what it's like to be a REAL chicken farmer

I just had to share with you this great article, From Friends to Food, telling what it's really like to raise chickens for food (eggs and meat) as a farmer.

This is not a tale of the goings-on in one of these industrial chicken processing behemoths, but instead what it's like to run a mom-and-pop outfit. To wit:

We don’t have rows of vast chicken houses holding 10,000 birds each. Our chickens live real chicken lives. They know what hawks are. Ellie, 9, and Levi, 7, are old enough now to get it. They understand it’s our responsibility to give these chickens the best lives possible with the realization that they will be food.

And interesting stats:

According to the Farm Aid advocacy group, there are nearly 5 million fewer farms in the U.S. than there were in the 1930s. Of the 2 million remaining farms, only 565,000 are family operations.

[Story author] Dean Mullis, 46, and his wife, Jenifer, 43, are among them. They own and operate Laughing Owl Farm, on five acres northeast of Charlotte, N.C. In addition to raising chickens and turkeys, they raise vegetables using organic methods.

Reading Dean's account makes me realize I should more appropriately refer to myself as an "egg farmer," but I'll stick with the grander-sounding "chicken farmer" label for the short term, at least.

In any case, enjoy the story!

Eggs, chickens and (RSS) feeds

It seems our friends in the UK have a lot more appetite for news about chickens in their press than we do here in the States.

Over the holidays, I broadened my Google Alerts feed to include not just "urban chickens" but "chickens" (period). And with that change, a flood of news items comes in daily instead of every other week or so.

I'm glad I expanded my horizons, as I've been delightfully surprised at how reverential the (lowly?) chicken is treated across The Pond.

Take today's Western Mail column, Every egg-eating lover of democracy should know how to rear chickens. The column opens with

THE first egg of the year is always a great moment. It’s a sign that the days really are getting longer, and it promises many more deep-yoked delicacies in the days to come.

And then it goes on to opine about foxhunting, the ancient Greeks, apple trees and hard labor. I can almost see the author looking out on dreary weather while taking comfort in better days to come.

Granted, here in California, in our first winter raising chooks in the backyard, we've only seen a slowdown of egg-laying (around eight a week, down from a dozen a week), and not a full stoppage. Folks in colder climes (or with older hens?) may actually be experiencing a winter break from fresh eggs . Let me know?

Oh and another thing that's lighting up the RSS feed? Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef) has gone on a crusade to investigate the poultry industry in the UK , present his findings to the public and alleviate the plight of the chicken farmer who has "to sell something like 100 chickens to make 3 or 4 quid and to [him] that's outrageous." It'll be interesting to follow along and see what he can do... if nothing else, his celebrity is drawing attention to how and where chickens are raised in the UK. I wonder what a similar campaign would look like here in the US?

I'll keep watching the feeds and let you know if I find anything interesting to post about. Seems to me we should be hearing about the status of the ordinances in Missoula, Chicago and Durham soon.

more praise for farm fresh eggs

While the Delphos Herald isn't on the usual path of my web wanderings, Google Alerts let me know of this great little blog post extolling the virtues of farm fresh eggs.

Last week I got the surprise of my life (well, almost) when I went to my favorite meat market to buy those farm fresh eggs. The price of a dozen eggs had gone up higher than I ever dreamt of. It was $2.15 per dozen. We talk about gas prices but it seems like everything has gone up … they say the price of milk will soon be over the top.

One customer commented, while I was buying eggs, that they will be going up more … because of something that happened in Georgia. Maybe the drought. I blame it on Ethanol and the price of grain. Those chickens have to eat. I know the price of eggs is up in the supermarket, too. It’s just the way it goes.

Someone asked me “Why do you go to the locker to get your eggs? An egg is an egg!!! No … an egg is not just an egg.

Farm fresh eggs are always better than ordinary eggs. Eggs used to be even better when the chickens could run loose and be happy.

As the proud owner of some happy chickens, I can attest to how yummy these eggs are.

And here in California, that $2.15 a dozen is a bargain at the store... I'm seeing $3.25 and over for the free range stuff at the local Whole Foods.

The girls at eight months

At long last, I was able to take some pictures of the girls playing around in the yard in the daylight.

It used to be the only way we could tell the two of them apart was by looking at the downy feathers near their vents. Let's just say that of the two of them, ZsuZsu was the one who was "clean down there," so all we had do was wait until they turned to trot away from us and then we could be confident in calling out for that dirty pooper, aka Sophia.

But sometime in the last month, it appears ZsuZsu failed to wipe (if chickens can even do such a thing), and we lost the easiest way to tell them apart.

Now, we have to rely on looking at the other end of the bird to see what the crown looks like. While Sophia's crown is nice and full from one end to the other, ZsuZsu's looks partially inflated about half-way through. Otherwise, the birds are pretty much identical.

I suppose we could band the legs different colors (should the crowns change shape), but until they learn to come when they're called, I think we can risk mis-identifying them in pictures and in person.

what happens to chooks in a downpour

With today's wild, wet and windy weather lashing us here in the Bay Area, LeftCoastMom has shared the lessons she learned trying to save our two chickens from themselves, including:

1. Chickens don't like rain.
2. Chickens don't dislike rain enough to resist the potentially suicidal temptation to dig a lake under their food bowls.
3. Twice.
4. The bucket of mulch I had been planning to put in the garden was perfect for filling in Lake Sophia/ZsuZsu.

You'll have to go over to her original post to finish the list...

Keeping chickens tops this WorldChanging resolutions list

Great to see Erica Barnett over on the WorldChanging web site has made "Get Chickens" the first item on her New Year's Food Resolutions list:

Get chickens. OK, so I'm hardly the first urban dweller to harbor fantasies of raising chickens for farm-fresh eggs straight from my backyard--web sites such as Backyard Chickens, The City Chicken, Mad City Chickens, and many others have existed for years. Still, better late than never, right? Chickens are low-maintenance, cheap to care for, and a sustainable food source--the food miles from backyard chickens are literally nonexistent. As a bonus, chickens provide free (and organic!) fertilizer...

I wonder how many others have made raising Urban Chickens a priority in 2008?

Happy New Year from the Urban Chickens

Happy New Year, everyone!

As I think back to January 2007, the thought of having yard-fresh eggs every day from our own chickens never would have entered my mind. And here we are, a year later, and we've been farming chickens in our back yard for seven months now.

With these seven months of experience under our belts, I can say in no uncertain terms that raising a small flock of chickens is so much easier to do than it might seem at first blush. My biggest concerns at the start (time each day to tend to them, the noise and the smell) have all proven to be molehills and not mountains. And the benefits to having our own source of eggs (and entertainment) are only beginning to sink in.

I'm glad I chose to blog about our adventures, as I've met some incredible folks through the comments (and I got on CBC radio, too!). While I'm new at this whole chicken-raising gig, there are thousands of others who see this as old hat and nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. I appreciate their tolerating my coming into this with eyes wide open and more enthusiasm than experience. I've gotten more advice, sympathy, encouragement and compassion from folks I've never met than I ever could have imagined.

Thank you for following along and chiming as we've started this adventure. As the newness of owning chickens is starting to subside, I'll be supplementing my own tales from the backyard with posts to update folks on the status of movements across the country to change zoning laws to allow a chicken in every backyard.

On behalf of Sophia and ZsuZsu, thanks to all of you for dropping by our little piece of the Web in 2007.

May you be flooded in eggs, too.