Pecking Chickens

For quite some time, we had the chickens broken of the pecking at us habit. (There was nothing more annoying than Cluck pecking at my ankles while I was trying to give them fresh food!) Well today I was collecting eggs when Big Crown ran right up to me and pecked at my hand. This really surprised me since she almost never does this and recently none of the chickens had been either. Their beaks are remarkably sharp and on more than one occasion they have made me bleed. We have read, from many sources, that the best thing you can do is swat at the bird to establish yourself as higher in the pecking order. I just hate doing this, but we really have to. She seemed surprised when I hit her, and she ran to the other side of the cage. (I promise I didn't hit her too hard and hurt her.) I was able to collect the rest of the eggs and change the water/food without further incident. With the holiday and both of us being busier than normal at work, we haven't spent as much time with the chickens as we normally do. You can tell that they aren't as social as usual. We will have to make more of an effort to spend time around them.

Laundry Detergent- DIY style

To avoid the incredible amount of waste packing most products come in, we tend to attempt to make as many of our everyday products ourselves as possible. Today we ran out of laundry detergent so it was time to make another batch. For the two of us, we have to make our detergent about every six months or so. (The ironic part of the story was Jeff was holding Cluck when she had an accident and hence the discovery of no more detergent- oops.) What I love about this laundry detergent recipe is it uses ingredients that we need for making other cleaners around the house. So for a few items we can buy in bulk once, we can get many uses out of it, saving money and being earth friendly- win win. So here's the recipe:

This makes a two gallon batch (I save the bulk of the detergent in a bucket and put a small amount in an old store bought detergent jug since it is so much easier to pour from.)

1. Boil three cups of water
2. Grate a bar of soap (Use whatever soap you like, but keep in mind this is where your color and scent are coming from) and put that in the boiling water a little at a time until it is all melted in
3. Add one cup washing soda and one cup borax
4. Stir it all together until everything has dissolved
   
5. Add the remaining two gallons of water
6. Let it sit overnight with the lid on

The next day it will be ready to go. The final mixture will be globby and you could mix it up every time you want to use it, but I have never seen any reason to as it gets mixed up in the washing machine. Use one cup per load of clothes. During the summer months I will mash up some of our rosemary from the garden to add a nice extra scent. Hope you enjoy this recipe.

Overhaul of Chicken Care Page

When we started this blog a mere three weeks ago, Jeff and I never thought it would take off like this. (We really appreciate everyone sending our blog link to your friends and posting it on your facebooks.) From your emails, I realized that our clandestine chicken overview page was lacking some necessary information to help you get started with your own clandestine chickens. Therefore, we have spent the last few days working hard to overhaul this page and include answers to your questions and more detailed info. Please check out the updated page and, as always, we value any comments or suggestions you have. (Oh and please keep letting your friends know about our blog- we are really excited about getting the word out about the chicken underground!)

Thanksgiving: Thank God We Are Chickens Not Turkeys!

As I am sure you can figure if you have read even one of my other posts, our chickens are hopelessly spoiled! The question then becomes what to do for the girls on Thanksgiving when almost everyday they get a wide selection of treats and regular food? Well I prepared a feast to suit their palettes- several of the large meal worms from the pet store, an apple cut up so they don't have to peck at it, sunflower seeds, and a few non-salted pecans. They gobbled it right up! They are very lucky birds this morning compared to their poultry cousins the turkeys! Check out the video of them on the first course of their meal, the worms.

What do the eggs look like?

Our eggs are shades of brown, some speckled, some bigger and others more narrow. It is interesting to see the variety. They naturally have a membrane on them so you don't have to refrigerate them. (They last a week un-refrigerated and three weeks in the frig.) (This is why in farm homes you see the eggs left out all the time.) One interesting thing we learned was that you shouldn't wash your eggs with water. This takes off the natural membrane and allows bacteria to penetrate the egg. Your best option for cleaning the eggs is to scratch off any dirt with a light sand paper or scratchy sponge right before preparing it to eat.

A Pound of Worms Really is a Lot of Worms!!!

Today the mail carrier dropped off our pound of red wiggler worms. (I really have to hand it to not only our carrier but all mail carriers. The weird stuff they must see everyday and just handle with a smile is amazing!) Anyways the worms arrived and Jeff called me (mid manicure I might add!) when I got home I was surprised by how small the box was but once I opened it and the small cloth bag inside, it was a mass of squirmy worms! There was basically no padding just one section of news paper around the bag. I pulled out the worms and, per the directions, poured them into my prepared bin and added a half of cup cool water and covered them with wet newspaper and left them alone. The cloth bag had the name of the worm farm on it so I thought it would be cool to save it, and I threw it in the cupboard we keep our reusuable bags in. Well a few hours later I was running out to pick up something for Thanksgiving and went into that cupboard to get a bag. It was then I noticed that several worms had stuck to the inside seams on the bag. I am not sure how many worms might have escaped into the cupboard! Oops! I am not going to tell Jeff about this little mishap right away- let use this as a test to see if he reads the blog! (I'll keep you posted!) The long and short of the day is that most of the worms made it safely to their new home and hopefully soon we will have some wonderful compost that we can use on our indoor garden.

A Pound of Worms, Chickens Eat Their Egg, Disco Lights and Homemade Hooch ....just another boring Sunday

In light of the fact that we emptied our compost into the garden and that it's too cold in our climate to start a new compost, we decided to get into vermaculture. Basically this is indoor composting but with worms to prevent odors. I took an old plastic trash bin, drilled holes in to the bottom, put in shredded papers, cardboard, and a few kitchen scraps then moistened it with a spray bottle. I put the entire thing in the extra chicken poop bin that we don't use any more (yes, we cleaned it out first!) This is the YouTube video I watch on how to set this up.



I called several bait shops to order red wigglers (this is the type of worm you need to use in the system) however they are not being sold this time of year so I had to resort to ordering them online.

I was going into the chicken coop to collect eggs when I noticed that there was a shell on the floor. I am guessing that this is more evidence that Scabby is laying now. The other chickens ate their eggs when they first started to lay so it would stand to reason that this is Scabby's reaction to her new found skill set. I cleaned up the shell, put a few more golf balls and river rocks in the pen and hoped for the best. (To see the full post on how we handled this the first time click here.) I did still collect two other eggs so lets cross our fingers that Scabby doesn't give the same idea to Big Crown and Cluck.

The next project of the day was setting up the LED light for my potatoes. Originally I had ordered this light for the Meyer lemon tree we are growing in our living room; the lights are in the blue and red spectrum for optimal plant growth. However Jeff took one look at it and told me there was no way we were going to have our living room look like a cheap night club! Banished to the basement, I had to figure out a new way to use the light. I thought about what grows well in containers and decided I had enough herbs in the living room set up, so I will try potatoes. One of my co-workers gave me a potato grow bag as a wedding present so I was already half way there. I just had to hang the light fixture. The seed potatoes should be coming on Monday. (I wanted to just take regular potatoes from the grocery store but Jeff did some research and found that you really do want to spend the extra money for seed potato since you have to be very careful about potato seedlings since potatoes are notoriously susceptible to plant disease, and you want to be very careful and use only seed potatoes certified as disease free).

We ended our evening by making homemade bread (by hand- one of Jeff's favorite things to do). We used a simple recipe for plain whole wheat bread. Its so easy to do, but mixing and kneading the dough takes a surprising amount of physical labor. We didn't realize making homemade bread could give you muscles! The smell of bread baking in the oven is almost better than actually eating it. Tonight we decided that we couldn't wait any longer to try our first batch of homemade hard cider. The cider was exceptionally dry and slightly effervescent. Alcohol content is a mystery as we don't yet have the tool to measure specific gravity (how you determine alcohol content). Jeff likes the natural dry cider flavor, me.....not so much. Woodchuck cider, it was not..... but at least it wasn't vinegar! Jeff is looking into ways to sweeten it.