We had been talking about it for months. Real eggs, orange yolks, funny noises.
Last September, before traveling to South America for six months, I bought two chicks for the backyard. They were just a few days old when we picked them up in Half Moon Bay Feed and Fuel.
They wrapped them up in a box, we bought some early chicken feed, a heat lamp (to simulate a momma chicken they'll never see) and we drove them back to San Francisco.
They were as adorable as one would expect, what small animal isn't? They made little sounds that were almost inaudible.We named them Lola and Pocha. Lola is a Rhode Island and Pocha an Ameraucana.
The first few weeks we kept them in a wooden box with the heat lamp on at all times, the mostly cuddled with each other and ate. Soon after I left for my trip and then others had to take care of them.
They grew quickly ( I got photo updates) and soon they were too big for the wooden box. My mom, with the help of some of her permaculture friends built and amazing chicken coop, that later had to be taken down because of neighbor complaints (what they were exactly remain hard to understand...) Then it was changed and here is where they live today:
I wasn't there, but it was a lot of work to build and it was starting to become time sensitive since the chickens where getting pretty large and hard to keep in one place.
They weren't laying eggs yet but as the days got longer they waking time got earlier and earlier. They began to develop their own personalities and to make a lot more noise than before. During the winter months we didn't have much in the garden so they roamed around the yard eating what they liked and, I am pretty convinced, maintaining our larger-than-normal spider population to a pretty low level. Eventually, we started to plan spring and summer crops, and we found out the hard way that they loved sprouts and to take their daily dirty baths in our recently planted beds.
So we set out to create a space just for them, where they could eat whatever they found and dig has much as they could. We built fence in the back of the yard, about 4 feet tall. They seemed happy in the new habitat. A few days later we found Pocha outside of the fenced area. We couldn't figure out how she had gotten out. A hole in the fence? Underneath it? Above it?? Yup, Pocha, the more wild of the two, had flown right over the fence that had taken us a whole day to put up. We extended the fence another 4 feet, now we take them out every morning to their play pen and they eat the dead bees and whatever kitchen left overs we toss over to them.
They are work. Waking up at 6am some times to take them out (we finally figured out that if we look their coop door at night, they sleep in) cleaning their coop at least once a week, and remembering to put them back at night. They are loud and if they ever get out in the garden their are small tornadoes. But, we having been doing some research on using their poop as compost, they give us lovely eggs, and they keep our spider colonies under control.
It has been a trail and error adventure with Lola and Pocha, but we are thinking of getting one or two more this year. They are lovely garden companions!
I never found any website that were very helpful on the topic, most of them are for farming land or larger scale chicken raising, but I have been seeing more books on the topic of keeping urban chickens.
I failed to mention, that I got the idea and urge to get chickens after reading the amazing book Farm City, by Novella Carpenter.
Here is the link to get great blog:
http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/
If you get inspired to get some chicks of your own, let me know, I'd be more than happy to provide some guidance and help out with any building of any kind!
