? Yeah, right. And I was so looking forward to it blooming next spring. The chickens were also responsible for polishing off every grape within their reach last summer. I suspect the wild birds and squirrels finished off the rest. Total grape harvest: zip. 

I expect the ducks would go after the grapes too, but they are unable to climb the arbor the way the chickens can. That doesn't stop them from going after the blueberries, however. They are so fond of them that they eat every berry within two feet of the ground (the approximate limit to Maggie's reach.) They don't even wait for them to ripen. As soon as the berries appear the ducks are down there, plucking them off the branches.

And then there are the rabbits. The cute, fluffy, bouncy little bunnies. The chewing, scratching, biting little bunnies. If they aren't scratching up the carpet, or marking their territory by peeing on the floor (a practice I try very hard to break them of), they are chewing. Their cage, their litter boxes, the deck, the door frame, the wicker baskets I store my fabric in, paper bags, books, and the cute wooden desk I picked up at a garage sale. Oh, and cords. Rabbits love cords. Telephone cords, vacuum cords, iron cords, lamp cords, and cable cords. The only weapons I have in the war with the rabbits are gates to block off furniture I don't want them chewing and a squirt bottle of water that is sometimes effective, sometimes not. Rabbits are stubborn creatures.

So, "owner." I think not. We are hardly in control of the situation. The main purpose we humans serve seems to be damage control. We roll out Mighty Mouth whenever Maia decides to pee in the living room, and follow the chickens around the yard, replanting what they dig out. We hide cords and fence off enticing furniture. Other than that, we have very little say in the matter; around here, the animals rule the roost.