The coop is complete!

Much good news to report on all fronts. After two days of medication and quarantine, Rose has recovered from her illness. She has rejoined the rest of the girls (we hope!), and they are happy to be back together. They have each declared their personalities, and since Gabriel and I are diehard devotees of the Golden Girls, the choice of names was obvious. As their sex remains indeterminate, we had to have male alternates:

• Rose - Nyland

• Dorothy - Stan

• Sophia - Getty

• Blanche - Blanche (isn't it obvious?!)
  

The picture doesn't do them justice, but baby chicks sit still for no one. Gabriel and I will do a little photo session soon. We've got to get their faces out there if they're ever going to have a chance at stardom!


The second bit of good news is that the coop is done, and we are very excited for the girls to move in. For those of you who want to write to them, their new address is:

The G's
6151 Richmond St.
Miami, FL

The girls should be ready to move in later this month and have a tentative date of September 19th, the same day as our City Chickens 101 course at Seattle Tilth. They will be about six weeks old then and able to keep warm in the coop with the help of some pine shavings.

We made a small addition to the Ark, a light inside the coop. Apparently, hens need about 16 hours of light per day to lay a decent amount of eggs. And since ours will be coming of egg laying age in January--roughly 8.5 hours of "light" in Seattle--we are going to need some help.

The coop project drew a lot of attention and excitement from the neighbors, and we now have omelet orders aplenty. I discovered today that the family next door will be getting their hens in the next few weeks. Gabriel and I are such trendsetters.

First swine flu, and now...chicken coryza???

Yes. Chicken coryza. It could almost sound appealing, maybe even delicious--think chicken cacciatore, chicken divan, chicken kiev. Unfortunately, it's nothing like any of those. It's a nasty infection caused by Haemophilus paragallinarum.

Yesterday was the official start date in the building of our new coop, the Garden Ark. However, just as I headed out I noticed that one of the girls (as we hopefully refer to them) had a closed eye. I quickly dispensed with the notion that she was just being coy and upon closer inspection noticed some clear goo and some swelling. My differential--infection or trauma. I was again off to the all knowing GOOGLE. Coryza sounded like the most likely culprit, although--thankfully--there was no nasty odor, as many of the sites described. After a few calls to the vet, to the exotic animals clinic (yes, apparently, chickens are exotic?!?!), and to local feed stores, I was off to purchase some antibiotics.

Most of the reputable sites recommended isolation, so I built a small house of quarantine from a bucket and some paper towels. She was not happy to be away from her brethren, and she protested loudly. She also defiantly escaped from my many attempts at creating a secure environment, and I ultimately resorted to cutting some garden cloth from our coop supplies and placing it on top, weighting it with a small stone to keep it in place. I felt I was back at work as I calculated the dosage of sulfamethazine for our infirmed feathered family member. Using a tiny syringe I coaxed 0.06 mL (that's 8mg to you and me) down her throat. She took it like a champ. For good measure I added a recommended amount of the Sulmet to the water dish of her still healthy compadres--so much for naturally raised hens! I was off to build...

The weather was beautiful, and getting back to some building and manual labor was refreshing. A few hours into the project I headed inside for a cold drink. What did I find?...our ailing avian had flown the coop. Or rather the hospital. There she was, happy as a clam sitting atop the rock I had placed on the garden cloth. She looked at me calmly in that one-eye-head-cocked kind of way that birds do. With a stern face I reached out my hand, and she moved onto my sawdust covered palm. After a firm talking-to (one musn't be soft even with children) back in she went, and I addressed any further potential escape routes. If medicine doesn't work out, maybe I'll look for a job in prison design.

Gabriel returned from work, and we labored until dark assmbling our Ark.

I am happy to report that the chicks are doing well today, and Rose is on the mend. Her eye is open, the swelling is better, and she seems in good spirits. She got her second dose of medicine today, and I am anticipating a return to the flock tomorrow.

We're Proud New Parents...

One week ago I arrived home from Richland, WA and heard a loud chirping sound coming from behind the closed door of our bedroom. Gabriel was still at work. I thought a bird had come in through our open window. With my arm raised over my face for full facial protection, I eased open the door expecting an assault of Hitchcockian proportion.

Nope. No flutter of wings. No flurry of feathers. No flush of avian frenzy.

Silence. I dropped both my arm and my Tippi Hedren act.

Then, just to my right, a soft "pew, pew, pew" and on top of our dresser, a cardboard box with a towel draped over it. I knew what it was. A confirmatory peek inside revealed three fluffy silvery chicks with salt-and-pepper feather-tipped wings. Two were curious, loud, and active. The third, even to my non-agrarian eyes, looked distressed.

I smiled at the thought of raising some chickens, then I smiled more that Gabriel had brought them home without asking me. It so typified his youthful exuberance--one of the many things I love about him. My smile lasted only briefly as my Hippocratic instincts kicked in. I clearly had a sick chick on my hands. In a flash I was at the computer asking the all-knowing GOOGLE what could be wrong. A mere 0.12 seconds later I was introduced to mypetchicken.com and in a few clicks surmised that they were cold. I quickly directed a reading lamp over the box and returned to the computer. When Gabriel arrived home, we hugged, basking in the warm glow of new parenthood and 200 watts of halogen, and we smiled down on our new brood.

A few hours at the computer had yielded the following:

1. Apparently, raising hens is all the rage. Gabriel and I had unknowingly and overnight become urban chic(k).
2. Seattle allows up to 3 hens per single family home. No roosters!
   
3. We were signed up for a "City Chickens 101" class at Seattle Tilth so that we might learn from and socialize with our new chicken-raising coterie.
4. Our copy of "Raising Chickens for Dummies" would arrive in two days--no I am NOT kidding.
5. My daily vernacular would have to expand to include alternate definitions for mash, crumb, scratch, and grit.
6. Only experts can sex baby chicks. Ours would have to remain gender neutral for a few more weeks.
   
7. We would have to build a brooder, a coop, and a run.
8. I would be visiting sites like mypetchicken.com and backyardchickens.com and others often over the next many months.
   

With our list of supplies in hand we were off to our local feed shop. That night we built our brooder, and in went the babes. The vigorous two frolicked and fed and sipped from their new watering tray, but our third did not make it. Apparently, it is not uncommon to lose some chicks, but that fact offered us little consolation.

This past Sunday Gabriel brought an additional two chicks home from his parents' in the hopes of raising our chances of having two or three hens. One is a bit older--an orphan whose mother and siblings were likely lost to a coyote or fox. The other is younger whose family has thus far managed to survive the hazards of farm life. They are all getting along swimmingly in their little Rubbermaid bin, basking in the red 85 degree glow of their heat lamp, eating and shitting and chirping away.