Chicken Anatomy

The external anatomy of the chicken

The internal anatomy of the chicken

Building Fences, Burning Bridges

We are not really burning any bridges here, except maybe with Lowes, but the title has a nice ring to it.

When we first got our chickens a couple of weekends ago we thought we would let them live in the pen that was already here at the house- the pen Molly’s grandparents built and used. I had spent some time clearing out the brush and trees that had overgrown in the pen over the ten or more years that it had been unoccupied, thinking we had a pretty nice place for our chickens to live. However, the second or third day that we had them they escaped. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it were during the day, but it was later in the evening, during a thunderstorm no less. Can you imagine Molly and I running around in the rain chasing after chickens? We actually were having such a hard time that we called for reinforcements- Molly’s parents. Then we were all chasing chickens in the rain.

We found the potential escape routes and blocked them off with some wooden boards, cinderblocks, and an old tomato cage. While these jury-rigged obstacles keep the chickens inside, they are not ideal and have no aesthetic value. To say it best, they are an eyesore! Given that, the rotten wood posts, and the necessity of keeping predators out, we decided to build a new fence.

I honestly believed that I could complete this task on my day off for Independence Day. I sure was wrong. My Father-in-law and I spent FOUR days doing this painstaking work. This may not sound like a big deal, but I wake up around 4:30 every morning to be at work… So working until noon, and then putting in a fence until after dark makes for a long day. A long four days.

“Why did it take so long?” You ask.

One problem is the chickens themselves. They are funny. When I tried to dig a hole they would fill it in. When I tried to make my trench they got in the way. When we were just making progress they would be off getting into trouble, requiring us to stop what we were doing to go herd them back home. At one point they discovered a nice mud puddle, rich in little bite-sized buggies, where they frequented often. The only problem was that their “mud-puddling” put them right in the middle of the driveway, a prime place to be made flattened chicken.

The second (but most frustrating) problem was the chicken wire fencing. When deciding what height fence to get we landed between 5 ft or 6 ft. Considering that we intended to bury about 6 inches of the fence to keep things from digging under it, we concluded that a 5-foot-something fence is better than a 4-foot-something fence… especially considering some predators can scale a shorter fence. Sounds good right? Except that chicken wire is entirely unwieldy! It sags, folds and rolls in all the wrong places, making it impossible to stretch by hand. Because of this, we strung an entire side of the fence without any satisfaction in our work.

[Enter stage right] The Handy Dandy Chip Reid Chicken-Wire Tensioner (patent pending). My father-in-law constructed a device to make the wire straight and tight using 2x4s, a block and tackle and his truck. It worked great and solved this problem, but we wasted a lot of time before creating this system. Actually, during the whole process we hit several dead ends and stayed there too long before knowing enough to move on.

It was also frustrating that I couldn’t find anything helpful on the beloved and popular Internet about installing this stuff. The most helpful said to “watch out for pokey wires which can jab you,” but no other form of helpful advice exists. Thus, I will fill this need in another post.

I will be entirely honest for a moment. I am 100% grateful for my dad-in-law’s help. I could not have done this job alone. His perfectionism also means that having his hand in the job will ensure it is done right, to work now and last… But perfectionism comes at a price and it probably slowed us down a lot. I’m ok with that though.

Last night we were getting close to being finished and I was determined to. I got dirty. My back and legs hurt. Ants attacked. My hands cramped from using the staple gun and were covered in blisters too! My body wanted to give out but I had to keep going. This project had taken too long already. Finally, in cutting and stapling the last bit of chicken wire to the bottom of the chicken house we finished! I felt like death, but was glad to be done. I certainly am proud of that pen. It is chicken heaven.

Naming of the Birds

In one of my previous posts I revealed that Molly and I got two new pet chickens. Many people have since asked why we chose to get chickens as our first pets.

Molly and I both would love to have a dog, but we both have different experiences with dogs, different sets of normal associated with dogs. Neither of us have any experience with chickens, which is actually a positive! With something so new to the both of us, we can figure things out together and make our own rules, free of previous experiences getting in the way. This way the chickens can be something that brings us together.

Chickens are low-maintenance animals. You feed them twice a day, change their water once a day and clean up their poop (two birds don’t poop that).

They lay eggs, essentially paying for themselves.

They put themselves to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time each morning.

They are extremely sociable animals, and we are blessed to have two birds that are so sweet and easy-going.

If you’ve been thinking about getting chickens and need to be pushed one way or the other, my job is definitely to sway you toward hen-raising.

When trying to name them we kept thinking of “chickeny” names such as Henrietta, Pecky, Cluck, scratch, chicken little, etc… These names didn’t satisfy us. But after watching them we started to see their personalities.

They are schemers. They fool around and get into trouble (in the funny way). Watching these chickens is like watching a sitcom with two hilarious scheming female leads. Molly and I both feel that Lucy and Ethel are the best names for our two hens, in honor of the greatest comedy tv series ever produced, I Love Lucy.

Macaroni and Cheese

Molly made a great dinner consisting of hamburgers, sautéed squash and zucchini, and this awesome Mac and Cheese. 100% enjoyable. I’m not sure where the recipe came from, but it’s a keeper.

Last Saturday was my last turn at cooking and I prepared a lasagna. I thought it was good, except the entire thing didn’t cool in the time allotted. I was given a lot of flak. Molly is certainly a much better cook than I am.

The Animal Annals

Last night Molly and I finally went to pick up our new pets: two chickens still unnamed. A friend was kind enough to give them to us as a late wedding gift, and they are beautiful birds.

I have always loved animals. For many years I even thought I wanted to be a veterinarian. When I was as young as I can remember, my grandparents had a sweet black lab named Mindy. I loved that dog. My grandma Betty always told the story of how she rescued Mindy while she was pregnant from a neighbor who abused her. I always had a picture in my head of this man (whom I never met) and as a child I could conceive of nothing more evil than someone who would hurt an animal. I would later learn this truth:
Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his animal but the mercy of the wicked is cruel (Proverbs 12:10). This scripture hung near my animals’ cages for years and is probably permanently settled in my heart.

Our next pup was Mollie…a beautiful blonde labrador (just a coincidence that my wife, Molly, share that trait). She was the best animal companion a person could ever have, and we grew up together. We would play and she would chew holes in my clothes. I thought that was funny; Mom did not. I think of all of the dogs I’ve ever had, she is the only one who favored me over everyone else.

When I was a teenager I raised parakeets. The first was Scottie, given the namesake of my uncle. He was a baby blue parakeet who was kind and very amicable. He was the first animal I really had full responsibility for. I wanted to take perfect care of him, but despite my efforts he caught a virus. The vet gave us some medicine and nutrients to feed him, but it wasn’t to any avail, and Scottie died in my hands while my Aunt helped me take care of him.

To take the place of Scottie, I got two new Parakeets, Sylvester and Tweetie. Tweetie was a yellow and green bird with a wonderful song and chirp. Sylvester was a wretch. She would bite anyone who put their hand in the cage. A mysterious disappearance occured with these birds. I came home from High School one day to find their cage knocked onto the floor in the living room, Tweetie gone. This mystery is left unresolved. Some blame the dog, some blame Sylvester (Benedict Birdie)… I have my suspicions. When I was left with just Sylvester, I soon accepted the adoption of a new white parakeet named Charlie. He taught Sylvester who was boss and she actually became tamer. Then one day I came home from school and they too were gone… this time along with their cage and all of their supplies. My Mother had given them away. I felt betrayed, and this wouldn’t be the last time I felt this way.

Not to make the story confusing or set it out of order chronologically, but at the same time that I had my birds we also had a Black lab named Ruby (after Mollie was gone) and a cat named Prissy. Technically, Prissy was my grandma’s cat, but I loved her like she was mine and would volunteer to take care of her all of the time. She was God’s angel (metaphor) to my grandma in the last few years of her life.

Alexander Thomas, or in short Alex, was my first Chinchilla. In case you don’t know what a Chinchilla is, they are adorable animals from the Andes mountains. They literally have the softest fur in the world, a face like a rabbit, short ears, a tail like a squirrel, and feet like a kangaroo. Many of my friends called Alex a Mexican Kangaroo. You can see a picture here. I later got another Chinchilla named Houdini. When I went off to college I couldn’t bring them to the dorm with me, but I intended to bring Houdini to college with me as soon as I could get my own apartment sophomore year, leaving her in my sister’s care for a year. Unfortunately, I was betrayed once more, and my Sister traded Houdini with a friend for a Coach purse. Ouch.

For a long time we had Lady, a beautiful Sheltie. She was my paternal grandma’s dog. She was loyal and loving. After Ruby died my parents got Bailey, a Westie. He is small and obnoxious. I think he helped put Lady to an early grave by just being annoying.

Two years ago I bought Molly African Dwarf frogs, Jit & Joe. Joe is still alive and he lives in our kitchen.

At about 9pm last night, Molly and I went to our friend’s home as the Chickens were all ready to go to sleep. They filed in their coop one by one, following the rooster and started to go to sleep. We then put them in a carrier and brought them home. They were scared last night, but today they seem to be doing fine. In fact, they even laid some eggs for us. We haven’t named them yet as we feel we need to observe them to name them properly. So far the candidates are Henrietta, Zaxby, Scratch, and Pecky… Feel free to suggest good chicken names. I think I’ll do another post on why we chose chickens as our newlywed pets.

One Month: Chickens and a Blog

Today marks our marriage as one month old, and by popular demand I’m starting a new blog.

May 22, 2011, the day of our wedding, is already one month behind us, and the rest of our lives still lie ahead with great expectations.

Here’s a quick summation of what we have done since the wedding:

Week 1: Honeymoon. We took an awesome cruise to the Bahamas. You can see pictures here. As you can see, most of the pictures are of either Molly or me as we didn’t have a photographer following us around to get candid shots. If it weren’t creepy, I would be giving the advice to all of my engaged friends to bring a photographer with them on the honeymoon.

Week 2: Molly went to work at Camp Breatheeasy for a week. It was a hard week for me, but I worked around the house and tried to get things ready for her arrival home.

Since Molly got home we have been settling in fairly nicely. We have been trying to find the proper place for every item, as organization is a must for us. Sorting through gifts (and writing thank you notes) has been fun, as is working on the landscape, and making meals. Learning to live together has its challenges though. The biggest adjustment has been sharing a bed. When you’re used to have a bed all to yourself it is not easy to have someone else “crowding” your sleep space. I love Molly, but I think she is a bed hog. She tells me I hog the covers. At least neither of us snore.

This week we have been working on prepare a place to raise chickens. Yes, chickens. What says “newlywed” like fresh eggs and a cockle-doodle-doo in the morning? We are actually going to get two chickens tonight from a friend who raises them. I’ll post pictures when we have some. As for the chicken pen… I started by clearing out trees that had grown up in the old pen in the backyard. Then cleaned out the brush, made a ramp, and placed an old wooden ladder for a perch. We will just be raising two birds to start, so it should not be an overwhelming experience. Molly and I chose chickens because it will be a totally new experience for the both of us; something we can figure out together without the interference of preconceived notions or expectations.

So now that we are all caught up, I will go. We will put up some wedding pictures soon, as well as pictures of the house and the stuff that we have been doing.