Re Rustica

This fox was telling us to keep back: we had gotten too close - she had smelled a grasshopper and didn't want our sight, smell or sound to interrupt her hunt. It is important to understand what the animals you are following for study are telling you if you are to learn from them!

We study our wild animal friends so we can work better with them.

Foxes love the hunt! They eat grasshoppers, rodents, small lizards and snakes, and sometimes even vegetation - they LOVE fruit. Contrary to popular opinion, they do not eat much chicken - when they can get the more nutritious and delicious foods they are used to.

They like to hunt along deer paths, but when people are around, they much prefer the human paths and roads. People are better at making paths than deer are.

They walk along, marking their territory, and sniffing for something delicious. They do hunt with their eyes, but their nose is what gives to them their greatest advantage. They can smell something they cannot see or hear, and can smell it before they themselves are seen or heard! They can then dive through the air like a cat and pounce on what food they have found before it knows even that the fox was there!

This is why we make paths down our aisles, so the foxes will be further encouraged to hunt among our crops. Our aisles are already path-like, but we make sure they are extra good for fox hunts. At the same time, we make them excellent hunting grounds for felines, coyotes and all kinds of raptors. We study our carnivore friends, and help them do their work - as we help our herbivore friends do theirs. By helping every creature in our fields find food and shelter, our crops do best!

If you are friends with the fox, it will let you come along on its hunt. We followed a fox we had become friends with for several days like this, learning how it hunted, what it liked to eat, and generally becoming more familiar with its magnificent species. We read books about foxes (including the excellent book, “RED FOX: THE CATLIKE CANINE, by J. David Henry and published by the Smithsonian Institution). We reccomend, if you cannot spend some intensive time with the foxes, to at least read this book.

All canines are carnivores, and are able to safely digest meat. They do not store up uric acid like herbivores do when they eat meat (most herbivores in times of need will eat meat, dead or alive).

They will hunt extra and store what they cannot eat - this is why they do not like to hunt large animals (like chickens): they have to hide and store all that extra food! They only eat about an ounce at a time, and even a small 1 pound baby chicken would present a lot of food to hide. Their pups learn quickly how to hunt through play.

Foxes are aesocial with other foxes, and family groups are rare. However, they are fairly social with other species, and will befriend you (as much as they befriend anything) if you demonstrate your respect and keep out of their way during hunts (keep quiet and back so your smell doesn’t get in the way).

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At early stages of chicken life, it is sometimes hard to tell whether the bird is a rooster or a hen. Behavioral differences and morphology aren't necessarily reliable, but in some breeds color differences help identify a rooster.

 

JL writes

My wife hatched a chick from some fertile eggs she purchased at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op. The chick is now five weeks old and I am concerned that it is looking much more like a cockerel than a pullet. My wife has grown very attached to the bird, but we live in downtown Sacramento and could not possibly keep a rooster.

I read your blog and it sounds as though your chickens live very happy and fulfilling lives. If our chicken ends up being a rooster I was wondering if you would accept it as a donation to your flock. I believe it is a white leghorn. If you are not interested, perhaps you could refer me to someone else who would allow the rooster to live and treat it with care.

We respond

We do sometimes adopt roosters from those who can't keep them anymore... before we agree to adopt yours or help find it a good home, though, we would ask a few things.  First of all, five weeks is sometimes too young to tell for sure if it's a rooster, though sometimes you can tell by then. It depends both on the individual and the species: some species mature quicker, and some individuals within a species mature quicker.  However (and please excuse me if you already know this, its a common enough mistake) many hens will develop combs and waddles early, though they will never get so large as a roosters it can be hard to tell wha they'll look like later.  A better sign is the feathering they'll get at age 6wks plus (again, depending on the bird): most roosters get long, swooping tails, sometimes get extra color on their feathers, and get "saddles" of longer feathers on their backs.  Another better sign is crowing (though we once had a hen that crowed from age 5 weeks until she was old enough to lay eggs, that is very unusual). If you'd like us to have a look at it ourselves, the best we can offer at the moment is via photos (we deliver via UPS to Sacramento; otherwise we'd have offered to drop by and look at it).  Or, you can take it to someone who may be able to tell better (such as UCDavis's vet school).  Or, keep an eye on it for another few weeks (some chickens don't "tell" if they're male or female till a good four months of age, though you can usually tell at 6 to 8 weeks) and let us know what you think then. 

We hope this helps: we would hate to adopt your rooster only to find out that it was a hen that you could have kept!  We almost had this happen when we adopted our rooster Scuttle: his previous family had five chickens, four of which they were sure were going to be roosters... we looked at them, guessed that Scuttle was a rooster (based on behavior and coloration, mostly, though it was an educated guess at best because he was only about 6 weeks old), and encouraged them to call if the others ended up being roosters.  Turns out the rest were hens after all, despite early comb growth and one having aggresive behavior, and their owners were very glad we didn't take all the chickens they asked us to...

If you want to send a photo we'd be happy to look, or just keep us posted if you decide to watch your chicken longer!  

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A brief break in the weather resulted in a delicious pond of water.  Our duck-rooster (he thinks he is a chicken, talks like a rooster and has bonded with 3 hens) swam about and excitedly brought his hens to the water.  He nudged his big red hen into the water, but she did not seem to appreciate this, squawking and flying back to shore.  Alas, perhaps soon they will learn to swim... but not today.

Here’s something that seems overlooked recently. It costs less to produce eggs outside of cages than within.

 

Add it up and compare for your self.

OUTSIDE CAGES (grazing)
FEED (per bird/year) - $78 (high estimate, based on increasing feed prices)

INSIDE CAGES
FEED (per bird/year) - $208 (same high estimate)

Housing can be held constant because grazing birds still need a coop at night.

Heat and other environmental care in California simply doesn’t matter much unless you’re trying to force production, in which case it would be constant whether the birds grazed or not.

Mortality rate for grazing birds may get as high as 1% per year under normal conditions if roosters are employed, and if hormones are NOT used. This rate is not different from those experienced by cage conditions and reflects the skills of good scientific management. The cost of 1/3 roosters in the flock increases feed costs, but that is accounted for above.

Discussion:

After hearing so many other producers bemoan the condition of the State, we had to point out that this is perhaps one of the kindest things the State has ever done for an agricultural industry.

To serve the consumer, farmers have to know what the consumer wants. So often it is a challenge to understand exactly what the consumer desires. The loud and clear message is a signal: and when, by our experience, the cost of producing eggs is cheaper when the animals are outside cages than within, we couldn’t be happier.

If the State were asking something onerous, we might object. But to be requierd to produce a product that costs less to make and is in higher demand is no hardship. We suspect those producers who object loudest either do not know how to produce eggs without cages, and would make ourselves available to any chicken farmer who wants to learn how to adapt to the new, good law.

If the larger producers cannot, there are many smaller producers who can. This will result in greater employment because of a demonopolization of the industry. Chicken farming is already a thriving hobby among enthusiasts, and as the larger producers find themselves unable to adapt to market demands, these enthusiasts will become tomorrow’s leaders. These enthusiasts are usually amateurs, recently consumers, and are attuned to the demands of the market.

As professional farmers, we’re proud to stand among these amateurs as their body of experience proves itself useful to California.

We’ve adopted some more hens! One of the folks in the neighborhood was moving to where they could not have any chickens. Did we want to give them a home? Of course!

Usually we’re adopting from shelters, but a true victory is to keep these good, productive and beautiful hens (and possibly one rooster?) from entering the shelter in the first place. There’s six of them, and one “micro” chicken we’ve named “Two Pence.”

The micro chicken is a breed that naturally is smaller. She’ll lay as many eggs as her larger sisters, but smaller eggs.

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Today we adopted two chickens and one duck from the Stanislaus Animal Shelter.  They were brought into the shelter together, and were inseparable friends there even when provided with a huge field and barn to eat and play in.  Though we’ve never raised ducks before, we’re glad to give this sweet bird a home with our chickens and geese. 

We love raising day-old chicks and goslings, but it is equally rewarding rescuing birds from animal shelters.  From a business perspective, adopting older birds can be an advantage by saving us five months (for chickens) or a year (for geese) for the birds to lay eggs.  It can also be a risk if you get a sick or too-old bird: chickens stop laying eggs after a few years, and while we don’t mind giving “retired” chickens a home, it is better for business if they earn their keep.  Sick birds, of course, can be dangerous to your entire flock, but are typically easy to tell if they are sick.  Stressful living situations, such as living at an animal shelter, will tend to exasperate any underlying illnesses so that when you adopt from a shelter you can more easily see if the chicken is sick. 

We also just rescued seven two-month old chicks. Their previous owner had raised them (inadvertently) to be cannibalistic.  Chickens are curious and omnivorous; when they are young, especially, they will peck at each other for various reasons.  If one chick gets injured and bleeds, the other chicks will naturally peck at the blood.  If one catches the problem quickly, it is simple to apply a bad tasting ointment to the wound and/or isolate the injured bird until it recovers.  Depending on why the bird got injured in the first place, other measures may need to be taken to prevent a reoccurance (for example, fixing a dangerous cage, eliminating overcrowding, or relocating an overly aggressive chick). 

The problem with the chicks we bought seems to be that early in their chick-hood they tasted blood and no retraining was undertaken.  As a result, they learned to make each other bleed (just a little, on the tailhead) and appear to have been “tasting” each other ever since.  Only one of them has a tail; the rest have been pulled out and scabbed over from repeated injury.  This is an easy problem to fix, though it would have been better if it had been prevented in the first place.  If they had been younger, or if we had no rooster to retrain them, we would have applied bad-tasting ointment to all their tailheads (actively bleeding or not), to teach them that eating tails is gross.  Luckily for us, though, we have a good rooster and could take the easier path: we simply put all the chicks in the coop with him and let him teach them how to behave like proper grown up chickens.  With a  few days of discipline (he never hurts them, just demands obedience), they have all but quit their bad pecking habit. 

One of the more challenging parts of adopting chickens is introducing them to the flock.  In most cases (excepting situations like the cannibalistic chicks that needed quicker intervention from our rooster) we keep the new chicken(s) in a cage in the coop for a day or two, so that they can introduce themselves without fighting.  Then they are let loose in the coop, but all chickens (new and old) are made to stay in the coop for a few days to get well bonded.  This is greatly aided by having a good rooster.  Skipping this step tends to lead to the new chickens wandering off and getting lost or eaten.  Finally, the chickens are let loose like normal to free range around our farm.  If the training was successful, they’ll stay together as a flock and return to the coop in the evening.  If not, we try locking the flock up for a few more days together in the coop to bond a little more.

An update: Clucky was found today, alive, well and... not clucking.  After working through her chicken angst, she walked up to us from out of the forest and wanted to be picked up.  We did so, and gave her her favorite treat (safflower) and put her in the coop.  We are keeping all the birds in the coop a few days to let them better bond, and Scuttle, our Head Rooster, is doing his best to encourage all of the hens to adopt her as one of their own.  She is now sleeping in the midst of the other birds and is still not clucking!  We may have to change the name of this once-cranky bird!