Those little...chicks!

I got back to the prairie restoration area last week, after many weeks of thinking about going. Terry’s been mowing it regularly. While I think we were only supposed to mow it once, the most important goal is to keep the invasive annuals from going to seed. I walked out on Wednesday to find that I now have half an acre of weeds. I have a sinking feeling that I have wasted a whole lot of money on prairie seeds. I expect this is why every other page in the Prairie Moon catalog reminds customers that it takes three years before the prairie plants bloom. They must get a lot of calls from people with giant weed beds in the first year.

The prairie restoration area

Which is, alas, mostly clover

Nadia is starting to get bits of white on her head feathers. Gracie is not, but she was not inclined to pose.

Nadia with white streaks in her head feathers next to a Buff Orpington hen

The Welsummer rooster looks like he is wearing brown pants. Even though all the chickens have feathers on their legs, the dark color somehow produces a more striking image.

Mr. Welsummer Fancy Pants

I made a video of the chickens running from the coop. If you watch closely, the all exit except for Gracie, who ducks behind the feeder. She can never make up her mind about going out. Many mornings she stands at the top of the ramp debating. The video also shows three chicks roosting on top of the sunshade, which is simply not wide enough for their feet. Still, height is status in the chicken world.

The chicks are getting big enough that Hilda got concerned about having 24 of them in Coop 2. We decided that we would separate the hens and move them to Coop 1 today. It never ceases to amaze me how, given that I have a Ph.D. in Biology, I can take action on thoughts that come into my head without ever stopping to question my assumptions. In this case, I took as a fact the assumption that the chicks were big enough to not get through the electric netting. Thus, when I suggested that we take down the chick fence, Hilda concurred and said, “Let’s do it before we let them out.”

And so sure we were of our assumption that we not only took down and rolled up the chick fence, we also took out all the poles. You know where this is going, don’t you?

We let the chicks out and began our Saturday changing of the wood chips. I climbed up into the coop to begin scooping out the dirty chips. From that vantage point, I looked over the yard and saw the chicks very happily dining on the cilantro outside the electric netting. (The netting was not plugged in at the time, but we know from last year that they are not deterred by the current in any case. The electric part is more to keep predators out.) They were walking through the netting as if it did not exist. What to do?

We let them free range until we had the coop cleaned. They didn’t wander far as the best foraging was mostly between the two fences. The first thought I had was to put the screen across the coop door so we could toss chicks in as we caught them and have them stay. HA! That’s a good one. We chased as many in as we could and put in the screen.

“How many did we get?” I asked Hilda.

“Four.”

“Okay. Only 20 to go.”

We managed to catch two more. It was impossible to corner them. Whenever we got close, they would scoot through the netting.

When Hilda left the run for something, she fussed with trying to get the netting closed at the entrance. Suddenly the absurdity of what she was doing occurred to her. “I have to get the fence closed so they don’t get in,” she said.

Which gave me an idea. We put the chick fence back up. We did a better job this time. We left both fences opened and started herding. Most of the chickens were inside the netting behind the coop in a particularly luxurious patch of volunteer dill. It still wasn’t easy. Initially, I was on the inside, and Hilda was on the outside. We should have left the chick fence open on both ends. The should-haves don’t count. Hilda herded a group of chicks all the way around perimeter between the two fences to the gate. One of them broke off and turned the other way. Hilda got most of them inside the chick fence and shut it. “Stay where you are!” I yelled and started herding the stray.

I got her to the gate, and Hilda was nowhere to be seen. “OPEN THE GATE! I told you to stay put!”

“I didn’t hear that,” she replied, but she came back to her post, and we got the chick in.

After that, Hilda stayed at the gate with the screen while I took the lid to a large storage bin to try to herd the rest out of the dill. And two hours after the whole fiasco began, they were all back in. We counted twice. Hilda took the coop; I took the run. First we counted the absolute number. She got 12, I got 13. Oops. I must have had 12. Then we counted by variety. I had 4 Welsummer, 1 Araucana, and 7 Buff Orpington. Hilda had 2 Welsummer, 2 Araucana, both Silver Polish, and 6 Buff Orpington.

We are totally NOT moving the hens today.

I heaved a sigh of relief and went in for a much deserved and much delayed cup of tea.

Chicken fights

The chicks continue to grow quickly. The roosters’ combs are getting ever so slightly larger and redder than the hens. I’m not prepared to separate the hens just yet, but I certainly have my suspicions. It looks to me like we have only one Welsummer rooster of the six survivors of that variety. The rooster is a darker color overall in addition to having the larger comb.

Buff Orpington rooster on the sun shade

Welsummer hen

Welsummer rooster

Lidia is getting a black beard. She and Cleopatra look more alike than they did when they were chicks.

Nadia and Gracie’s head feathers are almost long enough to flop over.

Cleopatra

Lidia (left) and a Buff Orpington hen

Nadia

I tried hard to get a good video of a chicken fight. It is a difficult task as the location of any given chicken fight is completely unpredictable. Instead of one good video, I have a montage of bad ones. The typical sequence is that the chicks fly at each other (sometimes they collide, sometimes not), have a little stare down, and then pretend that nothing happened. I find it hilarious and could watch for hours. The world would be a happier place if humans adopted the same battle strategies.

I saw the strangest thing on the patio yesterday. Early in the morning, I noticed that ants were swarming out of the cracks. When Terry put the patio down, he very carefully filled the cracks with some kind of hugely expensive sand that was supposed to prevent the ants from nesting. The ants didn’t get the memo, and we’ve got ant hills all over the place. About 11:00, I saw odd star shapes in the area where the swarm had been. I had to look very closely to make out that several ants were surrounding one ant. The head of the central ant had its jaws locked with the jaws of another ant. The remaining ants seemed to be tapping on the central ant’s body. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to pick up chemical signals or attacking. I concluded it was the latter because in some of the stars, the central ant was curled up and not looking so good. Yet all the ants looked exactly alike. I may have witnessed a hostile takeover of a nesting site either by a different family of the same species or a physically very similar yet different species of ant. Only the ants know for sure. By 1:00, it was all over. Regular ant traffic had resumed at its low level.

Stars of ants on the patio

We have had some rain every day for the last week. Yesterday Hilda and I walked down to the creek to see how full it was getting. Despite the precipitation, it is still well below the banks. Terry looked up the stats from last year’s floods. The pattern was similar—between half an inch and an inch of rain every day—except for the day of the flood, when we got 3”. Hopefully that won’t happen.

While we were back by the creek, we checked on the wild black raspberries. We are on track to have a good harvest. We saw a meadowlark in the field. I don’t remember seeing one here before. Also new this year is a large population of frogs out in the tall grasses. I haven’t seen one, but the chorus at night is amazing. I heard the calls of at least two different species. We saw a couple of fireflies last night. The primroses are blooming. It’s really summer now!

Primroses

Schmaltz

To catch up a loose end, the robins fledged last week. It turns out that one of the four eggs never hatched.

All that's left in the robins' nest

We ate our first garden harvest (not counting the asparagus that comes up annually by itself) Saturday night. I thinned the pak-choy and used it as a substitute for cabbage in bubble and squeak (a British dish of fried potatoes and cabbage with a name that ranks right up there with spotted dick and bangers-and-mash.)

Pak-choy, the first harvest from the garden

Also on Saturday, we saw the chicks in a dust bath. They were so cute! They all crowded in, vying for position. Gracie hopped out of the coop, strolled right over and plunked herself down smack in the middle. Sadly, I arrived with my camera just seconds after Terry had started weed-whacking nearby. All the chicks were cowering in the coop.

Sunday the wind blew and blew hard. My brother and his wife came out to take us to the Grandview Inn for Fathers’ Day brunch. When we got home, one of the chicks was between the chick fence and the electric fence. I grabbed it and tossed it back where it belonged. When it was bedtime, two chicks were between the fences. How were they getting over the chick fence?

Our first hypothesis was that they were escaping near the coop door. Accordingly, we spent some time this morning moving the posts of the chick fence closer to the door. We also put more earth staples around the bottom in case they were sneaking underneath. When Hilda was doing the usual chores, however, we saw the chicks walk right up the fence where it lay at an angle after she had moved the post to access the food and water. Well. Presumably, the wind had blown the fence over enough that the chicks had just walked over it literally in pursuit of the greener grass (and better dill). We reinforced the fence with another post. No escapees today. So far, anyway.

Also on Sunday, the row cover came loose from the cabbages and Brussels sprouts. When I went down after supper to secure it again, I was astounded at the size of the plants underneath. I put the cover back with plans to uncover the Brussels sprouts today, as they were getting stunted. The Napa cabbage seems close to harvest. After an internal struggle, I decided to leave it all uncovered. The downside is that it will get bugs. The upside is that it won’t be so hot, and the Coles tend to like cooler temperatures. They do look so very beautiful with the cover first comes off.

Back to front, cabbage, Napa cabbage, Brussels sprouts

I cooked the first hen today. I used her in a new recipe for red pozole from Pati’s Mexican Table. I put the pozole (hominy) in the slow cooker before I went to work. I quit in the garden at 3:30 to start on supper. I knew the chicken would need longer to cook. I figured on simmering the cut up pieces for an hour instead of the 35 minutes given in the recipe would be fine.

What I learned is that I have never in my whole life cooked a grown-up chicken. The first surprise was how thick the skin was and how much fat that chicken had. Big blobs of bright yellow fat were under the skin, by the joints, around the neck and belly. Also, the chicken was hairy. A fair number of inch-long hairs were here and there, especially on the wings. Those hairs were not easy to pull off. Knowing I was going to throw out the skin anyway, I gave it up fairly quickly.  I covered the chicken with water, put in the onion and cilantro, and set it to simmer. After an hour, I took the pieces out of the stock, let them cool a bit, and tried to get the meat off the bone. I couldn’t even get the skin to peel off. I had to slide a knife beneath it and cut. I had to peel the tendons away from the entire outside surface of the leg muscles. The wings and thighs were almost as bad. It took forever. Only the breast meat behaved normally, except that I had to pull the tendons out of the middle. I gave up on the back. These were some hard-won calories, let me tell you. I feared that the meat would be inedibly tough. Note to self: cook the hens longer.

On the top of the broth was the most schmaltz I have ever seen from one chicken. I ran it through the gravy separator and ended up with a little over a cup. It was the same amazing bright yellow color it had been in the chicken. Seems almost a shame to throw it out, but it is neither healthy nor part of my cultural heritage.

One cup of bright yellow schmaltz on top of some by-catch broth

So after all that, I was feeling pretty flustrated, as one of my coworkers in Mandan used to say. But when I tasted the broth, well, it was all so totally worth it. It was the best stock I have ever made. While the chicken was cooking, I had rehydrated dried chiles and put them in a blender with seasonings, garlic, and onion. I sautéed the paste in oil until it was thick and mixed it into the pozole, chicken, and stock. And then I read the part about “simmer another 25 minutes.” So much for supper at 6:00. At 6:30, three hours after I began, we sat down to eat. The chicken was not as tough as I feared it would be. And I was grateful to Ina, Ingrid, Giada, Bridget, or Nigella for her sacrifice. Whoever she was, she was delicious.

The finished red pozole

The homes we'll never own

Despite being on my summer break, I had a very busy week and have not had an opportunity to follow up on my birthday until just this minute. I was in a meeting most of the day Thursday. The most valuable thing about that was a free lunch. Thursday evening I was out celebrating the end of Leadership Greater McHenry County (LGMC) at our official graduation. On Friday the 13^th, Hilda and I gave Coop 1 a thorough cleaning in the morning, and I drove to Elgin to help Jane get her mom’s house just about ready to be listed with the realtor. At the end of the day, I went to a restaurant in Algonquin for an informal celebration of our LGMC graduation with my cohort. The first problem was that road construction has made it nearly impossible to get from Elgin to Algonquin. After two detours, I got to the restaurant and then spent 15 minutes looking for parking. I finally found a spot on the street and began the trek to the restaurant. Just as I was carefully stepping around some vomit on the sidewalk, a redwing blackbird swooped down on the back of my head and clawed my scalp. I am not making this up. I must have infringed on his territory. I was not injured but was certainly surprised.

Anyway, back to Wednesday. We got to Lake Geneva in plenty of time to pick up our tickets and get on the boat.

Fountain by the entry to the boat dock

 

Despite the cold, cloudy weather, we opted to sit upstairs in the open air. We were the only people up there for most of the cruise.

Boarding the boat

Group shot before we moved to the upper deck--Jane tried twice, but having everyone look at the camera all at once seemed beyond our ability

Terry looks out from the front of the upper deck

 

Our tour guide introduced himself as a college student between his junior and senior year at UW-Whitewater. He wanted us to believe—without any supporting evidence—that he was an interesting person. He encouraged us more than once to ask him anything about himself. He also intimated that he was available. The fact that nearly every woman on the cruise was old enough to be his grandmother made his flirtatious remarks more than a little creepy. His alleged attempts at humor centered on midnight trespassing forays on the grounds of the palatial estates we saw on the tour. So not funny. Twit. “The bar is open,” he said. “The more you drink the funnier my jokes are.” There’s not enough alcohol in the world.

We pulled away from the dock and started around the lake. Twit kept saying, “On your right, you can see…” Lake Geneva is a big lake. Moving in a counterclockwise direction, everything is going to be on the right. It seemed redundant to mention it.

In between the bad jokes, however, the twit gave us some genuine information about the homes we would never own. Property values ran at tens of thousands of dollars per linear foot of shoreline. Taxes are upwards of $100,000 per year. Think about that a minute. Yes, I’ll just sit right down and write a check for $100,000, put a stamp on the envelope, and send it to the assessor’s office. Most of these mansions are summer homes, by the way.

After we passed downtown Lake Geneva, we came to a bunch of homes on the sprawling Wrigley Estate complex. We heard the story of Wrigley’s fortune in chewing gum and how he built homes for various relatives and friends. I had thought that there was one Wrigley mansion and that it was on the other side of the lake.



One of the Wrigley homes (I think)

Lake Geneva was settled primarily by filthy rich business owners from Chicago. Most of the original mansions either burned down or were demolished to build more modern homes. Here are some examples of the homes we saw:

Seriously, just look a the size of these babies!

This house has a pond in front (that's water in the middle of the rock boarder) because the lake is just not enough.

Many homes had terraced gardens down to the water

 

We came to a strip of closely built and less ostentatious houses of the Elgin Club. This homes were built on land purchased by a group of businessmen from Elgin.

Houses of the Elgin Club

As we came into Williams Bay, we could see the Yerkes Observatory dome peeking out above the tree line. This observatory, operated by the University of Chicago, has the largest refractory telescope (40 inches) used for research. The telescope was demonstrated at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago before being moved to Lake Geneva to get away from the light pollution of the city. Many famous persons have visited the observatory, including Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, and Carl Sagan.

Yerkes Observatory

In the bay itself, several (presumably freezing) young persons were taking sailing lessons in three small boats accompanied by a larger mother ship.

Sailing lessons

There are still several camps along the shores of the lake. Most were established in the 1880’s to bring poor children from Chicago to have a wilderness experience.



Holiday Home Camp, established in 1887

Twit explained that all the docks around the lake have to be taken in for the winter. Having grown up on a lake, this was not news to me. I recall it vividly as a pain in the neck. On Lake Geneva, of course, the home owners have people for that. It is, in fact, a $6 million industry. Six million!

One of the boat in the pier service industry

Toward the end of the tour, we came on the mansion that I always thought belonged to Wrigley. It was really built by Otto Young, an entrepreneur who bought up the “worthless” land along State Street after the Chicago fire in 1871. Contrary to popular belief at the time, Chicago was rebuilt, and Young made a fortune. He spent a million dollars building the structure at the turn of the 20^th century. If I remember correctly, Young died just a few years later. His heirs kept it for a time. It was donated to the Episcopal Church for a short-lived school in 1939 and sold for back taxes in the 1980’s for $74,000. After several unsuccessful business ventures, it is now divided into 6 luxury condos worth well over a million each.

Youngsland, the mansion of Otto Young

As we pulled back into port, Hilda asked, “Do you think this is one of those tours where you are supposed to tip?”

“I’m not tipping him,” I said. He had just told us that the view from the pool of a house on the top of a hill was nice at 1:00 in the morning, but you have to watch out for their dogs. Trespassing was still not funny.

But others did tip. I exited among of group of grandmas and gathered from the conversation that Betty had given the guy a ten to split with the captain (another undergrad who had done part of the narration), and everyone in the group was supposed to give Betty one dollar to pay her back.

The tour was over at 3:00. Our dinner reservations were at 5:00. We drove 3 miles north of Lake Geneva to Northwind Perennial Farm. While the driveway from the road was easy to find, the parking lot was less so. Signs directed us down a gravel road for some distance to the entrance.

Northwind is a laid-back place. Gardens with interspersed sale tables spread among old barns and repurposed outhouses. Exactly where one paid for the plants was not obvious on the first pass. We looked through some value added items (objet d’artsy-fartsy, antiques, etc.) in a barn that smelled strongly of cat urine. One of the offending cats sprawled on a table outside. I puzzled over a “diamond” hoe hand-forged in Holland and attached to a very long and heavy pole. It was an elongated diamond shape about 2” wide where it attached to the pole, tapered to 3” long points on either side, and sharpened front and back, apparently so one could push it or pull it. Even if I had not deemed it too heavy for practical use, the $90 price tag would have put me off.

Entrance to Northwind Perennial garden--that's a red bird house at the top

Overall, though, it was a beautiful place. They had mayapples growing in a wooded area, but  none for sale. Jane bought some dill because she doesn’t have it coming up all over like I do. The purchase transactions were conducted in a small building to the side of the main path. It was the only new structure I saw. I was tempted by their vast selection of native plants but held off. I need to have a plan before I start buying.

Allium in bloom

Bleeding heart in front of an old outhouse

One of many gardens

Geraniums by an old barn



Former outhouse now displaying a cactus, a Mexican, a burro (only the back end is visible in the photo) and the Last Supper

In addition to cats and dogs, chickens roamed freely. I found the little black rooster fascinating. Such a scrawny little thing.



Free range chickens with tiny rooster on the left

We didn’t quite fill up all our time at the gardens. The Tuscan Bar and Grill was happy to seat us at 4:30, however. We were the only guests in the place at the time. We had a nice meal. Most of us chose soup over salad because we were still feeling chilled from the boat ride. We warmed up as we dined and sipped wine. I was sure to save room for dessert. My triple chocolate cake was delivered with a candle on top.

We were home early. Between the cold, the fresh air, and the wine, I was ready for bed at 7:30. I made myself stay up until 8:30 so I wouldn’t be wide awake at 3:00. It was a very fun birthday.

Chicks may safely graze

How fickle the heart is. In spite of my grief over the weekend, I find my chest swelling with joy and delight as I watch the antics of the new chicks. I mentioned in my last post that a few chicks were out of the coop by Saturday night.

Lizette and three Buff Orpingtons were among the first out of the coop

Monday most of them were out and about. They love to explore the vegetation. They alternate between being off on their own pecking at the grass, having little territorial tiffs that are quickly over, and spontaneously running like hell for no apparent reason. Lizette (the white one) seems quite partial to dill.

Lidia, who started out with very dark down, is now tan with black accents. Of our known hens, she and Lizette spend the most time outside. The Buff Orpingtons like to be outside more than the Welsummer.

Lidia

Nadia and Gracie like to hang out by the warmer. Perhaps they will spend more time outside when the weather gets more summer-like. Maybe their little heads get cold under their Mohawks.

Nadia and Gracie by the warmer (the underside of the platform is heated to simulate a mother hen)

Happy birthday to me! Last year I spent my birthday doing not fun things. Terry and I moved Coop 2 into position on the lawn, which was a long and exhausting process, and we moved the broilers and Jackie from the garage to the coop. I also put the drip irrigation on the garden. I mentioned recently how much I dislike that task. At the end of the day I promised myself that this birthday would be FUN.

I have already had a nice gift. It was raining when I got up. This not only provided much needed water for our garden but also got me off the hook for weeding before it was time for our Big Adventure of the day. I have spent a pleasant morning drinking tea and doing not much else.

Jane will be here at 11:00. After an early lunch of shrimp salad graciously provided by my mother, we will all go to Lake Geneva to take a boat tour. I have had this on my list of things to do for close to 30 years. Today is the day. The weather is cool and gray, but the rain has stopped here for the moment. Lake Geneva isn’t too far away, and I hope the rain has stopped there as well. In any case, the boat is not likely to be crowded, and the lower decks are completely enclosed in case it is wet.

After the cruise, we may go up to Northwind Perennial Farm. Jane has heard about it from several people. We have some time to kill before our 5:00 dinner reservations.

Stay tuned for more about my FUN day!

Moving day

When we got back from dropping the hens off yesterday, I had to have a cup of tea to restore myself. After that, we started in on moving the chicks to Coop 2. Yes, we could use Coop 1, since it is now empty, but we moved Coop 2 into position and got the fences up before we came to grips with the hen situation. We figure that as soon as we can tell the boys from the girls, we can move the girls we intend to keep over to Coop 1 for the duration. Besides, we can give Coop 1 a thorough cleaning and let it sit empty for a bit, just in case there are any disease-causing organisms lurking.

This is the first year we’ve been able to move the chicks as soon as they were ready. For the last two years, we’ve had to build the coop first. I know now why the books advise building the coop before the chicks arrive. You will not, in fact, have plenty of time to do it later.

We chased the chicks back and forth in the enclosure without much success in grabbing them before we figured out to put one of the screens vertically between the walls to trap the chicks on one end. It went better after that. We developed a system in which Hilda held the screens, I grabbed the chick and clipped its wing, and Terry opened and closed the plastic transport bin. We didn’t have to worry about wing clipping last year. The couch-potato broilers got so big so fast they could barely waddle to their food. Flying was out of the question. Dual purpose chickens look to be physically capable of flight for quite some time.

Vertical screen to keep the chicks in a smaller area while the horizontal screen keeps them from flying out

Wing clipping is quick and painless, the poultry equivalent of a haircut. I spread the wing out and trimmed about an inch or so off the ends of the feathers. This puts the chick off balance. It can flutter a little but can’t get up a full head of steam. After I was done, Terry opened the bin so I could put the chick in it. He then kept the lid closed until the next chick was ready.

Hilda demonstrates wing clipping

We carried the bin out to Coop 2 when we had about half the chickens done. I help the bin while Hilda put them in the coop. We covered the door with a screen for the first day to get them used to their new home and hopefully teach them that that is where they belong at night. We repeated the procedure with the other half of the chicks.

Huddled in the corner of Coop 2 away from the door

If we’d had our brains properly strapped on, we would have remembered to move the chick warmer before we did the transfer. Oh well. We had to install it afterward. Hilda wanted to clean it off before we moved it, although I was hard pressed to understand why. She set about cleaning the garage while I mowed the lawn.

Two and a half hours later, the chicks were still huddled in one corner of the coop, quite possibly because they didn’t like the cool wind blowing through the door. As soon as I put the warmer in the coop, the chicks had a complete change of personality. They were climbing all over it and the coop instantly, as if the warmer was a signal that everything was okay. They started eating and drinking also. It was amazing.

We had a little rain overnight. We waited until the grass was mostly dry, about 11:30, to take out the screen. The braver chicks peered out of the door. None would try the ramp. I lifted a few of them out and put them on the ramp. They climbed right back up to the coop. I tried putting some grass on the first step to entice them out. They reached out to grab it and then played keep-away with it in the coop.

One of the Welsummers got to the top of the ladder inside but didn’t seem to know how to move to the roost. After teetering on the top of the ladder for a few seconds, it settled down right there.

I'm at the top--now what?

The day passed. I left at 3:30 to pick up the frozen chickens. It was harder than dropping them off actually. I am sad every time I pass the empty run and see Ina’s dust bath in the corner of the raised bed. I missed throwing them my carrot peelings, which has been part of my Sunday routine for close to two years.

The butcher lady met me when I pulled up. They were done butchering for the weekend and were just finishing the last of the cleanup. She told me there was a problem with one of the chickens.

“A black and white one, I bet,” I replied.

“He would know,” she answered, “but I have it right here if you want to look at it. Her whole belly was just full of stuff.” She opened a refrigerator and took out a bag. A few black feathers here and there confirmed my suspicions. It was Sara.

“We knew there might be a problem. If there weren’t problems, we wouldn’t have brought them to you,” I said.

We loaded the cage in the back of the truck and put the remaining seven hens in a cooler. The woman said, “They’ll be good eating. We could tell they’d been well taken care of.”

“Thanks so much for doing the dirty work,” I said.

Terry and I weighed each one when I got home. Five of them were 3.25 to 3.5 pounds. One was 4.25 pounds, and another was 5 pounds. The two fat ladies, no doubt. Frankly, they just look like food now. It’s a relief.

I check on the chicks periodically. Still no one ventured down into the yard.

My parents went to a concert and dinner this afternoon. When they got back, I went upstairs to report on Sara. Hilda asked, “How long have the chicks been out?”

“Are they out?” I was surprised. Sure enough, Lizette and four of the Buff Orpingtons were down on the ground, mostly hanging out under the ramp. It remains to be seen if they can find their way back up by themselves.

Here's the update on Nadia's head feathers:

Nadia is getting some wild hair!

And the robins will be fledging soon. I'm pretty sure only three of them made it.

 

A difficult task

Jennifer, Clarissa, Sara, and Nigella enjoying their last sunny afternoon on Friday

Ina, Bridget, and Ingrid, ditto. They've had happy lives.

Many years ago, I heard a motivational speaker illustrate dedication and commitment with the following analogy: in a breakfast of bacon and eggs, the hen is dedicated and the pig is committed. With the dedication of our hens flagging, today we sent them off to make a commitment.

The day started off even worse than I anticipated. One of the Welsummer chicks developed wry neck (a.k.a. crook neck). Last weekend, we noticed that one chick went spastic with the excitement of changing the bedding. It lay on its side and spun in circles. When everyone calmed down, we couldn’t find Spaz again. We hoped for the best.

I researched “spinning chick” and didn’t come up with much. Perhaps a vitamin deficiency or an inherent neurological problem.

Yesterday, Hilda noticed that one of the chicks (we assumed Spaz), had a twisted neck. She put it in a box by itself. I did more research, finding the correct name(s) and some pretty dismal information about the disorder. It is often genetic, although it can be a vitamin deficiency or brain damage from pecking. I learned that Polish chickens are susceptible because their skull doesn’t close properly. Who knew? We’ve just been lucky there so far. It can also be Marek’s disease, but we had the chicks vaccinated for that. The vitamin deficiency also seemed unlikely because we’ve been putting vitamins in the water. If it is a vitamin deficiency, the treatment is to give vitamins three times a day for two weeks. Maybe it helps; maybe it doesn’t.

Welsummer chick with wry neck

Hilda and I agreed to just let the chick die. We hoped it would happen overnight. It didn’t. It looked horrible this morning, laying on its side in the box with its head twisted underneath it. I asked Terry if he would mind dispatching the chick. He said that would not be a problem. He would take care of it while we took the hens to the butcher.

We left the girls in the coop until 8:00. The butcher said we could deliver the hens any time today. We figured if we started at 8:00 we could be there by 9:00, giving them ample time for breakfast and coffee. Hilda hoped that we could have a quiet moment to hold each one, pet her, and say thank you and goodbye. The worked for the first couple. Then the rest sensed that Something was Up. Hilda had to grab them by the wings to get them to the truck. The only injury sustained was a scratch on my ring finger from Sara’s foot.

And yet, as soon as they were in the cage, they were quite calm. When Hilda and I got to the farm where the butchering operation is, the chickens were all sitting peacefully together like they rode around in the back of a pickup truck every day of their lives.

An extended family was in an open shed dispatching poultry with practiced efficiency. The rubber-fingered automatic plucker spewed feathers out the back. A young woman in her late teens or early twenties came out to help lift the cage off the truck. The last time we did this, they took the chickens out of our cage and put them in their own cages. Today, however, they didn’t have space. Everywhere I looked there were chickens, ducks, geese, and rabbits.

“Let’s put this over in the shade,” the girl said. I helped her carry the girls to the side of the driveway.

She recorded our order in a spiral-bound notebook. Did we want the giblets with each bird or in one big bag? With each bird. She told us we could have our chickens back frozen tomorrow. Hilda asked about that because the woman we’d talked to said the processing would be Sunday, and we would pick up on Monday. Freezing takes an extra day.

“Mom!” the girl called, “When can they have the chickens back frozen?”

An older version of the girl came away from the activity in the shed. “Since you are already here,” she told us, “we’ll do them today. You can pick them up tomorrow afternoon.”

We explained that they were two-year-old hens that had stopped laying and that one had died two weeks ago. The woman said that she could tell us what she found when they cut them open. “One time, we opened one up and it was full of something that looked like rotten scrambled eggs.”

Yolk sac peritonitis, I thought. At least they won’t care if one of our hens has it. They’ve seen it before.

Our hens sat placidly in their cage, gazing around with curiosity as if saying, “Well, this is different.” I patted Bridget on the head, and we went home.

Humans were not humans long before they imbued the nutrient cycle with spiritual significance. I can well imagine that if your only weapons are rocks and sticks, actually killing something would seem like a miracle. Either a god has sent the animal for you or the animal itself has chosen to die so that you may live. Some believed that eating the animal would give them characteristics of that animal. Fast as a gazelle. Strong as a bison. From there, it was not much of a step to believe, as the ancient Greeks did, that animals could possess the spirits of gods. A goat embodying a god would be sacrificed and eaten; those who partook would become one with the god. It is only in this context that the ritualized cannibalism of Christianity’s Holy Communion makes any sense. Communion = becoming one.

I expected that I would need to detach myself from the girls to make peace with what we had to do today. I am finding, however, that I feel better embracing my emotional attachment. We are going to achieve the ultimate oneness. Their proteins will become our proteins. If they were able to transmit some characteristic of theirs to me, it would be their ability to be present in the moment, to view everything that comes their way as the best experience they have ever had or ever will have, to wait tranquilly to see what each moment reveals.

I will dine with due reverence. Take; eat. This is my body which is given unto you.