Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart: a big fancy place to lay eggs.

The previous day she laid one on the bottom of the cart, right on the plywood, so I gave her some straw.

In which greed conquers fear and Jethro gets on the porch to eat chicken scratch

Problem: now I can't feed the chickens.

Chickens waiting for breakfast: a still life

The horse and donkey games are on.

I take these pictures from quite a distance away, because the games take place before breakfast, and if Jethro sees me he immediately stops and commences with his donkey yoga, designed to draw breakfast toward him. In the picture with chicken spectators, Superman is but a blur of tail at the left of the screen.

Our new Buff Orphington chicks

My neighbors Derek and Melissa were going out to the Efland Milling Company (919-732-7893) to get new chicks for their flock so I asked them to get me four. Four is a much more manageable number than the dozen I got last time. They are much calmer than the last batch.

By request: chickens perching on cardboard box.

I got four Buff Orphington chicks to renovate my herd. They are getting to that adorable part-fuzz and part-feathers phase. And they're practicing their perching skills.

Still life: chicken and Bulgarian embroidery

Can you tell I'm cleaning out my camera?

The chickens entertain me.

I got up this morning and looked out the window to see the whole gang of chickens lolly-gagging outside the kitchen door. When they saw me peering out of my second story window they marched over to stand right underneath and cocked their heads so they could keep their beady eyes on me (well, one eye per bird, they can't look at me with both eyes at once).

I migrated over to the office and looked out the window again and they marched over to stand directly under that window. Then I called "chickennns!" and they went to bumble around outside the back door - where I put their breakfast - like early-bird shoppers at Filene's basement, elbowing each other out of the way.

My friend Mark the neuropsychiatrist told me it couldn't be done, he doubted me, but the fact is that I have trained the chickens to tap at the door for sunflower seeds. They don't always remember, in their excitement, but yesterday while we were painting there were some taps so perfect and classic that they could not be ignored. Sunflower seeds were thrown.

The fact is, sometimes Ez and I open that kitchen door and put a little pile of sunflower seeds inside on the floor. We love to watch the chickens play out their angsty dance of fear and greed, coming, going, squawking in frustration, walking in circles. The bottom line is, some will come in and some won't.

I like to watch them in the morning egg rush hour - they all like to lay during the same hour, it seems - waiting at the bottom of the henhouse ladder for the prized spots to be vacated. There are six spots, but only two are preferred and one of the other four is acceptable. They'll scramble up and down the ladder shouting, waiting for the currently reigning rear end to make way for the next.

They have no rooster, so Ez and I are the next best thing - if we surprise them they squat and stick out their elbows, bracing for the attack. Are they disappointed or relieved to live the celibate life?

Chapel Hill now allows "small chicken farms."

CHICKEN FARM? Jeez, I have ELEVEN chickens and don't consider this a chicken farm. They are just a decorative addition to the landscape, and providers of far too many eggs.

10 Chickens OK in Chapel Hill

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The town that's home to the University of North Carolina's flagship campus says its OK for homeowners to operate small chicken farms.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that Chapel Hill Town Council voted Monday night to allow small-scale chicken farming in the town limits.

The vote will allow people to keep hens in any of the town's residential districts, affecting about 7,700 households. But no roosters will be allowed.

Chickens now legal in Durham North Carolina!

Extracts from
Durham says yes to backyard chickens
by Matt Saldaña for Indyweek.com, 18 FEB 2009
After months of debate and three contentious public hearings, the Durham City Council voted Feb. 16 to allow backyard chickens. The unexpectedly unanimous decision delighted many in attendance, prompting more than 50 supporters to burst into applause as City Hall's electronic scoreboard lit up with green bars, indicating 7 "yes" votes.

The vote was a victory for urban chicken enthusiasts, who organized around the issue and named their group the Durham HENS, for Healthy Eggs in Neighborhoods Soon.

After reciting a litany of egg-related metaphors ("This ordinance has been scrambled. ... Tonight, hopefully it will be served on a platter, sunny-side-up"), Councilman Eugene Brown announced that he had run out of logical reasons to oppose the change.

"When restrictions are in place, which they are, when almost every city in the state allows hens, which they do, I hope council will take the position of enhancing citizens' freedoms, and not denying it," said Brown.

Supporter Frank Hyman, a former councilman, speculated that the presence of young supporters—and Durham civil rights legend Ann Atwater, seated in the front row—made a convincing argument.

Seated behind Atwater was a row of teenagers who work at Durham Inner-City Gardeners (DIG), a youth-driven urban farming initiative of Durham SEEDS, the nonprofit city garden. Rashida Smith, 15, spoke matter-of-factly about the benefits of learning to raise independent food sources.

"I have never kept chickens, and don't know what it would be like, but in my opinion I think chickens in Durham will be a good opportunity to learn and see what happens," she said.

The youth support prompted scorn and a sideshow of drama from Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People chairwoman Lavonia Allison, however. Allison, a powerful political figure, belittled a group of urban teenagers who spoke in support of the measure, at times pointing her finger at supporters in the gallery and saying, "Shame on you."

Before Smith addressed the council, Allison spoke dismissively of the presence of inner-city youths in favor of the amendment—whose presence seemed to undercut her arguments at earlier meetings that supporters did not speak for urban neighborhoods.

"I see we have a more mixed group of young folk here tonight," Allison said. "They've been asked to come speak for some other folks, who don't have 50-foot lots."

Afterward, Smith said she wasn't worried about the icy reception, and that she had so much fun participating that she would consider speaking at future council meetings.

"Everyone has their own opinions. People can say what they want," she said.

Destiney Robinson, 16, chimed in: "I just wanted to get up and say [to Allison]: 'We're teenagers. We're still learning. We're participating in the discussion. That should be all that matters.'"

Mayor Bill Bell—who donned a Carolina blue UNC sweatshirt over his suit as penance for losing a basketball bet with Chapel Hill's Mayor Kevin Foy—said his vote came down to added protections for adjacent landowners, who will be given mandatory 30-day notice, and the opportunity to appeal the chicken permits.

Members of HENS have agreed to donate extra eggs to the Durham Rescue Mission.

Durham's new ordinance allowing backyard hens in city limits takes effect immediately, according to City Manager Tom Bonfield. Raleigh and Carrboro already permit them. Chapel Hill's Town Council is scheduled to vote on the issue Monday, Feb. 23.

Teaching chickens to beg.

Somebody asked for an update on my chickens. Of the current batch, which originally comprised a dozen, I still have eleven - a hawk got one, I was lucky to see it swoop down and carry off its silent feathered bundle while the others squeezed themselves under wheelbarrows and into flower pots (they were smaller then). Hawks have to eat, too.

Happily, the chickens are now too portly to be swept off their feet (I hope). They command a wide range, poking, grabbing, squabbling, grazing the day away in languid counter-clockwise sweeps around the house. They have certain hotspots: Jethro's piles of poop briquettes, for instance, the garden, the back porch where I leave their scratch...

[Scratch is a combination of cracked corn and wheat, and it's junk food for chickens, but this batch of hens, just like the last batch, scorns proper chicken food. I used to worry, but since they munch omnivorously all day, I no longer worry about their nutrition. The name refers to the annoying reflex which causes chickens to stand in their tidy pans of scratch and scratch all the scratch out of the pans all over the porch.]

They also like to rush over when Jethro gets fed, because he can't pick up every single bit of the oats and "sweet feed" (junk food for donkeys) we give him, and they are devoted gleaners.

Long ago the chickens discovered that I save the best food for their wild cousins the chickadees and cardinals: black oil sunflower seeds (they swallow them whole).

They first discovered sunflower seeds flung out of the birdfeeder by over-excited customers into the patch of irises below. They scrounge there and then waddle around the porch scarfing up outliers.

Seeing that, I started to throw them handfuls of sunflower seeds gratis. Now, though, I've decided to demand more entertainment, because they're pricey, sunflower seeds, they don't grow on trees you know, so the chickens must learn to beg. I'm trying to train them to tap on the glass of the kitchen door.

This isn't easy because

• chickens are incredibly stupid;
  
  
• they are also incredibly skittish and fearful. Even though I feed them every day and provide them a regal life, all the worms they care to eat, they act like I'm going to put them in a pot or something. Racial memory? They certainly seem to intuit that they are on everybody's shortlist of good dinners.

It's been pointed out to me that if all eleven chickens learn to tap, or even half of them, things could get mighty annoying around here.

In the mean time, though, I'm highly amused by holding up a small handful of seeds to the window; when one of them gets up the nerve to try and peck through the glass, I quickly open the door and fling the seeds outside. At first they would all then rush/fly/scramble away in consternation, but now they stand their ground and wait for the reward. Tentative tapping has begun.

Technorati Tags: Training, chickens

Jethro update, and a recommendation

It's 65 degrees right now, at 4:35 pm as the sun is going down. It's days like this that make me glad I moved to North Carolina, and that make it possible for me to keep from self-medicating against the blues by lying in bed and reading Marion Zimmer Bradley books, one after the other, until they are all gone.

In this picture you see two recent projects:

• The new improved donkey trailer, with back doors made by me, electrical lights/wiring done by Robert Hudson, and steel feet provided by Bob Vasile so the trailer would be stable.
  
  I was ready to tow it to the Motor Vehicle guy to get it roadworthy approved, except that my tow ball was on my van, and my van is totaled, lying crushed in a dump somewhere. So now I have to get a tow ball, and wiring, for the new truck, which adds a whole disheartening series of steps to this project.
  
  Meanwhile, Jethro is completely used to the trailer because we feed him in it. He hops in and backs out with insouciance.
  
  The chickens like the trailer too, because he's a messy eater and they are devoted gleaners. But he doesn't like it when they glean. So sometimes they are all in there, gleaning away, and he huffs up in amongst them and they all come exploding out any available hole between the boards and fly desperately to safety - i.e., a foot away, the limit of their flying range. Very amusing.
  
  
• A new tarp shelter I strung up today, reflecting Tom Lyndes' Tarpology Lessons. Since Jethro has a bit of a phobia about his lovely wooden shed (he'll go in it to snatch a bite of dinner but then comes right out on his veranda to chew), I thought he'd hate this tarp - flapping and all - but actually as soon as I strung it up he got right under it and stayed there looking pleased and proprietary.
  
  Which goes to show, predictions of the future based on the past are vulnerable to derision, take that, you economic forecasters!
  
  I was determined to get it up today because it was the first nice day in ages, and because Jethro's been needing a new mineral block and I hate leaving blocks out where they get rained on. So really, this tarp is primarily a mineral-block-protector. The fact that the donkey likes it is an unexpected plus.

I want to recommend a very amusing and well-written book to you: Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago by Tim Moore. I read it before I had a donkey, and wished the whole time I could write that well and be that funny. I'm re-reading it now, and it's even funnier because now I know what he was talking about. I plan to run some quotes one of these days, but trust me, it's wonderful.

Technorati Tags: donkey

The chicken coop gets expanded and fortified

While I was at Yiddish Week, all my chickens were killed. I figured it was raccoons, but it wasn't until today, when I was cleaning the feathers and post-carnage flotsam out of the coop, that I saw conclusive proof.


As soon as I got home I ordered a dozen mail-order chickens, assorted females. They were tiny when they arrived, but now, 2.5 weeks later, they are boiling up out of their containment area. They walk up and down this knife-thin edge of masonite, flapping their wings continually to keep their balance, and sometimes they fall out, and sometimes they fly to us as we sit at the kitchen table and land on our shoulders. This is not sanitary.


They have a lot of feathers now, except on their heads, which gives them a buzzard-like quality.


The brown ones are the prettiest, but also the lightest - they haven't bulked up like the others.


Since I was going to have to beef up security, I figured I'd improve the coop annex while I was at it. The dear departed ones never liked the second coop, which I had bought on Craig's List and got Jethro to tow on site. It was too low and too narrow and had no place to roost.

So one day recently Menticia and I took the jigsaw and cut most of the old roof off it. I cantilevered an addition onto the base (the dark red is the old part of the coop). I made two windowed upper panels and two hinged lower panels that pull in under the top and fasten with hanger bolts and wing nuts.

I added a hasp and a LOCK to the front and rear doors. If raccoons don't have skeleton keys they will hopefully be frustrated. (I didn't get combination locks because Bob told me he used to have a pet raccoon and it reached through the bars and twirled the combination lock endlessly for entertainment. Like monkeys typing Shakespeare, perhaps it would eventually succeed.)

I think it looks kind of like a bathysphere but Ezra doesn't agree.


Here's a rear view. I added the nesting boxes (the farthest back part); the part with the tin roof is the only part of the coop annex I didn't expand.


This is my favorite part of the coop - the connecting passageway with a real glass window.


Here's the interior of the new henhouse annex. I wired it for light from the light in the old part of the coop, and added a big long roost. I think it will be a hit. This was a great project for Menticia and me to do together.

Technorati Tags: henhouse, chicken+coop, construction, chickens, hens

The chicks get a bigger home.

There are certain advantages to not having a spouse. I am the baleboosteh. If I decide the chicken box is too small and I want to build a really big one out of masonite and attach it to the kitchen island with screws and angle irons, I can. Nobody will complain.

Raccoons: 8; Chickens: 0

On four separate occasions, three of which took place while I was at Yiddish Week, raccoons (I am supposing) came and killed chickens. On the fourth visit, they untoggled the front wall, removed it entirely, and killed the last two chickens.

What a horror story: you, one of those last two chickens, having survived the killing fields three times, are perched at night, listening to the scratching sounds outside the house with increasing unease. You watch helplessly as the raccoons figure out how to take it off. And then they come in and you get eaten.

It appears that on previous occasions the raccoons had figured out how to lift the metal door by its string.

I came home to a horrible silence. No cheerful chickens chasing Japanese beetles or rooting through Jethro's dung. An empty chicken house. It turned out, I couldn't stand the silence.

So I ordered new chickens, and Menticia and I set about improving the chicken house. The hurricane got in the way this week, but we plan to build the back house up and out, and then put hinges and a hasp on the front wall. Bob says he had a raccoon that was trying to figure out the combination for the combination lock on its cage, but I'll save that paranoia for later.


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Nature may misfire, but roosters never lose hope.

The Buckeye hens I've had the longest tend to go "broody" quite often - this means they stop laying eggs because they'd like to hatch some. They commence sitting all day and all night. However, they sit haphazardly -- meaning even if the activities that followed the pictures below were successful, the hens wouldn't tend the eggs 23 days straight and they'd never hatch.

For a few days one of the hens was sitting in the top box, which was empty. Then the other hen started sitting below, on an actual bunch of eggs.

After a few days they got lonely and started sitting together, both in the top bunk, ignoring the eggs in the bottom bunk.


Today I got aggravated. When hens are "brooding" they don't lay eggs and hardly eat or drink, they just sit in there the whole dang day. What's the point of that?

So I threw out those neglected eggs, because if they are half-incubated there might be things inside a person wouldn't want to see.

Then I performed a lockout by disattaching the metal door from the space-age German electronic eye light-sensing door opener.

The hens couldn't believe it.


Soon two roosters came thundering into the area. Red Alert!


The hens felt cornered. They didn't want to leave the top rung of the ladder, just in case the door should magically open and allow them to resume sitting together in the top bunk. But the roosters were in harrassment mode and getting away from them was a high priority.


Shortly after this picture was taken, both hens abandoned the ladder and ran away with the roosters running after them. Everybody was squawking.



Technorati Tags: chicken, hen, rooster, love, sex, brooding

From the New Yorker: "Free Range Chickens."

"Well, it's another beautiful day in paradise."

"How'd we get so lucky?"

"I don't know and I don't care."

"I think I'll go walk over there for a while. Then I'll walk back over here."

"That sounds like a good time. Maybe I'll do the same."

"Hey, someone refilled the grain bucket!"

"Is it the same stuff as yesterday?"

"I hope so."

"Oh, man, it's the same stuff, all right."

"It's so good."

"I can't stop eating it."

"Hey, you know what would go perfectly with this grain? Water."

"Dude. Look inside the other bucket."

"This . . . is the greatest day of my life."

"Drink up, pal."

"Cheers!"

(Laughs.)

(Laughs.)

"Hey, look, the farmer's coming."

"Huh. Guess it's my turn to go into the thing."

"Cool. See you later, buddy."

"See ya."

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Surviving a heat wave with fur or feathers.

I feel bad I haven't taken Jethro the donkey for his daily walks since the heat got so brutal. It's a relief, though, to see he truly doesn't mind 100 degree days - I deduce this from the fact that he spends a goodly part of the day standing out in the sun when he could perfectly well be standing in the shade. The same way he stood out in the sleet and wind in the winter when he could have been in his house. He's amazingly tough.

To assuage my guilt (guilt that I have air-conditioning and he doesn't) I've taken to giving him daily showers. I halter him and tie him to a post and then hose him down. At first he decided he was going to hate this, but as he realized the water was cool and delicious he yielded to it. Now he lets me spray him full blast, his ears down and eyes closed, mouth open to let the cold water drip in. He's so big, it kind of reminds me of washing a car, something I haven't done in years.

The chickens are having a harder time. They pant all day. They migrate around my house, searching for the coolest places as the sun shifts its position... they make dust bowls to sit in, deep dust bowls under the shrubbery, only their backs and heads are showing. They've just about dug up some of their favorite bushes (the ones in front of my house) while burrowing as far down in the dirt as possible.

They don't let me give them showers.

Me: I've used the heat wave to stay indoors and finish my second lulu.com songbook.


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Valentino, the continuing saga...

Valentino has more fans on the internet than he does in real life. For their sake, I present these emails, all sent today by the nice young real estate agent to whom I sold my rooster yesterday.

It started auspiciously this morning, when I received an email from the buyer. Of course I feared he would be telling me Valentino had been eaten on his first night away from home. But no!

Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 9:18 AM

Valentino is settling in nicely.

My kids (5 and 3) love him and surprisingly he is very approachable - my wife (who had chickens growing up) thinks it is because he is out of sorts and misses his hens.

Anyway, could you tell me where to find the chicken coop automatic door you mentioned? Thanks.

I replied with the link to spectacular German-made electronic door opener I built into my coop, then left for a memorial service. When I got back, there was another message from a less gruntled owner ...

Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 2:09 PM

Thanks for the door info, but Valentino may get eaten yet.

My wife can easily pick him up - in fact he comes to her.

Unfortunately, he has decided that our front porch is his roost.

During the day he stakes out the porch and today he went after both the kids - not his fault we completely understand - but it's going to make life tough until we could fence a chicken yard.

Unless you want him back (keep the $6 as a rental fee), I'm going to put him back on CraigsList.


My sympathetic but firm reply: thanks but NO BACKS. Three hours later ...

Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 5:36 PM

Thanks - we found a place for him.

Lots of folks out here in the country!

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In which Valentino the Rooster goes to a better place.

Valentino has been increasingly irksome as he has grown into full testosterone-infused glory.

He defines his job broadly. Defending the flock includes attacking people who come to pat Jethro. Defending the food supply includes attacking ME when I have his FOOD RIGHT IN MY HANDS and I'm about to GIVE IT TO HIM! You can imagine how stupid and exasperating this has been.

In addition, (1) none of my friends like him; (2) he is noisy all day long - which makes recording at home somewhat frustrating.

On the plus side: he is utterly gorgeous, with a scarab-like green sheen to his black black feathers, and he lets me rock him in the rocking chair.

Realizing that I will soon need a donkey sitter, and that the previous donkey sitter let me know she would not tussle with Valentino again -- well, I advertised him for sale on Craigs List.

I thought this was hopeless. Everybody who has chickens has roosters they want to get rid of.

However, today a cheerful young real estate agent contacted me and was all excited to have Valentino and came and paid me and took him away in a box.

It was fun to meet somebody who knows less about poultry than I do. The cheerful young real estate agent is PLANNING to build a chicken coop, but hasn't done it yet, and he is PLANNING to have hens, but doesn't have any yet. So he will be surprising his wife and children with Valentino tonight.

Valentino, of course, will be surprised too: he'll have no hens to boss around and, more ominously, no place to roost when night falls. And, therefore, there's a good chance he'll will be gone by the time they get their coop up, because a chicken is everybody's favorite meal...

As part of my recent series of searing personal retrospectives, I mulled over the Java chicken debacle. One desperate night, I ordered fifteen eggs. They were shipped next day air (not cheap) carefully packaged (also not cheap) and they cost more than $50 all told. Then there was the incubator, bought new, with optional fan. That was substantially more than $100. Of the fifteen eggs, three hatched. All three were roosters. I rid myself of the first two hooligans a few weeks ago (don't ask, don't tell) and now Valentino is gone, I was paid $6 for him. Therefore, a loss of more than $150.

Oh well! Not sure what the lesson to be learned from this was. Meanwhile the hens continue with their scratching. They don't appear to miss their lord and master one bit.

UPDATE (posted the next morning): It's very, very quiet out there. I can hear the songbirds. Heh.

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