Bein’a Chicken - Don’t Cry Fowl

Ah.. the joys of 4-H’ing.. Now I know i’ve gone country. And while I’m not a zoologist, but I am thinker.

Raising Chickens for the first time can be intimidating. When I first called the feed shop, I was trying to sound like a pro. I asked, “Do you sell pullets?” “Yes”, the man replied. “Are they all females?” It’s been an uphill battle ever since.

Pullet parenthood is an much of an adventure as child rearing, only with more feces per pound of body weight. However, I’ve been reading quite a bit on poultry matters. So here ’s a little scoop on how this chicken rearin’ goes.

Go to your local feed store and purchase $10.00 worth of chicks and $50 worth of food and supplies. Don’t forget the water dispensers. Buying the metal ones, never plastic is always advised. I have yet to see a metal one.

Next, place the chicks somewhere sheltered, like a bedroom closet. Toss in some highly flammable straw or wood shavings and promptly dangle a glowing heat lamp just above them. Note to self: Update homeowner’s policy.

For the next several weeks feed them 3 lbs of food per day and remove 4 lbs of sh*t per day from the closet. Despite all logic the birds get bigger. As the adult feathers grow in be sure to clip one of their wings. That is one per bird, not just one wing total. Clipping can be accomplished by tossing your scissors and your body into the heaping mound of chicks, poop and straw. Grab a wiggling screeching bird from the bile pile. Restrain it with one hand. Stretch the wing out with your second hand. Clip off 50% of the wings outer ten feathers with your third hand.

As the birds grow adjust the heat light temperature down by one degree per day. No, this is not actually possible. That’s not my point. You start at 100 degrees for hatchlings then continue down by one degree per day until your bedroom is a minimum of 3 degrees cooler than the spring blizzard outside your window.

Before the move, experience the Joy of Wing Clipping one more time. Feather clipping never works the first time. Still, after all the hassle you probably don’t want them to fly the coop in under sixty seconds. Of course, if you’re like me, by this time you may be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a stack of Greyhound tickets by the open coop gate.

The scoop on coop construction: Hen houses and chicken coops are an art form unto themselves. There are lots of web sites showing off architectural designs from Chicken Chateaus to Bird Bordellos. The meticulous craftsmanship makes my own home look like – well – like a chicken coop.

Always fashionable, I went with designer shabby for our coop. As for the coop itself, there is a gift for tight chicken wire, which eludes me. Inferior design aside, I ultimately learned a thing or two. The nesting boxes are supposed to be up off the ground. That is correct. For those of you keeping score you just spent two weeks cutting back the birds flight feathers only to hang their houses in the sky.

Higher than the nest boxes, you are to build a roost. This is where the birds crap at night so they do not crap on your breakfast eggs. Of course the roost is usually OVER the nesting boxes, so whatever you do, don’t use those perforated plastic milk crates. For young birds maintain a heat light in the hen house.

And finally there is the feed regime. I consulted several experts and read up on feeding as well. Make sure to give your chickens, starter formula, mash, growth formula, start & grow, brood formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never ever switch in-between.

Alas, if you want healthy, happy chickens that lay good quality, tasty eggs then make the effort to feed your chickens a balanced diet that’s intended for chickens.

Unless you really do know what you’re doing, the best option is to buy ready made feed from a local farm merchant.

Be forewarned; finding a label that identifies contents as organic and free range can be futile. Trust me. I’ve tried. But I won’t give up. Some farmers aren’t giving up either. Here’s a great article from one about the old-fashioned practice of letting chickens roam free on the farm. And another about why a free-range label might not mean so much. As with so many other issues, we’re left to wonder what’s best and what we’re really buying. Seems the only way to be sure is to buy from a local farm where you can see for yourself what goes on.

Ready made feed will give your birds a balanced diet that keeps them in good condition without risk of malnutrition or diseases and disorders caused by a lack of essential nutrients and vitamins.

Think about it. If a commercial, free-range, organic egg producer who relies on each and every one of thousands of birds producing an egg a day does not bother to feed his hens any old rubbish, why should you?

I may not be Queen of the Coop yet, but at least I’m not running around like one with my head cut off

Lessons from “the Frontier House”

The PBS aired Frontier House had a huge influence on our final choice to move to Montana While we were gung ho on it, watching this was the “icing on the cake” for us. I jotted down several of my favorite quotes from the show so I could post them here. If you’ve never watched it, I highly encourage you to do so. To recap, the three-part series takes three families and exposes them to what it was like to live on a homestead in 1883 Montana. They spare no one from the vagaries of 19th century living for six months. A homesteading dream? Or lots of quibbling?

The thing that’s amazing is how… really a twenty-first century woman isn’t preoccupied with her covering up her body, but she is very preoccupied with putting on the makeup and putting on a mask to hide behind…
Gordon Clune

Four foot by about twelve or fifteen foot. It wouldn’t even fit the books in our house.
Mark Glenn, speaking of their Prairie Schooner wagon

Neighboring is a lost art in our society. We’re such a mobile culture, it’s rare to really get to know your neighbors or invest any great deal of energy into the art of neighboring.
Nate Brooks

I feel like I’m growing up a lot here because like before like if I was in Temecula or California or wherever I used to live like I wouldn’t do anything. I would just sit on my butt and watch TV and I was just a lazy person. But like now that I’m actually doing work I feel like a better person. Like you know I’m actually doing something to help other people.
Tracy Clune

The following quotes are reflections made by the people about two months after they return to normal life.

In modern life there’s almost too much to choose from so I’m not really sure what to do… We could do anything. We could get a Masters in anything and recreate ourselves and become anything, make any amount of money, have any amount of kids. It’s overwhelming. You know, I’m not sure exactly which one to pick.
Kristen Brooks

You’re a man or a woman working hard in the twenty-first century and your kids don’t know what it is that you do. It’s seamless. They’re isolated from it. And that’s sad… I realized that more so than ever since I’ve been back. But in five months in 1883 I got more satisfaction, more accomplishment, more appreciation than I did my entire career beforehand.
Gordon Clune

I think the year 2001 is kind of boring. Every day I always say I’m bored and my parents get mad at me for it. But there’s nothing to do. There’s just nothing to do here. You get kind of tired of going to the mall every day. And you get kind of tired of doing nothing all day.
Tracy Clune

The twenty-first century you’re bored because there’s so many things. It’s like you have so much stuff that you’re just bored of all of it. In 1883 you have such little stuff that it was like special to you when your mom would buy you stuff and things just for you.
Logan Patton

It’s an unnatural life that the twenty-first century offers us. I think there’s just too much. There’s too much stimulus. The pace and the noise and the…florescent lighting… It’s a bit overwhelming… Your principles, your ideals, your morals… they’re all for sale. I think there’s a lot of problems that we’re just not admitting.
Mark Glenn

People of all ages have an ongoing romantic fascination with country living. Maybe you’re one of those people who sits in traffic and daydreams of someday trading gridlock for greener pastures. Or perhaps your feet are firmly planted in the city (and you wouldn’t know a heifer from a haybale–or care to meet either one), but you enjoy reading about other peoples’ crazy adventures from the safety of the nearest Starbuck’s (make mine a double latte, please). Moving to Montana is definitely an ongoing adventure; Dorothy had it right.. .”Toto , we’re not in Kansas anymore”.

Trot on friends, trot on.

Crying Wolf

The Department of the Interior announced late last the removal of the Northern Rocky Mountains population of gray wolves from the Endangered Species List. “The wolf population in the Northern Rockies has far exceeded its recovery goals and continues to expand its size and range,” Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett said.

The latest population counts show more than 1,500 wolves and 100 breeding pairs in the tri-state region, well above the established recovery minimums of 300 wolves and 30 breeding pairs.

The announcement affects only wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains, including all of the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, a piece of north-central Utah and the eastern third of Oregon and Washington. Outside of this area and the Midwest, where wolves were delisted in 2007, gray wolves will remain endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The delisting decision will not take effect until 30 days after the rule is formally published in the Federal Register, expected before the end of the month. Assuming there are no court challenges—and there will be—the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming will then assume full management for the wolves in their states.

Natch, some environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife, announced their intent to file suit after the rule is published in an effort to stop the delisting.Environmental groups around the region called the announcement premature and says it threatens to undo the decades of work and millions of dollars poured into wolf recovery efforts.

“We have spent a lot of time and money and it would be a real shame to see wolf numbers decline due to a premature delisting,” Stein said.

Both environmental groups believe the federally approved state management plans are not sufficient to ensure the long term survival of the wolf in the region, and are particularly critical of Idaho and Wyoming’s plans.Conservationists argue current wolf populations are still too low to be considered genetically sustainable. The wolf population in Yellowstone also remains genetically isolated from the wolves in Idaho and the rest of Montana. Some scientists say that the federal recovery minimum of 300 wolves is insufficient to maintain a healthy population across the region. Rather 2,000 to 3,000 wolves are required across the region to maintain long-term genetic viability.

But not all reaction was negative. Jay Bodner, natural resource director for The Montana Stockgrowers Association, said he was encouraged by the federal government’s decision. “We’ve met recovery goals for four or five years,” he said. “They looked at the science, they based it on science, not on emotion, and we support it 100 percent.”

Stay tuned.