Home by sunset

Thinking outside the coop

by Johanna Silver, Sunset Test Garden Coordinator

With lettuce on the bolt and Honey's comb in need of a little TLC, I decided to build a portable coop so she could keep me company in the garden. This portable mini coop, also known as a chicken tractor, is a shining example of garden-animal integration.

Both birds and garden bed benefit. The gardener saves some back-bending and precious time because the birds do every action performed by a tractor — they till the soil with their feet (albeit in a very non-invasive way), drop fertilizer, and gladly clean up an old, bolting garden bed. The chickens get to nibble on fresh greens, weed seeds, bugs, and they get a chance to experience the great outdoors.

Our new tractor is about as simple as they come. I cut windows out of an old plastic bin, lined the inside with chicken wire, and fastened it all with nuts, bolts, and large washers. A door is secured with paper clips wrapped around bolts, and the whole thing is tethered to the ground with garden stakes. There is also a small dish of water near her at all times. This simple set-up works in our case — Honey goes home at the end of the day so I don't have to worry about predators digging under the coop.

Not everything went perfectly: It took some time to build the coop; Honey seemed a little spooked; and I will still have to fork the bed and pull up the rest of the old plants. So why bother? Mostly because it is an absolute blast to have a clucking chicken work next to me in the garden. I love the questions posed by people who pass by. And I'd like to think that there is a part of her small bird brain that is enjoying the new scenery and fresh chow.

Chicken tractors are used on both small and large scales and come in a plethora of creative designs. My favorite collection is here.

Squirting Chickens

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Sunset imaging specialist Kimberley Burch, water pistol in hand, guards Honey (center, with tiny, pecked comb).

We last visited the sorority from hell (aka the Sunset henhouse) about 3 weeks ago. Honey was getting mercilessly pecked by at least a couple of the other chickens, to the extent that she'd taken near-permanent refuge in the nest box and had to be picked up by hand and deposited in the chicken yard to eat and drink. At the suggestion of a helpful former chicken-raiser, we've recently tried two new tactics: applying a paste of Dr Bronner's Baby Mild Liquid Soap to Honey's chewed-up comb (in the hopes that its nasty taste would act as a repellent) and squirting the attacking chickens with a water gun. It seemed to work. At least they squawked in surprise and retreated.

Alas, maintaining a round-the-clock squirt detail isn't possible. And Honey seems too terrorized to risk a foray to food and water on her own without a human protector. The pecking looks like it's continuing, even with the soap. Meanwhile, Honey gets lighter and lighter... we'll have to think of something else fast, before she just collapses into a heap of feathers. Readers, any and all suggestions welcome!

Poor Honey!

Overheard about the coop: "That place is worse than junior high!"

News of our henpecked hen has been spreading through the office, and everyone is distressed about our coop dynamic.

Here are ways we're planning to make things better:
- Give Honey a place to hide
- Pick her up and pet her a lot. (Admittedly, this last suggestion is from a colleague who watches a lot of The Dog Whisperer, who reasons that small dogs are such terrors because they're always being held up higher; thus the higher we keep ol' Honey the higher the other chickens will hold her in esteem.)
- ??? (Readers? Help?!)

On the other hand, this seems to be about the mildest case of pecking order horrors. I've read multiple stories of chicks introduced to adult flocks; it never ends well. One hen will peck the chick's head till she bleeds; then all hell breaks loose. Once chickens have drawn blood, their evil reptilian side comes out and they almost always peck the chick to death. The shocking part: This happens even if the hen who laid the chick is a member of the flock!

Nature is red in tooth and claw, indeed. Be glad your mama wasn't a chicken.

Crisis in the coop!

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Our girl Honey is spending a lot of time in the nesting box.

It was getting to the point where every time you opened it up, she'd be in there, fluffing her feathers and acting a little pouty. We chalked this up to broodiness, the state when hens get it into their heads that they want to sit on and hatch a clutch of eggs.

And we all thought it was adorable. Our little Honey! She was the last to lay, but here she is, getting motherly. So jolly and cute.

On Saturday, I got annoyed with Honey's "broodiness" and pulled her out of the box and put her back in the regular coop. (You're supposed to discourage broodiness in pullets and any other chicken who's not going to eventually raise chicks.)

Instantly, it became clear to me why she's spending all her time in the nesting box. Carmelita is terrorizing her. Within seconds of my plopping her down in the coop, Carmelita was pecking Honey's comb till it bled.

I felt so bad about all this that I spent the next 30 minutes running interference so Honey could get something to eat and drink. (She seemed hungry and thirsty.)

So the question is: What to do? I've read about putting hiding places into the coop — a panel of screen door is often recommended. That way, Honey could see what was going on in the coop, but wouldn't be vulnerable to attack. Of course, I imagine if you live on a farm, you might have part of a screen door lying around. Us? Not so much.

I feel terrible. This has been going on for weeks, and we thought she was just hanging out in the nesting box for fun. But now I feel like she's a prisoner in her own coop. Honey's a really sweet chicken; unlike her more cranky sisters, she never bites, and doesn't mind being held. How could I have been oblivious to her peril?

In other news, I bought some black oil sunflower seeds yesterday. Hopefully adding a handful of these to the girls' feed every day will keep them from doing so much feather-plucking. (Apparently the sunflower seeds provide an amino acid that you can also get from ... feathers.)

Our chickens are made of meat

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

When it comes down to it, our chickens are made of meat.

They cluck, they peck, they're covered in feathers, but underneath it all, they are bones and fat and skin and muscle — dark and light meat. Suitable for soaking in buttermilk, breading, then frying.

It's an inescapable fact of chicken-raising. We have these chickens with names, chickens who are pets and who we raised from tiny babies, but all of us who care for these chicken are meat-eaters. Chicken-eaters, even.

I've been thinking about this lately, especially because of this comment we got on the blog a few weeks ago. (Reader Emily, I haven't been ignoring you.) Here's what she said:

My understanding is that you are not planning to harvest the chickens for meat, only their eggs. I can understand why, but I ask that you reconsider. If we are going to include meat in our diets, there is no better source that I know of for personal, animal and ecological health than happy chickens raised in our backyards. I think it would be a great gift to your readers if you share with us how to handle the difficult business of bringing home raised chickens to the dinner table.

When we got our chickens, we knew that we were not going to kill and eat them. This is primarily because we're urbanized, soft-hearted, lily-livered wimps. I, for one, had never even touched a chicken before we visited Jody Main's chickens last summer.

Our favorite chicken reference book (The Chicken Book by Page Smith and Charles Daniel) is even sterner on the subject:

Never make chickens into pets. ... Chickens are not pets; they are chickens; they are producers; they exist to lay eggs and be eaten. Never name a chicken. To do so is merely cute  — and silly — and an abuse of names. That does not mean that you must not enjoy, admire, and love chickens individually and collectively; it just means that you must not sentimentalize and falsify your relationship to chickens. This, for the most part, is why I feel keeping chickens should involve killing chickens as well. Somebody or some machine has to kill chickens, so why shouldn't you, especially if you are going to eat them?

I'm not volunteering to swing the hatchet or anything, but I do understand the hypocrisy of our position. I was a vegetarian for a decade. And not the fish-eating, occasional-poultry kind. I didn't eat anything with nerves or eyes. So what changed my mind? Partly, this Michael Pollan article in the New York Times magazine from 2002.

Partly the fact that I got a dog. I'm annoyingly crazy about her, but despite my devotion, she is absolutely not a person. Not a person at all. When she dies, it won't be like a person dying. (Although, trust me, I'm going to have to take a few days off from work, dear bosses.)

It occurred to me that I didn't know anything about cows, pigs, chickens, or fish. Nothing. I wasn't going to eat them, but I didn't know anything about them. And people who did know them — farmers and ranchers and such — didn't have any qualms about it. They raised them to be eaten. And I was some urban kid from Dallas who was taking the moral high ground by not.

Thus began my non-vegetarian transformation. (I also got my ears pierced. My brother joked that I should be on The Swan.)

So now — here we are, with these chickens. Their fate is not in question, but I do think about it. Could I kill one? I read the Backyard Chickens forum "Meat Birds ETC" board with some regularity. It leads me to links like this one. (Warning: If you click around, it will teach how to pull the heads off your chickens to kill them. Not for the squeamish.)

Right now, um, no, I'm not going to kill our girls. For one thing, it's so unnecessary. There's lots of food available on the San Francisco Peninsula at any of our dozens of nearby grocery stores. There's no need, no tension, no reason.

When the revolution comes, and we actually have to subsist on what we can grow? Chickens, you're on notice.

Et tu, Carmelita?

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Nobody loves our chickens as much as our Jim McCann. Sunset art director, leader of Team Chicken, he is probably the person who spends the most time in the coop. He brings them an afternoon apple every day, he holds them and pets them, and he is the most vigilant of us about keeping them fed and watered.

And what does Carmelita do in return? Bites him.

Hard. Drew blood.

Do these chickens have no sense of decency? Jim is so tender-hearted that he issued a proclamation that we shouldn't lift our chickens up and take their eggs while they're still in the nesting box, because he's afraid it will upset them. (Secretly: I'm still taking their eggs from under them; I think that's a time-honored part of chicken-human interaction.) But still ...! He's the one who was most distressed when we were worried that Carmelita was a rooster. (Which would have likely meant the stew pot.)

Nothing like a little blood-sport to change a man's opinion. After she gave him a chomp, even Jim was considering Carmelita coq au vin.

We don't have any photo or video documentation of the event, sadly, but I think it probably went a little like this. (It's a video.) And despite the potential danger in a chicken bite, Jim seems thus far undiseased. Only his heart is broken.

And it's not just biting humans. Carmelita seems to be our group's little Robespierre, leading her own reign of terror. (I know, Julius Caesar to the French Revolution — I'm mixing historical metaphors.) But she's managed to peck out nearly all of the sideburn and muff feathers on Ophelia and Alana, and she pecks poor Honey so much that her comb is starting to look stunted.

Although we've had much wringing of hands about this, it all seems well within the bounds of normal chicken behavior. The pecking order is brutal, man.

We're trying to calm her behavior using a combination of techniques:

• Bold and fearless movements  — we're not going to cower, even if she does try to peck us
• Saying "No" firmly (apparently birds are auditory creatures?)
• Responding to aggression with firm and gentle ruffling of feathers.

We'll let you know how it goes.

***
In better chicken news, I have the perfect way to use a half-dozen fresh chicken eggs: a souffle. I'd never made one till this weekend, and let me tell you, it was superb. Easy! Delicious! As satisfying a cooking experience as I've ever had. I made this Classic Cheese Souffle using sharp provolone, and I added a crushed clove of garlic and a tablespoon of chopped rosemary to the bechamel.

I didn't even have a proper souffle pan (I just used a 1.75 oven-safe glass casserole) and made a foil collar to prevent overflow. Worked like a charm.

Serve it with bread, a salad, and a glass of Riesling, and you've whipped up the perfect Saturday night dinner.

Easter, sunshine (and disastrous DIY dyes)

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Obvious-yet-profound revelation of the day: The connection between eggs and Easter is not a coincidence.

I feel like a fool even admitting this, but until I had a real relationship with real, live chickens, I didn't really consider that they might have a laying season. But — duh — of course they do! Chickens lay sporadically when it's cold and dark and wintery. Then as the lightness of spring comes their laying cranks up. We're getting six eggs nearly every day, and the weather is as springy and spectacular as I've ever seen it. These things are related.

And of course a basketful of eggs is a longtime Easter tradition. I thought about that this afternoon as I took my basket to pick up our blue, green, pale brown, and rich ecru eggs.

I wanted to do something special with our bounty of colorful (and delicious) eggs for the holiday.

My inspiration? The ever-fabulous Pam Zsori, whose housemartin blog is a favorite around here, and whose spring design tips are in our April issue of Sunset. (Now on newsstands, people.)

I was browsing her blog when I came across this idea — pure genius:

Rather than the sacchrine palette Easter-egg dye usually imparts, these eggs were sophisticated, gorgeous, surprising. She dyed brown eggs. Look at how marvelous they are!

Energized by this stroke of brilliance, I decided that I too would dye our colorful eggs to achieve new colorful heights. And rather than use those old-standard dye pellets, I decided that I would go with all-natural dyes. (Ha, ha. This seemed like a good idea at the time.)

I did some research, consulting the natural dye instructions at Plantea.com. Since they recommend hot dye methods over cold ones, I decided that's what I'd use. But I thought 30 minutes was too long to boil eggs — I wanted then hard-cooked, not over-boiled. Since I'd recently read instructions for making perfect hard-cooked eggs every time, I tried to incorporate that timing into making the eggs. Also, at this point, the prospect of using our precious eggs from our own chickens for this weird experiment started to seem like a bad idea, so I bought brown eggs from Trader Joe's (along with white eggs, which would act as a control group).

As for my natural dyes, I went with things I had on hand or could buy at TJ's. (It was a Tuesday night. Time was tight.)

Although experienced natural-dyers go with onion skins and other such ingredients, I went with the three most-staining things I could come up with: blueberry juice, beets, and mustard. (Natural dyeing techniques favor the lazy refrigerator-cleaner. I swear, I opened that blueberry juice in December, so I didn't feel bad about using it to dye my eggs. Also, I had no fewer than three open bottles of mustard; who knows when I opened those.)

The beets I pureed, then added water, and the mustard I thinned with water. I added white vinegar to each batch, because that's supposed to help the dye stick.

Then I put my eggs on the stove, brought them to a boil in the (very vivid) dye/juice/weird runny mustard, then let them sit, covered for 14 minutes, as our instructions specified for tasty hard-cooked eggs. Then, they went into the fridge to cold-soak overnight.

Let's just call this a failed experiment and get it over with:

The pretty blue, green, and brown eggs you see here are eggs as they came straight from the chicken. The creepy black ones were dyed with blueberry (color that, by the way, unattractively flakes off when you touch them) and the mustard-dyed ones were crazy-blotchy. You don't even see the beets, because rather than the violet I was hoping for, they turned out uneven beige.

The good news is that they're cooked perfectly. Now I just have to figure out how to use up 14 hard-cooked eggs.

All Yolked Up

by MacKenze Geidt, Sunset Assistant Travel Editor

Meet Jumbo: (and Jumbo's little brother egg on the right, providing size perspective in this case)

Jumbo weighs a whopping 72 grams.  Now that may not sound like a lot, but consider this: I checked with the USDA to find out average egg size delineation and here's what I found:

Large = minimum 45 grams; Extra Large = minimum 50.5 grams; Jumbo = minimum 56 grams

That makes our Jumbo egg 16 grams larger than a regulation Jumbo egg! (it was so big that the lid of a Trader Joe's Jumbo egg carton wouldn't close over it!)

Look how big Jumbo is compared to a storebought egg (Jumbo on the left, sterile-looking storebought egg in the center, and Little Brother on the right).   Around the office, Jumbo was initially referred to as "The Dinosaur Egg," and everyone was eager to see the contents (I personally was secretly hoping the contents would be somehow mutant...)

I finally worked up the nerve to crack Jumbo and got an inadvertent lesson in egg-cracking from Sunset Food Writer, Amy Machnak.  Amy taught me that you should never crack an egg on the surface of the bowl you're using to collect the contents.  Crack the egg on a separate surface.  Why?   Bacteria collects on the outside of an egg shell (think Salmonella), so the shell shouldn't make contact with the egg white and yolk.  Good tip!  The U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed:

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Focus_On_Shell_Eggs/index.asp

Check out Jumbo's contents: Jumbo had twins!                                                                                        

A double yolk!  My secret wish for mutant contents was fulfilled!   Although maybe it's not that uncommon after all... According to PoultryHelp.com, "double Yolkers appear when ovulation occurs too rapidly, or when one yolk somehow gets "lost" and is joined by the next yolk."

http://www.poultryhelp.com/oddeggs.html

Compare our beautiful double yolk with the storebought option:

Margo True, Sunset Food Editor explained that the runnier the yolk is, the older it is.  Conversely, the tighter the egg white, the fresher it is. 

Top image = storebought

Bottom = Sunset home-grown double-yolk egg

Which one would you rather eat??

Mark your calendars, it's chicken season

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Are you inspired to start your own flock? You're in luck: Many feed stores carry chicks in spring. (But, please, don't succumb to the lure of Easter chicks. Chickens need  coops, proper feed, and years of care. Don't impulse buy!)

The West is rife with events happening all over to orient new chicken owners. Here are just a few of the many classes and workshops we're looking forward to in 2008:

Portland

Livingscape Nursery holds their ChickenFest with workshops on coop-building and chicken care and selection, chicken-related film screenings, and displays of 20 different breeds March 26-28. (Details are still being finalized.)

Growing Gardens is holding an urban chicken-keeping workshop July 12.

Also sponsored by Growing Gardens: Portland's 5th annual Tour de Coops on Saturday, July 26. Tour urban chicken coops all over the city and chat with experienced chicken owners. In addition to all sorts of poultry-fabulous events, Growing Gardens also has good chicken resource information on their website, so click away!

Salt Lake City

Wasatch Community Gardens holds a class on Urban chickens on June 25. And on June 28, they'll have their own Tour de Coops (a bargain at only $5!)

San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco's Garden for the Environment has a class on city chickens (and ducks) March 29.  (Registration required; the cost is $15.)

Sunset's chicken guru Jody Main will be teaching a class on backyard chickens at Common Ground in Palo Alto on June 21. (Registration is required; the cost is $45.)

Seattle

Seattle Tilth hosts a class on raising baby chicks March 8, covering everything from chicken health and behavior to poultry law and coop construction. (Registration is required; the cost is $32).

Readers, do you know of others? Leave a comment, and we'll add 'em!

For our Bay Area readers: The guru of ethical, omnivorous eating, Berkeley's own Michael Pollan, will be speaking at Stanford University at 7:30 p.m. March 3. If you haven't read our interview with Pollan in the February issue of Sunset, check it out! And, you can read the full, unedited interview here.

Ruby says: Don't buy chicks impulsively. We're cute, but we're trouble.

Chicken craft; out to "pasture"; the egg bonanza continues!

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Answer me this: Is this not the cutest card ever?

Inspired by our photo of our beak-to-beak Rhodies, our crafty online editor Sheila Schmitz made this adorable pop-up card. (Find out how to make your own pop-up cards here.)

As far as our real, three-dimensional chickens, they are not crazy about the rain. Well, I'm not crazy about visiting them when it's raining. Even though they have a covered yard, the dampness of February rain gets into the straw under the coop and makes the whole area smell ... pungent. We're tossing straw into our compost bin as it gets soiled, but when the whole mess gets wet enough, there's no covering it up with fresh, clean straw. (A few hours of dry weather are enough to eliminate the smell entirely, though.)

The rain is terrific for the weeds, which continue to pop up all over the test garden at a tremendous pace. I pull them out — roots and all — and feed them to the girls, who gobble them up enthusiastically. We can't let our chickens free-range, but I like to think of my offerings of annual bluegrass and crabgrass as bringing the pasture to them. They snatch the tender blades first, often swallowing them in one, long, green ribbon, and then they use their feet to sort through the roots, nibbling on any earthworms, slugs or other critters unlucky enough to end up in their pen.

And despite the drizzly weather, they're settling into a thrilling 5-eggs-a-day pattern. The eggs have gotten notably fatter and darker too.

Our girl Honey is our last chicken to lay, which is not entirely surprising, considering how immature her comb and wattles are. She's squatting though, so it's just a matter of time.

Compare Honey (above) to Charlotte (below, right). They're the same breed — Buff Orpington — and the same age. But Charlotte looks like a fierce adult, while Honey still looks like an immature teen. (It may be my imagination, but Honey also seems to act like an immature teen. If I bring in a handful of greens and crouch down to feed them, Honey is always the one who waddles around behind me and takes a peck at my lower back. She's laughing at me, I swear. Maybe I'm getting too involved with these chickens.)

Sad as a cabbage in a chicken coop; happy as a cantaloupe

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

As far as chicken life goes, our flock has a sweet deal: A constant stream of chicken scraps, a swank 10- by 10-foot play area with a small pine tree, a coop with windows, people to pet them and feed them handfuls of grass. But recently I've been getting worried about them.

What if they get bored? What if they need more stimulation?

Perusing BackyardChickens.com, I got an idea. Cabbage, hung from the roof of the coop. That way, it could be a nutritious treat and a game of tetherball. Good for them and potentially hilarious! We couldn't lose.

First step: figuring out how to suspend a head of cabbage in mid-air. Our facilities supervisor, Tony Soria, didn't think it was at all odd when I showed up in the workshop asking if we could drill through a head of cabbage, but he helpfully pointed out that a drill would probably be overkill. Instead, he poked a hole through the core with a long, sharp skewer, and then threaded butcher twine through, tying a large washer onto the end to keep it secure.

Honey walks on by.

Sadly, all this effort was for naught. Maybe our chickens are spoiled by the tender greens they get from the garden, but they looked at our cabbage head — which was even organic! — like it was a boulder. Or invisible. Note Honey (above) walking by it like it didn't exist. It obviously did not register as food for them.

After a week of hanging, I had no choice but to declare the cabbage a failed experiment.

But the idea of chicken tetherball stuck with me.

So I replaced the cabbage with one of their favorite treats:

A peeled cantaloupe. This is what it looked like at 11 a.m. Friday.

Here's what it looked like at 3 p.m.

Ophelia was pecking at it like a piñata. It would slowly swing away from her, then come back, and she'd have another bite.

They continued to nibble on it over the weekend, but I got the impression that mobile food isn't really their thing. They prefer to step on their food and keep it still while they eat, so this morning, I cut the melon down. A few hours later, the only thing left was a little bit of skin.

Nesting boxes are full

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Excuse me, ladies.

The nesting boxes are hopping. When I went to check for eggs on Friday, I accidentally found Carmelita (on the left) and Ruby doing their business. I snapped a photo, checked for eggs, and let them back to their privacy.

(When I lifted Ruby up, I found a one of Alana's blue eggs and her brown one. Carmelita laid a little later.)

As our weather becomes spring-like, warm and sunny, our egg production has picked up. Five of our girls are laying now — although our Buff Orpington Charlotte is having a bit of trouble starting up. Her eggshells look thin and chalky, and one of them broke on Thursday.

Speaking of broken eggs: We've had a few. We were worried at first that Carmelita (or maybe Ruby, jealous that her fellow Rhodie was laying?) was pecking eggs. This could potentially be serious — egg-eating chickens do exist. And once they've developed a taste for eggs, it's hard to break them of the habit. Some veteran chicken-wranglers swear that the only solution is the stew pot.

But after careful analysis, we think that Carmelita just started laying really thin-shelled eggs, which got knocked around in the box till they broke. After all, the eggs appeared to be pecked, but they were not eaten.

Our egg-production problems are slowly working themselves out as the ladies mature. We ate 10 eggs (slow-scrambled, with mushrooms and truffle oil) on Wednesday, and we still had all these on Friday.

When we first got our baby chicks, we were thrilled at the idea that we might get a couple dozen eggs a week, but it was hard to believe it would happen. Now, collecting a couple of eggs every time you check the nest box seems like no big deal.

Next: The games chickens play (and do not play)

The runt's first egg

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Egg update: Our chickens, acquired six months ago for the purpose of producing eggs for our One-Block Feast, have one by one begun to lay. Ophelia went first, with pale blue eggs. Alana, second, makes soft green ones. Carmelita followed, and hers are reddish brown.

And who turns out to be Layer #4, ahead of our stout, maternal-looking Buff Orpingtons, but Ruby—the chick who almost checked out. Witness her tiny, freckled effort below:

Ruby's egg at left, next to a storebought egg.

Weight: just under 1 ounce, versus 2 ounces for the storebought. Go Ruby! A milestone in the life of a little chicken.

The funny thing is: She's been our feistiest hen so far, croaking belligerently at us whenever we enter the coop, checking out the kitchen scraps first to let the others know they're edible (more croaking), bobbling along right on our heels as we leave (croak croak croak). But now, after creating this one egg, Ruby has mellowed. Not so bossy, much quieter...almost...contented. But then again, I could be reading way too much into this.

Anyway... as long as we're comparing eggs, here are all four of our layers' eggs next to that storebought behemoth:

Left to right: Ruby, Carmelita, Alana, and Ophelia. Center: Name unknown.

Next: Chicken tetherball! YEAH.

Kerfuffle in the nest box

by Margo True, Sunset food editor

One by one, our chickens are stepping up to their duties and beginning to lay eggs. Ophelia went first, causing much excitement around these parts. Alana started up a couple of days ago, producing a slender greenish egg that looked a little like a smooth kiwi. Both of them seem unfazed by this radical change in their physiologies. They just calmly deposit in the henhouse and then hop back out to the yard as though nothing’s happened.

Yesterday, it was Carmelita’s turn, the redder of our two Rhode Island Reds. No walk in the park for this chicken, I'm afraid.

Around noon, Jim, Team Chicken’s leader, reported that he’d seen her sitting in one of the nest boxes, shooting her legs in various directions and squawking frantically.

I popped by the coop an hour later and there was no sign of her—in the yard or, when I peered through its window, in the henhouse. Finally I saw a motionless bit of wing up in a nest box and went round to the latched door that leads to it. She was in there all right—scrunched up against the door in a frozen position, her head thrown back and beak open, like a figure in a Napoleonic war painting. Good God. I shut the door quickly. The poor thing clearly needed privacy.

What if that first egg is stuck, I wondered. Or breech or something. Does massage help? I blocked these thoughts and managed to get back to work.

After another hour or so, Jim came into the kitchen, holding her small brown egg—with a hole punched in it, a hole that looked suspiciously beak-size. He’d found Carmelita still in the nest, clucking loudly over her punctured egg, and snatched it before she could do further damage (or worse, acquire a taste for eggs, which apparently some chickens do).

Maybe she was so furious after her wild afternoon that she vented on the egg. Or maybe I am a hopeless anthropomorphist.

Anyway, we blew the contents out of the egg, and now it’s just a peaceful shell with a scar. Here’s hoping things get easier for Carmelita.

More egg-cellent news!

by Margo True, Sunset food editor

We have a new layer! Alana the Ameraucana (aka Martin Van Buren) has at last leapt into the productive phase of her life, after two weeks of suggestive Egg Crouching. Above (on the left) is her first effort, which we know is hers because it's a distinctive mossy green compared to the bluer tint of Ophelia's egg (on the right). Also, though you can't really tell from this photo, it's also noticeably skinnier than Ophelia's. Well, bravo to Alana for popping it out at all. Once she's internally, er, adjusted, we expect fatter eggs. All to enrich our one-block feast this summer.

A happy hen will, we're told, lay an egg a day. How remarkable is that--to reproduce yourself every day!? Hats off to the hard-working chickens.

Unbending gender; unladylike behavior in the coop; egging along; the weeds-and-infested-olives diet

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

First things first: Six weeks ago, we had a sudden panic that our Rhode Island Red Carmelita was a rooster because of her suspiciously shiny feathers. Well, we can put that worry to rest.

Observe:

That, my friends, is Carmelita doing the egg squat. (Also, that is my skirt and completely inappropriate footwear for tromping around in a coop. For future reference: heels + straw = unladylike.)

Up until last Monday, she was still avoiding us when we tried to pet her. No more. Now we have four girls squatting, Ophelia (our layer!), Carmelita, Ruby, and Alana.

That's Alana (aka, Martin Van Buren) and our online editor, Sheila Schmitz (aka, Alana's new best friend).

But things here in Eggland aren't all souffles and really, really good scrambled eggs. We only have one girl laying. (I think. Other members of Team Chicken think Alana's also laying; both their eggs are blue, so it's hard to tell.)

And our girl Ophelia has had a bit of trouble. Last week, I found a completely soft-shelled egg in the straw under their coop. It was egg-shaped, but covered in a rubbery, translucent membrane (the same one you sometimes have to pick off hardboiled eggs). I could see the yolk inside, but it had broken. (I thought about photographing it for the blog, but everyone I showed it to found it gross, so I've refrained, dear reader.)

And the next day, I found another one, but this was in their little yard. It had broken. I imagine they were both from Ophelia, our layer, since she didn't lay an egg those days.

Soft-shelled eggs, while freaky, are apparently fairly normal, especially in chickens that are just starting to lay. In addition to their layen crumble and cracked corn, we're feeding them crushed oyster shells for calcium, which should help them develop that good, thick egg structure. And, of course, lots of greens:  Scraps from the kitchen and, well, weeds. I've been collecting them from the alleys near my house as I walk my dog in the morning. My husband gets embarrassed and has threatened to stop walking with me, but I maintain that by ridding the neighborhood of sow thistle and weedy grasses, I'm doing a public service. It's volunteerism of a sort.

Weeds:

Since then, our Ophelia has laid four good eggs, shell and all.

Now it's time for the others to start doing their part! We are not running a chicken charity here! They need to step up. (To be fair to them, chickens are supposed to get 14 hours of daylight a day to really lay optimally. Right now, we have about 11 hours. Some people use artificial light to stimulate more laying in winter, but we haven't bothered.)

I leave you with a question, readers of the blogosphere:
Our chicken coop is underneath an olive tree. (One of our many olive trees that are infested with the olive fly.) Anyway, it means that tons of olives fall near (and roll into) the coop. The chickens adore the olives; they fight over them, and gulp them down pit and all. Pit and all! And to no apparent ill-effect. So my question is this: Are olives okay for them to eat? I understand that chickens have, er, uncomplicated digestive systems, but this seems dangerous. And yet, they've been eating them for months and never had any trouble.

So this is what a really fresh egg tastes like

by Margo True, Sunset food editor

Several days ago, chicken Ophelia wowed us all by laying our flock’s desperately awaited first egg (we’ll need many more for our end-of summer feast). Of course we were itching to eat it right away, but it was awfully small. It could not serve all of Team Chicken. So we waited a few more days—and Ophelia obliged. Eggs three had we!

Jim McCann, leader of Team Chicken, with eggs.

After five months, we were finally going to eat our own fresh eggs. How fresh? One of them was actually still warm. Hah!

We wanted to save the First Egg somehow, though, so we decided to blow out the contents the way you do for Easter eggs.  Here is how we did it, step by step, while managing to avoid hurting our eardrums. (Remember in grade school, when you’d have to put your lips to the egg and blow? Ouch.)

SUNSET’S KITCHEN-TESTED METHOD FOR PAINLESS EGG BLOWING

What you will need:

Washed and dried eggs
1 tack
1 hatpin or darning needle
1 ear syringe (we found ours near the pharmacy counter of our neighborhood Safeway)
1 bowl
Running water
1 folded paper towel

Washed and dried eggs.

Step 1:  Make first (small) hole. Poke a hole in the larger end of the egg, which is where the air pocket is, with a good sturdy tack. Make the hole twice as large as the tack’s tip (to allow more air in for easier blowing). Hold the egg in your hand so you don’t smash it to smithereens on the table what with all the pressure of the poking.

We discovered that Ophelia’s pretty little eggs have surprisingly thick shells, like unglazed porcelain. Firm drilling worked better than gentle scratching. “I used a lot of pressure,” said Sunset researcher Elizabeth Jardina, who turned out to be an excellent egg driller. “More pressure than I actually felt comfortable with.”

Drilling the first hole.

Step 2:  Scramble. Stick a darning needle or a hat pin in the hole and wiggle it around to scramble the contents. It’ll be hard to get the yolk out unless you do this.

Step 3: Make a second (larger) hole. Put a finger on the hole you’ve just made, flip the egg over, and make another, bigger hole in the small end.

The second hole (bigger than the first).

Step 4: Expel the egg. While holding your egg over a bowl, put the ear syringe against the first (smaller) hole and gently squeeze the syringe. In a moment, the white and then the yolk will stream out of the egg into the bowl.

Step 5: Rinse the shell. Fill the eggshell partway with water and shake it up to rinse thoroughly. Then use the syringe to blow the water out of the shell. You might have to repeat the rinsing and blowing a couple of times to get it completely clean.

Step 6: Dry the eggs. Let them drain on paper towels for a few days until they’re completely dry. Store in a cool dark place.

You may notice that we began with three eggs, and now have only two eggshells draining above. Yes, dear reader, we lost a shell. Too small an exit hole, too vigorous a syringing. We learned the hard way.

The yolks were a deep yellow-orange, almost the color of marigolds, and the whites very firm and bouncy. It was actually kind of hard to get them to combine with the yolks because they resisted the whisk.

To do justice to our first eggs, we chose a slow-scrambling method that makes the eggs so tender they’re practically like custard. It’s from a wonderful new cookbook called My Bombay Kitchen, written by our friend Niloufer Ichaporia King.

Here is her recipe (we adjusted the amounts to suit 3 little eggs):

Creamy Scrambled Eggs (Charvela Ida)

It's not hard to make scrambled eggs voluptuously creamy the French way, with lots of butter, but it's good to know that there's an alternative. You can make equally creamy eggs using a small amount of butter and a little slug of milk, about a tablespoonful per egg.

The high-heat, short-order cook's approach to scrambling eggs doesn't work here because the goal is creamy softness. You'll be surprised by how many lovers of firm scrambled eggs are converted by this approach. You need to use a saucepan for the best results. Nonstick pans are fine, although I've seen cooks in Bombay use thin aluminum pans with great success. Serves 4 generously.

8 large eggs
1/2 cup milk or half-and-half
1 to 2 tablespoons ghee [Indian clarified butter], clarified butter, or butter
4 pinches (about) salt

Whisk the eggs and milk lightly together in a small 1-quart saucepan. Add the ghee and about 4 pinches of salt. Over low heat, stir the eggs constantly with a wooden spatula, keeping contact with the bottom of the pan. In 5 minutes or so, the eggs will be creamy, soft, and ready to serve.

Best eaten with a spoon.

I scooped the eggs, so bright yellow they almost looked dyed, out onto a plate and we stood around and spooned them up. They were velvety and tasted rich and deep—like eggs, only squared. They were better, even, than the pasture-fed hen eggs I have bought for many dollars per dozen at farmers’ markets. I know, I know, I’m maybe a little bit biased. But really—they were the best eggs ever.

Team Chicken member Elizabeth Jardina

Egg-cellent news!!!

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Finally, finally ... an egg!

There it is, right in the center. (The larger brown egg at the back is our decoy egg, a marble egg we put in there on Friday because we were worried that the chickies wouldn't know where to lay.) And the color is pretty accurate; that beautiful blue oval was laid by our own Ameraucana Ophelia (formerly: Kevin).

What a relief — egg fever had hit pretty hard here at Sunset headquarters.

Actually, egg fever had just hit me. But I was itching for eggs. Restless. Desperate. Every time I went to the coop, I ended our interaction with: "Lay me an egg." And I tried to make it sound stern, like it was an egg, or else, the frying pan. (Actually, our chickens are layers only, and they'll never face the frying pan.)

Browsing the forums at BackyardChickens.com just made me antsier. I discovered that our 21- and 22-week-old girls were just about the right age to start laying. Plus, their combs were getting bigger and pinker. The combs of egg layers are supposed to turn juicy red, like a raspberry. Sunset EggWatch 2008 was on.

Then, on Thursday, Ophelia did the "squat."

Here's the deal with the egg squat: It's the surest sign that your girls are getting ready to become, ahem, grown-lady chickens. I tried to pet Ophelia, and instead of dodging my hand, like she usually does, she crouched under my hand, threw her wings back, and stood very still, letting me stroke her back. This was highly unusual behavior; Ophelia typically flees from petting.

At that point, I started going to the coop twice a day.

I came to the office on Saturday, just to check. She was hanging out in the nesting box. Close ...! We were so close!

On Sunday, I got the call from Alan Phinney, our managing editor. An egg had landed! I rushed to the office, where I met my fellow member of Team Chicken, food editor Margo True, and we made googly, aww-ing noises over it for several minutes.

The bliss of our first egg!

But that was nothing compared to the excitement of today. I went to to the coop this morning at 11:30 to check on the ladies. Ophelia, our quietest girl, was making some raspy clucking announcements like she had something to say. I hung around and watched her trot into and out of the house. Alana, her fellow Ameraucana, followed her, jumping up onto the roost and clucking. Ophelia jumped up into the nesting box, then out onto the roost and then back into the box. Keeping an eye on me the whole time, she started rustling around in the box. I stayed very still, hoping she'd forget I was there.

She made a distinct "Cluck, cluck" noise and then she was quiet. I watched her head as she opened her beak and then closed it. Then she was very still. I tiptoed around to the back of the coop and opened the door to the nesting box:

Another egg! (Again, that big brown thing is our decoy egg.)

 

Then she hopped out, and I snatched the still-warm oval to bring inside and show off. Miraculous. I felt as plum-proud as if I'd laid the silly thing myself.

Ophelia, who seems to be our only girl who's laying so far, is producing petite blue eggs; the first was 1.5 ounces, the second was 1.6 ounces. Under USDA guidelines, that would qualify them as "small." (They do seem really small, especially if you're used to buying Extra Large or Jumbo eggs from the grocery store.) They'll get bigger as she matures.

Tomorrow: What will we do with the eggs? A tiny, tiny omelet? (Maybe.)

Talk chicken to me

by Margo True, Sunset food editor

Every day, at least one person here at Sunset will ask, “When are those chickens going to lay eggs?” They’re about five months old now, and it could really happen any time. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” suddenly isn’t a cliché. It’s actually kind of calming.

Which started me thinking about chicken lingo. There’s a lot of it. Not surprising when you consider that humans have been keeping chickens for 5000 years.

Just for starters, there’s:

Pecking Order And you thought it was an office term… Chickens actually do this; generally there’s a line of dominance in any given flock. At Sunset, Ruby is Top Hen. (Listen to her commanding croak.)

Roost Every day at dusk, a chicken will find a sheltered spot, preferably up high and snuggled next to another chicken, to sleep. A rooster is called a rooster because one of his main jobs is to herd chickens to their roost for the night.

Chicken Scratch What a doctor writes on your prescription. Just like the marks a chicken’s feet leave in dirt.

Chicken Said by someone who does not have your best interests at heart, as in “Don’t be such a chicken—that snake won’t bite.” Also refers to the ridiculous game, started in the 1950s, in which two teenage boys drive at each other head-on or toward an obstacle, the first one to swerve being the chicken. Smart is what I call it.

Running Around Like a Chicken With Its Head Cut Off The ultimate in disorganization. Drawn, unfortunately, from a lot of vivid farm scenes. That’s why cones are used to contain chickens in their final moments.

Hen-Pecked Once said about a wife who verbally picked on her husband. Now, of course, nagging is equal opportunity.

Fly the Coop Vanish suddenly. An older meaning, from the late 18th century: To break out of prison.

Chicken Feed (also chicken change) Absurdly small amount of money. As in, “My starting salary as an actress was chicken feed.”

Chicken Run Pen attached to a chicken coop, where poultry wander during the day. It’s been used to describe the abandonment of marginal seats by British members of Parliament for seats they were surer to win. It was also a derisive reference in the 1970s to the flight of whites from Rhodesia as it was becoming independent Zimbabwe. 

Chicken Ranch The original Chicken Ranch operated in Gilbert, Texas, as a brothel in the mid 1900s. You can guess the meaning of “chicken” in this context. Another explanation: Local farmers handed over chickens as payment for services rendered.

Brood To moodily contemplate, as in “Don’t brood over that silly boy, my dear. He wasn’t worth it.” Derived from “broody,” the inwardly focused (and pretty much immobile) state of a chicken when she’s sitting on her eggs.

Lay an Egg Not what we want for any Sunset project—except the chickens. What a strange term for failure, when you think about it.

Egghead As in, “What happened to Mary? She used to date eggheads and wear sweater sets—now she’s into surfers and raw food.” If you yourself are an egghead, you might want to check out The Chicken Book, a tome plump with fascinating facts and lore.

Egg Someone On Goad a person into doing something difficult and possibly not all that good for them. Comes from the behavior of a laying chicken’s coopmates, who surround her and cluck encouragingly when she’s about to lay.

Eggbeater 1930s term for a helicopter.

Cockpit The English theater “pit”, where orchestras now play, was originally used for cockfights (hugely popular in 18th-century London).

And… because it’s too tempting not to include…

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Punchlines, please! We’d love to see your favorites. (And add to this list, if you like. Just post a comment below.)

Listen up; the chicken crying game, part II; clucking our way through adolescence; is that the eighth president I see in our coop?

By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Every time I visit the chickens, this is what I hear:

Our friend Ruby, who has grown into quite a lovely lady, makes this decidedly unladylike noise at the sight of people. Like a creaky door. Sometimes it means "Give me some of whatever you're carrying," and other times it means "Don't feed Charlotte that delicious grass! I want it," but it can also be a greeting for any human who dares enter the coop.

Ruby's body looks almost like it's covered in netting. Her feathers are very matte and very smooth. (Soft too, when she lets you give her a quick pet.)

Which brings us to our other Rhode Island Red, Carmelita, the lady who was looking like a dude to us. Here's an updated picture of the two of them:

Carmelita (on the left) certainly has a lot of greenish feathers on her body. Now they're 22 weeks old. I think that if she was going to secretly be a rooster, she would have said something by now.

Since we last blogged, the girls have grown up in a few other ways too. Their vocalizations have changed. Rather than a weird combination of creaking and cheeping, they sound like a happy, clucking clutch of hens.

Listen here:

A happy clucking bunch — with the occasional creaky door noise, which is always Ruby. Fellow chicken-wrangler MacKenzie and I were worried for a while that the creaky-door voice was going to morph into a cock-a-doodle-doo, but Ruby's so decidedly hen-like, we decided our fears were baseless.

Of course, MacKenzie is no slouch either. Listen to her traditional chicken call here:

And they're developing combs and wattles that are bigger and pinker every day:

This is either Charlotte or Honey. I can never tell the difference.

Alana, one of our famously hawk-like Ameraucanas has developed some — er, facial feathers. Hilarious, awkward facial feathers. For your viewing amusement, I offer you a comparison:

So, does our Alana look like president Martin Van Buren or what?

Even with all this maturity, still no eggs. Yes, I know it's the dead of winter, but I'm dreaming of fresh eggs. Scrambled with the baby arugula that's just popping up out of the damp ground., Yes, I know we planted that for the chickens, but still, it would be scrumptious with their (potential, future) eggs.

I leave you with a photo of a funny butternut squash from the garden. Talk about an awkward growth spurt:

Lady looks a little bit like a dude, but is probably still a lady

By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

So, our feathers have been ruffled lately by a nagging fear that one of our pullets is a rooster.

That could be really, really bad news. If one of our shes is a he, we wouldn't legally be able to keep him in our particular municipality (Menlo Park, California) because roosters crow. Loudly. Often at inappropriate times of day and night.

The chicken in question is Carmelita, who you may remember as the sturdier of our two Rhode Island Reds.

I was describing her beautiful green-tinged feathers to our chicken guru, Jody Main, and Jody got really quiet.

Then, she said: "Uh-oh."

As it turns out, Rhode Island Red roosters have greenish feathers on their necks, and especially on their tails. Carmelita (above, note the neck) is developing dark feathers that flash green in sunlight.

Then Jody asked me if she was really shiny.

She is. She looks almost wet.

Apparently that too is a sign of a rooster.

It was time to consult the experts: the forums at BackyardChickens.com. They helpfully have an entire bulletin board called What Breed or Gender is This?

After an extensive perusal of photos of Rhodies at various stages of development, I think I'm prepared to say that I don't think Carmelita is having a gender-identity crisis. At this point, Carmelita and our other Rhodie, Ruby, are 16 weeks old; they were born about Aug. 22. By this point, it seems like most Rhodie roosters start developing big red combs and pronounced wattles (those red things that hang down from their cheek/neck area.) Her comb is quite petite, and her wattles, while they exist, are not very prominent.

Now, it is possible for roosters to be late-bloomers. BackyardChicken.com users report "mute roos" not revealing themselves as the non-egg-laying sex until 22 weeks, but we're hoping for the best with our suspiciously shiny Carmelita. And we're on alert for stray cock-a-doodle-doos. (Right now both Carmelita and Ruby's main vocalization has an uncanny resemblance to a creaky door. No real clucking yet, and certainly no crowing.)

Readers with chicken experience — you don't think Carmelita is really Carl, do you? Reassuring comments would be appreciated. I'm not sure what we would do with her if she's a him.

Speaking of our lovely flock, they've been braving our recent bout of relatively cold weather with fluffy aplomb. We were a little bit worried about how they'd weather our nighttime lows, which have been dipping into the 30s, but apparently our Bay Area weather just isn't that cold for a chicken.

It's also about time that we properly introduce them to the world. How about some photos?

Ruby, all grown up.

Quick facts
Name: Ruby
Breed: Rhode Island Red
Age: 16 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Ginger. Red-headed, sassy, secretly everyone's favorite.

You may remember Ruby as our delicate runt, the chicken we were most worried about. Compared to the others, she was tiny! And she spent all of her first week of life nodding off under the heat lamp, then being startled back awake. Plus, she fell victim to the dreaded "pasty butt." (You think raising a chicken is easy??)

But oh, how our lovely lady has grown. Although she doesn't cluck yet — again, the creaking door sound  — she's blossomed into a healthy adolescent. (A pullet, technically. They're not hens till they're one year old.)


Honey perches on a Mugho pine.

Quick facts
Name: Honey
Breed: Buff Orpington
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Sporty. Good natured, likes to jump in trees (or on your arm).

Honey is one of the flock leaders. She's not shy at all — she's the first to jump up and grab whatever offering you're bringing. And she's the one we used to let fly up on to our shoulders and laps. She doesn't mind being picked up as much as the other ones, and likes to be stroked.


Alana gives a mighty glare.

Quick facts
Name: Alana
Breed: Ameraucana
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Scary.

Although she used to be one of our most docile girls, willing to be cuddled and have her chest stroked until she was six weeks old, Alana has gotten quite suspicious of us these days. She will not consider being picked up, and she's one of the last to cluster around you when you bring them food. Plus, that glare!


Charlotte struts.

Quick facts
Name: Charlotte
Breed: Buff Orpington
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Baby Spice. Adorable, busty, sweet.

Charlotte  is slightly lighter in color and has rufflier feathers than her sister Honey. Both Orpingtons were actually named "Charlotte" for the first three weeks we had them because we couldn't tell them apart. Our eagle-eyed art director Jim McCann was the first to notice that Honey was slightly darker, although we mere mortals — who work mostly with words, not photos — couldn't tell the difference until weeks later.


Ophelia ... also gives a mighty glare.

Quick facts
Name: Ophelia (formerly, Kevin)
Breed: Ameraucana   
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Posh, I guess. I'm tempted to say Scary again because the Ameraucanas look so fierce, but I've kind of written myself into a corner with this Spice Girls thing.

Ophelia went from being one of our shyest chickens to one that — grudgingly — tolerates being picked up. She's a flock leader too, always ready to take a bite of quackgrass when offered.

Chicken Smitten (or, How the Chickens and I Ended Our Romance, but Remain Friends)

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

I bought our chickens a bunch of dill at the grocery store the other day. I have completely cracked.

I was wandering around, trying to drum up some lunch, and I couldn't help but check out the fennel selection, just to see if there was anything that our flock would like. The fennel was OK, but didn't have as much of the feathery foliage tops as I would have liked; plus, it was $4.99 a pound, which is a lot for a weedy free-ranger that grows, literally, on the sides of highways. But right next to the too-expensive fennel was a gorgeous, full bunch of dill. $2.99. I bought it, along with some clam chowder.

Note, I did not purchase a vegetable for me to eat. Just for the chickies. Like I said, cracked.

And, just as I suspected, the dill is a hit. Certainly $2.99 worth of fun.

We're slowly learning about the chickens palates. They seem to like most plants in the carrot family, which includes their beloved fennel, dill, carrot tops, parsley, and celery greens. As best I can tell, their general rule is: Bitter is better.

Their patch of arugula has been plucked bare (the peppery green is their absolute favorite; we've re-planted, but germination takes time), so we've been saving scraps from the test kitchen to satiate their need for greens. At various times, Sunset staffers have brought in lovingly saved leaves of soft butter lettuce or mild red-tinged Oak Leaf lettuce; the chickens have been shockingly ungrateful. But give them some bitter carrot tops and they're in chicken heaven.

To be perfectly honest, though, our girls are happiest to munch sow thistle or a weedy grass that's popping up everywhere around their coop. (Our best Sunset garden minds think it's quack grass; we think the seeds came from the straw we're using in their coop.) They love weeds. (I tasted them myself; the grass is not delicious, but the sow thistle isn't bad. Not that I'm advocating eating random plants that pop up in your garden, because I'm