Port Potager

We have wild turkeys visit the garden from time to time , but this year is much more interesting: That’s a pair of females, but they’re not alone! Between them they have 11 little poults that follow them around, just like ducklings imprint on their mothers and travel in a line: When they saw me, the mothers hopped up on the fence. The poults soon followed: When the little ones jumped up, they had to work a lot harder to get air, and plenty of dust flew out of their wings. It turns out that our garden is their preferred neighborhood spot for dust baths: If you look closely, you can see five or six little hollows where the babies were getting a dust bath. The chickens do this too — they wallow in the dirt and spread it over their feathers, working it in like dry shampoo .  This turkey group has got things pretty well together now, but about a week ago Kirk and I saw one of the mothers and her half dozen poults crossing the street at the hospital. Th...

Since Dolley's death , there have been a lot of changes for all of our animals. We had been worried that she, as our pluckiest chicken, would be all over the new chicks when we tried to integrate them into the flock. Because of that, we were really taking our time introducing them  to the hen house and chicken run.  But now the rival groups of chickens are even in number: three big girls and three little ones. Louisa Catherine had already jumped the fence and lived to tell the tale, so we knew were getting close to bringing them together. Enter Cooper. We let him out of his acclimation cage  some time in the middle of last week, since he seemed much calmer. (Well, he was calmer until we tried to leave after feeding him: Then he would throw himself around our legs and hang on for dear life. This was cute as long as you weren't wearing shorts and sandals.) On Saturday, after he rolled over and let me rub his belly as a thank you for his breakfast — to...

Lizzy, Rachel, and Louisa Catherine are too big for their brooder box now. They had been in the garage for the past couple weeks, using the heat lamp just at night (since it's been down into the 40s). That was going okay until yesterday, when Tiegan went into the garage to put away a watering can and discovered that the birds had gotten out of the brooder and were roaming around the (messy, dangerous) garage. It was no fun trying to round them up in there, so today Kirk made them a mini hen house: Remember, the little girls need to stay separate from the big girls until they get used to each other. We'd been carrying the young ones back and forth from garage to their spot in the run each warm day, and that is a huge pain. So to be able to keep them outside, they need a temporary hen house in their section of the run. Kirk repurposed an old play oven that he built for Tiegan five or six years ago. He drilled some ventilation holes in the sides, added a roost...

Our new chicks aren't so little anymore. They're a month old now, and most of their feathers have come in. They are getting to that awkward phase for sure: From left to right are Rachel, Louisa Catherine (the black one pecking at the ground), and Lizzy.   Today was nice and warm, so we took the opportunity to let them have their first day outside. They are in the chicken run, and they were definitely interested in scratching, taking dust baths, and exploring every inch of their interesting new space. This kept them from pecking at each other, which has gotten a little intense over the past few days — when you hear a wrestling match and find Lizzy's feathers in Rachel's mouth, you know it's time for them to move out. You can't just throw strange chickens into and existing flock, though. That pecking order stuff is for real, and the little ones could actually be in danger from our grown chickens protecting their turf. To get everyone accustomed ...

We've had quite the population explosion here this week. In addition to thousands of honeybees , we also have three new chicks: I picked these guys up at the post office first thing this morning. They were slow to figure things out, but it's been a few hours and everyone knows how to eat, drink and poop, so it looks like they'll be fine. This is Louisa Catherine, a Gold Laced Wyandotte. She's asleep in Tiegan's hands here, and typically falls sleep face-first onto the ground whenever the mood strikes. This is Lizzy, a Welsummer. She's definitely the runt of the group. She was hiding in the corner of the box when I opened it, and for the first couple hours looked like she was either drunk or had a broken leg. She was no good at walking. She seems better now, but she's definitely the least mature and capable of the newbies. This is Rachel, a Rhode Island Red. She's already the boss, and she appears to be the smartest and str...

Did I mention that we are expecting three new chicks next week? I think I did . They'll be shipped on Monday, and we expect them bright and early Tuesday morning. Vacation week is a good time to get babies, since we'll be home when our friendly neighborhood postal worker brings them to the door. Kirk had off from work today, so he built a new brooder in preparation for the new babies. Our old one was a plastic bin with some hardware cloth for a floor, but the new one is the Taj Mahal of brooders: The great big crate was made from a couple of our old potato boxes . (We are going to hill our potatoes a different way this year and won't need all those boxes — more on that later.) There's still the guillotine stand to hold the heat lamp, though it's now permanently attached to the sides of the box.   Inside the box there's a permanent cross bar to support the feeders. There's also a layer of hardware cloth secured in place by battens along the ...

As I mentioned earlier this month , our chickens are done laying for season, and we will be out of eggs until they stop molting and we can turn the light on in the coop to trick them into thinking it's spring. Last year they all laid so well throughout the summer that I was able to freeze enough eggs to use throughout the winter molt, and we never had to buy any from the grocery store. This past summer? Not so much. Dolley is no longer laying at all, and the other girls have slowed a bit with age. (Dolley is a Red-Star hen, and it turns out that this hybrid breed is a rock star daily layer for about 18 glorious months, but then it's over for good, which was not advertised. Luckily for her, she's the smartest, best-trained bird we have, or we might have considered her for soup.) Without her efforts, we still had plenty of eggs to eat fresh in the summer, but not enough to put up for winter. We're back to buying them at the store until we get them laying again (I...

Our chicks are getting big . They love to run around outside, and they have started rolling around in their bedding, trying to get a dirt bath. They are also scratching and looking for food in their bedding of wood chips in the brooder. In short, they are making a big mess. On the plus side, they are practicing all the adult chicken skills that they need when they are outside ranging in the yard: rolling in dirt, scratching up bugs, pecking around at things to give them a taste, etc. Inside the house, though, all this stirs up a lot of dust and fluff (and lately even a few feathers). They also have started knocking over their baby chick water dish and spilling it in their bedding, which makes a mess. And, sad truth be told, none of that smells very good. So they are out : Now that it is consistently pretty warm and the birds have feathered out, we moved their brooder to the screened-in porch. We have the heat lamp for the nighttime when it's cooler, but during the da...

The chickens are getting big, even for their new, enlarged brooder , so Kirk has been working on getting their real coop ready to go: That may seem gigantic for just four birds, but most of what you see is the framework for their outdoor run. The coop itself is on the right — the mini-house raised two feet off the ground. The rest of it (to the left) that reaches the ground will be their screened-in yard.  Kirk is standing where the nesting boxes will be. We have them open onto the brick path so we can easily get our eggs without getting our feet muddy. Tiegan is climbing up where the (human) access door will be. That's where we'll reach in to sweep the bedding out into a wheelbarrow when it needs changing. Kirk picked up some cheap peel-and-stick vinyl tiles for the floor. They are nice and smooth, which should make it easy to keep the floor clean (or even to hose off, if it should ever come to that). Kinda fancy for a henhouse, but the plain ones actua...

What a gorgeous weekend! Since it was nice and warm out, we were able to bring our chicks outside to play: They spent several hours Saturday and Sunday roaming the back yard. They like to stick together for the most part, but they got more adventurous their second day out. Favorite spots are underneath the kids' slide and along the workshop — especially under the peonies: They sampled lots of weeds and insects, and Martha also learned to take a dust bath (something chickens do to help keep their feathers free of mites). She scratched out a little wallow right up against the workshop and rolled around in it, getting all nice and dirty before she shook it all off later.  It was such a treat to watch them waddle and hop and prance around the yard, getting to be regular old chickens. They don't have a coop or a run just yet, so we could only have them out while we were there to supervise (on the weekends this can be for several hours at a time). We'll try t...

Our chicks are over twice as big as they used to be. That's great and all, but it means that they dump twice as much food all over the place and poop twice as much (at least ). They are way too big to be comfortable in our old brooder set-up , so we got a bigger container for them: This is easily twice as big as the old one, and probably more. It's much taller (although Abigail managed to get up on the side pretty quickly), and there's a lot more room inside for them to stretch and roost on the wooden bars Kirk made them: We have big chicken wire over the top now, but it's not sturdy enough to use a base for them to walk on. In the old set-up, we had the wood chips beneath a screen, so that their droppings would fall through the screen and they couldn't eat them. They are older and hopefully wiser now, so we have them just in the wood chips this from now on. This has the added benefit of giving them something to scratch in, and they seem to be enjoyin...

Our chicks are getting big! They are now two and a half weeks old, and instead of cute little balls of fluff , we have these guys: They are still totally entertaining, even if they're not quite as cute as they used to be. They have some new tricks, too: They can jump up on the edges of the box and roost on the plastic rim; they can flap their wings to take short, hopping flights; and they can scratch behind their ears like dogs (hilarious!). They also jump on top of each other, leading to lots of squawking and bickering — for the time being I think we have six kids in the house instead of just two.  They are also feathering out, so we have a better idea of what they will look like as adult hens. A snapshot of each: This is Martha, and it looks like she will be all white. She is one of our "easter eggers," which you can see by looking at the greenish-gray color of her feet. That means that she has the Ameraucana gene to lay blue or green eggs.  ...

So as we've been enjoying our chicks for the last week, we have also, of necessity, come a little obsessed with their butts. While that doesn't necessarily sound healthy (in a Freudian sense) for us, it's important for the birds. We have to check their "vents" (that's chicken-speak for, um, sphincter) to make sure that they don't have poop stuck to them. If they do and it dries, it can glue their butts shut. That sounds kind of hilarious in the abstract, but it can kill your chick if you don't take care of it. So we have found ourselves making a nightly inspection of everyone's rear end, and using a damp towel to soften and then pull crap off of their butts. Poor Sally seemed to have kind of an issue with this for a couple days, and Kirk felt bad when he pulled off a bunch of her fluff once, but it's better than death. I think they might be big enough to be past this issue now, though, as we've had a couple nights of clean-as-a-whistl...

When our chicks arrived in the mail yesterday, they were in a smallish box with a heat pack to help keep them warm. Babies need some special care, and warmth is a big part of it. Still, a brooder isn't something you have to sink a lot of money into, especially since it will only be used for a few weeks until the birds develop their adult feathers. Here is a look at our brooder set up for the chicks: For the first week of their lives, chicks like the temperature around 95 degrees. We are providing that with a standard heat lamp. Kirk bashed together the guillotine-esque stand for the light out of scrap from the workshop. It's nice and tall, so we'll be able to raise the lamp a bit each week by adjusting the chain. That way as the chicks get bigger, we'll be lowering the temperature about five degrees per week until they are ready to hang out first at room temperature and then outside in their permanent coop. Because if you take a look, you can see that this...

Our chicks arrived in the mail today! The postal service made a special trip to our house with this box, which was loudly peeping during the hand-off at our back door. Tiegan brought the scissors and we cut the tape, took off the lid, and found our four little birdies all healthy and active. And ready to get out . And so to their new digs: The weird color in these photos is because of the heat lamp. These two-day old chicks will need their brooder at about 95 degrees or so this week. But before getting into all the nuts and bolts of the care, some introductions are in order: This is Martha, the sleepy one. Her first order of business was to take a nap. If there's a runt of the flock, she's it. It's hard to tell in the photo, but her actual fluff is classic chick yellow, with no markings. We're pretty sure she's one of our easter eggers (which means she'll eventually lay blue or green eggs for us). The one looking at the camera here i...