Chickens!!!

One of my many lifetime goals--besides taking the Lord of the Rings tour of New Zealand, hiking the Appalachian Trail, living in Kauai, learning another language, and watching my daughter score a goal in the women's World Cup--is to be completely self-sufficient so my family can survive the impending zombie apocalypse. This would include enough solar panels and wind mills to generate our own energy, a full-size garden with the knowledge to can certain staples to get us through harsh winters, and livestock to provide us with the dairy and protein my family needs to survive--and barter with in exchange for protection from the local militia. I'd mention the huge underground bunker I want to dig with an escape tunnel leading down to the river, but that would make me sound crazy.

Since we aren't allowed to raise cows or goats in the city of Knoxville and my relatively small plot of land (you could call it the 'Liebenow Compound') wouldn't support them anyway, I decided to get some egg laying hens. I go through a lot of eggs. They are the perfect food to eat by themselves, or as part of so many other dishes like quiches, frittatas, pancakes, potato salad, fried rice, egg salad, cakes, or most important of all, cookies.

I know next to nothing about raising chickens though. You would think I'd know more. My family lived on a small farm for four years in western Washington. At one point, we were raising 75 chickens for both meat and eggs. But this is when I was only 5-9 years old. My father did the complicated stuff like purchasing the chicks, raising them in a brooder, building the coop, finding the right feed, bedding, nesting boxes, yada yada yada, a lot goes into raising chickens. The main thing I remember is having to clean out the coop with its awful stench, searching for eggs in the hay bales of our barn, and also catching chickens and bringing them to my father so he could behead them. They really do run around if you cut their heads off. Oh by the way, if you're at all squeamish hearing about the death of chickens, this may not be the blog post for you. Maybe you should rethink that trip to KFC too, you hypocrite.

So, Betsy and I did exhaustive research on the subject of chickens, including interviews, web searches and buying relevant literature such as this book:

Because the Idiot's Guide to Raising Chickens is too hard to understand

We thought we had a handle on it. We read that book inside and out. We decided to convert Grace's old playhouse to a chicken coop by just adding chicken wire to the windows, and an extended run stretching from the porch out into the yard. I thought buying chicks would be too hard because you have to make a brooder and keep their environment safe, clean, and warm. Not to mention you have to wait 5 or 6 months before you get your first egg. So we went to a local farm and got three nice birds that had just started laying at 18 bucks a piece (if you want to make money as an urban chicken farmer you have to  think long-term).

Introducing Martha, Henrietta, and Razzle-Dazzle

The family immediately became fond of our little flock. We each got to name a chicken. Mine was Martha. Grace's was Razzle-Dazzle. Guess I'm kinda lame in the naming department. They started laying immediately. We had a couple eggs the very next day. After only 5 days, I had enough eggs to make quiche. Our dog, Lilly (may she rest in peace), was extremely interested in causing the chickens harm, but they were safe in their pen. We just kept predator separated from prey and relaxed, knowing that our egg factory outside would keep us swimming in egg yolk for years to come.

We made her spend the night with them. Am I a bad father?

Then, disaster struck the Liebenow Compound. Betsy and I were inside the house sitting on our couch, peacefully going on with our lives, when we suddenly heard a piercing scream from the back yard.

"THE CHICKENS ARE DEAD!!!!  THE CHICKENS ARE DEAD!!!!"

Grace ran in the room, arms waving madly, eyes wide with terror. Betsy and I dashed outside to a horrible scene of carnage in the chicken run. Feathers everywhere. The foul stench of death filling my nostrils. Two mangled, nearly unrecognizable corpses lying where they'd been blissfully scratching minutes before

R.I.P. Henrietta and Razzle-Dazzle

How could this happen? Our sheltered lives had been violated in a primal fashion.

They had so many years of egg laying in front of them

Sorry, did you say you wanted a closer look or you don't want one?

It was obvious that the fault for this poultricide rested on my shoulders. I used small staples to attach the chicken wire to the frame of our run. The predator was easily able to lift the wire and get at the birds. I pridefully thought Raising Chickens for Dummies had taught me everything there was to know about chickens, even as I ignored the underlying message: I am a dummy!!!

But who, or what, could've done such a thing? This was an attack in broad daylight. Most predators do their killing at night. We live in the middle of the suburbs, less than half a mile from a Target, a Starbucks, and a shopping mall. There are no wolves, there've been no fox or coyote sightings. Other people in our neighborhood had their chickens taken by a hawk, but we had chicken wire over our run. Could a hawk have lifted the chicken wire, gone inside the run, killed the chickens and retreated in the middle of the day? Also predators like that usually stick around to eat their prey. This seemed to be killing for the joy of it. Some manner of serial poultry killer. We have a chain-link fence around the yard. No dog ever comes back there. Even rabbits and cats feared our back yard because of Lilly.

I know what you're all thinking. "You actually ARE a dummy, Brian! The dog did it!!" Well, smarty pants, here's the hole in the wire:

Lilly couldn't fit through that hole. We tried to get her through because we had the same suspicion but her bulky body couldn't make it. And we were pretty sure she was in the house at the time of the crime.

Wait. Hold on a second, where was our third chicken?!? We had three, right? Was Martha still out there, hiding or in pain and unable to reach us?!? Detective Grace spotted a trail of feathers and followed them to our back fence where we discovered the final, mangled body. So, whatever terrorized the chickens in their pen chased poor Martha down until she could run no more. I'd like to think she didn't suffer. But, who am I kidding? It was most likely unspeakably painful and horrifying up to the end.

Trail of feathers. Grace will soon be publishing C.S.I. for Dummies

For the past year, there've been more theories about who, or what, killed our chickens than guesses about JFK's death. Was it a vindictive neighbor? A homeless vagabond with an odd hatred for chickens? A previously unclassified mammal that looks like a cross between a snake and a howler monkey? An alien life form that resembles a giant worm who killed our chickens on behalf of earth's tiny worms? Those are all valid theories.

So that was it. Our experiment with chicken farming was over. My hopes for surviving the zombie apocalypse were dashed in a flash of feathers.



Until now...

Immediately following our trip to Aspen, we vowed to give it another shot. This time, we decided to raise our hens from day-old chicks because they're so adorable and they only cost a couple bucks each.  A co-op about 30 miles away gets new ones every Monday, so I drove out there that afternoon and picked out four of the cute little buggers.

Sure it's cute now, but in a couple months it'll be big, smelly and ugly

You're supposed to make its first day stress-free, but screw that!!

"So that's what a chicken nugget is?"

I think the chick liked it, but it was just another indignity for the dog

They're supposed to be in a relatively small box or cage called a brooder until they grow enough feathers to live out in the elements. We converted an old pink tote, set it up in the garage and hung a heat lamp over it to keep the chicks warm. We also put food and water dishes in there, which they were kind enough to poop in constantly.

Hopefully, they don't mind the color pink

We had to start thinking about the coop. Grace's old playhouse didn't seem structurally sound anymore. We needed to do this right so we bought a nice coop at Costco. My mom happened to be visiting from Germany and kindly offered to help me build our coop. When I say she offered to help, I mean she did most of the work because I cracked a rib in Aspen and I'm not supposed to lift anything whenever it seems like work...I mean until I'm healed.

The box says you can build it in 5 easy steps!

Here I am giving sage advice to my mom (she's an engineer)

And here I am basking in the glory of my mother's efforts

Betsy pantomiming how we'll look when we find eggs in ~5 months

Hopefully, they won't grow to be this size. I locked her in for the night. Am I a bad husband?

So far so good this time. It's been about 4 weeks and with the weather heating up, they'll be ready to transition from the brooder to their new coop soon. 

Already getting feathers in. Does that one look like it would kill me in my sleep?

While Betsy was at work on Sunday, Grace and I had the chicks in their coop a few hours to get them used to it. Late in the afternoon, some dark clouds started rolling in and I heard thunder, so I started moving them back in the garage. One of the dark ones--we haven't named them yet; don't get too attached--did NOT want to be caught and carried back to its tote. It managed to hop over my clumsy grasp and run into the yard. So there I was, limping in circles around the new coop, while this unbelievably quick pullet stayed just out of my reach. It evaded every attempt by Grace and I to catch it and started running along the chain-link fence. Then, as I got closer, it desperately squeezed THROUGH the fence and I probably would've lost it forever if I didn't catch hold of one of its feet and haul it back into the yard. Only having one hand, I couldn't switch my grip to carry it more gently, so I schlepped it, holding just one foot, back inside. When you hold them by their feet, they often go limp, so Betsy arrived home right at that moment to see me carrying a seemingly dead chicken in the direction of the garbage can. Hopefully, this incident doesn't foreshadow things to come...