Troops arrive for basic training

I found five little cockerels at Wilco for half price. They are lucky little birds. Normally they would have been tossed into a grinder as soon as they were sexed, but somebody must have thought they were pullets (hens) and sent them to the store where their true nature was discovered. Not sure what the store would have done with them if I hadn't come along looking for troops to chicken the Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone Garden Perimeter Fortified Area of Defense (RPBKZGPFAD).

As the man at the store said, very absolutely, 'nobody wants cockerels!'

I replied, 'shouldn't they be free?'

No luck, but at $1.50, close.

My Janissaries in training: Two White Leghorns, two Blue Andalusians, One Gold Laced Wyandotte, and two Rhode Island Reds, the latter are pullets to replace my lost Buff Orpington and my Unexpected and Very Expensive Speckled Sussex Rooster.

They're heritage breeds. Without a marketable skill like laying eggs or growing genetically engineered giant breasts, they get, well, decapitalized.

That the boys get immediately killed was one of the ethical dilemmas I faced at the beginning of the chicken head scratching. We can't keep roosters as they're too loud for the neighborhood, plus I need good foragers that are pretty cold hardy--good forager plus cold hardy leaves me with only heritage breeds to choose from.

But for every heritage female I buy a heritage male is going to die. Oofdah, my bruised
conscience.

Cheap Cheeps

The white leghorns massage my ego/conscience the most. White Leghorn hens lay white eggs. White eggs are not sought after by the particular sort of hairless ape that keeps heritage breeds. So, the white-egg-laying White Leghorn cockerel is a lucky bird if he sees day two. Nobody wants cockerels, especially White Leghorn cockerels.

Poor Henry the Unexpected and Very Expensive Rooster, he's going stir crazy. But I can't put him outside. He is LOUD. I take him to the land and let him roam when I have the time or I'm working on the fence. Soon, he'll be in chicken wonderland, though, scratching, eating bugs, and generally Roostering.

We're keeping Henry Rooster in the garage until we get the fencing ready on the farm. Tonight he kicked his stall door open (actually a dog kennel) and raided the place. He hopped up on the top of the chick incubator and broke the heat lamp. We're lucky he didn't kill the chicks.

Work on the RPBKZGPFAD in progress. Electric wires soon.

More thoughts on fencing

Here's the coop in the backyard of the home office. It's on a very steep slope. You can see the three strand electric fence and also the T-Posts holding up some bird netting. These combine to make, so far, a safe habitat for the chickens.

Henry the Unexpected and Very Expensive Rooster

Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone!

We have a few backyard birds. We bought them as chicks from the local Wilco farm store in the Fall, and raised them under lights in the garage--picked a few crusty butts (warm wet rag and patience, be gentle).

We have a Delaware Rooster, a Speckled Sussex Rooster, a Barred Rock Hen and an Americauna Hen. We had a Buff Orpington but she ended up on a Raccoon's dinner plate.

I feel terrible about that. I could have kept her from being eaten alive but I missed closing the coop one night and, well, bahk, bahk, bahk, aaack!

KK and me. I'm not a cowboy, but I like the hats. They give shade and peripheral vision.

There is a lot to raising chickens. I suspect that our eggs will end up costing us about $10 a dozen, in the end. Much of the costs could have been avoided had I known about fencing and what type of coop I wanted right at the beginning.

But my children are learning about where their food comes from, so it's worth the effort. Plus, when the Zombie Apocalypse hits we'll be that much more prepared.

I'm a vegetarian, but only by convenience and the availability of options. That is, if I miss one meal I start thinking about what small creature I can slaughter to satisfy my hunger. I don't figure it will be too long into a systemic collapse before I start whopping heads off roosters, but as long as the economy holds up they are some lucky fowl.

If I had started with an electric fence, one strong enough to have the occasional weed touching it, our little buff Orpington hen would still be with us. 

Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone under construction.

The pic above shows my Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone garden concept under construction. The T-post fence to the left surrounds about a third of an acre. I've dedicated that space to market crops, some trees, and perennials. The smaller fencing attached at an angle creates a space inside which my roosters will eventually range. Their space, safe from red-tail hawks, and to be protected on the perimeter by an electric fence, will surround the entire garden area, creating, essentially, a moat a few feet wide surrounding the garden.

This fits with the permaculture concept of multiple functions (though, admittedly, not perfectly), gives the roosters a job, and allows me to keep the promise I made to the chicks when we got them, that they weren't ever going to be on a human dinner plate--even if they were roosters.

I cut 10' pvc in three pieces and wired them to the tops of the T-posts. I then strung three strands of 17 galvanized wire between the pvc posts for a total fence height of eight feet. It has preformed well, keeping the deer at bay. This pic was taken just after a windstorm wreaked havoc on the wires. 

My rooster moat does come at a cost. It is essentially three fences, all 450 feet long, each encircling the next. Total cost is going to come in near a grand and will have taken me, over the course of learning, several days to install.

The inner fence is T-posts, 2" galvanized wire roll fencing, pvc extenders, three strands of galvanized wire, making a total of eight feet--deer proof in our verdant area. If I'd known I was going to do the Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone and the electric fence, I would not have needed the pvc extenders--deer generally will not jump over two parallel fences.

If I could start again, I'd use the cheap plastic deer fencing that comes in 7x100 foot rolls instead of the 2" galvanized wire fencing. That would have saved hundreds of dollars. Initially I intended to use as few plastics as possible, so I was going with metal where I could, but as expenses add up, ethics take a beating.

Not the best pic, but the home office chicken coop is in the background. This was the set up before I installed a small electric fence, the set up that just looked like a lunch counter to a raccoon.

We can't keep roosters at our home, a few miles away from our farm, so I have to come up with a solution for the two we have. That's what started the whole Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone construction concept--I can't send the family pets off to certain doom.

What the (hopefully) predator proof area on the land does, though, is allow me to keep another promise. When we got sexed chicks we were told that each chick was a female, with 95% surety.  Of course, that means that most of the chicks who were not thought to be females were destroyed--tough life for boy chickens.

At that time, I promised myself that I would make up those numbers, some day, and raise five cockrels, preferably of a breed known for white eggs but not for meat production (Brown or White Leghorns, for instance).  In other words, I promised myself that I'd raise at least five chickens that would have been, more often than not, run through a grinder minutes after they hatched to make up for my five hens. So, the rooster moat will allow me to keep that promise, some day.

Probably not too many farmers worrying about the cockrels that were destroyed to make room for their pullets, I suppose.