Brooklyn Feed

Since Razzy laid her first egg, we’ve been on egg watch for Edie’s first egg. She was running back and forth between the large run and the nest box this morning, which is a sure sign of something brewing. It must be very strange to feel like something is about to pop out of you. She has  no parents to give her “the talk” after all. We put a golf ball in the nest box to give the new girls an idea of where the eggs should go. Edie didn’t take the hint.

Our two newest chickens have been on the point of lay for some time. Razzamatazz (Razzy) especially has been showing signs of maturing. Her comb has turned a deep red and her legs have become a brighter yellow. In addition to that, when you pet her back she squats down, which is another sign of being mature. The squat is the submissive mating stance if you must know.

Our first generation of chickens laid their first egg on Ground Hog’s Day. I was hoping for a Thanksgiving egg this time. Razzy waited until we got back from our Berkshire Thanksgiving to lay her egg. So yesterday, while we were outside raking leaves and reading the paper in the 63 degree weather, Razzy started announcing she was ready to lay. She was extremely vocal as she paced between the run and the nest box. After a couple of hours, she produced a beautiful, small, pinkish brown egg.

Ever wonder what became of our cute little chicks? In a matter of weeks they turned into huge monster chickens. This is what they looked like when they first came:

The first one is Edie and the second one is Razzamatazz (yes, I let a 7 year-old name her). Here they are now:

They are now integrated with the other girls, which has been a bit of a process (and is still going on). Any time a new chicken is introduced to a flock, there is a disturbance in the pecking order and the top hen has to re-establish her dominance. This translates to mean that there is usually an initial smack down. I read various accounts on how to add new hens to a flock and then came up with my own version. First of all, I waited until the chicks were a couple of months old and big enough that they wouldn’t be hurt when (and I mean when) the older ones beat them up.

In my set-up, I have the Eglu, which has a 9′ run attached to the coop. We built a 10′x10′ enclosure to extend the run. This enclosure isn’t predator proof, so we lock the door to the Eglu’s run at night to keep our gals safe at night. We have a wire dog crate, which is what we used in our office with the heat lamp when the girls were younger. We brought the crate into the extended run and wrapped it with layers of chicken wire to make it predator proof. This served as the coop for the chicks at night. During the day, we would let the chicks out of the crate into the extended run. The 2 older ones stayed in the Eglu’s run. I would then let both groups into the yard when I had time to spend in the yard. This got them used to one another and also gave the little ones places to hide when the older ones ran after them to peck them. I was surprised that Andie, my polish hen was the aggressor. Lulu just saves her aggression for me I guess. After several weeks of this, we decided that it was time for the final phase of the flock integration. We opened the door to the larger enclosure and let the two groups mingle. We kept the crate open as a place for the girls to hide. They spent a lot of time on top of it. But at night, we closed the crate and the chicks followed the older hens into the coop of the Eglu.

Here are some tips I can give on integrating a flock.

• You can do it as slowly or quickly as you want. I chose to do it more slowly in the hopes they would get used to each other and prevent the fighting. This didn’t really happen.
• Provide several food and water stations. The established flock has a tendency to guard the food from the newcomers. You want to make sure the new hens are getting enough to eat and drink.
• Provide some sort of place for the newcomers to escape from the older ones. Ours used to fly on top of the dog crate and hang out there. That’s where we put the chick food. We took that out and now have a perch in the extended run. The older hens don’t seem interested in this at all, so it is the place where the young ones can go to escape from the old meanies.
• Expect some pecking while they establish their pecking order, but keep an eye out to make sure nobody is getting too hurt or wounded.  Andie mostly would sneak up behind one of the chicks and peck them soundly on the tush. They now just try to avoid her as much as possible.

This hilarious book arrived in the mail a couple of days ago with a note saying get well. It didn’t say who sent it though. It is a very, very funny book. I guess I am not the only one who has gotten pecked in the eye by a chicken.

Let me know if you are the person who sent this to me.

Chickens like to explore their world with their beaks. Their minds work somewhat along these lines…What’s that green thing? Peck. What’s that creepy crawly thing? Peck. What’s that shiny thing? Peck….you get the idea.

As you can imagine, I am used to getting pecked by my girls. They especially love the color red, so if I ever have colored nail polish on my toes, those are fair game. They also love anything that resembles a worm. There have been very comical episodes of them pulling on my shoe laces, or clothing ties. I posted them grabbing my knitting a month or so ago when they were still indoors.

Anyway, with all this pecking, I am very careful with my face. The girls don’t mean to be vicious (except for my dear Lulu), they just explore by pecking. Yesterday when I let the little ones out of the dog crate, Midnight jumped up onto my shoulder as she usually does. She’s a very sweet chicken, who likes to sit on my arm or shoulder. She kept craning her neck around to peer at my face. It made me nervous and I kept turning my face away from her. Unfortunately, while I wasn’t paying attention, she pecked me. On my eyeball. I didn’t blink in time.

The last two days have been filled with going to the eye doctor, getting antibiotic eye cream ($100/bottle!!), missing a freelance gig, and going back to the doctor. I figure that peck has cost me just shy of $700.

I had chicken for dinner last night. Just not one of mine.

With the weather turning hot and the chicks getting most of their feathers, we decided to move them outside. I also made that decision because when we got back from our trip my desk was completely covered with thick layer of dust. It was quite incredible how much dust the 4 girls generated in one week. It looked as though we were in the middle of a big renovation project and the sawdust had settled all over our office.

I have read articles about free range chickens being raised indoors for the first several weeks (months?) of their lives. The farmers are allowed to do this because they claim it reduces the likelihood of disease or illness in the young hens. Once they open the doors to the outside the hens are so used to their confinement that they are terrified of going outside. Just as an aside, the terminology of being a free range hen states that they have “access to the outside”. This could be a paved yard. You can see a more lengthy post about this here.

Anyhow, when we opened the door to their cage, the girls looked very skeptical. It took some cajoling for them to venture outside. I might have even picked a few of them up and physically moved them. But after a while, they started to explore the yard and scratch and peck and munch to their hearts content.

Although they have grown exponentially, they are still too small to integrate with the big girls. There’s an initial smackdown when you introduce hens into an existing flock. These babies need to get a little bigger to give them a fighting chance. We have the door between our two runs closed off with the babes on one side and the big monsters on the other.

The Chicken Co-op by Raad Studio could be the closest thing to a Dwell home you could offer your chickens. I would love to see one of these in person. It’s hard to tell from the photo if it is functional as well as beautiful.

The chicks are just one week old. They now have some feathers sprouting to make tails. Their wing feathers are very developed, and now they are getting more feathers on their shoulders. They are insanely cute and I don’t get a whole lot of work done with them in my office.

More photos to come!

Here’s a ridiculous video Neil took on my request last night. I was knitting and the chicks were going bonkers trying to capture the “worm”. It was hilarious. The red light is the heat lamp.