on clipping chicken wings

Given how high and how far the girls can fly across the back yard, I think we're about due to clip their wings.

Having butchered my share of chicken carcasses bought at the store (the cold, featherless kind), I'd been under the impression clipping the wings was actually a rather gruesome task: taking out the wing at the last joint.

Imagine my relief when I found out "clipping wings" is simply shorthand for "cutting short the long feathers at the end of the wing"... about as painful as cutting one's hair.

Whew.

Researching a bit further, I see that I really only have to clip the feathers on one of their wings, and that throws them off balance enough that they can't get any height or distance before dropping to the ground again on the clipped side of their body.

So, the outstanding question for me and my girls is:

• do I clip the wing on the same side for both chooks? visions of them vainly attempting to fly, going side by side around the same futile circle, or
  
• do I clip the wing on the opposite side of each chook? visions of them crashing into each other mid-flight, or veering out in opposite directions only to come together again in a puff of feathers
  

I'll have to meditate on this one a bit...

the chickens escaped the yard!

We live in a part of the country that gets hot during the day and cool at night, so we sleep with our windows open to take advantage of this natural A/C. A side benefit:I wake up each morning to the sound of birds chirping and dogs barking and chickens clucking.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a couple of unhappy chickens in the backyard. They weren't making an agitated "get me the heck out of here" sound, but they were clearly voicing their displeasure at being cooped up for some reason.

Before anyone else in the house could wake up, I stole downstairs and outside to let the girls do a bit of free-ranging in the backyard before I went to work. They were more than happy to get out and showed their joy by stretching their legs with a lap around the backyard before settling into the seek-and-eat formation of side-by-side examination of every square foot of organic material for greens and bugs. We've got tall fences on all sides, so I'm not concerned about their flying into any neighbor's yards (tho I should clip their wings soon). The only way they could conceivably get out of the yard would be to go down a long narrow side yard to the cast iron gate and squeeze under it. In three months of free-rangings, they've never even attempted to start down that yard, let alone make it to the gate.

So I thought nothing of leaving the girls out back and going inside to shower, eat, etc, putting them in the coop on my way to work.

Imagine my surprise when Left Coast Mom returned from walking our daughter to Kindergarten to find the chickens in our front yard. Yep, they made the long walk up to the gate and scooted right under it to start poking around the driveway. Luckily, they seemed too dazed by the fact there's a whole 'nother WORLD out front to try and escape further. With a couple swoops of the arm, Left Coast Mom herded them back under the gate and into the back yard. I used some fresh lettuce leaves to coax them into the Eglu run and they've been cooped up all day (that I know of).

Now, I'll have to craft a movable fence to keep them from repeating their escape next time they free range. I hate to think I'll have to supervise them closely from here on out.

I'll have to watch Chicken Run again to see what's next up in their plans for the great escape.

the girls and their stage fright

I'm hoping this isn't a sign of performance anxiety to come, but the girls exhibited what can only be described as stage fright yesterday when asked to continue their incessant clucking so someone could record the sound.

Early yesterday morning, I'd been on a phone interview about what it's like to raise chickens in my backyard (details to come) and I was sitting next to the run so as to capture the ambient noise of the girls clucking in the background. The girls were SO noisy, I actually had to move a little ways away from the run so I could hear the questions being asked of me. When the Q&A was over, I agreed to hold the phone by the run so they could tape just the sound of their clucking.

Wouldn't you know it, the moment I stopped talking and held the phone out, the girls effectively shut up. I tried waving the phone around to elicit a response, and the girls just stared at me, blinking, wondering what kind of spell I was trying to cast on them. I looked away hoping they'd cluck to get my attention.

No luck.

After waiting about 30 seconds, I put the phone back up to my ear to apologize for the lack of sound and the chorus of clucks once again rang out loud. ::sigh::

Now you know why I haven't told the girls we're hoping to get some eggs out of them starting in a couple weeks. I don't want them to feel any pressure whatsoever, because I'm sure they'll find a way to put it off as long as possible if there's any expectations lingering out there for delivery.

(Shhhhh... I still hope we'll have our first egg by Labor Day)

the nesting habit is deeply ingrained

I went out to check on the girls tonight and found that they had once again pushed aside the chicken wire that Thomas used to block the nesting box. ZsuZsu was actually trapped behind it, peeping away as if she were still a wee little chick. After I offered her a few grapes, she was able to squeeze around the wire and hop out into the run.

After popping off the side of the Eglu, I reached in to move the wire back into the nesting box. This did not go over well with the girls, who protested loudly, as if to berate me for ruining all of their hard work. I scooted them out the door and tried again.

The wire was nicely seated in the nesting box until ZsuZsu came back in. I watched through the opened side of the Eglu as she wiggled and squirmed her way into the box, half nestled under the wire. They are definitely not fans of the roost.

perils of free-ranging the chooks

I know I haven't posted in awhile (ok, only once), but ZsuZsu gave me quite a scare last night, so I thought I'd share.

I had just picked a zucchini and was readying it for the grill when ZsuZsu, ever curious, hopped up on the shelf at the front of the grill to see what I was doing. And to look for scraps, no doubt. At that point the grill had been on for at least 10 minutes and was at about 500 degrees.

So I freaked and tried to shoo her off.

She returned the freak-out and fluttered onto the handle of the grill cover.

I don't know if it was shock at the heat, or if she was just being stubborn, but she refused to get down. I actually had to push her pretty hard to get her to move--all the while yelling, "Oh my god! Get off of there! Get off!"

I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking.

ZsuZsu seemed fine once she finally hopped down--just before Sophia joined her on the handle--but she wouldn't let me look at her feet. Go figure. I can only hope that my repeated assurances that she's just not that type of chicken, combined with some memory of the heat, will convince her to stay away from the grill next time.

breaking the nesting habit is hard

I went out to the coop this morning to find the girls had physically pushed aside the chicken wire cylinder that had been blocking the nesting box. Evidently, some time between sunset last night and dawn this morning, the lure of the nesting box became to great to ignore and the new contraption was brutally pushed aside to make way.

And to top things off, the girls pooped in the bottom of the nesting box to make sure I knew it was their own doing.

Will have to reinforce it in place tonight. I think I can use the vent holes at the top of the Eglu to anchor the cylinder in place.

I'm not giving up yet!

eating local: a fo(odometer) video

Saw this three-minute video today and thought I'd share it here. They don't have any statistics regarding the food-miles cost of eggs, but I'm betting eggs are a rather expensive item to consume in terms of energy used to produce an egg on one's table.

Happy to know we'll be eating our own home-grown huevos in short order!