Anna/Flowergardengirl’s last blog post..Haint Blue Porch Ceiling

I’m definitely going to check out Animal Vegetable Miracle–I saw you mention this in the initial post and added it to my various wishlists/todolists. I’m reading so little these days I don’t know when I’ll get to it–I have a huge stack of books I’m currently “reading”.

Frances, oh how I wish I had room for many more – I see all the photos of the different kinds and wish I could add to our little brood – but I think three is probably enough for my small space! I love to name my chickens old-fashioned names, like Hazel and Agnes and Ethel. Right now we have Beryl, Ethel, and Esther.

Fern, we don’t have any special permit, but we live in what is called “the bottoms” of Arcata, which is to say it’s suburban, but just a couple blocks from farmland. I think chickens are allowed in our town’s limits but no roosters; however many neighbors have roosters so I think it’s loosely enforced in our neck of the woods.
I’m laughing imagining your kitties running from the crow. I can just see them hiding in the closet, going – phew! That was close!

Hey, Stanza! Thinking of adding fresh eggs to the Cooking On Sundays lineup? Let’s see, how expensive is it – I think the initial expense is the worst. Our coop cost about $500 to build plus $100 for a used nesting box, but I chose to use redwood for the frame so that it would last. If you used cheaper wood which would last less long you could probably build something for a couple hundred less – and I bet you could build something serviceable out of scrap wood and a $50 roll of wire for much, much less. The main thing is it has to be super-sturdy. Raccoons are surprisingly dexterous and smart and will dig under, manipulate the door, try to get through cracks – whatever – to get a nice chicken dinner.

Once you have a good coop, if you let them out to eat snails and weeds every day too, it’s maybe $15 a month per three chickens to feed them? Then you just have to think about coop repairs, the yearly bale of hay for $7 or so, oyster shells $5/year, and scratch $2/ month – oh, and a handful of diatomaceous earth tossed in a bowl of scratch once a month to prevent problems with gapeworm, which they can get from eating snails and garden bugs. And replacing any vegetable plants they eat or dig up. We haven’t had to take ours to the vet yet, but I do feel a commitment to them as pets so if they need it ever, we will.

I refill their food and water every other day which takes like five minutes, collect eggs, scoop out the floor of the coop every so often and compost it (it’s easiest to do it oftener, like every other month, then if you let it build up to icky proportions – it takes like a half hour to do and then you need to shower!).

If you let them out each day, you don’t actually need to hang out with them, but you do need to make sure you shut them in before dark. Most breeds want to go back to their coop and will go home on their own at dusk. Or you can use scratch to bribe them in.

We have been getting a shockingly good 2-3 eggs per day from three girls! They took a month off in December but are back at it already for January, which I hear is unusually awesome. I hear this breed usually gives about 300 eggs per year – we have golden sexlinks. They won’t lay in the first nine months of their lives and I hear they stop laying at around the 4-5 year mark, but live on for a few more years (we will love ours until they die).

Allright, I’m laughing now – grooming, Stanza? We have sturdy sexlinks – perhaps the fancier ladies require spa visits, but luckily ours seem happy with a patch of dust for their baths!

You might like to check out Animal Vegetable Miracle from the library if you are thinking of doing some food gardening! It’s not a how to, but it’s really inspiring and got me all fired up about what I could do on my own small patch. When I think of growing enough food to get by on, the main sticking points are that I don’t have a cow, and that grains seem difficult to deal with. But I think if you canned and froze food through the year you’d have good variety all year long, and I agree with your neighbor that you can do a lot in a typical backyard. Even just in containers, really!

Do you have to have a special permit to have chickens in your back yard? Not that I’ll have the room any time soon…

Fern’s last blog post..Great Gardening Links