No, that’s not the clever name of a dish, although it could be…
A year ago we got 3 baby chicks –Kiwi, Sunny, and Olive–and made our way into the backyard chicken movement. Watching them grow up so quickly was really amazing. I can only imagine how transformative it is for my friends with newborns and toddlers to see their little ones grow up and learn each new thing; well, that’s how it was for us and our chicks. Here’s an excerpt from our chicken memoir thus far, in 5-parts:
Feb 07: The hens have been fascinating to watch. In their brooder they began to scratch around looking for bugs at about 2 weeks and at about 3 weeks they started jumping on their food and water containers trying to perch. now, at 4 weeks they are beginning to emulate giving themselves dust baths (which is funny in the glass brooder b/c they’re on top of towels) and they fluff themselves out and squat down too. Meanwhile we aren’t actually supposed to let them be in their coop for another 2-3 months and they won’t start laying for another 4-5 months.
June 07: So the chickens (Sunny, Kiwi, and Olive) turned 20 weeks old yesterday. And today we were graced with….our first egg! We were thrilled of course–and it might be why the girls were so excited this morning at 7:15. They were cooing and squawking every 15 minutes on the dot until about 8:30 or so. I just wrote it off as being annoying and went back to sleep. We’re not sure but we think that this is Kiwi’s egg since she is the most mature/aggressive (Sunny can’t even eat until Kiwi has had her fill or else she gets pecked). So Sunny and Olive will probably start laying in the next few days or so too. And then? Then we can expect almost 2 dozen eggs a week until the beginning of December and then again starting January. And now some notes on our girls. They love bread! They also love our scrap vegetables and fruit like kiwi, grapes, tomatoes, and squash. Since we’re vegetarian it’s obviously important for us to feed the girls vegetarian feed. Most feed that you find at the hardware store has ground up chicken pieces in the feed! Yuck. Luckily we found one place right outside of Baton Rouge called Dodge City Feed Store that carries veggie feed.
August 07: Unfortunately, Kiwi has left our home. It was rather upsetting and difficult to make the decision to break the 3 sisters up, but it was more important for me to wake up peacefully. You see there’s a little phenomena that I didn’t read about in any of our chicken literature, where in a group of hens, one will emerge as the hypermasculine one. When this happens, sometimes this macho-hen will try to crow. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard a hen try to crow like a rooster, but I’m here to tell you, it sounds like death in a bottle. That’s right. Every morning around daybreak, little Kiwi starts sqwaking and hacking and making awful guttural sounds that sent me running for earplugs at the closest CVS one morning around 4:30. And I’m a good-sleep gal. I fall asleep very easily and I stay asleep all night. When I wake up, it’s peaceful, slow, and beautiful. This racket was anything but; in fact, I often started getting violent, throwing pillows, books, and other objects at the door hoping beyond hope that this fiesty black and white marbled feather beast would just let me sleep for another 30 minutes! Coupled with the fact that she started to make the hormonal transformation into a he (which meant no more eggs), we decided that we would ask our local egg-lady at the farmer’s market if she would take her. She agreed, so I packed Kiwi’s things and we bid her adieu. I think Olive and Sunny are worried they’re next!
January 08: After six months of about a dozen eggs a week, they’ve halted production. It got below freezing 3 nights of the last 5 and they’ve decided to take a cue from the writer’s strike. I don’t know how long this little charade will last, but I hope it warms up soon. It’s funny, we never bought eggs before we got these hens, but now that we’re used to an egg-icious omelet in the morning, we miss it like crazy!
Mid-January 08: Ok now they’ve started molting. It’s not pretty! In fact we walked outside and thought that the slaughterhouse had come to our backyard overnight–there were feathers everywhere. They look pretty funny actually–Olive is without her tail feathers and Sunny is molting from the neck up right now! Their dignity is likely shot at this point, so I suggested to them that perhaps they should start laying eggs again…
Soon enough, the egg recipes will appear. Until then, have an egg-cellent evening!
