Urban Chicken challenges in Missoula

Thanks to the folks at boingboing, I found this story about controversy in Missoula over urban chickens.

Be sure to follow the link to see the video... hilarious presentation of the pro-chicken side of the argument.

The urban chicken ordinance, which stalled in City Council after a tie vote late this summer, would allow Missoula city residents the provisional right to raise up to six hens (no roosters) within the city limits.

Opponents of the ordinance have repeatedly pointed to health, noise and regulatory concerns, while supporters emphasize the importance of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and locally-sourced food. Until the new City Council takes over in January, Don Nicholson, current chair of the Public Safety and Health Committee, will decide when to bring the ordinance to the floor for a new vote.

Thanks to the folks at boingboing for pointing this issue out. Can't wait to see all hell break loose here in Redwood City as the opponents assert is bound to happen since I'm one of "them chicken folk" and my neighbors are not.

I've really got to spiff up my video techniques!

Urban Chickens now on Facebook

The page is just a start, but now you can become a fan of Urban Chickens on Facebook!

Simply visit our Urban Chickens page and click the "become a fan" link.

Let's see just how many urban chicken farmers there are on Facebook.

Fingers crossed for the Woody Creek Chicks

Since the changes to our own chickens have slowed (as evidenced by the decreased posting here), I've been following with interest the posts over at the Woody Creek Chicks blog.

The chef/blogger over there has been raising her own three chickens in an Eglu, and she's gone a step further in trying to hatch her own chicks this Fall. The tricky part? She's at altitude in Aspen, Colorado.

Having lived in New Mexico for a decade at high altitude myself, I know the effects first hand. All the tales of blue babies (lack of oxygen at 7000 feet) at the hospital are unconfirmed but plausible, and I'd imagine the same condition applies to chicks, too.

The incubation was to last 21 days, but that day has come and gone and the worry has understandably set in. Kinda like waiting for the first egg from our own chickens, but without the mortal consequences.

I'm hoping her next post has good news today. In the meantime, hop over and post your well-wishes and take a look at how pretty her Barred Rocks are (even though they're stuck in a pink Eglu)

chicken farmers everywhere!

Just got back from a business trip to New York City, and I was quite surprised to find out that two folks I've known for several years grew up in households that raised chickens.

These were friends I haven't seen in a year or so, and when they asked what I've been up to, I of course talked about Sophia and ZsuZsu and this Urban Chickens blog.

Our conversations immediately went back to their childhoods and their experiences growing up with chickens in the backyard and how delightful it is to eat fresh eggs all the time.

Is this a  phenomenon where the vast majority of us have chicken farming in our background but no context in which it can come up in regular conversation?

I'm almost tempted to start a Chicken Farmers group on FaceBook just to see how many chickens are in my social graph.

If and when I create the group (maybe over Thanksgiving?), I'll post the link here.

Blogged with Flock

fifty pounds of chicken feed... gone!

It seems like just yesterday I was worrying about how to properly feed our chooks.

Checking my receipts, I see I bought our first fifty-pound bag of Layena crumbles Labor Day weekend.

Here we are just two months later and we've dusted the first bag and I just spent $11.99 to buy another fifty pounds of chicken feed.

Quick mid-blog-post math shows we spent $12 on feed and another $3 for the nesting material (aspen shavings) and we're up to $15.00 for the first 100 eggs. That's 15 cents an egg or $1.80 a dozen.

Having our own hens producing in the backyard sure beats the heck out of paying $3.00+ a dozen for industry-produced organic brown eggs down the road at Whole Foods.

And besides, when was the last time you saw a produce stocker chasing grapes?

an update on our eggs (getting bigger!)

I've yet to do anything with the first eggs that Sophia and ZsuZsu laid around seven weeks ago (except keep them well refrigerated). So, whenever we put the newly harvested eggs in the egg carton, it's easy to see just how much bigger the eggs are getting from being their cute little selves like the ones that first dropped into the Eglu nest. Here's a picture comparing first eggs (on the right) with today's eggs (on the left). ZsuZsu's are in the top row, Sophia's are in the bottom row. While the first eggs were toy-like in size (maybe a USDA-rated "small" at best?) you can see the most recent eggs are worthy of being rated "large" in size, perfect for cooking with.

Since the egg shell has the same mass whether the egg is small or large, the shells have gotten thinner and therefore easier to crack open when cooking. While I can still easily crack open industry-produced eggs with one hand and not break the yolk while doing so, I can't quite claim the same success with our backyard eggs. Even thought the shell is thinner, the liner inside the shell is still pretty tough and prevents easy access to the insides. It must be the liner that becomes more brittle over time as the eggs sit on the shelf.

Since the egg liner is thick on our home-grown eggs, it makes for difficult openings, and it means I crack the egg multiple times before getting through the fractured shell and liner and at the insides. So, I've been picking more shell out of my mixing bowls when cooking with our backyard eggs than I can ever remember having to pick out of my cooking since I first learned to bake back in eighth grade. And, given how thick the albumen is in our backyard eggs, it takes some extra oomph to mix the yolk and whites sufficiently. But for all the difficulties, the taste and convenience is more than worth it.

Even though it's now a daily habit this harvesting of eggs, I still can't believe they come from our own backyard.

Oh, and I'd better blow out the "first eggs" soon before they go bad, huh?

we've survived six months of chicken farming!

We did it! We made it through six months of urban chicken farming! The girls turned six months old last week, and Monday marks their sixth month with us in Redwood City.

Now, if I could just remember where the time went... it seems like only yesterday I started this blog by warning we had peeps incoming (Apr 26), then posting the news of our jumping into chicken farming with both feet by bringing two barred rock chicks home to live in a temporary brooder made out of a 10-gallon aquarium in our home. (Apr 30)

Within a week, our chicks were named (May 5) by our oldest daughter, and we've called them Sophia and ZsuZsu ever since. Then, we watched these little fluffballs grow bigger and bigger by the day (and tried to share it in our Flickr set as much as possible) and soon they'd outgrown the aquarium and we had to move them into a wire cage as we waited for our Eglu (May 26) to arrive.

Six weeks into our chicken farming experience, the Eglu arrived (Jun 5) and the girls started sleeping outdoors and enjoying being the outside birds they've become. The folks over at Omlet, the maker of the Eglu, seemed to enjoy following our story, and we've had a nice link to this blog on their site ever since.

Thanks to the wisdom of the chicken farmer crowd, I've gotten great advice on issues ranging from "how do I tell if I've got a cockerel?" to "what to feed the chooks at time-of-lay" to "when's our first egg coming?"

Finally, a little magic hit the hen house right about the time Nora at Spark interviewed us about chicken farming with our Eglu on the debut of the Spark radio show.We hadn't had eggs at the time of the interview, but the Saturday the episode aired, Sophia laid her first egg! Of course, this meant a follow up on the third episode of Spark, and added enough pressure on ZsuZsu that she finally had her first egg less than two weeks later. Since then, we've had double egg days more often than not, and we haven't gone a day without fresh eggs in the nest for over six weeks now.

So, what's it like at the six month mark? Still delightful to look out in the backyard and see the girls pacing their run first thing in the morning. Tranquil to come home after work, grab a drink and go out back to watch the girls free range in the backyard eating bugs and weeds. And scrumptious to have fresh eggs to eat every day of the week.

What do I look forward to in the next six months? Seeing how the chickens do over the (mild) winter here in the Bay Area and whether they stop laying at all in the cooler months ahead. Using the chicken-dropping rich compost in our garden next Spring. Resisting the urge to add yet another chicken to the flock when I hear the peeps of chicks at the feed store.


Stay tuned to read along. It's been great having you here so far!