KaiserTales

Meet Eggy and Henny, and we’ll see about Mo:

Eggy, the Barred Rock hen

Henny, the Rhode Island Red hen

I don’t know what happened to Nate over the course of last week, but he woke up one morning squawking about chickens — and how we needed to get some! I suspect it has to do with all the doom and gloom of the financial markets, paired with the natural instinct to hunker down for the winter. All that, and Nate loves to implement his “zombie plan,” getting us closer to self-sufficient if zombie’s attack and the world goes to hell.

Nate, always a man of action, spent the week researching coops, setup and care for urban hens. Then we went on a visiting tour. Fellow Ballard-ites Aaron and Tina have had two hens for well over a year. They keep them in their backyard, and often let them out of the coop to cluck around the yard and play with Pico the dog.

Aaron and Tina got their hens as “pullets,” chickens that are older than chicks but less than a year old, and the Rhode Island Red and Wyandotte have treated them well. They lay more eggs when they get more daylight (I bet the hens, like most Seattleites, are Vitamin D deficient). And the eggs are better when the hens have more protein.

We also solicited thoughts from my aunt and uncle. I remember thinking it was so funny when Auntie Lorre and Uncle David told us about their hen house, but the idea of fresh eggs sounded awfully nice. Auntie Lorre got her hens as baby chicks. They thought she was their mama and followed her around the yard. Too bad their neighborhood has by-laws against chickens. Some neighbor snitched them out and made them get rid of the hens.

But we’ll benefit from it all, since they still have the water and feeding troughs! As for the hens, we’re buying two–maybe three–off Craigslist and going to pick them up on Saturday. I’m excited!

Seattle Tilth offers a City Chickens class that’s becoming quite popular. There’s no classes offered now, but they do have some pretty good resources online.

And our friend Jen wrote a story about raising chickens in the city for NW Source. She even featured Aaron and Tina’s hens!

I’ll post more this weekend, once we actually get our chickens.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 2:32 pm and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.