Chicken Breeds Resource

I found this website with short video clips of different breeds of chickens (and ducks, guineas, etc...).  The videos I was looking at appeared to have been taken at a poultry show in Europe so the animals are very nice representatives of the breed.  It was helpful for me because I could see how the animal actually moves - much different than looking at a two-dimensional representation.  Enjoy!

http://www.mypets.egzoticpheasant.com/browse-chickens-videos-1-date.html

Gallinas Urbanas - Urban Homesteaders in Puerto Rico

I found these very cool folks who helping people get started keeping backyard flocks in PUERTO RICO! I'm really enjoying the fact that people are doing the same thing there as we're doing here....simply trying to stay connected with our food supply.  

 Love the logo, love their site :) 

  http://www.gallinasurbanas.com/   

(when you get to their website, right click & you'll have the option to translate the page - it's worth it) 

Gallinas Urbanas

 

1

Birds of a Feather

See any family resemblance? 

I love this picture! Flame and Jackson are second cousins.  Their great-grandmother is Barbie, my ancient Barred Rock hen.

Barbie x Einstein ---> Rosie x Dora ---> TwoRoo x Rosie ---> Flame

Barbie x Celso ---> Jenny x Rex ---> Lulu x Jack Sparrow ---> Jackson

Jenny and Rosie are half-sisters so TwoRoo and Lulu are cousins.  Go figure! The first generation ended in long E sound; the second generation ended in "ou" sound.  Maybe I should go back to the drawing board on the third generation names....... Flamenco & Spare-O....hmmm, maybe I should think harder....

Birdie, It's HOT Tonight

The heat is on!  

The ground has mostly dried up inside the coops and we're down to just a handful of broody hens in nest boxes.  The rest of them are out teaching their chicks to forage and keeping them near water.  

We're two weeks into the heat and it was about this time last year our well went dry....and stayed dry until the middle of August.  Right in the middle of that parched dryness we had 14 back-to-back days of heat indexes over 100 humid degree temperature, barely dipping out of the 90s at night.  Yeah, it was a downright nasty evil hell for our feathered friends.

All things considered this year is a cake walk (so far.....) Over the last year we've strengthened our housing infrastructure to better buffer the heat. We now systematically conserve and store water.  This is good and has meant being able to manage the bumper crop of chicks, poults, and keets.

Several of the projects have had excellent break throughs. The Aikikos have finally produced several dark skinned, rumpless, pea combed GIRLS and we hatched our first barred chocolate rock!

Also, I've been tinkering with a genetics app to make it easier to document and track field observations.  Yeah, I'm geeky but at least I aspire to someday be organized.  I'm looking into how to put it together so other people can use it too.

Mottled Java "Nannie"

Nannie is the last of my trio of mottled javas. She enjoys being a part of the flock but isn't especially chummy with any other hens.  I've never had her go broody but she's very good at helping new moms.

Nannie and Brandi have an easy respect for each other.

Nannie likes to help take care of everyone's babies.

The Percentages Game

 

Gold Sebright checking out the nest box in a new coop.

95% of my building materials are salvaged, 85% of my building technique is self-taught, 75% of my  coops have been taken apart and put back together multiple times, 65% of my birds are in dedicated flocks each with their own "house", 55% of my birds are free-ranging at any given time, 45% of my birds generate income by way of hatching eggs, 35% of my birds provide food for my family, 25% of their diet is food waste procured from local schools and restaurants, 15% of my birds were rescued or abandoned.  5% of my birds came from a hatchery - the rest are all products of self-sustaining flocks. Enjoy!

The Taco Party

Is it a taco box or.....

or an upcycled nest box?

Do not disturb for the next 21 days!

Tarp Tents and Garage Grunge

Bedding Trials and Composting Calamities Part 2 I used to clean out my chicken coop every week. EVERY WEEK! That was back in the day when I had 40 birds that free ranged and only the ever-morphing tarp tent add-ons gave them extra protect them from wind and rain (in about 2008).  I spent a lot of time tinkering with temporary housing that gave the birds a lot of freedom. Straw bale walls eventually gave way to a plastic and wood framing that kept the birds contained for about 2 weeks. Then they took over the garage for the rest of the winter - miserably the coldest in recent history. I used bag after bag of wood chips and stable fresh pellets. Combined with chicken poop and spilled water,then alternately frozen and baked, this combination of ingredients bonds to concrete like cement. The plastic and drop cloth monstrosity has been gone for several years. I bought this special tool for scrapping crud off concrete floors and hosed and soaked and scrubbed but there are some lumps that I suspect are now permanently installed. And then, I learned how to use a drill....and salvage things. Slowly I started replacing the tents and plastic mindset with more solid structures, outside the garage.

Feathered Friends...or not

From World Poultry January 2013A Royal Veterinary College study has found that hens reared in commercial conditions do not form friendships and are not particular about who they spend time with.  Full ArticleThe research published by Applied Animal Behaviour Science and funded by BBSRC, was carried out to discover if the welfare of chickens could be improved by taking advantage of 'friendships'. ************************************************************************************

Inseparable Cousins....yeah, really, cousins.

Sparky's Reaction: Do they truly have no desire to form relationships?  This is quite contrary to research done on birds in the past and goes against everything I've ever seen.  If it's true and not a research flaw,  what do we do with the knowledge that with selective breeding we are capable of eliminating social structure?  

PS I'm sure I'm taking this way beyond the researchers intentions...at least I hope so but, isn't there something a little slimy in thinking about how to take advantage of friendships in terms of food production.  Like, the birds with the most friends taste better?  Is the next step to genetically isolate and replicate popularity.  Eew.     

This is me - circa 2013

My old phone was so complicated
I couldn't even take a picture and
smile at the same time.

Hello, I'm Alison.  I live in Lawrence, Kansas with 2 children, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 cockatiels, 2 miniature ponies, and an undisclosed number of chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, turkeys, and peacocks.

I manage the animals on a shoe string budget (made of used shoe laces), a thimble-full of practical knowledge, and an only slightly larger bit of common sense. A power drill and a box of band-aids are pretty important as well. (Ok ok! There've been A LOT of boxes of band-aids but we've only had to go to the emergency room once, *cough*, or twice.)

We first got chickens in 2007 and it's been a rather long haul to today.  What started as a wrong turn down a dead end aisle at the feed store morphed into a full blown lifestyle commitment to....well, I'm really not sure what.  All I know is that I'm ready, 24/7, dead of the night, high noon, or the crack of dawn, in the rain, sleet, snow, wind, and heat wave, hole in my rubber boots, drenched in a raincoat, glasses fogged, a tad bit of frost bite, a nasty sunburn or two, head to toe in wet stink with feathers carefully tucked in my dusty smelling hair, ready. I'm there and ready to deal with whatever birdy issues need to be dealt with - and there's ALWAYS something that needs to be dealt with....

I've grown up a lot in the last 6 years.  Become more pragmatic, more aware of my limitations,  more accepting of myself and less hesitant to acknowledge my needs. I think I have more faith in the world to survive without Herculean efforts on my part and sometimes, if the wind is blowing just right, I am entirely at peace with the fact that I will never know everything there is to know.  I find comfort in respecting the capabilities of unknown, unseen strangers and trust that they're  doing things that make my life better and I don't even need to know how or why.  I can do these things because of what I've learned from chickens.

Enjoy.