Backyard Chickens & Bees

Ten chickens enjoying a hot meal on a cold day, eating up the mashed grains I used to make a rye bock lager. Ah, the best way to transform the spent grain onto compost!

One of the Hamburgs has been very lethargic recently, and we are beginning to suspect that she might be eggbound. She has been quite solitary and showing little signs of energy, although her eyes are bright and she talks a bit now and then. Veronica checked in her cloaca, but felt no eggs; I felt [...]

Woke up this morning at 5:30 am to the alarm clock and hearing the chickens chattering away outside. We got up and looked out (it was still pitch black, of course, so we had a flashlight on) and saw a big, fat raccoon sitting in front of the door to the chicken coop! Tapping on [...]

We just had our first frost and (tiny bit of) snow here in Portland, and fortunately we were more or less ready for it! At least, ready as far as the bees and chickens are concerned. Well, OK, as far as the bees are concerned. But the chickens are easy to work with so I [...]

I went with my neighbors to get new chicks today to replenish the ones that have been lost over the past year to raccoons, the inability to get along with the new flock, or the butcher knife (for the two roosters). Last year we got 11 chicks to go along with the two that were [...]

The other night we took on the task of killing and cleaning the two chickens that ended up becoming roosters. The two roosters in question were from the group of chicks that we bought last Spring. The chick supplier claimed to have 90% accuracy for sexing the birds, but we still somehow ended up with [...]

Apparently, now that the chicks are getting up to laying age and are almost as big as the two older hens, we have two roosters. It has long been suspected that at least one of the Cuckoo Marans was a rooster, but now there is evidence that one of the light Brahmas is, too. Alas. [...]

This month has been super BUSY, what with the bees swarming, the chickens getting bigger, and all the salads and peas that have been eaten. This past week gave us a nice respite via a road-trip vacation to Park City, Utah to see Veronica’s cousin be married and to party with the rest of her [...]

I’ve been following up on the chicken illness that hit George and seeing what can be done to minimize spreading it to the other chickens. While there is probably a lot of anecdotal evidence to support a variety of holistic treatments, I am (as a scientist) more interested in proven, peer-reviewed methods that do not [...]

I mentioned in the last post that George, one of the older hens in the flock, was looking pretty sick and acting very lethargic. This was especially apparent when we reintroduced the new chicks to the older hens and George was not chasing them around and asserting her dominance. Even loud Emily was doing more [...]