6/28 Update: Chicken Little was showing some of the same signs that Droopy had, and Kevin wanted to check if there was fluid in her lungs. He turned her upside down and, sure enough, a little fluid dripped out her beak. And then she just died. Because there was fluid in her lungs, we probably [...]
Our chickens are getting old. They’re long in the beak, over the hill, past their prime. They’re no spring chickens. The most obvious clue is the dwindling egg supply. In their heyday, our seven birds delivered almost three dozen eggs a week. Now, two years into their lifespan, we don’t get that much in a [...]
I believe in editors. I’ve had the good fortune to be edited by some of the best in the business. My books were read, amended, and read again by Tracy Bernstein at Penguin and, before that, by Maria Guarnaschelli (then) at Scribner. My magazine and newspaper work has almost always been made better by the smart, [...]
“You know what your problem is?” Kevin asked me one day, early in our courtship. What do you answer when someone asks you whether you know what your problem is? The possibilities are endless. I went with, “No.” We were grocery shopping, in the produce aisle at Fairway, and Kevin turned and picked up a [...]
One of the pleasures of living with livestock is that you see animals often enough to begin to understand their behavior. Differences in chickens that wouldn’t be apparent to a visitor become patterns to the people who see them every day. It’s charming when a chicken jumps into a car to see what’s in the [...]
The e-mail from Murray McMurray Hatchery came on Saturday. The chicks are in the mail! They arrived this morning, as a 7:00 AM call from the local post office informed me. I lined the brooder, filled the waterer, switched on the heat lamp, and was out the door inside five minutes. “Turn the seat heater [...]
Our sick chicken, who we’ve started to call Droopy, has staged a miraculous recovery. As of this morning, her comb is bright red and almost vertical. There is a gleam in her eye and a spring in her step. She scratches and pecks with vigor. I don’t have the foggiest idea what happened. At first, [...]
Like just about every gardener in a 500-mile radius, we use winter rye as a cover crop. We sow it in the late fall, and sprouts before the really cold weather sets in. Then, miraculously, it stays green throughout the winter. It even grows a bit, if there’s a warm spell. Then, in spring, it [...]
4/30 Update: Despite several warm baths and one attempt, by me, to make tactile sense of what’s on the nether side of a chicken’s vent, our chicken remains the same. If there’s no change tomorrow, we may have to take that most drastic of measures. Thank you for all your good wishes, and for the [...]
The first year we moved to Cape Cod, we got chickens. The second year, surprised and encouraged by our success, we considered all kinds of additions to the barnyard, from rabbits to pigs. To make sure we didn’t overextend, we made a rule: one new species per year. Then we got bees and turkeys. In [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
TwitteringThis 
by 
hosted by 
, secured by 
© Tamar Haspel, 2010. See linking policies .
Recent Comments