Here is Charlie on the day we got her home. (note – little black chicks are notoriously difficult to take photos of.)

just a little bitty thing.

And here is Charlie now, almost 2 weeks later.

This chick has legs from here to there.

Here are her feet before I released the webbing.

You can see the webbing and deformation in this photo.

And here they are 4 days after the surgery. As you can see there is still a lot of extra tissue (that Charlie sometimes tugs at) but she is able to roost, walk upright using both feet equally, scratch, and roost. All very important chicken activities.

It does look like she has a small amount of feather growth on her feet which may or may not cause a problem because of the extra tissue and her middle toes are still a tiny bit curled but I don’t think it’s enough to justify a shoe (where the heck are the toenails on those toes?)  But as far as healing is concerned, Charlie is ready to be discharged from the chick ICU and is now back to her regular antics while hanging out with the rest of the human flock.

But first I want to talk about some of the pitfalls of owning chickens.

The Northeastern Poultry Congress was all about fowl. It was about selling birds and judging them. No admission was charged.

So when you go to one of these things, the considerate thing to do is to at least buy tickets to the Chinese lottery (you buy 20 tickets for 5 dollars and drop your tickets into the bags hanging in front of the items you’d like to win.) It’s a way for them to raise money. You win, they win, we all win.

We have a very winning family. So much so, that my kids are actually disappointed when we don’t win something, not because we didn’t get the item but because we didn’t WIN. (Hey once, we even won 2114 jelly beans.)

One of our strategies during lotteries like this is to drop tickets into the bags with the fewest tickets. You get a better chance of winning, right? (I justify this by claiming it’s a lesson in probabilities for my kids.) It doesn’t matter what the object is, we say, it’s the odds that we are playing.

At 3:00 when they started calling out the results of the lottery, who was the first person to win something?

Me.

This is what I won.

Marc kept the mug.

I think I had the only ticket in the bag. People were actually laughing at me when I tried to pick up all that stuff (I had to make two trips to the car.) I got cookie tins (empty), a strange snowman in a flower pot, silk flowers, ornaments, and a really scary looking leprechaun, partially stuffed into a Victoria’s Secrets bag (which my 4 teen sons all called dibs on.)

Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right? And anyway, Savers was on the way home. I’m still a winner.

I didn’t expect much for the rest of the auction (I mean what are the odds?) but low and behold, my name was called again, and this is what I won the second time.

Trust me, if you like chickens, you’ll recognize this one as the gold mine that it is. Someone obviously cleared off their shelves of chicken figurines and now I get to have them. There are little chickens, old chickens, matching chickens, white chickens, and even a little green glass chicken-like thing. Marc sighed as I happily started placing chickens all around our house.

Ain’t no way, these babies are making their way to Savers. Perhaps though, after a year of sitting on our shelves, I’ll gather them together and just might donate them back to the show so that some other lucky person can win them in next year’s lottery.

If you recall before I started, her toes looked like this:

You can see the webbing and deformation in this photo.

Charlie is a sweet chick but those feet were probably not going to hold up the weight of a full grown chicken which is why I decided to try and release the toes.

Charlie is doing well, the wounds have closed and she is walking around. Last night we introduced a stick as a roosting post hoping that the use of it would get her to start moving her toes (chicken physical therapy) but she prefers the edge of the cardboard box which she came home in and which is still in her cage.

That wooden candy cane was too slippery to be used for roosting.

But here’s the good news.

This is her right foot.

And this is that one that was horribly deformed.

Her left foot is still curled, especially that middle toe,  (some of that is extra tissue from the webbing) and we may be putting a shoe on it in the next few days but compared to what it was, this is nothing short of amazing. Granted Charlie is not going to win any pretty toe contests in the next few weeks but it does look like she’s going to win her adulthood.

And that’s just fine with me.

If you are readers of this blog, you know that last weekend I was given a tiny Maran chick that was unable to be sold because both of her feet were webbed and one foot was deformed. Webbed feet (toes that are fused together) is a genetic condition making this little guy unsuitable for any kind of breeding, the future didn’t look good for her (for the record we still don’t know if it is male or female but to quote Trevor “If Charlie turns out to be a boy, I’m just gonna cry.”)

After convincing (read – pleading) with the seller to let me buy the chick by letting her know that we raise our chickens as pets and only for eggs, and that we seem to specialize in “special” ones, she let me have him. Marans lay dark chocolate colored eggs, hence her name “Charlie” – as in “and the Chocolate Factory.”

A chick in the winter in New Hampshire is not the best of all times to have one. She won’t be ready until around the Spring to go outside which means for all intents and purposes we have an indoor chicken. (Yeah, says Marc.)

Our house is very cold and so in order to keep Charlie warm we heat up the TV room with an electric heater making it toasty warm. So toasty, in fact, that the other kids are pretty much living there also. (Seriously, our house, which used to be a summer cottage by a water fall, is so poorly insulated that you can see curtains blowing in the breeze. In the winter, wool and polar fleece become our best friends.)

This of course means that Charlie is getting very socialized. Chickens are flock birds, when I teach people about chickens, I always say that you have to have at least 3 birds in your flock. Not having other chicks right now, the kids have become Charlie’s flock. She shits (that was actually a typo but I think for obvious reasons I’m going to keep it in) sits on their shoulders while they watch TV and she likes to cuddle up near a warm neck or under an armpit.

Everyone loves Charlie.

Except that Charlie had those horrible feet that were literally hobbling her. When we moved her to a large plastic tub, because she walked on the knuckles of one foot, it started bleeding. Not good. I had to make a decision, leave it alone and hope that maybe she could build up enough scar tissue to walk on her feet, or try to release the toes.

I wasn’t sure that those feet would be able to tolerate the weight of a full grown chicken.

After one week of adjusting, I decided it was time to do a little bit of surgical intervention. Based on instructions that were pointed to me by a good friend (who, is now Charlie’s official God-mother, thanks Lauren!) we decided to go for it. We thought about doing only one foot at a time but decided instead to do them both at once (based on reading others’ accounts that said their chicks bounced back by the end of the day.) These are the steps we took:

Charlie wasn't too keen on her bath.

1.Wash the feet off of gunked-on food and poop.

You can see the webbing and deformation in this photo.

2.Sterilize some cuticle (curved, thin, and sharp) scissors in Isopropyl (Rubbing) alcohol (use good quality scissors, the first set I found the blades actually bent if pressure was applied – not good for tiny toes, I bought a top-brand pair for about 11 dollars)

3.Put a large glop of instant Oral-gel onto each foot and hold the chick quiet for a few minutes.

4.Bath the foot in Betadine (do this over newspaper or you’ll have stained memories of this in your house for the rest of your life)

Right foot.

Left foot, the tricky one.

5.Apologize to the baby, tell her that it might hurt but it will be better in the long run and while someone else (Trevor) firmly holds the chick, spread out one foot and as best you can snip the webbing up to the main foot. Do it as quickly as you can with precision. A longer cut is better than a lot of little snips. The chick will squawk a bit, either in distress or pain but it’s not that bad. (Not like your kid getting her first shots.) For this step, really spread the toes wide, you want to snip the webbing and not the cut the actual toe.

6.In our case, I also had to release the other foot, the problem with that one though was that not only was it webbed but it was truly deformed. Again while Trevor held the chick, I spread out her toes and did my best to cut only webbing and not toe tissue. To be honest, I didn’t do as good a job on that foot, there was just too much deformation to see what was what.

The entire procedure (both feet) took about 5 minutes.

You can already see the difference in the right foot.

Afterward, I put more Ora-gel on the feet, slathered on antibiotic ointment and then we put her in a crate with clean newspaper. She left little blood spots for a few hours and then the wounds clotted and she stopped bleeding (make sure the chick has access to water at all times, even a little bit of blood loss means a lot of fluid loss for a chick.)

Once she stopped bleeding we reintroduced her food. She’s still a baby and we have her on medicated food (we keep all chicks on medicated feed until about 5 weeks), in this particular case, I think the medicated food was a stroke of luck on our part.

The right foot almost looks normal, the other one, still not so much.

Charlie seemed the most calm when she was near another member of her flock and so Trevor spent hours holding her in his shirt while he studied for his upcoming finals. When we did put her in the cage, she was definitely favoring that one foot (the more deformed one) and at times would stand on one leg with the foot tucked under her doing her best flamingo impression.

Almost immediately, though you could see that she was able to stand more upright and could walk with more balance, the better of the two foot’s difference was remarkable.

I checked on Charlie this morning and although she is doing fine, when I looked at the deformed foot, I could see that it looks like the top knuckle of her middle toe, although released from the neighboring toe, is still fused downward (imagine bending your finger so that the top segment touches the bottom segment). If that’s the case, then her toe-nail is going to grow inward instead of outward. Not good.

I’m going to let her fully recover from this, give it a few days and then see if she might need another tiny release on that one toe. (This all needs to be done when the chicks are as young as possible so that the toes can grow right as they gain weight – for this operation, Charlie was 1 week old.)

As I’ve stated, webbed toes are a genetic condition that you don’t want introduced to or perpetuated in your flock, for the most part these chicks are usually destroyed.

Just not in our part.

We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light 

~ Mary Dunbar

Have a great weekend, folks. Back on Monday with some stories about Charlie (who has become the love of our lives) including accounts of the always popular game: “Where’s Charlie?”

Today I wanted to show you some of the photos I took at the Northeastern Poultry Congress just to give you an idea of the diversity there is in the chicken world.

Female Black Polish

The female Black Polish (as opposed to the photos of the male yesterday) wear Dandilion puffs on their heads.

Unfortunately I don’t have the names of the breeds for all these birds but I loved the pattern on this one, enough to take a closer look.

And then we have this stunning breed. (There’s a mama hen somewhere who loves this little guy.)

Some of the birds were big on tail bling.

Here’e the rest of him.

Some chickens were just BIG.

It's tough to see the size but this guy was HUGE!

And some preferred to be, well, a tad more elegant.

And although this one is a goose, she looked like a Cinderella with her beautiful feathered ball gown.

Even though this guy is a turkey. I just had to include him. That thing on his neck  just fascinates me.

And then as it was a poultry show, I saw a few of these, because, as we all know,  when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.

When I went to the Northeastern Poultry Congress this past weekend, it hadn’t occurred to me that Jan Brett would be there. And not only there but with her polish chickens, no less!!

As a mother of 6 I have read (and re-read, and re-read) many childrens’ books illustrated by Jan. She has beautiful illustrations that are as calming to adults as they are to children.

I’ve even contacted Jan (through her agent) about an article I was writing on hen houses. Here’s a little fact – Jan has noise insulated hen houses for her roosters.

After I had left the Willy Wonka of chicken salesrooms, I walked down the hall to the exhibition hall.

Gasp. The first thing I saw was a row of Black Polish show birds. After having just decided I couldn’t buy any (because they were sold in pairs) this was just cruel. Life was taunting me.

But still, I can appreciate beauty when I see it. I approached the birds, slowly working my way down the row talking and cooing to them as only a chicken lover does, telling them all how pretty they were.

And then I came upon a woman in an apron who was taking some of her birds out of the cages and spraying their feathers. Must be the owner. I went back to the birds.

Record scratch. Wait a minute.

Black Polish show birds, woman owner (in a very cute apron) = Jan Brett.

“Are you Jan?” I asked preferring not to say what I was actually thinking which was “OH. MY. GOD, YOU’RE JAN BRETT, RIGHT?”

She looked at me and smiled. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”

“I write about chickens I started telling her. “I have a flock at home and I’ve always lusted for a Black Polish. You have absolutely stunning birds.” I told her.

“Thank you.” And then she said, “Would you mind holding this one for a few minutes while I clean up?”

Would I mind?

She put one of her male birds into my arms where he docilely sat while I stroked his back.

“His name is Pasquale,” she told me.

I was talking to Jan Brett, holding one of her birds at a chicken show. Life is kind of good sometimes.

Jan Brett's Pasquale

“Such a calm bird,” I said. Jan went on to tell me a little about the breed and how lovely and gentle they were.

I then asked her about her hen houses and if she really did have a noise insulated one. She said that she did but that she only used it for the roosters in the winter, in the summer, all her birds were allowed out.

“It’s to keep some of the noise down for the neighbors,” she said.

Oh, don’t I know about that, sister. I thought, now lusting not only after her birds but her noise insulating hen house.

I then talked to her about her chickens, I knew from my article research that she was introduced to the breed when she needed models for some book illustrations.

“I fell in love with them,” she said,.

“That’s what happened with me,” I said, “I had a few chickens and then I fell in love with them. I had no idea they had such interesting personalities. It only takes one to get you going.”

“Exactly,” said Jan, as she put down her supplies and got her final bird ready.

Eventually she gently took Pasquale from my arms and put him back into his cage. Not wanting to look too much like a groupie, I thanked her and walked away.

Afterward, I was thinking, no one is going to believe this story, so I turned around and took a photo of Jan walking away, that’s her in the green shirt.

And here she is talking to someone who sigh is buying a pair of her chickens.

Here’s where I have to remind you that I’m really not a stalker, but come on, someone who works with books and who loves chickens? That’s like telling me not to come home from a chicken show with any more chickens.

Toward the end of the day when her booth had slowed down (because most of her chickens were sold) I talked to her again.

Jan Brett with one of her birds

“Do you mind, if I gather up some of your chicken’s feathers?” I asked.

She gave me permission and like a fan gathering the tossed off towel of a rock star, I picked up the beautiful black and white feathers. It’s not time for me to have a Jan Brett Black Polish right now, but as far as I’m concerned, I have the next best thing.

Jan Brett's Black Polish Chicken feathers

And as an added bonus, here’s an extra shot of Pasquale – ahem, AWARD winning Pasquale (I got to hold an award winning bird, she giggled.)

L-R - Lauren Scheuer, Wendy Thomas, Terry Golson, Melissa Caughey

Before I left (it was a 2.5 hour drive so I had to leave bright and early) Marc warned me “Don’t come back with any new chickens.” (He’s always saying crazy things like that!)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “It’s the wrong time of year to get chicks and now is not the time to introduce a new adult into our flock.” We try to do that in the spring and summer when the birds are out of the henhouse and have more room to get to know each other. “Don’t worry.” were my parting words.

It was bitter cold on Saturday and as I approached the building, I saw an open side door. Hoping to get out of the cold as quickly as I could I popped inside.

What was this????!!!!!

Like the kids when they entered the magical chocolate mixing room in Willy Wonka’s factory, I was dumbfounded and utterly amazed. There was row upon row upon row of all sorts of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and even a few rabbits.

“Wow” I thought, this is pretty cool. AND THEN I REALIZED THAT I WAS IN THE SALES BUILDING AND ALL OF THESE CREATURES WERE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE! I hadn’t even entered the judging room yet.

Okay, can I just put it out there – I’m not a very strong person.

But Marc’s words were still ringing in my ears like the ghost of Marley – “dooooon’t bring home any mooooore chickens.”

I looked at the geese, they were neat but I’m not interested in geese, or ducks, or another rabbit. The chickens were okay but you know what? We have 36 chickens right now, I’m okay in that area. And then I saw the literal golden goose of chickens. I saw Jan Brett’s Black Polish birds – and they were for sale.

I took a deep intake of breath. “Wendy…,” I warned myself. “Think of the children.” – a little phrase I say to myself which can stop me from doing something bad about half of the time.

Be strong, be strong. I went over to look and saw the problem right away. She only sold them in pairs, a male and a female, and well, I’m not doing males anymore, if I can help if. It looked like I would not be buying any of Jan Brett’s incredible birds today. Marc was going to be proud of me.

But then I noticed that on a small table right by Jan’s booth, a woman was selling Maran chicks. Oh good I thought to myself, I was going to meet up with a friend later who had Marans and I had wanted to see what this breed was.

The hens are black with a bit of copper and the males are black with a beautiful orangery-copper mantle. It’s a stunning breed, but not only are they stunning but, get this, they lay chocolate eggs. As the eggs travels down the egg-tunnel, the hen coats them with a dark brown pigment at the very end making them look just like chocolate eggs.

Maran chocolate eggs

I went over to the table and the chicks were selling like hotcakes. People apparently love this breed (and who wouldn’t love a bird that lays chocolate eggs?) I mentally added this breed to my list of birds to get someday (right up there with a female black polish.)

And then, this is the part where I got into trouble. The woman selling the chicks was holding one tiny little chick in her hands apart from the other ones. I asked her to see it – just adorbs (as my teen daughters would say) – a tiny ball of black and yellow fluff with all her baby down. This little baby still even had her egg tooth, just a bitty wonder.

Oh you don’t want this one, she said to the customer who was picking out 5 chicks. It’s toes are fused.

My ears picked up. Fused toes? I hadn’t come across that before. I looked at the baby and sure enough, the two end toes were not only fused but the toes were starting to curl under. It turns out this is a genetic condition and if the chick is a female she’ll still lay eggs but shouldn’t be used for breeding and if the chick is a male, you wouldn’t want it anywhere near the females in order to avoid this trait being passed on. The future did not look rosy for this little guy.

“I’ll take it I,” said before Marc’s voice could even get past the “bring” part of his warning. The woman looked at me like I was a little nuts. (which, as any one who has read this blog knows, is not entirely off the mark.) It took a little convincing to tell her that I really was going to take good care of it.

“I write about chickens and kids, we have a flock of pet chickens.” I presented my case. “We’ll take care of her and make sure she has a wonderful life – adored by all. We kind of specialize in birds that need a little bit of help.” I said remembering one of our lame 3 witches and, of course, Alkaia.

I must have looked a little desperate (I prefer not to think pathetic) and so she gave me the Black Copper Maran chick, to keep. For my very own.

“Guess what????” I texted Marc.

“Oh No!” was his reply – can you tell we’ve been married a long time?

We’ve named her Charlie (as in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and of course, the kids have fallen in love with her (we don’t know if its a boy or girl but we’re all using positive thinking and calling her a girl. I showed the kids what the breed looks like and what the eggs will look like. And as we are in the middle of January, in New Hampshire, it looks like we are going to have having an indoor guest for the next few months.

She’s still young, and I’m looking into what I can do about her toes (leave them alone – she might do fine, tape them to cardboard to “flatten” out the cartilage, even snipping the webbing between the toes) but for now she’s warm, happy, and well into the first season of M*A*S*H (I spend a little bit of quality time with her each night) because she’s living in our TV room which, due to an electric heater, is the warmest room in the house.

Say hello to Charlie

And so while I have a ton of stories to tell about the Poultry Congress, I wanted to get this one out first. I should probably have a tee-shirt made that reads:

I went to the Northeastern Poultry Congress and all I got was this adorable, baby chick.

If you want to read about it, click on the “more…” button. If you’d rather skip it, that’s fine, tomorrow I’ll start telling some of the many stories I collected while attending the Northeastern Poultry Congress (and one of those stories is about becoming a mama hen to a new baby chick.)

For those who choose not to read the rest of this rooster killing post, I’ll leave you these parting words… it’s wasn’t as bad as we had imagined it would be.

The Ethical killing of a rooster. Let me begin with the fact that it’s not fun. Killing anything is not fun and (yeah, I’m the sort of person who feels bad about killing bugs, if I can move them outdoors I do) but if you are going to be a responsible backyard chicken owner who has neighbors, then something needs to be done.

I can think of no quicker way for towns to revoke the right to have chickens in your backyard than to have a group of anti-rooster-noise people gathered together in protest. Although I firmly believe that you have a right to own chickens in your backyard, I also believe that neighbors have a right to some peace and quiet and while a crowing rooster during the day is rather bucolic, one that is crowing at 2 or 3 in the morning is, well, NOT.

We’ve tried very hard to not have roosters, but sometimes they slip in. Our first few roosters were when we bought some exotic chicks. We thought the smaller, more petite, ones would be females. We were almost right, but out of 6 chicks we ended up with 2 roosters. Not very good odds.

We’ve bought sex-linked birds in an effort to keep roosters out but if you take that one step back, by buying the sex-linked birds, you are just destroying the roosters earlier (the wrong color chicks are destroyed right after birth.)

Last Summer we hatched eggs in an incubator. We got a few roosters. It happens. I even talked to a woman at the Northeastern Poultry Congress who told me she knew of someone who had ordered pullets and somehow a rooster got into the order.

My point is that you can be as conscientious as you want, but occasionally if you decide to have chickens, you are probably going to have a rooster at one point or another and you are going to have to figure out what to do with them.

I spoke to one woman at the Congress who said that if her neighbors dogs’ barked (and they did) then that gave her a right to have roosters who crowed. While on some level that reasoning is correct, I’m also thinking that might not be a very happy neighborhood.

Our most mature rooster (and therefore the alpha, protector, and noisiest of our birds) was a problem, he was making a lot of noise. As handsome as he was, he had to go.

We had talked about chopping the head off with an ax but didn’t know how to secure the head so that we’d be assured a clean cut. The kids had visions of missing and nicking the bird, I had visions of taking a trip to the emergency room. We talked about building a block with belts on it to hold the bird down but we quickly dismissed that because we thought we’d be terrorizing the bird for too long just to get it ready.

So I bought something called a Killing Cone. It looks like a large galvanized steel waffle cone. I’ve include a photo of ours here. (Just as an aside here, I bought the cone at the Poultry Congress which is all about celebrating chickens, so after I got it, I discretely and quickly took it out to my car for the rest of the time I was at the show.) I bought a size medium which fits a bird up to 20 pounds, as my rooster was a roughly 3-4 pound 6 month old, I was sure he would fit. The price for our cone was 19.95 and I got it at the Eggcarton.com booth (and can I say that they were incredibly helpful by giving me encouraging  information for the process.)

After watching a few videos, we were ready.

These are the steps we took:

• Nailed the Killing Cone to a tree far away from and out of view of the hen house. You want the height to be at a level where you can stand comfortably to be able to do the kill. If you are bending over or have to reach up high, it increases the risk that you won’t get a clean kill.
• Placed a bucket directly under the cone to catch the blood from the kill. (and there will be a fair amount of blood, I was surprised.)
• Got the rooster. I carried him and talked to him apologizing for this as I brought him over. There is discussion that the roosters should be carried to the cone by the feet because that increases blood to the head area but I think that that’s unnecessary trauma so I carried him. (also, remember, this is the first time we’ve ever harvested a chicken and yeah, I did have to deal with a few feelings of guilt.)

The next part has to be done quickly, so make sure you have your (very sharp – we used a hunting one) knife ready, everything is in place, and that you have gloves on. The gloves are not only because you’ll get some blood on your hands, but I also didn’t want the chance of the other chickens smelling chicken blood on us.

• Place the bird in the cone feet facing toward you.
• Pull the head out of the bottom of the cone.
• As you bring the knife to the carotid artery (located just below the ear) bring your knife up under the feathers so that you are cutting skin and are not sawing through feathers.
• A quick deep cut is all you need. (although for us it took a few swipes before we could find the right area – remember this was our first time.)
• The chicken will bleed out fairly quickly (in a matter of 4 -5 minutes) as he bleeds out, you can see his eyes slowing closing. Not to minimize this at all, but it looked like our bird was slowly going to sleep.

When the bird has bled out, and is no longer alive, take the body out of the cone and either dip it in hot water to start the process of getting rid of the feathers to prepare the carcass for eating (which we did not do) or bring the carcass to the woods and let the local wildlife feast on it (which is what we did making sure to place it well off the trail so that no person would come across it.)

That’s it. There was more worry, and angst involved then there was action, and when all was said and done it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.

A few thoughts:

• The cone helps to “disguise” the body a little allowing you a tiny bit of emotional distance.
• Amazingly our rooster never struggled (and I mean never.) He didn’t squawk, he didn’t try to escape, once he was in the cone there was no noise, this wasn’t about us, but it sure makes it easier if the animal you are about to kill doesn’t put up a struggle.
• We decided on a quick bleed-out as opposed to chopping the head off for a few reasons, a bleed-out is slower but gentle. It’s as if, we literally put our bird to sleep. An ax was just too violent for us, none of us wanted to deal with a chicken running around with it’s head cut off.
• The blood (and there is quite a bit) was taken out to the woods far from the hen house (and from where people walk) and was dumped. We had discussed putting it into the river that runs along side our street and may do that in the future but not with all the ice around, just don’t need people to see puddles of frozen blood until the spring.

The deed is done. Now we know that we can do it and it’s not the end of the world and although I’ll never look forward to doing this again, at least in the future, we know that if we have to, we’ll be able to.

Home (with the help of your flock) is where your story begins. 

Next week we’ll return to the topic that was originally scheduled for this week and of course, back to the life lessons  learned when one decides to shares one’s life with children and chickens.