Subversive literature and a new wrinkle in organic feed

This book is a dangerous book.
Not that it leads me down a path that I wasn't already well established on, but it makes it all seem so ... comfortably inevitable, as opposed to being a harebrained scheme out on the distant horizon of my timeline.

It makes me think that we could feed ourselves off of our city lot. It makes me think that we should feed ourselves off of our city lot. It makes me think that we could make our city lot whole and useful and right with the world.
It also makes me worry for my neighbors.
I think I'll go tidy up around the yard for awhile this afternoon...


Organic feed vs. non-organic.
A couple of weeks ago I was feeling poor.
Telling myself that I don't eat organic food one hundred percent of the time, that nearly no-one I know does, I went to Fleet Farm and bought two bags of layer feed at half the cost of the organic feed.
The chickens liked the feed just fine. And I felt like I was doing the right thing at the right time. They still get plenty of great scraps, and greens from the yard, and the eggs are still delicious.

So, feeling a little less poor, and a little more thrifty, I was nearly settled on buying the non-organic feed in perpetuity, at least through the winter.

Then I realized that the hens were inhaling the feed. Consumption had doubled! So, reckoning that since non-organic feed at half the price, eaten at twice the rate of organic, was no bargain, I have gone back to the organic feed. And their consumption has slowed back down.
I realize that there may be other factors at work here. If they go back to eating at the rate they were with the non-organic, roughly 50 pounds of feed a week, then I'll have to switch back to the Fleet Farm food. At $20 a bag for the organic, I can't afford to feed the girls a bag a week. Even if they were all at peak egg production that would put the feed to egg cost at about $3.75 a dozen. Factor in the cost of the hens, the straw, the time and work, even if you subtract the benefit of the manure for the garden and the health benefits of fresh eggs and meat -- it makes for a tough decision. For that I could just buy Organic Valley eggs and have more time for other pursuits.
But the normal rate of consumption, 25 lbs a week, cuts that cost in half, to nearly the cost of a dozen factory farm raised eggs. And then it's a no-brainer.

I'm hoping that there'll be enough eggs to sell, and to recoup some of my feed costs there. Or maybe there'll just be enough for us and to share with my lovely neighbors and it will pay off in community harmony.

As I sit here, I look over my neighbor's perfect golf course of a lawn and absentmindedly wonder how much grain and hay I could grow there, given the chance. What a dreamer I am.

Big big news in the coop!!!

Finally! An egg!!! Two, actually, as of today.
My girls are becoming womens!
One of the hens laid an egg yesterday morning, and another today (right after we'd had breakfast and I'd (photographed and) eaten yesterday's egg). They're 21.5 weeks old.
I'd read so many different estimates of laying starts that I'd given up hoping for anything soon -- one resource even had a start date out at 26 weeks.
And then yesterday morning one climbed into the nesting box while I was feeding them, and started to look an awful lot like a chicken trying to lay an egg.
She was standing in a half crouch, and making a new noise.
Later, when I tried to look under her, she pecked me. So I stroked her back and talked to her for a minute and then she moved just enough to one side for me to peek at the egg.
I left her with it, washed up and hurried to the Chez, since it was nearly opening time and I still had to bake a batch of Danish for the Saturday morning crowd.

I could barely wait to get home and check for more eggs. Alas, there was still just the one, but today another hen (or maybe the same one, I can't tell), laid another.
They're small, as I expected. But perfect in every way.
And delicious. Especially with some of Chris Malek's yukon golds, crispy apple-smoked bacon, and some homemade raisin walnut sourdough.

Nothin' but golfballs

As promised, here are photos of the new nesting box. They love to perch on it, but so far there's nothing but golfballs in those nests. (We put golfballs in the nests to give them eggish ideas. Chickens do not like to be the first ones out on the dance floor, so it helps if they feel like someone else has been there before them.)










The metal plate with the blue and red shield on the end is from the monstrous, vintage hot water heater that we extricated (somewhat painfully), from the coop to make more room for chickens.

Beneath the boxes is the old oak dresser with the middle and top drawers removed. The bottom drawer is loaded with straw and more golfballs. I don't see any sign at all of them going in there, though. If they don't use it, I think I'll build another set of three boxes (you want one nest for every four hens, at least), and hang them both on the wall. I'll add perches to them, and take the dresser completely out. That will give them a little more floor space (and we'll need it next year when I get more hens*).



The girls are 20 weeks old today. They could start laying any day now, but I expect that they're still a week or two away from eggs. Better late than early: you don't want them to start laying before their bodies are mature enough to handle it.

Still, we're as anxious as kids at Christmas to get eggs. I check every day (at least once, even though I know they're most likely to lay in the morning and that an evening check is pretty silly).

The timing is a little bit tricky right now; they're coming out of molt, the days are shortening, and the temperatures are dropping, all at the same time.
It's a confluence of factors that work against egg production.
We've got a light on a timer to augment the day length and give them the needed 14 hours of light in a day before they'll lay eggs. And the coop temperature is staying between 40 and 50 degrees, which is pretty good. Later, when it gets colder, I'll put a heat lamp in and hope that keeps them as warm as they need to be.




After I took pictures in the coop I scooped up Clucky and gave her some quality time outside.
I wish I'd got the pasture area done this summer, but I just couldn't swing it. They've got plenty of room in the coop, and they seem fine. Still, when it's sunny and warm outside, like it is today, I wish they could all roam the yard. If we lived in the country, it wouldn't be a problem. But I doubt that my neighbors would like to see them in their yards, and there are too many dogs around and eagles flying overhead for me to feel comfortable about it.
Plus, I have a better idea in my head of how I want the coop pasture to be. So it's a good thing that I had to put it off.
Next year!

This is how I built the nexting box:
I got two untreated 8-foot 2" x 12"s and 12 feet of 3/4" x 3/4" baluster.
I cut one 2"x12" in half, giving me two 4' sections.
The other I cut into 14" sections, and there was some left over.
I cut the baluster into 12" sections

I marked one of the 4' 2"x12"s into thirds, to mark out three nest boxes, and held a 14" piece of 2"x12" roughly centered on end over the line marking a third, where it was going to be a wall inside the box, and drew a line on either side of the 14" piece. I nailed a piece of baluster on either side, making it snug against the 14" piece. These support the 14" piece perfectly, holding it right in place.
Then I did the same at the other third mark, and on the ends (using only one piece of baluster on the ends, obviously). In this way I had partitioned off the 4' piece into three nest boxes. Then I balanced the other 4' piece on top, and drew lines marking where to nail the baluster pieces. This was a little tricky because the uprights swayed a bit. I had to be careful, but it wasn't hard.
Then I nailed those baluster pieces in and it all snapped together like a lego toy. I didn't worry about making perfect angles or measuring everything to the nth degree. It's just a nest box, after all, and I just eyeballed everything for level and square. I did make double sure that the balusters were going to leave enough space for the 2"x 12" x 14" partition pieces before I nailed anything in, however.

Then I nailed the uprights to the top and bottom of the boxes. I could have screwed them together, but I didn't. I figure that the natural humidity of the coop is going to break the boxes down sooner than later, and that using screws would have been like putting lipstick on a pig.

I took a scavenged 1"x4" board from the shed, cut it to fit, and nailed it on the front, and a scavenged 1"x10" to the back, to hold in the nesting material. Voila! Nesting boxes.
Then I decorated it with a piece of door trim, also scavenged, on the top front to hide the seams, and attached the plate from the aforementioned hot water heater.

In hindsight, I wish I'd covered the entire back, because when they perch on top, they poop, and it's falling in the back of the nests. But I wanted to leave it partially open for ventilation. So maybe I'll just attach some window screen there. That will keep it clean and airy. I'll want to trim in the screen, though, because I don't want rough edges to scratch at them. I also could put an angled roof on top to keep them off the boxes completely, but they really like sitting on top of the boxes. It's not a big deal right now to scrape the tops every once in a while. And I might paint the box in the spring. We'll see how it looks.

Materials, inluding the nails, even if I hadn't had boards around to scavenge, probably would have run me $20, tops. It took only an hour to build, and that was at puttering speed.

And there you have it. Nest boxes. Simple and solid. Just like chickens.

*Next year's flock: Early next spring I plan on getting a mixed run (male and female chicks) of 75 birds -- Wyandottes and Dorkings. Then, when the roosters begin to mature, I'll butcher the males. Later still, when the new hens start to lay, I'll butcher the old hens. They'll be about a year and a half old. I'm going to add on to the coop in the shed, partitioning off another large section, and keep the existing fence wall intact, so that they're separate but side-by-side. When the new hens are big enough that they can defend themselves against the old hens, I'll open the door between them and let them work out the new pecking order.