Animal Husbandry 101: Web DVM

Less than 24 hours after christening them Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde (you know, the 4 ghosts in Pacman), Clyde has decided to rebrand herself.  I can't blame her, Clyde is the less coveted orange "slow guy" of the set.  So now we have a Clyde of "Bonnie and Clyde," an escape artist not afraid to look death in the er... mouth.

Ever since Tim Ferriss diet and copious egg consumption, we've toyed with the idea of chickens.  After much research, I settled on a set of 4 which, when mature will yield enough to support 2 egg a day consumption and fit neatly within Santa Ana 4 hens, no roosters, 100 foot offset from neighbors ordinance (though some microflock masters are lobbying that down to 40 feet).  Legend has it that they continue to lay into their teens.

Breed Selection
Of course, they couldn't be run of the mill chickens.  They needed to lay something eggceptional that couldn't be obtained in your typical grocery or even farmer's market.  Therefore, I wanted 2 French Black Copper Marans.  This is a Maran Scale.  Black Copper eggs start at 5 or darker.  You can see that they're also larger than your typical white "large" egg (#1).  "Inky" is starting to make more sense, eh?  

I was also very interested in Easter Eggers.  These are chickens that lay pastel eggs ranging through blues, greens, pinks, even an occasional lavender (though a hen lays the same pastel color throughout her life).  My e-search warned me that hobbyists will sell Easter Eggers under names of Ameraucana and Araucana.  These are actually pure bred lines which lay blue eggs.  Some sources say these lines have a recessive gene that results in 25% of chicks dying before hatching (they got the recessive trait from both of there heterozygous parents).  Annoying if you're trying to run a profitable business, eh?  So my conjecture is that folks started crossing the pure lines with other breeds to weed out the recessive trait.  They ended up with a rainbow of egg colors, but mixed/hybrid chickens.  Enter the Easter Egger.  The breeder we got these chickens from says they're Araucanas, and he may be right-- the do have the start of the funny feather whiskers of the breed.  We'll see how they feather out and what they start laying (blue or some other color) and then determine if Pinky was woefully misnamed.  We should know in 3-4 months because they are 2-2.5 months old now and start laying when they are 5-6 months old.

Coop Construction
So over the past couple months, MacGyver has been rigging up a fitting arcade cabinet for the Ghosts.  After MaGyver made over our side yard, we discovered we have a rose tree sheltered pergola (formerly House Plant Cemetery).  After the pruning guys buzz cut the dead over/undergrowth, MacGyver built a roof out of clear roof sheeting and capped off the ends with plastic chicken wire and a custom gate.  MaGyver returned with an heirloom nestbox which was affixed half way through the mesh next to the door.  The roof was cut in half and hinged to allow us to harvest future eggs without needing to enter the coop itself.  We use a mini bungie to hold it down.  We had surplus pavers, so we leaned these against the inside perimeter of the pen to prevent anything from crawling under the walls.  We stuck two rows of dowels in at shin level to provide egalitarian roosting options.  I planted sunflowers as a green windbreak to the north, but they have yet to make an appearance.  

On our first trip to Norco, we bought a bale of straw for $7, broke a couple flakes up as ground cover inside and leaned the rest against the north wall to provide even more draft protection.  We also bought a couple drip water dispensers, a feeder, layer feed (turns out we need grower feed right now) and chicken scratch.

Chicken Acquisition
We considered mail order chickens, but the backorder on the types we wanted was so long, it would be until October before we got chicks, at which point, we'd need to set up brooding equipment (heat lamps, different feed, different feed/watering containers, an indoor enclosure, etc.)  Plus the cost of shipping doubles their price.  Plus a lot of places were cagey on even being able to offer us sexed birds.  We wanted pullets (not roosters) who had lost their fuzz and thus didn't need heat lamps (usually around 2.5 months old).  So we turned to Craigslist.

We got our chickens from Russell in Norco.  Prices are reasonable-- a buck or two less than what you'd pay online and no shipping charges.  Norco's on the way to Mountain High snowboard result and a decent road trip unto itself--"Horsetown, USA."  The sidewalks are bridle paths and their lane divider marks aren't just white, they're red, white, and blue!  Why was I not surprised to learn their mascot was a mustang named "Hail Yeah!"?  There's a half dozen feed lots on their main drag and hobby farms everywhere.  It's surreal to see a dude in a gallon cowboy hat ambling along on his quarter horse, talking on his cell phone.  You almost want to ask if saddles come with Starbucks cup holders.  With proceeds from selling our 1923 tub on Craigslist, we also bought a 50 pound bag of medicated grower feed off of Russell (should last a month or two) and 18 eggs for $5.  

These guys seemed to do alright in their coop, but it was a bit drafty with the open lattice work and the Marans are 2 weeks behind the "Araucanas," so they looked like extras on Game of Thrones, fluffing their black fuzzy coats against the cold as if they'd been drafted into The Night's Watch.  At sunset, we bed them down in a straw-lined dog carrier that sat on the back porch to shelter them a bit more from the elements.

The Drama
Here I was, drafting this blog over breakfast and I mentioned to MacGyver it would help to have a better picture of the peeps.  "I'm on it!" and off he went, followed by angry shouts at our errant "Kai Fawkes."  By the time I got to the scene, he was coaxing one of the Marans through the lattice.  Evidently Kai had slipped into the coop behind him and commenced running amok.  One of the chickens had tried to escape by diving through the lattice.  MacG had successfully exiled Fawkes only to discover she'd obligingly run to the outside of the coop to "help" Clyde, whose head had made its way into Kai's mouth.  The bird was still alive, but her back was scratched from the squeeze through the fence.  MacGyver made an immediate trip to Home Depot to plywood all sides of the coop against future mishap.  Sure, it's not as pastoral, but it's a way more effective wind block and dog deterrent.

Band-Aids are not for birds.  Clyde shook hers into an awkward feather tangle within seconds.  We tried tying gauze over the scrape with a strip of old t-shirt.  She shook that bandage off while in outpatient care in the pet carrier.  She was willing to eat and seemed very interested in "pewpew'ing" the whereabouts of her flock (huddling under a straw leanto "Kai shelter") I felt bad she was standing in the manure from the previous night's slumber party.  Eventually I just left the pet carrier in the coop with the door open.  She bounced out barebacked and helped herself to a snack from the feeder.  Within a couple minutes, her chirps had coaxed the rest of the distraught flock out of hiding.  Later on that day, we stopped at Rite Aid and dressed her scrape properly (Neosporin and 2 butterfly closures topped off with a round of self-adhesive gauze and a final butterfly closure).  She seems to find this outfit more flattering as she hasn't removed it yet.