Power washing the house leaves paint chips in the run

Today was day #1 of the house painting project.  To be clear, by "project" I mean "paying someone to pain the house." They guy came to power wash and I moved the hens to a temporary pen out by the garage.  They seem happy and unconcerned.

I, on the other hand, am now a little p.o.'d about all the paint chips in the chicken run.  I don't know for sure if there's lead in our paint, but seems safe to assume there is.  I asked the power-washer to tarp the chicken run and he did, but not that well.  It's pretty well covered in 3-molecule pieces of paint.

So now what?  I haven't moved the hens back to the run yet.  Andrew's on his way home from work.  Maybe we'll just swap out all the mulch from the run and start from scratch (no pun intended).  Ugh.  What a pain in the butt.  But I've just spent 20 minutes scaring myself by googling "chickens + eggs + lead paint."  It's probably worth it if we don't want our future offspring to have lead poisoning, to say nothing of the poor chickens.

I also read here about getting eggs tested for lead levels.  That could be an interesting science experiment.  I may start bothering the extension office for information on getting eggs tested in Columbus.  If I find anything, I'll post.  If anyone else knows, please share.

Chickens survived the heat-wave

It's finally under 100 in the chicken coop & the chickens are back to their normal business.  They rode out the heat wave under the hydrangea in the side yard with occasional hose showers. 

This morning, because it's not so stinkin' hot today, we decided not to let them out in the side yard (they poop on the breezeway and it makes letting out Moses (the dog) logistically difficult, so the side-yard is not normally chicken-territory).  They protested loudly for a few hours, but they seem to have forgotten by now.

We picked our chickens because they're pretty cold hardy breeds & I'm not sure what that means about their heat tolerance, but I'm glad to see them relaxed, not-panting, and seemingly happy.

Heat Wave Day 2: Trying to Cool Off

We read that one way to help the chickens beat the heat is to give them a shallow pool of water to stand in. We set it out yesterday, and no one took the dip. Today was a different matter, and here Peggy and Sally (though not at the same time, of course) enjoy the pool.  You can also see the umbrella we have set up to give them some additional shade.

Diatomaceous earth camo

Joan is pretty well camouflaged after dusting the run with diatomaceous earth. It's our new anti-fly strategy. Apparently food-grade diatomaceous earth (basically the dust of ground up diatoms -- who knew this even existed!?) will kill grubs & larva of flies by both cutting them & desiccating them. Not so lovely - but it seems better than those poison traps we used last year. I'd love to dust the compost but I have a hunch it'd kill the worms, too. Does anybody know?

Poop, Here! Get'yer chicken poo here.

In preparation for moving, we did some digging out yesterday.  If any Columbusite Composters are looking for some "gardening gold" for their compost heaps, let me know!  It's all bagged up and ready to go.  I'd say it's about half-way composted at this point (poop + pine shavings + leaves).  The bags are liftable...maybe 30 lbs?
Feb 7th is moving day for the humans.  We'll see about those chickens.  They might have to wait for the weekend.

(I bagged the chicken poop in the Layena bags -- which makes it seem like a simple factory line: Layena = eggs + poop (dorky stats joke: would the hens be a mediator or a moderator?)

Rabbit hutch

This photo is the rabbit hutch up close.  Again, this was totally unnecessary, but for $60, it gives the ladies something else to do.  And the busier they are, the less they hassle Sally.  Sally, BTW, has finally settled in pretty well.  Joan is molting and I think the power vacuum in the middle of the ranks has made things slightly easier on Sal.  Peggy is still #1 chicken in our back yard and she doesn't let the others forget it.  She's not the nicest hen, but I guess someone's got to be the boss.

Notice Andrew's ingenious chicken ladder (a board with wine corks nailed in for traction).  The ladder/board that came with the hutch seemed too steep for the ladies to give it a try.  Truth-be-told, they could hop in without a ladder if they wanted.  But they didn't want.  And we're suckers.

Lost their appetite?

The ladies seem to have lost their appetite. They've been eating about 1/5th of what had become their piggy norm. They're still all over the scraps we give them, but barely touch their food. What gives? Any chicken-folk out there that can set our minds at ease? Or do we have anorexic hens!?

Turns out we're not in it for the money

In case the dee-lux chicken coop wasn't a tip off, it looks like we're not about to make money off these little ladies any time soon.
Josh Levin at the Good Eater Collaborative did the math. If we hadn't spent all that money on the coop, we might break even in about a year. With the coop? Probably never. And considering these ladies will only be active layers for 2 years or so (after that, as Betsy says, we'll be running a chicken retirement home) we'll probably never be able to quit our day jobs and survive on the backs of Joan, Betty & Peggy*. There goes that plan.

*This from the girl that just spent $50 on 2 week's worth of canned dog food hoping that 'ol Jack'll eat any of it.

Salmonella outbreak is another strike against factory farmed eggs

On Aug 18th Wright County Egg, an Iowa factory farming operation, recalled 380 million eggs after some of its facilities were linked to a massive salmonella outbreak. The FDA is recommending that "if consumers are unsure about the source of their eggs, they [should not] eat them and [should] discard them immediately." This is especially true if you're fragile: young, old, or sick.

Wright County Egg is a bad actor, to be sure. According to the NYTimes, the company has had "run-ins with regulators over poor or unsafe working conditions, environmental violations, the harassment of workers and the hiring of illegal immigrants." They also keep their chickens in the kind of CAFO conditions you're used to hearing about: grossly overcrowded cages, artificial lights, ammonia fumes that could knock you over. A 2008 survey by the UK Soil Association, which certifies food in Britain as organic, found large flocks of caged hens were 19 percent more likely to be contaminated with Salmonella than organically raised hens and 17 percent more likely to be contaminated than free-range or pastured hens. Whether the same would hold true in the US egg industry is unclear, but the Association did find that rates of Salmonella were directly proportional to the size of the flock. The larger the flock, the more likely the hens were to be contaminated.

So, even though Peggy, Joan & Betty will have only the teeny tiniest chance of laying salmonella contaminated eggs, I've started learning about proper sanitation to prevent even that tiny chance of getting ourselves or whomever is lucky enough to eat our eggs sick.

How to prevent salmonella in your backyard flock

• Collect eggs often.
• Keep the coop clean! Salmonella is passed around in chicken poop. So get the poop out as often as possible.
  
• Keep the ladies healthy by feeding them well, keeping the dry, and finding a good vet to help.
• Practice biosecurity.
  
• Wash, wash, wash your hands, for the love of god.
  
• "Don't wash off the bloom from the egg. If the egg is soiled, you can use a dry, stiff nail brush, fine sandpaper or a rough pan scour pad to remove manure that might have caked on. Only wash the eggs before you use them and in warm water. Do this only as a last resort. Dirty eggs might be covered with bacteria, which have trouble getting through the shell so long as it's dry. As soon as the shell is wet with cold water, the pores of the shell opens and germs pass through more easily. And then, as the egg cools even more the contents shrink a little, causing a partial vacuum inside that tends to suck foreign matter into the egg."(from Barnyardsandbackyards.org)

And, now back to the chickens.

Baby chick set up: less than $70

Our baby chicks are snug in their set up in the garage. 60 bucks covered the following supplies:

• Lamp w/ infrared bulb (to keep the box at ~90 degrees)
• Chick feeder & 50 lbs of chick feed (though with just 3 of them, an empty, shallow can probably would have worked just fine as a feeder)
• Waterer (we got one big enough to work when they're full grown)
• Pine shavings for months
• Electrolyte powder which was completely unnecessary
• Day 1 gel food that they didn't touch (went straight for the chick food)
• We had the big plastic tub already
• We had a digital thermometer, too

I can't believe that's all you need to take care of tiny lives.

We can start to feed them treats in a week or so, but nothing that would require grit in their gizzard, yet. That limits us to yogurt and hard cooked egg. Something feels wrong about feeding them egg, though. Right?

How to worm a chicken!?

I just read this blog post from a fellow columbus-ite with a backyard flock:
How to worm a chicken in five simple steps. She seems like a pro!
I, on the other hand, am more than a little freaked out by this -- though, not nearly as freaked out as I am about one of the chickens eventually become "egg bound." Barbara Kilarski explains in Keeping Chickens!: Sometimes an egg gets stuck in the chicken's body. If this happens, the backyard farmer must help her relax & sometimes she'll be able to pass the egg. But, if that doesn't work we'll have to "massage some vegetable oil very carefully around her vent while gently massaging the hen's stomach." For the uninitiated, the vent is code for "lady parts." Other books recommend KY. What have we gotten ourselves into!?