!Tiene huevos ella!
Sometimes it happens – two yolks are captured in the same egg. This week Greta, who lays the largest eggs anyhow, laid ‘The Big One’. This egg was so large in my hand that it made me laugh incredulously for probably two minutes.
Breakfast this morning confirmed it was a double-yolker: one less egg to crack. I hope she took the next day off…
One of the benefits of having chickens, particularly baby chickens, is watching Chicken TV. We were surprised how easily amused we are by their antics. There is something about watching small creatures do simple things that is meditative.
In the summer we sit out in lawn chairs and watch our chickens wander about doing chicken things – pecking, eating grass, scratching dirt, sunbathing, perching, wallowing in dust holes.
Watching chickens is one of the ways that Professor Kirsten Eve Beachy prays. Seriously. A professor at Eastern Mennonite University, Dr. Beachy has written a heart-warming, educational, and amusing treatise called “Field Notes Toward a Doctrine of Chicken“. Chicken behaviours are explained under theological headings such as ‘Petition’, ‘Original Sin’, ‘Communion’, and ‘Salvation’.
The theological analogies are sometimes a stretch, but she has chicken behaviour dead-on. In my favourite passage, she writes:
“A flock of chickens is no Zen garden […] A flock of chickens is a series of distractions, the ever-shifting motivations and pursuits of six greedy individuals with fifteen-second attention spans spending the afternoon together”.
Apt.
Our living room is small. The past two springs I have rearranged all our furniture so that I could start seeds in trays by the south-facing window. For three months every year the main feature of our living room, and spilling over into our kitchen, was haphazard trays of newpaper-potted dirt and seedlings, tented in plastic bags propped up by pencils. A conversation-starter, but not very attractive.
This year is gonna be different. This year I will start my seeds outside in cold frames. The cold frames I saw ran $80 – $160. Instead, I went to the re-use building store and bought some old wood-frame windows for 5-bucks each. With the money I saved, I splurged on cedar 2x2s for the frame.
The frame slopes gently forward; I cut the posts 11″ in front and 16″ in back. For the back panel I used an old piece of plywood, and for the sides I again splurged, on 0.03 HDPE, which is translucent white and I could attach to the frame with a staple gun.
Overall, this project cost me about $35, mostly for the cedar. I could have saved about $10 by buying fir or another ‘cheap’ lumber, bringing the total cost down to about $25.
Window = $5
Lumber = $15 (3 2×2)
HDPE = $10
Hardware = $5
NB: Cedar is very soft. When open, the heavy windows want to rip the hinges out of the frame. I will fix this by further supporting the windows with chains attached to the frame. Not a big deal.
Now, I don’t actually know if this will work. Will temperatures be warm enough (and not cool down too much at night) for my seeds to germinate? I will keep you posted.
UPDATE 2011: Seeds germinated! I will definitely do this again, just starting a bit earlier…
UPDATE end 2011: Sadly, the beautiful starts were mostly fried when I transplanted them out to the garden, covered them with floating row cover, and left for what turned out to be a unseasonably hot weekend. Most had to be replaced with purchased plants.
UPDATE 2012: This year I used cow dung pots and the weather SUCKED. Most starts didn’t make it. Partly, it’s the difficulty of keeping the starts moist in permeable pots. Even wrapping them in dry cleaner bags, it was too difficult. Will have find a better solution.
Yes, we have baby chickens again. Fun, cute, and – time to get creative.
We started them in the same deep tupperware bin as last time, with newspaper, heat lamp, water, and food.
It’s time to upgrade their accommodations when they are able to roost – literally – outside the box. Cute – but potentially very messy.
We hadn’t run across any large cardboard boxes like we had used last time. And we really felt they could use more space rather than just putting some netting on top of the tupperware. That’s when Scott had the brainstorm of the month. He said: “Let’s put them in the fireplace.”
My gut reaction to this was: ALARM. Fireplace sounds like a dangerous place for pets of any kind. But it did make sense: fireplaces are meant to reflect heat and we could simply burn the dirty paper and woodshavings when we move them outdoors in April.
It is working beautifully. They have lots of room to play, the hot pad under the newspaper and the lamps in the fireplace work well together to keep them warm enough, and the grating is too high for them to jump over. Perhaps the most practical advantage to this new set up is that it is easier to socialize them. They are less freaked out by sounds and movement because they are connected to the world around them (not so life in a box).
Sustainable Scientist 