Although I’m always asked about how to care for chickens in cold weather (don’t they need heat? and what about snow?) after twenty years of backyard chicken keeping, I can tell you that your flock will weather cold weather just fine. (It’s all about good coop design and management. See here.) I wish, instead, that people would ask, How will my hens do in the heat?. The answer to that is that chickens get heat stressed. When it’s too hot, and they don’t have cool water, they can die between the time you leave for work and the time that you get home. I’ve written a FAQ about hot weather care for your flock. Read it now, so that you are prepared.

Although nights here have remained cool, and we haven’t had any extreme high temperatures yet, that heat wave could come at any time. We’re prepared. Steve has put up the shade cloth. We take it down in the winter so that the hens get as much sun as possible, but it goes up in the spring. The fabric is designed to block sunlight, but let water and air circulation through. You can purchase these at home stores, or find a supplier on-line to make a custom size for you. They last for years, and it is a very good investment for your coop.

As soon as all danger of freezing is past, provide outside waterers. Chickens would rather drink water outside in the pen than go into the coop for a drink. To keep them hydrated I keep both the inside and outside dispensers filled. The Ladies empty that plastic waterer in just two days. (The red ceramic feeder contains grit which they eat when they need it. Free-choice grit is essential for your hen’s ability to digest food.)

Veronica says that all of this is quite interesting. She’s ready to sunbathe.

Mother Nature does things on her own idiosyncratic schedule. Usually, by early June, my perennial bed is full of color. By now the peonies in the perennial bed should be opening up into showy bursts (which soon become loose, falling petals that require tidying up so that the flowers below aren’t buried in a soggy mess.) However, this year, despite the predictions that the Northeast will bear the brunt of rising temperatures due to global warming, Mother Nature is taking her time.

This year she seems to prefer a limited palate. Luckily, it’s my favorite – blues that ease into the purple and red end of the spectrum.

Borage is one of the few true blue plants.

These flowers are shot through with a smokey blue. I can’t remember what this is, and the tag disappeared over the winter. Can someone remind me?

My inexpensive, fill-in-the-blanks petunias are stunning.

Although herbs taste best if you keep their blooms pinched off, I can’t do that to this Vietnamese basil. The flower is edible, but there’s so little color in the garden, that I’m leaving it there for myself to look at, and for the bees to gather nectar.

There’s purple in the meadow, too, and I’ve already watched the pollinators eagerly going from bloom to bloom. Don’t discount how important clover is for bees. I have plenty, and I pull handfuls to feed to Phoebe.

Chives are in bloom. Without the balance of the fragrance of the peonies, my garden smells distinctly of onions.

The salvia can always be counted on for a show all summer. How the bees and hummingbirds love it!

Usually, by the first week of June, the green swath of the meadow is dotted with yellow and whites of daisies, but they’re still closed up tight. However, there are tall spires of lupine bursting with purple.

I’m guessing that Mother Nature will pull out her pink paints next, but I could be wrong. We’ll have to wait and see.

The CDC has issued a warning about a salmonella outbreak coming from Mt. Healthy Hatchery. This is the same hatchery that salmonella outbreaks were traced back to in 2012 and 2013. There are many strains of salmonella. The ones coming out of Mt. Healthy sicken humans. This time, no one died, although of the 126 reported cases, 35% ended up in the hospital. It’s serious. It’s also a problem that’s hard to fix at the source. Most of the huge mail-order hatcheries don’t actually raise all of the chicks that they sell. They are distributors for smaller producers. That’s how a company like My Pet Chicken can offer so many rare breeds. They either get in hatching eggs, or they get in the chicks and then ship them out again. With eggs and breeding stock being sourced from multiple farms, it’s just about impossible to eliminate all risk. Mt. Healthy seems to have more trouble than other suppliers at controlling salmonella. Given a choice, I’d use another hatchery when stocking my flock.

It’s essential to recognize that as fluffy and adorable as day-old chicks are, that they can carry bacteria. But, chicks aren’t lethal fuzzy balls. Salmonella is transmitted to humans via the chick’s manure. All you have to do to protect yourself is to:
1. Keep the brooder somewhere other than your house! Chicks kick up dust. You don’t want bacteria-laced film coating your kitchen surfaces.
2. Do NOT kiss your chicks.
3. After handling the chicks, wash your hands.
4. Dispose of manure properly. The germs die off in fresh air and sunshine. You can compost the waste in a far corner of your yard (in a container that your dogs won’t roll in!) You can bag it and throw it out.

I’ve been hearing from worried owners of chicks purchased from Mt. Healthy. (Mt. Healthy supplies many feed stores with chicks; you should always ask which hatchery the birds came from.) There’s been a lot of misinformation going around. People are being told that once infected, always infected. That you’ll never be able to integrate the Mt. Healthy chicks in with your flock. That the best thing to do is to either permanently quarantine the Mt. Healthy birds, or to cull (kill) them. Some people have been advised to cull their entire flock, since they were all exposed, and to start over! I wanted to know if there was any science behind this advice. I called the USDA. I called my state Department of Agriculture. I talked to the poultry expert, to the state epidemiologist and to the state employee who goes farm to farm, testing flocks for communicable diseases. I read the literature.

It really comes down to commonsense.

All animals carry bacteria, viruses and parasites. Good management keeps the load down so that there is minimal health risk to both the animals and their owners. Because industrial agriculture models don’t have good management – animals are crowded, stressed, and fed poorly – bacterial load can quickly escalate. One sick animal means that everyone becomes ill. These farmers use an “all in, all out” model, which is when all of the animals arrive together, are kept for a short time, and then harvested. The empty barns are disinfected, and a new flock moves in. Not only is this impossible to do in a backyard set-up, it’s unnecessary.

Most birds are carriers of one disease or another. They don’t show any symptoms, but they harbor pathogens. When stressed, they still don’t look sick, but they do shed germs. That’s why you can purchase what looks like the healthiest hen at a poultry show, bring her home, and within days, all of your other chickens become ill. If you quarantine the newcomer for about a week, hopefully she will settle in, stop shedding the germs, and she can be added safely to the flock. On the other side of things, your birds, over time, have been exposed to countless pathogens, and these germs lay in wait in the surroundings. Slowly acclimatizing new stock, including chicks, to their surroundings helps them to develop immunity.

The reason that our flocks remain healthy despite harboring all sorts of germs and creepy-crawlies is because, with good management, we can keep the load down. We do this by removing manure, sweeping away dust and cobwebs, and providing housing with ventilation Good food boosts immunity. Of utmost importance is fresh air and sunshine, which kills pathogens. Even if your chicks came with bacteria in their guts, their load will dissipate. It won’t cause a problem for them, for your older hens, or for you (although, always wash your hands after taking care of your flock!)

If I had purchased Mt. Healthy chicks, I would keep their brooder scrupulously clean. I’d wash my hands each time after handling them. As soon as possible, I would get them outside onto ground that the rest of my flock doesn’t free-range on. I’d let them grow to be big and healthy. And then I’d integrate them into my flock.

On Saturday, a lovely, kind and enthusiastic group of new chicken keepers gathered around my porch table to learn about flock care. The one question that had them all leaning forward and listening closely? What do I do with a dead chicken? This topic comes up at every one of my workshops, and for good reason.

In this modern world, death is rarely dealt with in a hands-on, immediate way. People, of course, are prepared for internment by funeral homes, and what goes on there we don’t see or think about. Our dear dogs and cats are taken to the vet to be euthanized, are cremated, and the ashes are sent back to us in containers. Farmers know differently. Animals die from illness, injury, predators and old age. Animals are harvested and slaughtered; some parts are used, and some are hidden deep under compost piles or put into barrels and carted away.

The backyard chicken keeper is betwixt and between these two worlds. When it’s time to end a hen’s life (and if you keep chickens, this is part of the experience), I believe it’s best to do a neck break, or use an ax. If done properly these two methods are quicker and less stressful for the bird than a trip to the animal hospital. Avian vets, trained on exotics like parrots, rarely know how to euthanize chickens. I heard from one woman, whose hen had a broken leg. She took it to the vet who said it needed to be put down, but that, because “hens have no veins,” he’d have to anesthetize the bird, and then inject a lethal chemical into the intestinal tract. This would all take almost two hours. And cost $135. I’ve heard from other people whose veterinarians charge about $35 to euthanize a hen, which is worth it to them as they could never bring themselves to do the deed at home. I understand that. It is never easy to take a life, even when the animal is suffering and needs our help to pass on.

Sometimes a hen simply dies. There’s a body. What do you do?

We have enough land here to bury our chickens. Snowball, the hen that posed for my book Tillie Lays an Egg, has a special place under the peach tree, along with Candy, the late great Empress Bunny of the Barnyard.

Others are buried in the meadow, or in the woods. It’s work to bury a hen. The hole has to be deep enough so that dogs and other animals don’t dig up the body. It’s especially hard work here on our rocky New England parcel. Some urban towns don’t allow burial in the backyard. These laws harken back to the days when people raised food on small lots, and it was unsanitary to have the decomposing bodies near to houses and wells.

We’ve lost chickens in the winter when there was no way that we could bury a hen, what with the snow cover and frozen ground. I confess that I have carefully double-bagged the body and put the hen in the trash. The physical reality is that that’s not much different than throwing out the carcass of a rotisserie chicken. Emotionally, however, it takes some getting used to.

This discussion might make you uneasy or queasy, but I am not sorry for bringing it up. You can’t keep animals without thinking about what happens at the end. I’m a big believer in thinking things through and planning for contingencies, and so every time that I’m asked, What do you do with a dead chicken? I am actually heartened. I know that the person who is asking that question will care about their hens, not only during the halcyon days when the eggs are appearing in the nesting boxes, but also when their birds are at the end of their lives and hard decisions have to be made.

Whatever you decide, burial, or putting the body in the trash, what matters is the life that led up to that moment. With chickens, it’s not about longevity, it’s about quality. Today, while I garden, my hens will be allowed out. They’ll be enjoying that meadow.