Peeping Deliveries

The chicks have arrived! Wednesday morning just after 7:00, the Davidson Post Office called to let us know that there was a peeping box waiting for us there. Could we come and pick it up as soon as possible? You bet! The girls and I rushed to finish mucking out the stalls and the coop and dashed to the car. Within minutes, we were at the post office's back door, ringing the bell as instructed. (Did you know there is a door bell at the back of your post office? We felt awfully in-the-know and official, standing there waiting for our special delivery and watching the early-morning shift sort and stack packages. To think that, just yesterday, we were still front-room-only citizens.)

The gentleman who came with the box smiled empathetically when he handed it over, wishing us luck and hurrying back inside. Oh my, I thought. They must have gotten our order wrong. There's no way twenty-eight chicks could be crowded into this tiny box! We tried our best to peek through the holes in the cardboard but couldn't see much, so I gently bent up the top panel to get a better view and found that not only was the box surprisingly small--they were only occupying half of it! The other half was blocked off with a divider. But there sure did seem to be a lot of them. "Yikes--those critters are TINY!," I muttered. That quick look assured me that they were all alive (baby chicks sometimes die in transit from hunger, thirst, or cold). It also assured me it was not going to be possible to do an inventory until we got home. So off we went, chirping and peeping our way back to the house.

My husband, G-P, had been kind enough to set up and prep the brooder, so when we arrived it was already warmed to the prescribed 95 degrees and waiting for us on a utility table the Discovery Room. The sugar water and food were in their respective troughs, ready for the hungry travelers dig in.

"They're in that box?!" G-P exclaimed--assuming, like me, that the hatchery had only sent half of our order. Once we got the box open, we were able--though not without difficulty--to count their pecking, dancing, scurrying little bodies. Twenty-five. Well, that was close. We soon decided that it was three of the eight Ameraucanas that were missing. I soon got on the phone, and the kind folks at Stromberg's (the hatchery from which we ordered them) went to work making sure we got replacements for the missing chicks--and then some! This morning (Friday), we received eight more female Ameraucanas and eight "filler chicks" (males from less popular breeds--sent with the Ameraucana pullets to insure that they stay warm enough to survive the trip). So instead of going from nine chickens to thirty-seven chickens this week, we've gone from nine chickens to fifty! The gentleman at the post office wondered, "Did you eat all of those already?!?"No, we assured him. And no, he needn't worry; we won't be back for more--at least not until next spring.

But let's get back to Wednesday morning. Once we had the chicks counted, the girls and I began lifting them out of the box and putting them one-by-one into the brooder. We were careful not to skip the all-important step of dipping their little beaks in the water trough before releasing them. This teaches them both what and where the water is (without a mama hen to lead them to a water source, chicks sometimes don't figure this out). A couple of the particularly squirmy ones managed to hop out of our hands and get a quick bath--not good for tiny chicks. Fortunately, we were able to get them dried off before they got chilled. Then we started introducing them to their "chick-starter" feed. It didn't take them long to figure that one out! Within seconds they were happily pecking away, peeping and chirping excitedly.

And that's what they've been doing ever since. Only a handful have managed to escape so far, and the rate of breakouts is rapidly decreasing. The tiniest of today's shipment has managed to make it all the way to the floor (several feet down!) several times, but even she seems to have given up her flight fantasy during the past couple of hours. For the next 4-5 weeks they'll live in the brooder--eating, drinking, running about (where are they going in such a hurry?), peeping, and pooping. Then they'll move to the extra stall in the barn, where we'll set up perches and a heat lamp to help them transition to free-range living.

All the chicks belong to heritage breeds--that is, "traditional livestock breeds that were raised by farmers in the past, before the drastic reduction of breed variety caused by the rise of industrial agriculture" (www.sustainabletable.org). Here's the breakdown of the breeds we now have:

• Splash Jersey Giant
• Dominique
• Buff Plymouth Rock
• Rhode Island Reds 
• Delaware
• Barred Plymouth Rock
• Ameraucana
• Buff Orpington
• A few mysteries (stay posted!)

Together these chicks will provide our little farm with a veritable rainbow of color, shape, personality, and history. And many healthy, delicious eggs! Indeed, all of our current chickens and almost all of the new ones are pullets (females), with a handful of males (cockerels) thrown in so we can have a few to eat and a couple to fertilize future eggs. (Like the males of most farmyard species, male chickens tend to be louder, more aggressive, and generally more high maintenance than the females, and thus are much less populous and shorter lived than their sisters. Poor little devils.)

Which brings up the biggest challenge we face now: trying to keep the girls from naming each and every one of these babies. We keep explaining that we'll have to eat some of them and will be giving away (and possibly selling) several as well. But they just can't seem to help themselves! And as we all know, once you name them, you love them. But that's a topic probably best left to another post . . .

Late-breaking news: It looks like we have a chick-count update! Crystal finally managed to hatch one of her eggs, so now we're up to fifty-one. We were especially happy to see this little one. In fact, we were beginning to wonder if all these weeks of sitting would pay off for Crystal at all. Much to our dismay, she and/or the other hens started pecking at her eggs early in the week and managed to wipe out nearly all of them within a couple of days--except this one. It's evidently as tough as it is cute. We'll have to find an extra-special name for it. Oh, wait. The girls have already taken care of that. It will be Lou Lou--the nickname of my feisty, lovely older sister. Let's hope it turns out to be a pullet.

These past few days of listening to the musical chatter and watching the energetic antics of these tiny creatures has indeed reaffirmed our love for, and fascination with, chickens. There's truly nothing like a good dose of chicken time to lift one's spirits and perk up a dreary day. Try it sometime--I promise it'll do wonders!

For more information . . .

• On heritage breeds of poultry and other livestock: the website of The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.
• On raising chickens:
• The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers, by Harvey Ussery
• Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, by Gail Damerow
• Keeping Chickens, by Ashley English
• The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit, by   Jennifer Megyesi and Geoff Hansen.

Eggs for Sale!

We finally have enough eggs to offer 2-3 dozen a week for sale. (We hope we'll have many more by this time next year, when the chicks we're expecting in May will be laying.) They are all brown but vary in shade and size. We are selling them for $3/dozen.

Here's a bit of information about the hens who lay our eggs: They all belong to heritage breeds, some of which populated our country's very first small homesteads. They spend most of their days free-ranging throughout our organically run farm (we don't use any herbicides or pesticides--ever). Their diets are supplemented by organic scratch and organic layer feed, both purchased locally. All this means that their eggs are significantly higher in folic acid, protein and Omega-3s than most grocery-store eggs. We have never medicated our chickens for anything, so their eggs don't contain any traces of antibiotics or other icky stuff.

So here's your chance to taste some happy-, healthy-, hippie-hen eggs! If you live somewhere in our vicinity and would like us to hold a dozen (or a half-dozen) for you, just let me know (at littlebentcreekfarm@gmail.com).

Chicken Chat

One of the most enjoyable parts of my daily routine is opening the barnyard gate soon after sunrise and being greeted by our colorful brood of heritage chickens racing toward me to beg for a scattering of scratch. Almost as delightful is sitting with them later in the pasture as they alternate between snuggling together and busying around in the leaves and dirt looking for bugs and other delicacies.

Before becoming interested in sustainable farming, I had never thought very much about chickens. They were not particularly exciting, not particularly complicated, not particularly lovable. They were just, you know, chickens. It is now hard to believe I ever felt that way about these fascinating, spunky, productive little wonders of the domesticated-animal world.

Here are some of the things I have learned about chickens just in short time we have been keeping our own.

• They are lovely. The feathers of the chickens in our brood are speckled white, black (with streaks of glossy blue), golden, and barred. And they wear them with grace and dignity as the strut about the barnyard.
• They are sociable. I have been surprised by just how gregarious and companionable our hens and rooster are. They spend all day together, chatting, cuddling, and occasionally pecking one another as they scratch around for food, lounge under the cedar tree and explore new areas of the pasture. They have even started socializing with the goats, often hanging out with them for much of the day in the goat stall. 
• They have distinct personalities. Who knew? They each truly seem to be their own chicken. Queenie (the Buff Orpington) is the matriarch, both bossy and protective; Zebra Zuzu (the Delaware) is gentle and sweet; Autumn (the Buff Rock) is feisty and independent; Crystal (the Splash Jersey Giant) is the quintessential team player; and Captain Haddock (a Dominique and the sole rooster) delicately balances submitting to his compatriots with asserting his male authority.
• They are fun. There are few things as entertaining as observing our nine arranging themselves on their perch in the evenings. Each time, night after night, they appear to passionately flirt, argue, repel, and persuade one another as they vie for position, and somehow always end up all cuddled together (except for Autumn, of course) on the same rung.
• They are endangered (more on this below).

Given the popularity of chicken meat and chicken eggs in our culture, how could I have known so little about these creatures before they became a part of my own household? Like most Americans, chickens have played a big role in my diet but had almost no place at all in my consciousness. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S poultry industry is the world's largest producer, and Americans consume more poultry meat than either beef or pork. We also consume a lot of eggs: between 75 and 80 billion each year. You might think all this is good news for our chickens. I'm afraid not. The vast majority of chickens raised for meat and egg production in our country are raised in deplorable conditions. They are confined in tiny, filthy cages, drugged to grow so quickly and produce so many eggs that they commonly develop organ failure, cancer, and various types of deformities. Or they get infections that lead their owners to administer still more drugs. Some are so tightly packed in their cages that their beaks are cut off to keep them from cannibalizing each other. They never have a chance to peck at the ground, take a dust bath, or bathe in the sun. Or live anywhere close to their natural lifespan. (For more information on animals raised on factory farms, see www.humanesociety.org.)

It didn't used to be this way. Chickens have been around for ages and have been providing food for humans long before mass production came on the scene. According to scientists, the modern-day chicken is most likely descended from the Red Jungle Fowl that populated Southeast Asia around 3,000 years ago. The Greeks and the Romans may have been the first to domesticate chickens (for cock fighting, not meat or egg production). It is generally believed that chickens came to our own continent when Columbus brought them on his second voyage in 1493, though there is some evidence that they had already been introduced to native communities in South America by that time--most likely by Polynesians. Americans' interest in raising chickens skyrocketed in the nineteenth century, and for several generations chickens were a standard feature of the American household, an essential source of both food and income. They thrived in Florida where the weather was balmy; Minnesota, where it was frigid; and New Mexico, where it was arid. Sadly, it was their popularity and adaptability that eventually led to the near extinction of many backyard chicken breeds. As Jennifer Megyesi explains in her book The Joy of Keeping Chickens,
After World War II, the poultry business became industrialized, and improvements were made by crossbreeding to produce superior egg layers and meat birds. With the rise in commercial value for chickens, many breeds, now referred to as heritage breeds, were eliminated from flocks.

Unfortunately, the eggs and meat from industrialized birds are not nearly as healthy as those from chickens raised on small farms. (Free-range chickens contain 30% less saturated fat and 28% fewer calories than factory-farmed chickens; eggs from free-range chickens have 10% less fat, 40% more Vitamin A, and 400% more omega-3s.) And so most of us have spent most of our lives eating copious quantities of not particularly healthy eggs, legs, and breasts from miserably unhealthy chickens representing only a handful of hybridized breeds, while the rugged, diverse breeds of our ancestors have rapidly declined (and in some cases, disappeared). The heritage chicken movement wants to change this. It wants to bring chickens back to Americans' backyards and rescue the surviving chicken breeds that remain threatened with extinction. (Twenty-six of the 55 chicken breeds listed by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy [ALBC] are identified as critical or threatened.)

On our own farm, we have several Dominiques (the oldest breed developed in the U.S., and listed as under watch), a Jersey Giant (also under watch), a Delaware (threatened), and a Plymouth Rock, an Orpington, and an Australorp (all recovering). So raising chickens for my family means not just providing healthy eggs and meat for our table, but also making a small contribution toward preserving the unique characteristics of some of the American farmyard's most long-time residents. As an added bonus, we are also providing ourselves with endless entertainment and endlessly charming companions!

For additional information on heritage chickens see:

• www.albc-usa.org (website of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy)
• www.heritagepoultry.org (website of the Heritage Poultry Conservancy)
• Keeping Chickens: All You Need to Know to Care for a Happy, Healthy Flock, by Ashley English
• The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit, by Jennifer Megyesi and Geoff Hansen.