Matters of life and death.

There are certain mistakes I have repeated often enough that I can consider myself an expert at failure in those areas. The hubris of thinking I am in charge is one of them.

The Chicken Kingdom

I created MY Chicken Kingdom, where I thought I reigned (with the CE, of course) as potentate supreme. I was convinced that by prettifying a little patch of dirt under the oaks I could effect a micro happily-ever-after for hens, that the right combination of fussing and care and hardware cloth and fencing could guarantee one secluded little safe haven in an unpredictable world.

I should know better by now. I guess it’s human nature to put ourselves in charge, to think that we can embark on life projects and determine the outcome. If/then is such an seductive and symmetrical ruse. One by one I’ve made the mistake and learned the hard way: If I work hard, life will be easy (Wrong-o.) If I sacrifice enough, my children will be perfect. (Well, not exactly.) If I invest carefully, I will never lose money. (Ha!)

Maybe it seemed like I wasn’t asking too much if I applied if/then to poultry. After all, it’s lowering the stakes from raising children to raising chickens, right? If I apply myself, I can at least successfully care for four hens. Wrong again. Lily is gone and we will never know why.

Lily at one week

I’ve Googled “sudden death in young chickens” several times in the last few days and while I’ve learned nothing about what may have killed her, I’ve learned that it is not at all unusual to lose a perfectly healthy young chicken.

Lily at 6 weeks

Some examples:

“Yesterday the Australorp just died. No warning. No signs of foul play. Not a ruffled feather. They free range in the daytime when I’m home and I went out early evening and she was just lying in a sandy spot, dead. She’d layed an egg in the morning, did her usual clucking and running around the yard when I let her into the yard late in the morning…”

“I lost 2 this week. one was over a year old and another was 5 months old.  I found them on the ground below their roosts…. they were healthy.”

“Melanie went out to tend the chickens this evening and found Sophia in a heap, expired, in the back corner of the run, just outside the door of the coop. Not sure why she died. There was no sign of suffering. She was just lying down in the corner, eyes closed, motionless.”

So today, instead of counting eggs, I’m just counting chickens. We check on them several times a day, just to make sure they’re alive. So far, so good: Amelia, Autumn and Hope all seem fine.

Free-ranging

Another mistake at which I have become an expert is that of getting overly attached to pets (Oh, really? You think someone who actually writes a Chicken Blog might have a problem like that?) We’ve lost enough of them that we should know how to do it by now, but we manage to be surprised each time.

Peaches was Chloe's predecessor

Who could forget Baby?

Their names evoke a memory of a particular time in our lives: Gypsy, Huckleberry, Jasmine, Avis, Chirp, Peaches, Baby – silly cats, dogs and birds that enriched and enlivened our days, made us laugh when things weren’t all that funny and made us cry when they departed. I miss them still.

Daniel brought me flowers yesterday - maybe I raised perfect children after all...

So I learn (once again) that I am not in charge. That I care a little too much. And that things go on. The other three hens are on a supervised bug-hunting expedition at this moment. They have already re-choreographed their hunting and pecking ballet from a quartet to a trio. Life is good. Rest in peace, Lily.

Sad news.

I’m so sorry to bring sad tidings to your merry Christmas.

Yesterday afternoon I went over to the coop to check in on the girls and immediately noticed only three of them standing in the pen. 3 pm is late for laying, and no one was on the nesting spot. Thinking we had an AWOL situation, I combed the property, but finding no straggler, I returned to the coop to look more closely.

I found her lifeless, wedged into a corner on the floor of the coop. We have no idea what happened, but Lily is gone. She seemed fine in the morning when I let them out to free-range, and I think she may have laid an egg, although I can’t prove it was her since I didn’t see her on the nest.

I read about sudden death in chickens all the time and have even posted about it on the blog, but I think I had a false sense of security about my girls because they look so healthy and I think (or thought) that I take pretty good care of them.

The possibilities? She could have been eggbound, although I think she may have laid an egg yesterday morning. It’s so hard to tell hers and Hope’s apart that I can’t be 100% sure. Another possibility is that she choked on something. I’ve researched others’ reports of losing chickens suddenly like this and the known causes range from a broken neck (I don’t think so) to fatty liver disease found in a necropsy of a seemingly healthy 6-month-old chicken.

Lilly on 12/20 looking perfectly healthy

One person explains it this way: “…chickens were never bred to be strong and live long.  They were bred to lay more eggs and gain alot of weight.”

The worst of all possibilities is infection, in which case the other three girls are in peril. They show no symptoms of illness, but neither did Lily. We can only watch and wait.

The “egg song” and the “squat”.

Remember how quiet my chickens were? Not anymore. They are currently making such a racket I heard it upstairs on the other side of the house. It’s mostly Lily, who sounds much more like a goose than a chicken. She does not bawk, she honks! We think she’s getting very close to laying, which may explain the agitation.

Hens are known for singing an “egg song” after they lay – sort of a “hey, look what I just did!” proclamation. Sometimes – in the case of Hope, for example, she will remain demure and quiet after laying, but Amelia will sing the egg song for her, announcing Hope’s great accomplishment. Lily has been singing the egg song and lurking around the nesting counter all morning.

That's a golf ball under her, not an egg.

I’ve left the golf balls in the nesting area to encourage Lily, who, at 28 weeks, will be the last of the four to begin laying. I believe she is very close, because in addition to her increased interest in the nesting area, she is doing what is called the “squat”. When you pet a mature hen, she will instinctively lower her body and slightly spread her wings. The purpose of this posture is to allow a rooster to have his way with the hen.

It doesn't really play out like this (photo from www.squidoo.com)

One rooster is sufficient for 8-10 hens – some say up to 20 hens, but interestingly, roosters do play favorites, and will repeatedly seek out a beloved hen. This can be tough on the hen, thus the market for hen “aprons” or “saddles”.

This hen has missing head feathers due to an amorous rooster

A stylish "camo" apron to protect the hen from a rooster's attentions (from www.crazykfarm.com)

Since our four girls live a convent life, their feathers all remain intact. It also helps that they live in spacious quarters – hens will aggressively defeather one another when they are kept in too-close surroundings or denied adequate nutrition, light or freedom of movement. In other words, like all the other animals who live here, these hens have hit the lucky lifestyle jackpot!

Egg on my face.

I know you’re all waiting with bated breath for the update: yesterday I told you that Lily was sitting in the nesting spot Hope created, but I was wrong! A case of mistaken identity: it wasn’t Lily – it was Amelia! I’ve been so convinced that Amelia would be the last to lay an egg that I didn’t see what I saw. In my defense, without being able to see the feathery feet, it’s easy to confuse the two:

Lily

Amelia

I’ve insisted all along that Autumn would be the next to lay, and I do think she’s getting ready. Her comb is so much bigger and redder, and she’s test-driving the nesting spot also:

Autumn's comb is different than the others. It's called a "pea comb"

I think she looks pretty serious about laying here.

But they all proved me wrong yesterday, and it’s a sobering thought to realize you’re not as smart as a chicken.

Chris, our carpenter, came to work on the bench he’s building, and there was a lot of hubbub in the chicken yard. Amelia came out of the coop after laying in the nesting spot for quite awhile, but without leaving a “gift” for us.  A false alarm.

The girls were free-ranging and were startled when Chris turned the power drill on – when I walked over to where they were standing, I saw an egg on the ground. It was still warm. How strange of Hope to lay an egg there, I thought, but we decided it was because the entrance to the coop was blocked in all the construction commotion.

Wrong again, because an hour later, Hope went back in the coop and laid an egg in her usual spot. I realized that the egg I’d found outside wasn’t Hope’s at all. It must have been Amelia’s.

Meanwhile, Autumn is apparently more interested in construction than egg-laying. After her brief visit to the nesting spot, she spent the rest of the morning “helping” the CE put up lights.

Autumn shadowed the CE all morning.

New lights to illuminate the path to the deck

Autumn is proud of her work!

Amelia spent another half hour in the nesting spot this morning, but again emerged without proof that she’s our new layer. Ah, the suspense!

Rite of Passage

Coming-of-age rituals are common in the human world. Celebrations and solemn ceremonies abound. For chickens, however, things are less exciting. No engraved invitations. No limos or live bands. Poor dears, all they get is a new bag of food that LOOKS just like the old bag of food,  which basically looks like little pellets of corrugated cardboard. The significance, however,  is profound: at the appointed time, a hen is changed over from “starter” ration to “laying” ration, the operative verb here being “to lay”.  As in an egg.

Any day now would be nice!

Like many other aspects of chickenkeeping, there seems to be a fair amount of disagreement about when this momentous change should occur. Some people switch their chickens over to layer feed as early as 14 weeks. Most seem to favor a switch somewhere between 16-20 weeks of age. But there are also those who insist layer feed should not be given until pullets are actually laying eggs.The advice I was given at our local feed store was to change the ration when the girls turn 20 weeks, which just happens to be today. Coincidentally, as I was filling their feeder this evening, I noticed that I was scraping at the bottom of the bag of grower ration, so I will take that as an omen.

Out with the old

From what I understand, the biggest difference between grower and layer feed is the percentage of protein. According to the Animal Science department at UC Davis, pullet grower feed consists of 14-16% protein and should be fed between the ages of 6 and 20 weeks of age. At this point, it is recommended that the birds be switched to laying ration, which has a boosted protein content of 15-18%.

In with the new!

Amelia at 20 weeks - you can see a small wattle emerging

Hope at 20 weeks - she looks ready to me!

There is a survey on the Backyard Chickens web site where subscribers have shared the age at which their hens first laid eggs. Here is the data on our four breeds, including earliest and latest age at which the bird laid its first egg,  color of the egg and size of the egg:

BREED                                                  EARLIEST                   LATEST                         EGG COLOR                                        EGG SIZE

Brahma, Light  (Amelia)                   19 wks.                     39 wks.                   lt. brown/cream/pink                med. to extra large
Easter Egger  (Autumn)                   17 wks.                    31 wks.                    mint/pink/olive/                        small to extra large
Delaware (Lily)                                   20 wks.                    22 wks.                    light brown                                    medium to large
Orpington, Buff   (Hope)                   19.5 wks                  28 wks.                    light brown                                    (no data)

As you can see from the above chart, the girls are statistically in egg-laying territory. I poured the last of their old food into their feeder tonight, and tomorrow they will be officially on layer ration. Let’s hope they get busy and start laying eggs soon!

“Cluck you”

Well, at least I think that’s what I heard the girls say when they heard what was on the menu last night. Bernadette was joining us for dinner, so Victoria made something special: roast chicken. When I texted Bernadette to tell her not to spread the info around the chicken yard when she arrived, she texted back: “Was it a close relative?”

Bernadette and Soho

Probably not, since the chickens we buy in the supermarket are generally Cornish X’s (Cornish Cross), a bird that was developed specifically to fit the needs commercial factory-raised poultry operations. This is the chicken that nearly led to the extinction of Lily’s breed, the Delaware chicken.

Lily at 17 weeks

A Cornish X is less a chicken than an eating machine and a freak of fast-forward photography: Due to their rapid growth, they reach a market weight of five pounds (live weight) in six to seven weeks, which makes them the most efficient and economical meat chicken on the market.

Lily at 8 weeks, which is about the age of most chicken you buy in the grocery

Of course it makess more sense from a business model to process the birds at a younger age for a myriad of reasons, but I know I’ve read someplace that an older chickens taste better than younger ones. A poster on www.backyardchickens.com explains that ”older birds have higher amino acid counts wich makes the meat more complex…. more nutrient dense… and because of this you get a higher quality of flavor.” The jury will have to remain out on that one, because no matter how much my girls swear at me, I have promised not to eat them.

All cooped up.

The girls spent their second night in the coop. They seem a bit puzzled as to why we keep forgetting to open the door to the run, but otherwise happy. When I brought them meal worms yesterday afternoon to appease them, Amelia got so excited that she actually leaped into the meal worm container in my hands!

They’ve been staring longingly out the window this morning. I know they’d like to be outside doing their bird work. Maybe we’ll let them out this afternoon for a bit.

And a fine Sunday morning to you, too!

Amelia does her seagull imitation in hopes that we'll let her out - the feathered feet are a dead giveaway, though.

Lily looks longingly out the window

"Open the door, you dummy!"

I MEAN IT!!!!!

You could at least have pizza brought in!

Lily

Lily is starting to develop her adult Delaware markings. She was buttercup yellow as a chick, and remains the daintiest of the four ladies. The Delaware breed is considered to be “critically endangered” , not because they are exotic, but because they fell by the commercial broiler production wayside. George Ellis developed the breed in 1940,  in, guess where – you got it.  He crossed Barred Plymouth Rocks with New Hampshires to culminate in a predominantly white chicken and initially gave the breed the name of Indian River. These chickens were prized by the broiler industry because white feathers do not leave marks on the skin when growing in, resulting in a more attractive appearance in a meat chicken.

Delaware hen

By the late 1950s, the faster-growing Cornish x  Rock Cross replaced the Delaware as the preferred broiler breed, and the Delaware breed fell out of favor. According to an article on www.Physorg.com, there are fewer than 500 Delaware chickens remaining, qualifying them as “critically threatened”. I’m just a bit dubious about that, as it was no great challenge to acquire Lily – I just added her to my feed store order, so I’m not sure just how critical the threat really is. A North Carolina-based group called the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is focused on preserving 66 different breeds of old-fashioned chickens that face extinction due to the 90% market share of factory chickens. Their criteria for certified heritage chickens is that they “must breed naturally, be able to live and forage outdoors and not be genetically modified to grow abnormally large breasts”. Yes, this does bring Pamela Anderson to mind, but “genetically modified” does make me wonder if we should make the switch to outrageously expensive organic chicken for our table.

I didn’t realize that Lily was actually intended to be a meat chicken. No wonder she’s the most agitated of the group when we handle her! Fortunately, she will also lay what are described boutique farmers as “rich, nut-brown” eggs whose customers tell them “are the best they’ve eaten”. Four months and counting until we get the chance to find out…

Delaware eggs

Lily at 5 weeks

Now I understand why people call their chickens "Fluffy Butts"!

Baby pix

They’ve changed a lot just since this morning! They’re exploring their surroundings quite bravely and are squirming a bit when held. Here are their pictures:

This one is Autumn

The Light Brahma is emerging as the favorite of visitors. Note her feathered feet:

Here is the Delaware. She’s the most dainty and feminine of the group, also the smallest. I’m thinking of calling her Lily.

And here’s the Buff Orpington. You can tell her from the Delaware because she’s a deeper yellow and doesn’t have the faint gray markings on her head.

Delaware

This breed was developed in 1940 in, uh, Delaware, of course. They are not well known. They’re a cross between New Hampshire Reds and Barred Plymouth Rocks. They are said to be a lovely, calm and friendly breed. Their eggs are brown. Here are pictures of them as chicks and adults.