Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Chicken Medicine Cabinet

Chickens are fairly simple animals to take care of. The day to day flock management takes only a few minutes. Overall good health can be maintained by keeping the coop clean, dry and well-ventilated, and by giving your hens plenty of space, good food and clean water. Enclosures should be as predator-proof as possible. Still, birds get injured, they get attacked, and they get sick. When that happens, you want to have the tools at hand to care for them.

It’s always useful to have scissors. You never know when you’re going to have to cut off a tangled string, trim some feathers, or cut a piece of duct tape. I also keep a pair of sturdy gloves within reach.

Almost everything else in my coop emergency medicine cabinet fits in this case. I keep it in the barn.

Rubbing alcohol, gauze, and vaseline have a multitude of uses. Disposable gloves not only protect you from handling gross stuff, but they help to prevent the spread of germs. Duct tape is essential! Among the many uses, I’ve made it into hats to protect pecked-on heads, and fashioned sturdy band-aids out of it to cover wounds.

Two other essentials are blu-kote (gentian violet) and povidone. The povidone is the expensive version of betadine. It effectively kills germs and does wonder on red, irritated bottoms. The blu-kote, also a topical antiseptic, (though not as powerful) has the added benefit of darkening red skin which reduces pecking. Both are permanent stains, which is one more reason to have those disposable gloves on hand.

If you do have a chicken with a wound, then topical analgesic and antibiotic creams can be used. The other product that you should know about is the calcium alginate dressing. If your chicken gets a puncture wound (a dog will do this) then you can pack the wound with this dressing. Don’t buy these items ahead of time, as they have a limited shelf-life, and storage in a hot and/or freezing barn limits their effectiveness. But, once you do have them and use them, don’t put them back in the house with the products you use on yourself!

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you know how much I believe in epsom salts, which can be used both internally and externally. The “spa treatment” of a warm epsom salt soak helps with laying issues, abdominal swelling and irritated skin. (Follow the package directions.) Epsom salt, when ingested, can neutralize toxins, help get the intestinal tract moving, reduce runny poo and treat vent gleet.

Olive oil is also one of those cure-alls. When a hen looks poorly and isn’t producing manure, I want to get things moving. A dose of a tablespoon, poured down the throat, can sometimes loosen blockages and help.

Lastly, there are times when the only thing that will save your flock are antibiotics. These can be purchased online, at feed stores and from your veterinarian. There are many on the market, and you’ll read that some are better for certain respiratory diseases than others. This is true, but unless you take your chicken to a vet and have blood work done, you won’t know what you have. Symptoms can be deceiving! I dose with what I have, and if symptoms don’t improve in 24 hours, I reassess the drugs that I’m using. Don’t purchase ahead of time as they have a limited shelf-life. But, once you have them, store in a safe place (preferably with a cool, steady temperature) and use when you need them.

It’s a simple medicine cabinet. It’s most effective is you know your animals, thoughtfully observe what’s amiss, and use the products with common sense.

How Loud Are Hens?

We all know that roosters are loud, what with their cock-a-doodle-doing all day long. That’s one reason why towns and cities ban the boys. It’s true that hens don’t crow, but that doesn’t mean that your flock will be quietly unobtrusive. Sure, some hens go about their days saying nothing. Others chuck-chuck and bawk-bawk in low pitches, almost under their breath, like they’re talking to themselves. Some only up the volume when they’ve laid their eggs, announcing the achievement with a quick squawk and then returning to their quiet lives.

But other hens are loud. Very loud. Onyx, my Barnevelder, is a talker. She broadcasts that she’s stepped into the coop. She lets everyone knows that she’s going back outside. A half-hour before laying an egg she’ll increase the volume while stomping around the barn. Etheldred is another one that wants to be heard. This video is less than 30 seconds, but it’ll give you a good idea of the racket that a couple of loud hens can make.

But neither of these two girls compare to my late and much missed New Hampshire Red hen, Marge. She and her twin sister, Petunia, always traveled side by side, but it was easy to tell them apart. You knew it was Marge by her vocalizations. She was like an ever-present haranguing, argumentative, demanding aunt. She’d watch me garden, constantly clucking in what sounded like a stream of criticisms. “You’re doing what?” “Not there!” “Toss me the bug, now!” Petunia never said a word. Marge had such an insistent, unique voice that we made it into a ringtone. I have it on my iPhone timer. When I put money into a parking meter, I set the timer to remind me when the time is up. There’s nothing like having Marge squawking at me to get me running to the car. If you have an iPhone, you can hear her (and get the ringtone) by going to the iTunes store and searching for HenCam.

When you have a loud hen (or two, or three) you worry, and rightly so, that the noise will bother your neighbors. Certainly the cackling of a hen is not pretty or melodic. If you happen to have a chicken that makes most of her vocalizations in the morning, you can keep the coop dark (and the inhabitants asleep) until a reasonable hour. But, most noisy hens are noisy all day. Fences and screening with sound-absorbing plants make for good neighbors. Keeping the hens busy with compost and greens keeps their beaks pecking instead of talking. Siting the coop under your bedroom window, not the neighbor’s, is the prudent thing to do. But, honestly, if you have a noisy hen, well, it’ll be noisy. It helps to keep it in perspective. For example, Onyx isn’t half as loud as my neighbor’s lawn mower. Etheldred’s voice can’t drown out the sound of an idling FedEx truck. A neighbor’s barking dog is as loud as Garnet (another noisy girl here.) And if you have a hen like Marge, when she’s gone it will be markedly quieter and you’ll miss the hubbub.

 

White Leghorns

The White Leghorn is often overlooked as a hen for our backyard flocks. I think that’s because of all of the horrific images we’ve seen of white chickens crowded into cages in factory production facilities. We don’t want egg machines in our sturdy, old-fashioned flocks. But, the reality is that the hens in those cages are a modern invention with closely guarded genetics. They are not the Leghorns that you purchase from a hatchery. In fact, the Leghorn is an old breed that originated in Italy. In the mid-1800s leghorns transformed chicken farming here in the United States because it had the best food-to-egg conversion, and made egg farming a viable business. The Leghorn was an active forager, heat tolerant, and so was ideal for the new pastured poultry ranches that were springing up in California and elsewhere.

California Chicken Ranch 1911

 

Today’s Leghorns lay beautiful white eggs almost daily and rarely go broody. I find them to be friendly to people and not aggressive to other hens. Bantam White Leghorns are charming, spry birds full of personality. My first bantam White Leghorn inspired me to write Tille Lays An Egg. If you get a Leghorn, or two, I’m sure they’ll inspire stories of your own.

How To Make Applesauce

Making applesauce is ridiculously easy. It’s so easy that at first I thought I wouldn’t bother showing you how I do it. But then I thought that it’s one of those things that if you haven’t ever done it, you might not know how.

You’ll need apples. If, like me, you live near orchards and it’s apple picking season, you’ll have your choice of varieties. Cortlands, romes, macouns, jonagolds and mactintosh. Some are tart, some are sweet, some are for baking, and some are for eating out of hand, but all are good for sauce. The only ones I don’t use are the delicious, which I find are not at all like their name, but are too sweet and often mealy.

Give them a good rinse under running water. Quarter and remove the cores. I use a paring knife for this, but if you have a favorite coring tool, use it. Put the apples in a large, heavy pot. Add one cinnamon stick. Pour in just enough water to cover the bottom by a scant quarter-inch. Turn the heat on low and cover.

You might wonder why we food writers love to say, “put in a heavy pot.” The answer is that a pot with a thin bottom conducts heat unevenly, often warps, and slow, long-simmered recipes will scorch.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until all is soft, which takes about one hour when on very low heat. Apples vary in juiciness. If the sauce sticks to the pot before becoming soft, add a touch more water.

The next step requires a food mill, which is a handy device which squeezes the fruit through fine holes and separates it from the skin.

I cook the apples with the skin on for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don’t have to peel them, which saves a lot of time. Secondly, the red peel contributes a cheery color to the sauce. This year’s apples were so ripe, moist and thin-skinned that much of it went right through the fine mesh, adding even more color and flavor. If you don’t have a food mill, you can start with peeled apples and can skip this step.

That’s it! Adding sugar is unnecessary (in fact, when I see commercial applesauce with added sweeteners it makes me wonder about the quality of the apples). Applesauce stays fresh in the refrigerator for a week, or you can freeze it to have on hand all year until next apple season.

If you have chickens, there’s one more step to making applesauce.

You’ll have a bucket full of cores. Take it out to the girls.

Put it in their compost area and listen to their appreciative clucks.

If you have goats, they might like apples, too. Or, not. Caper turns up his nose at the peels, but Pip loves them.

Cooling Cucumber Salad

Often my recipes are inspired by what I have on hand.These are items that I usually have in the summer: Cucumbers, mint, parsley and chives from my garden, and a lemon from the market.

I partially peeled the cukes and then cubed them. Washed the herbs well, dried in a salad spinner, minced, and tossed them in. Squeezed the lemon and strained out the seeds over a measuring cup. A lemon usually yields about a quarter cup of juice, but it varies. I checked how much I had, then poured in good extra virgin olive oil to not quite match that amount.  Salt, pepper, whisk, toss.

Make it a main dish by adding feta cheese. Or, serve as a side dish. It goes nicely with salmon and egg salad sandwiches. (One can salmon, one large hard-cooked egg, mayo, pickle relish. Mash.)  It’s a summer menu that doesn’t heat up the kitchen.