(Semi)Urban chicken farm repost with update

10/18/08 For those of you who don't know, last March (I think), we got two chickens from a friend who had too many. They are Rhode Island Red hens and since that means they are red, we wanted to name them after famous red-heads. Because we live in a Superhero-centric house, we promptly named them Mary Jane Parker Watson (Spiderman's wife) and Dr. Jean Grey (from the X-Men). A couple weeks later we got two more chickens. These were Delawares and they are mostly white with some black feathers around their heads and on their wings. There are a few white haired superheroes, and we finally settled on the names Storm and Rogue (both X-Men). Things went very smoothly and we had a great deal of fun watching them play and peck around the yard and we REALLY enjoyed fresh, free-range, organic eggs (for pennies compared to what they cost in the store)!!
Unfortunately on one 100°+ day this summer, Dr Jean Grey passed away. It was harder than we expected as they are pets, but it helped us teach the kids about life and death and we buried her in the yard where we can visit and remember her. Then began my husband's quest to convince me we needed more chickens. God love him, that man is persistent! I should back up to the beginning and tell you how I was convinced to become a (sort-of) urban chicken farmer. Jayme decided that eggs were too expensive and we should buy some chickens so we would have our own eggs. I said, "We live within the city limits, it may not be allowed." So he called the city and found out we can have up to 8 hens and no roosters. There are some ordinances about how far from your neighbors the house can be, but we have a big enough yard that wasn't a problem. So we started planning the house we would build it. It was going to cost quite a lot of money to buy all the lumber. One day while we were driving somewhere I saw a cedar fence and I thought, "You know how when we go to our land in Crockett we are cutting down all the smaller cedar trees? Why couldn't we use them to build the house?" And so we did! We built a great house for minimal money since all we had to buy were nails and screws and the roof material.
Back to the present: I was fighting against getting more chickens. We had three in a house with three nests, it seemed perfect to me. Then my Mom asked if we knew where she could get a couple chickens. ARGH!!!! So we got two for her and two for us. They are also Rhode Island Reds. So we were back to red-head names. Well, Clay took care of it, naming all four of the hens we picked up one day before they were even home. He wasn't perfectly true to the red-head idea, but he did stick to superheroes. So we ended up with Elektra, Phoenix, Susan Storm and Star-Girl. Mom took Susan and Star-Girl so we have Elektra and Phoenix. It is fitting that we kept Phoenix because Dr Jean Grey (in the X-Men comics) seemingly dies only to be reborn as the Phoenix.
Elektra and Phoenix are both very sweet and sociable. Phoenix keeps trying to jump through the window screens into the house and she even gets up on the window ledges to peek in at us. Mary Jane comes running if she hears the vacuum and the back door open since she knows that usually means we have vacuumed up a spider inside and she comes and eats it. She also eats any other bug you bring her and is especially fond of grasshoppers. She has caught a frog for herself and gulped it down before also. Storm and Rogue are a little more aloof, but one of them caught and ate a snake one day!
I know a lot of people put stock in the whole "watching fish in a tank is a stress reliever" idea, but for our money, nothing beats watching the chickens.
Here's Storm

Here's Rogue

Here are Phoenix and Elektra

Here's Mary Jane




10/8/2009UPDATE!!!! Susan and Star-Girl (the two chickens we gave to my mom) turned out to be roosters…OOPS!! Clay was enlisted to rename them and quickly decided on Wolverine and Sabretooth. Sabretooth seemed to have a pre-existing condition of some sort and dropped dead on day for unknown reasons. Wolverine grew into an absolutely gorgeous rooster, one of the handsomest I had ever seen. While we were visiting Mom and Dad this summer, tragedy struck. A raccoon dug its way into Wolverine’s pen and killed him. Over the next several days, despite Dad and Jayme’s best efforts, the raccoon (or possibly a possum) returned and killed all but 2 of the chickens she had left. Mom insisted we take the survivors home with us until Daddy could rebuild the coop in such a way that she wouldn’t worry about them being killed too. So we did! Welcome to the flock Felicia Hardy (aka The Black Cat from Spiderman comics) who is a Barred Plymouth Rock and Wanda Maximoff (aka The Scarlet Witch from the X-Men comics) who is a Turken. You heard me correctly. She is a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a turkey, and quite possibly the ugliest thing I have ever seen. My husband has a very strange and disturbing affinity for her, but she is devastatingly ugly it’s hard not to take extra care that she gets a treat or two once in a while. Even the other chickens treat her badly. So now our coop is full to bursting and we have reached the limit on the number of hens we are allowed to have. At least now I don’t have to worry about getting any more.
Here's a picture of Felicia and the magnificent Wolverine

Here she is...Miss America (aka Wanda)