Chicks 2012

As promised, albeit delayed, here are pics from the arrival of chicks we got a few weeks ago. Beware: excessive cuteness below.

Straight from the secret 24-hour post office (no joke), our chicks arrive from the official Radio Acres hatchery, Murray McMurray. Chicks are shipped the moment they hatch, as they can survive for a few days from the egg they're hatched out of and stay warm from the other 24 babies in there.

Hello little ladies (and two men)! Welcome to Radio Acres Farm! 

Must make these pics large for the extra dose of eastery preciousness. eeeh. look at those sleepy eyes!

Setting them up in their new home...

Everyone loves the new chicks. 

Here's a list of the different types of chicks we got this round:

5 Pearl White Leghorns

2 Black Star

2 Red Star

2 Barred Rock

1 Turken! (for Kim)

4 Rhode Island Reds

2 Salmon Faverolles

1 White Crested Black Polish! (for me!)

1 White Faced Black Spanish

2 Araucana

2 Black Minorca

2 Cuckoo Maran roos (1 was free)

1 mystery rare exotic chick (thrown in for free as well)

We're excited about increased egg production in the fall!

Momentum.

It's so exciting and freeing to be able to dream a little again on our hopes here. This weekend we had a work day with some friends who wanted to get their hands dirty and do a little digging. It was awesome and inspiring to see how much work could be done in such a small amount of time and also to see what a loving community we have around us. We are finally moving again. This electric current of ecstatic excitement seems to be flowing through all of us, bouncing off of each of us and inspiring us with the potential of this land.

 We also received an order of chicks last night! Its been a while since we've had babies in this house, so that's really exciting. We couldn't resist throwing some of the rare and exotic breeds into the mix, so we got a few that we've never had before like White Faced Black Spanish, Minorcas, Salmon Faverolles, a beautiful little Polish top-hat and a Turken! Sarah took a bunch of pictures which I am sure she will post soon, but here are some generic ones off the 'net that I found to give you a little show of what we're expecting...

These pictures are off the Murray McMurray Hatchery Website, which tends to be the place that we order most of our birds. We've had really good luck with them thus far and have never had anything but good flocks of really happy, hardy babies arrive. Can you tell which breed is which?

Labor Day Reflections

In honor of Labor Day, Jeremy and I slaughtered the last two of our meat birds. We may have some roosters that we hatched ourselves lurking in our flock, ready to crow at dawn on some unsuspecting Saturday, but for now, the meat bird raising project is officially done.

With my hand deep in the warm innards of a newly-dead rooster, and on this holiday that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers, I thought for a moment about the men and women working in the often unbearable conditions of our meat factories. Think Tyson, Jimmy Dean, a big packet of ground beef that you bought for tacos. When you kill your own chicken, you understand the sad, smelly, and complicated work harvesting meat is. Imagining doing that 8-hours a day (or more), in deplorable working conditions, and with little compensation make me realize how cheaply we get the meat that we eat (in America, daily or every other day).

It is often immigrant or refugee communities that take these types of jobs. When I was working with Sudanese refugees, many were moving to the midwest, towns that had big meat-packing factories, because there was steady and available work.

Thankfully, we are caring more about the way that our meat is raised... free-range, grass-fed, hormone and pesticide free. This no doubt affects the working conditions of the people that harvest and package our meat as well. But let us continue to care about and figure out ways to advocate even more fiercely for the humane working conditions of our meat as well. And collectively, let's say a prayer of thanks and protection for the workers that are doing the hard job of providing us all with the meat we love to eat.

If you'd like a more hands-on experience of how hard it is, I can call you when the next rooster crows...

More information on the meat packing industry.

Farm haps for the week

Hmmmm. It's been an insanely busy week around the farm,what with everyone winding up their summers with vacations and work travel. We've all hardly seen each other, but that will come to an end soon. The manic busy-ness can take over sometimes. Colin is back in town and back in our lives, at least for the time being. We just got finished with a marathon camping trip over the last week, so we are adjusting to a life full of hot showers and really coffee again. We've finally just about "processed" all of our roosters. I really hate that word, but can't think of one better. It was really fantastic yesterday morning when some started crowing right before 5:00 am. They were loud for about 10 minutes and then tapered off. I was restless and couldn't go back to sleep (remnant from teaching that 5:30 spin class for so long!). I looked at the clock at 5:30 and was contemplating rolling out of bed and working out. No sooner had I decided to pull the blanket back around me and attempt sleep when I heard a rustling in the kitchen and the sure drip of a fresh pot of coffee. I hopped out of bed to find a very wide-awake BJ.

"what are you doing, so wide awake this early?" I asked. I was grateful for the early morning company.
"well, I figure no better time than now to get a couple of roosters processed before getting going for the day" he says. Ha! I jumped on that boat and plucked some feathers as the morning light was breaking. I feel sadistic admitting that it was such a pleasant and meditative way to start the morning. I almost felt like a real farmer!

Moral of the story? I guess if you can't sleep, c'mon over and be productive for us! We've still got a half a dozen left.

Chicken Workshop and Victory Gardens!

Victory Gardens is offering an awesome workshop series at the Southeast Farmers Market, in case you haven't heard or didn't read my earlier blog post on it.  You really should consider checking out some of them!  Last week, there was a great one on growing berries here in San Diego.  It was extremely informative!  It's also a great way to network and connect with other people that are doing the same thing.  It's never bad to have people you can call when you have questions on this stuff!  We did one a few weeks ago on "How to Backyard Chicken".  Here are some pictures!  It was loads of fun, and Sarah has the .pdf that we handed out - she will post it as a link soon.

Choose your own adventure

I woke up this morning at 6:00 to the awful sound of panicked chickens. I looked out our bedroom window and to my horror saw a coyote in the chicken run with a white Cornish rooster dangling from the coyotes mouth. The worse part was the damn coyote smiled at me with the dangling chicken in his mouth. It was just like the chicken scenes in Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Once I gathered my senses I darted outside in my underwear like a mad man screaming bloody murder and ran right for the coyote. He escaped just like in the movies. I am measurably slower without coffee. So here is the bizarre part.... Our chickens are always locked up secure and happy, but this morning the latched outside door was opened and the flock was meandering freely around our gardens.

So here is the part you need to vote on. 1. Did a coyote figure out how to open the secured latch on our chicken door and break in? 2. Did somebody break into our coop in the middle of the night and casually leave the door open in their pursuit of farm fresh organic eggs?
3. Did the wind mysteriously blow the latch to the door open for the first time in year attracting our sinister menace? Note: It was closed the night before. 4. Did aliens looking for intelligent life forms bypass our house in the middle of the night and head straight for the chicken coop to perform their experiments? There were no identifiable crop circles in the morning. So go ahead and cast your vote, or come up with your own scenarios. Help us solve this annoying mystery. The hens are depending on you!

Victory Workshop!

Just an FYI to anyone interested, RADIO ACRES FARM will officially be collaborating with Victory Gardens San Diego  to offer a mini-workshop on how-to backyard chicken =)  It will be at 5:00, this friday at the farmers market.  The People's Produce Project Farmers Market runs from 2:00 to 7:00 pm every friday on Euclid, just north of Market.  Follow the signage...

Way too many chickens

Did we mention in a previous blog that we got about 30 meat chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery? (and yes, that really is their name).  Well that was about 3 months ago and know those cute chicks are big and in my opinion, eating us out of house and home.  Literally, they eat non-stop.  I guess that's what happens when you get meat birds, they are bred to pack on the pounds. 

We also hatched out eggs from our late rooster, Doodle-do, about 10 or so.  And if that wasn't enough, just last week we bought 14 fertilized Maran eggs to put under another hen. So in about 2 more weeks we will have 14 more.  Which means by the end of July we will have approx. 60+ chickens, of which about half are roosters and just learning to crow. 

To complicate matters, I just saw a moving truck at our neighbors. Uh-oh....Maybe we should bring them a chicken dinner....

What we husbands will do....

For all you married men, you know what I'm (BJ) talking about. Now imagine you live on an Urban Farm and there is always another project to do. Jeremy and I thought we were being great husbands this Friday afternoon by taking care of some projects around the farm.

For the last month we had a rooster our friends gave us when they found out he wasn't planning on laying eggs and started crowing instead. We affectionately named him "DoodleDoo", he was a great rooster until about a week ago when he started crowing too much. Now he is chilling in our fridge and will be dinner tomorrow. Along with all the crowing we also got fertilized eggs which we had a broody hen sit on and hatched out 10 chicks (as Sarah mentioned in her last blog).

They were super adorable for about a week. We put them in a dog crate on top of our dryer in the basement, where their cuteness quickly devolved into a stinky and annoying mess. So Jeremy and I constructed a small hen house and a fenced off area in our existing chicken coop to keep them separate from the older hens.

We finished the project this afternoon and were so excited we moved Mama Hen and her chicks into it this evening...Then, the wives got home....

Apparently it's too cold for chicks outside. Which begs the question, "What did hens do before we domesticated them?" Not to mention the fact a cold night in San Diego means it dips a couple degrees below 50'F. I will admit it is raining and chilly tonight, but they have a roof, shelter and nice straw bedding. Plus, Mama Hen is still sitting on them to keep them warm. But the wives were concerned...

Alas, as the good husbands we are, we went outside in the rain with flashlight, tarp and umbrella in hand to tuck them in. If you keep chickens you know how muddy a coop gets when it rains. So as I was stepping over their little fence I slipped. Now when you are carrying a flashlight, tarp and umbrella and slip in mud and chicken sh**t a lot can go wrong. I ended up doing the splits, tearing the fence down and face planting in poopy mud. And all I hear is Jeremy chuckling behind me.

All this to reassure our wives that some chickens, which evolved with all the necessary instincts to stay warm and dry in a rainstorm, would make it through this harsh winters night. Oh, what we husbands will do.

Just in time for Easter

I need to post these pictures before our chicks grow into little chickens! We recently ordered 25 chicks from Murray MacMurray Hatchery... the "all heavies" order. These are 25 chicks that we are going to raise for meat birds (eating). But right now they're pretty cute little chicks, getting bigger each day.

We also hatched our first clutch of laying hens, from our very own chickens and rooster! One of our sweet little birds, Blue (now called Mama Hen), went broody so we stuck a bunch of our other eggs under her, and she sat on them for at least 21 days, and then they all hatched!

So now we have a lot of little chickens. I have two videos for you. One is Mama Hen with her babies. They like to cuddle up underneath her like Mother Ginger in the Nutcracker. Note also the tiny backwards leg stretch by one of the little chicks. So adorable.

The other video is a running "chick-cam" of our 25 chicks. It's long, so if you want a dose of easter goodness (of the hallmark variety, not really the Passion variety) feel free to watch as much or as little of this one as you like. There's some cute stuff in there. They have such funny little personalities.

And, if that's not enough, go ahead and click here for more precious chick pics.

Up and Coming Projects

bees. 

meat birds.

goats.

 trailer.

(*picture courtesy of el cosmico, our inspiration.)

stay tuned.

Poultry part 2

The hens have started picking up their laying again! I don't know if we blogged about it, but sometime in late summer they just decided that they wanted to stop laying. Out of 20 hens, we dropped down to 2 eggs a day. Now, I do know that hens are photosensitive and all that stuff, but we've had chickens for a few years and they had never slowed down that much. It was obvious that they had avian pox at the time, so we scrapped it up to the virus and assumed they'd pick up again sooner or later. Well, September came and went, as did October and November and we were still only getting 2 eggs a day at best. In November we slaughtered the turkeys and just before our farm counterparts left for their vacay we were discussing options for our ridiculously expensive yet non-productive laying flock. As much as we didn't want to think about it, I think we were almost resolved to culling and starting over in the spring. At least I was. Now, low and behold, mysteriously only 1 month after we slaughtered those darn turkeys, the flock is starting to pick up pace. It's the dead of winter and we just had the shortest day of the year, so I am throwing out the photosensitivity excuse. I think it was those big, mean, food hog turkeys! My two cents, I guess we'll never know for sure. The only thing I DO know for sure is that we got 5 eggs yesterday and 4 each day the two days prior. More than we've averaged in a long time. I can finally plan on making a quiche for dinner this week!

Got eggs?

We are just about ready to officially launch our egg CSA! If you are interested in getting farm fresh, organic eggs every week or every other week please see our "Want Eggs?" tab at the top of this blog! We have a limited number of spots, so be quick. We will also establish a waiting list and as we get more hens coming into lay we will fill it accordingly.
I suppose I should disclaim my use of the word organic- we are not certified in any way, shape or form. I do, however, promise that our hens are probably the best fed darn chickens around. I buy bags of organic whole grains straight from OBPeoples bulk department and mix their feed according to this recipe at Greener Pastures Farm. This is a great website for feed and chick starter recipes if you want to make your own. We also feed them Organic layer pellets straight from our local feed store. If they get sick, we treat them naturally with homeopathic and/or natural remedies such as raw garlic, colloidal silver, grapefruit seed extract and your standard over-the-counter homeopathic drugs. I found a great homeopathic poultry guide that I've got saved on my other desktop, so I will post the link to that later for those that are interested!

Chicken run.

As caught by our friend who has a fear of birds.

The Farm: An overview.

In case you were wondering what, exactly, does our farm consist of? Is it a dairy? Do we raise livestock? Do we have any food growing/harvesting?

The answer is... no, yes, maybe someday. Our farm is a bunch of projects. Some might call them ideas...dreams...or just plain craziness.

Here's a quick overview of what we got going on. Hopefully each of these items will become their own blog posts, whenever the guys decide to start blogging... hint. hint.

The chicken coop. You've heard much about this endeavor. Which also includes turkeys.

Our Chicken Education Program

Yes, those are chickens in Trader Joes bags.

Our Composting system. Thank you Colin.

Our Garden... in progress, obviously.

Our orchard, so far.

The studio/detached bedroom.

And our hill, which we're currently taking ideas for.  

 

Did we mention communal living?

The chickens, part two.

In the last post, I miss-wrote what actually occurred after the Tragic Raccoon Attack. The chicken-lady called us to come pick up part of our chicken order, not the entire 20+ chickens. We needed to pick up the older contingent of our chicks (she could still keep the smaller ones in her garage, safe from raccoons.) So BJ and I hopped in the car, drove north to Del Mar to claim our chicks.

In our excitement, we forgot anything to actually put the chickens in, so we just stuffed them in our car. No, that's not true. She lent us a cage, and I think we put the rest in a box or something. Then we drove home with our 8 chickens... which, out of the whole 25 or so, wasn't so bad to think about housing. The main problem was that we lived in a small apartment with a "backyard" that we shared with 4 of our neighbors, definitely not the legal 30 feet away from any other houses.

But, luckily our neighbors were pretty mellow. They let us construct a makeshift chicken coop in our shared space. This consisted of laying our outside table on it's side, wrapping plastic mesh around our four post pergola thing, thus creating a 4x4 run. For the actual hen-house (where they slept), we grabbed a big moving box, flipped it upside down, and cut out a door.

The chickens seemed to like their first home. They got busy scratching around, and doing other chicken activities... like pooping everywhere. When we put them in the coop, we  watch with curiosity as most of them seemed to do a strange dance with each other... puffing out their neck feathers and doing what could only be described as a little chicken duel. We thought that was weird, but dismissed it as the girls figuring out their pecking order.

At first I was worried about something eating our chickens, as the whole coop was definitely not predator-proof. But then a much louder concern presented itself. About a week or so after we moved the chickens into their temporary home, we started to hear a strange noise coming from their coop (which happened to be right outside our bedroom window). The noise was somewhere in between a cat's meow and a gargle. We realized that we had a rooster in our midst, and he was learning to crow.

These beginning attempts weren't that problematic, as they were pretty quiet, and we could shut him up by quickly running outside and throwing some feed in the coop. But after awhile, he developed his full crow, and BJ and I would awake with dread to the racket, try to run outside and subdue him before he woke all our neighbors and they called the cops. This morning ritual caused much anxiety for us.

This rooster could not stay in our backyard. I posted him on craigslist for $15, and some nice young man came and bought him. Whether he became someone's meal, only God knows. When we got rid of him, I had my first peaceful morning sleep-in. It was glorious.

Not two days later, we awoke again to crows from the backyard.

"What the..." we groggily complained.Quickly, we ran out to the coop to see what was going on.

We looked at each other nervously, "How many roosters are in there?"

Over the next few weeks, we came to find out that all but ONE of our "girls" were actually boys, and each time we would get rid of one of them, another would start to crow.

Craigslist found homes for about half of them (one time I was in such a rush, I had to leave a rooster in a box on my front step for the person that was going to pick him up), but in the end, we had too many roosters to dispose of. And, we had paid for these birds after all. Might as well get something for our money.

We decided together that they would make some good roast chicken. It was harvest time.

Bravely, the ex-vegan among the four of us was the first to volunteer to slaughter a chicken, so I'll let her describe that in her own words.

Overall, I would not recommend chickens if you live in an apartment in one of the densest parts of your city. It just doesn't make for good sleep. What you really need is a farm...

Eggs!

I am cracking up reading Sarah's entry right now! Yes, yes, it's all true. We counted our eggs way before they hatched, so to speak, and we did NOT have all of our ducks in a row. Ultimately, it all worked out fine. We have a lovely chicken coop, no roosters waking us up in the morning, and all of our hens are starting to lay more regularly. We are averaging 10ish eggs a day, never any less! With 20 hens in the backyard, we anticipate closer to 15 eggs a day at our peak. That means that they are almost all laying now, and the variety of color is awesome. We have a few ameracaunas that lay a lovely pale blue. The crazy chicken lady did some hybridization to produce a hen that lays an egg that comes out looking like a manzanillo olive. The browns vary in shades from a pale, pinkish tint to a deep, dark chocolate. Some of the ladies lay a beautiful rich mocha egg speckled with espresso.

It is funny, in all of it's simplicity, how gratifying it is to collect the freshly lain orbs everyday. I love to count them, to feel their warmth and to "oooh" and "aww" over their color. It never seems to get old. As Sarah said in her last post, hens are not new to us. We obtained our first few about 2 years ago and it has fulfilled me in the most enchanting way, as if I'm a child waking up to exciting gifts every morning. It's as if some seed that's buried deep within my soul is nourished simply by the act of being in touch with my food in this way. Reconnecting with nature. I know that it is so cliche, and I am sure that folks that are real farmers would probably laugh at it, maybe even wishing for an escape of their own some day. I think that people sometimes don't realize what a gift it really is that we get from these animals in every way. Be it as simple as an egg or as generous as their life, we forget to appreciate enough what it is they give. Unfortunately we don't often even make the connection. I feel blessed to be able to give my kids the opportunity to get back to this basic element of nature and food, to instill in them an understanding and respect of where this all comes from.

I logged on here wanting to blog more about the process of the farm, the steps that we went through and instead I find myself reflecting on some of life's "isms". I promise to post soon some photos of the process of building the coop, some pictures of the ladies and maybe a story of the first time we really connected with our food and slaughtered some roosters. As an ex-vegan, the only thing I can say is that I feel like I've come a long way!

The chickens, part one.

P6196800
Originally uploaded by radioacres

This really was our first project... as we started accumulating chickens long before the farm came along. You can read about our original chicken (and other) adventures here. A couple years ago Kim, Jeremy, BJ and I had built a chicken coop and run in their backyard and purchased our very own six hens. They had been a great investment, and we knew that one of the first things that we wanted on the farm was more chickens.

In anticipation of moving onto our farm, we had started to scour craigslist for chicks being sold. We were particularly looking for unusual breeds of chickens, which would produce a variety of egg colors. I think it was BJ that actually found the post, but when I read it, I got that craigslist syndrome... you know the one where you read the post, see the pics, and immediately need to buy whatever it is they're selling? All rationality goes out the window, and you begin to plan your day around getting a hold of this person and driving wherever they are to claim your items.

At that point, we were a few weeks away from closing escrow and getting the keys, so I was hoping that I could go and look at the chicks, give her a deposit and ask her to hold onto them until we were ready to come and pick them up. I thought up this plan as I was driving to her house in Del Mar, an unusual neighborhood to have a chicken raising operation.

This Del Mar chicken-seller had a plethora of fancy kinds of chicks she had hatched, as well as other unusual fowl such as peacocks, spread out across her nicely manicured lawn. Speckled-sussex, Wellsummers, marans, so many different breeds with the potential for such varied egg colors! I was sold. I asked her if she could keep the chicks until we moved into our new place and she said yes. Paying cash for 20 chicks, she said she'd throw in a few more for free! I drove home to our tiny apartment, excited and feeling very satisfied with my plan. Now we would have the beginnings of our chicken farm right when we moved in!

Kim was also very excited. The two of us comprise the more spontaneous (read: impulsive) side of our farm quadrant. The men tend to be more... shall we say realistic? I think they were worried about pre-purchase of our chickens.

I pooh-poohed their silly concerns, as I was sure it would work out perfectly. We were set to get the keys in about two weeks. Then, we could quickly throw up a chicken coop and viola! Our chicken farm would be ready.

Unfortunately, two things complicated my plan.

The first was Arnold, our governator. He decided to allow a California tax credit for home-buyers, which we found out we could qualify for, along with the national tax credit. It was great news for our pocketbooks, not great news for our chickens, as it pushed back our close of escrow two weeks longer.

The second unfortunate event was a tragic raccoon attack on our pre-bought chickens in Del Mar. I got a frantic call from the chicken-lady, telling me there had been an attack, she was afraid it would happen again, and I needed to come and pick up the chickens right away.

So... there we were, with 20 chickens and no place to put them for a month.

Transporting 20 chickens, their storage and care while living in a tiny apartment, and building a behemoth of a chicken coop in part two...