Gross.

A chicken pooped on my hand today.

Happy (one week) Birthday!

Short post this week. Happy one week Birthday Chynna, Wendy, Carnie, and DebbieGibson. One week ago, ladies, you were a shell of your current selves. Ha!

Chicks grow FAST in a week. The ladies have more than doubled in size and have begun flapping their wings - we need a screen to cover their brooder soon! They have also graduated from 95 degrees to 90 degrees, following the general rule that their environment gets 5 degrees cooler a week, until the brooder temperature is the same as the outdoor temperature.

Ollie still loves his new friends and maintains his polite manners. What a good boy!

Rock Star Lineup

The ladies are only six days old, and yet their personalities are starting to show. Here's what we've observed so far.

Name: Chynna Treuhaft
Breed: Buff Orpington
Favorite Hobbies: Eating, Sleeping, Shitting
Odds to become flock leader: 10:1
Other: Chynna seems to be developing quite nicely. She has good genes and should be a calm, non-agressive young lady. We think she has a bright future.




Name: Wendy Treuhaft
Breed: Barred Plymouth Rock
Favorite Hobbies: Eating, Sleeping, Shitting
Odds to become flock leader: 8:1
Other: Wendy enjoys human contact and will stay perched on a finger for several seconds at a time. We think she will quite enjoy roosting.




Name: Carnie Treuhaft
Breed: Ameraucana
Favorite Hobbies: Eating, Sleeping, (shitting not so much)
Odds to become flock leader: 20:1
Other: Carnie is a lovely young lady however she is having some digestive issues as her tailpipe is getting clogged. We think with some TLC she will be fine. Her breed is known for laying green eggs.



Name: Debbie Gibson
Breed: Rhode Island Red
Favorite Hobbies: Eating, Sleeping, Shitting, Jumping
Odds to become flock leader: 2:1
Other: Debbie is a feisty lass. She is a bit skittish of human types, but she can scoot her way across the brooder like no other!







Ollie is really digging the ladies as well. Instead of leading us to the front door to be let out for potty (and a nibble on the neighbors cat food), he has been leading us to the basement so that he can catch a glimpse of his new friends-to-be! He is completely calm around them, and even sits a few feet away, maybe to show us that we can trust him...



And finally, as you can see, we have decided upon a name for the fourth lady. "Debbie Gibson", a nomination by our friend Nicole, edged out "Lara Pabst", a nomination by Lara Pabst, in a close race. Many thanks to all who participated!

lofty living

All conventional chicken wisdom suggests that the coop be ready for the chickens before they arrive home. Even though they'll be living in the basement in their brooder for the next two months at least, it seems it's best to avoid the experience of having full grown chickens squawking around the house without a place to call their own. So, we decided to troll our local craigslist to see what our options were.

Once we weeded through the regular batch of craigslist crazies, we fell upon Jon and Cindy Bake of Bake's Binsters. Jon is a pro contractor who is taking a gamble on the fact that the urban chicken market is going to continue to grow pretty furiously in Portland by designing a series of modular coop/compost bins. I told him exactly what we wanted and he built the coop in two days to our specifications.



That window you see is the window that looks out over my kitchen sink. The screened part under the window is what's called the run, and the solid wood part to the right is the house where the chickens can roost (sit up in the air on bars) at night. There's a guillotine door on the far right side, where we intend to build a coop expansion out into the neighboring bed this spring, once we've removed all that blasted bamboo. Sustainable material, maybe, but also a huge pain in the tush. If anyone wants me to send it to them to make some sheets out of or something, let me know.



We're pretty thrilled with the way the coop looks. Since you can see it from the street, we didn't want it to be an eyesore and we think Jon did a great job. It's kind of like a condo in the Pearl District, really. Our ladies will live in style.

Announcing the ladies

Chicks have arrived on 25th Avenue!






Yesterday we spent a bit of time at a new shop on Morrison Street called The Urban Farm Store (www.urbanfarmstore.com). We came home with all the goodies for the brooder, and learned that we'd be able to come back for some chicks at ten this morning. We were so excited-- and worried that our choice breeds would be gone in a flash-- that we showed up at ten on the nose only to find out that the chicks hadn't yet arrived in the mail. That's right. The chicks travel from hatcheries around the country via the good old U.S. Postal Service.

Later this afternoon as we were headed to the park with Ollie, I called the farm store in the off chance that the chicks arrived mid-day. Turns out they had, and they were going fast. We raced over and managed to get the breeds we were after. They are:


Buff Orpington


Ameraucana


Rhode Island Red


Barred Plymouth Rock

Aren't they going to be a pretty flock?

So far, the chicks seem a bit shell shocked. They chirped furiously all the way home, but now that they're settled into their brooder, they mostly eat, drink, poop and fall asleep in the middle of walking. It's a bit startling when that happens as it pretty much looks like they're dead-- wings akimbo, legs splayed. But then they sleep for a few moments, wake up, and go about their business like nothing happened. Weirdos.

Regarding the ladies' names: we're not sure who's who yet, but we know that three of them are called Wendy, Carnie, and Chynna after the hit pop group Wilson Phillips. The fourth chick was an impulse buy, so we haven't settled on the last name yet. Anyone have thoughts?

the place for chick checks

Friends and family:

Hi. Welcome to the blog where we will post pictures and writing about our adventures in urban chicken keeping. It's clear that plenty of you (ahem, families!) think we're nuts for doing this, so it is our hope that you'll visit us here once in a while to see just how not insane this project is.

Our chicks arrive tomorrow morning, our brooder (place where baby chicks hang out) is set, and our outdoor coop is ready for the day the ladies are ready to move outside-- roughly ten weeks from now.

Welcome to our wild world of animal husbandry. More soon...