Photos from the ranch

Jeff and Jeanine Dyer

Let me tell you our story of how we began.

When I was young, my only lifetime dream was to live in the country, raise animals and plant a garden. Well, all three have come true. But just a couple of years ago, I couldn’t have said that. In 2009, we were living in a planned community in the suburbs of Arizona. I wouldn’t exactly call it “bumpkin” territory.

When the economy crashed, so did our dream of using the equity from the sale of our home to purchase land. So, we decided to make the best of our current living situation while waiting for the housing market to improve. (It never did.) Living on a cul-de-sac, our backyard was the biggest in our HOA-restricted, walled-in community. My husband divided the big backyard into three sections via a six foot wooden fence on one side of the house and a three foot picket fence on the other side.

Meanwhile, in spite of the restrictions, a neighbor across the street had purchased baby chicks. We adored them and entertained the idea of doing the same. We would visit their home often to see how the chickens were growing. A few months later, the neighbors knocked on our door with a batch of their first eggs. They were delicious! We half-joked about getting chickens of our own and never having to buy store-bought eggs again. As our conversations on this issue grew more serious, I became hesitant. “But…” I said, “money is tight and the HOA might not approve of it.” Little did we know… money wouldn’t be an issue, especially after they started laying eggs. Furthermore, after looking up the CC&R restrictions on pets, we discovered that if we called them just that — “pets” — we could have chickens.

The following Easter, our neighbor gave us a gift: four Easter egg chicks, called Ameraucanas, that lay blue and green eggs. My daughter, who was five at the time, named each of them them right away.

Sushi

We were so eager to see those colored eggs when the chickens started laying. But, sadly, we didn’t get the chance. A week before they were supposed to start laying, someone we hired to do the gardening had left the gate open between the dog area and the chicken yard. When we got home, it looked like world war three. Feathers were everywhere! Thank Goodness the chickens were out of sight. My daughter saw only feathers. Yes, she cried. But not for long. The moment I told her that we were going to get new chicks, she cheered up and began thinking of new names.

Well, buying new chicks wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. Living in Arizona, summer time is too hot to have them shipped. Every feed store in town had stopped buying chicks for the season. Every farmer had priced their chickens higher than usual. They knew that summer chicks were rare. We couldn’t justify paying even the cheapest price for adult chickens, when baby chicks would cost no more than three dollars when the weather cooled off. Had our budget not already been maxed, we might have gone with the adults, but we had no idea how we should keep them cool in the heat. Since they were given to us in the first place, we decided to wait for the fall shipment of chicks to come in at the local feed store. We used the waiting time to collect information about chickens, find every feed store, and improve our makeshift coop.  We also got a new latch for the gate. Looking at mail order catalogs and library books about chickens became a new hobby that the whole family enjoyed together.

My husband studied chicken coops. The first one he made was actually an extension of our daughter’s wooden swing and slide set. There was an open area beneath the slide tower and we simply enclosed it with scrap wood and chicken wire and added doors with handles, egg boxes, and a feed trough. We made a watering trough out of a bucket and the water-catcher “thingamajig” that you find at the bottom of a planting pot. It didn’t work terribly well, but we ended up using it for feed later on after purchasing a nice waterer from the feed store.

Our second set of chickens was a combination of one pair each of six different breeds. Almost all of them were going to be good egg layers. We had two each of the Barred Rocks, Buff Orpingtons, Silver-laced Wyandotes, Rhode Island Reds, Black Jersey Giants, and my favorite, the Silver Phoenix. Twelve chickens seemed, at the time, to be a lot. But I laugh about that now. We currently have 50+ birds and my husband has since built a home-made incubator for hatching chicks.

One Japanese Silver Duckwing Phoenix grew up to be the master rooster. His name is Sushi. His long black and white feathers are gorgeous. We have added to our chicken collection a black Japanese Bantam rooster named Samurai. We also added a white Cochin Frizzle Bantam rooster named Mr. Magoo.  Jeff heard someone attending our class about raising chickens say that Mr. Magoo’s curly feathers make him look like he went through a wind tunnel backwards.

Several of the birds we now have were born to pairs of the original twelve. We have incubated and hatched many chicks sired by Sushi. We’ve noticed that there is a big difference between chicks born under their mother’s wings and those born in an incubator. The mothered chicks are calmer, quieter, and guided by their mother. The incubated chicks have no guide, so they are sometimes louder, too curious for their own good, and don’t know how to behave like a chicken as well.

The hardest lesson we learned was that chicken owners lose chickens to various threats on a regular basis. It’s commonplace for us to strain our brain cells concocting ways to protect our chickens from predators, accidents, and illness. Needless to say, we’ve had frequent burial ceremonies for our little fine-feathered friends.

The next “surprise” for us, after the “gardener massacre of 2009,” was when we falsely presumed that plastic chicken wire would be enough to keep six new chicks safe. We had just added three each of d’Uccle bantams and Brahmas to the family of twelve. But they weren’t old enough to be put in with the adult chickens yet. So, we made a separate coop out of our daughter’s outgrown plastic play house, covering the windows with plastic chicken wire. Well, the dogs didn’t think it was penetrable either, until they got a better look at it. One day, during ball time, my daughter was throwing the ball while the chickens were still in the coops. I went inside for a few seconds and was drawn right back outside by my daughter’s screams. She was yelling at the dogs to stop. I got closer, and noticed that the d’Uccles had gotten away, and the Brahma’s hadn’t been harmed, but they had died of sheer fright. I learned soon after that about how chickens can have a heart attack if they are excessively frightened.

That’s when I begged my husband to build a real coop. And boy did he! It was a deluxe version, modified to suit Arizona weather. We painted it barn red, and it was as cute as could be.

At that point, we thought we were surely predator-proof. But on an overcast day, a hawk was soaring in unfamiliar territory over our housing complex. Just as my daughter was looking out the window, the hawk swooped down on a Barred Rock named Pepper, who was eating and hadn’t noticed that the rest of the flock had already taken cover under the coop. We ran with speed out to the yard. But the hawk’s eyes were bigger than its stomach. Pepper was twice the size of the hawk, even as a pullet, and the hawk couldn’t lift it to safety before we came to chase it away.

Another funeral.

Then a heat wave took a Wyandotte named Paleface and the last Barred Rock, Connie. We named her that because her bars were so dark that they looked like the stripes of a convicted criminal.

Another mishap occurred because we didn’t think that our chickens were skinny enough to fit through the corner of the fence separating the dog area. But, a silver Phoenix squeezed in when frightened by the dog’s bark, running right into the dog’s mouth. As much as I love my dogs, the killing makes loving them difficult for a couple of days. But these experiences have given us a healthy respect for the damage that dogs can do.

Then there are the Roadrunners and the neighborhood cats that like to scale the fences at night. They would probably eat a baby chick if they got the chance. Fortunately, they’ve never been given that chance… yet.

In December of 2009, my husband became a statistic of the economy, losing his seven-year-long Systems Analyst job. He did every odd job he could think of to continue providing an income, from baking bread to online IT consulting, and never quit looking for a job or got depressed like some do. But neither the rate of job loss or the availability of I.T. jobs leaned in our favor. After six months, our savings was gone and we found ourselves on the verge of losing our home. Jeff began experiencing severe stress headaches that landed him in the hospital.

When the headaches went away, Jeff decided to do something he enjoyed to relieve the stress. He started building chicken coops, planter beds, and various other things made of wood to see if they would sell while continuing to look for work in I.T. He was encouraged to see that they were selling and our area was hit hard by the recession, so sustainable living products are needed. Chickens are one of them. So, we put together a package deal that is unique to Arizona and it kept us going for quite a while. It has it’s ups and downs, but we now have something to keep us going when times are tough. Jeff can do this whether or not he works a full-time job elsewhere. He did get another I.T. job, by the way… one year later. Having this business on the side made Jeff a more cheerful I.T. guy. Not only was he able to participate in a more formal setting, the corporate world, but he was also doing something in a more casual environment that he was passionate about — helping people to be self-sustaining and eat food that is good for you and not stripped of it’s God-given nutritional value.

One of our current coop models

Jeff hasn’t had a major headache since he started building with wood. That’s not to say that he doesn’t feel the pressure of providing for his family constantly. He just has something to do that relieves the stress a bit when he feels overwhelmed. I don’t think we could have survived the hard knocks without starting Chicken Scratch Ranch. In December of 2010, we were chosen out of thirteen families that wanted to live here in this home. We now have two acres for our animals to roam, fruit trees, goats to milk every morning, turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a garden. Chicken Scratch Ranch is not a booming business by any means. It could probably qualify as a non-profit. It pays for the animals and some of our smaller expenses. Jeff desperately needs a new I.T. job. The one he got in December was sued.  They have fired way over 200 employees because they have made some major mistakes. So, please say a prayer for us. And please consider how Chicken Scratch Ranch can be of service to you. We love that we can sell you pasture-grown food, chicken housing, sheds, barns, fences, brooders, boarding animals, provide field trips, set up informational tours, and hold classes… all to ease your transition toward healthier, happier living.

“So…” you ask, “Why should I have chickens?” Well, chickens play multiple roles in the backyard. They eat bugs and spiders, mow the lawn, fertilize, aerate, entertain, comfort during stressful times, lay healthier eggs than store-bought, and their eggs can earn you extra pocket money when things are tight. All that makes for quite a rewarding hobby!

You know, if I were told in my younger years that I would grow up to love raising chickens, I’d have laughed. Horses, yes, but chickens? No way! Yet, I truly love raising chickens. I love taking care of them. I love that they earn their keep. I love how much my home-schooled daughter has learned and how it qualifies as part of her hands-on science curriculum. No public school could come close to providing my daughter with the experiences she has had and the life lessons that she has learned from raising chickens at home.

In fact, one of our experiences was sort of an accident. Or was it? After 3 days of incubation, my husband accidentally cracked a fertile eggshell. It wasn’t all the way open. So, out of curiosity, he split it open and dumped the contents into a bowl to see what was inside. Then he called us all into the room. “Come quickly! You have got to see this.”

There were veins started, but the most fascinating part was that, right in the center of the veins, there was a beating heart! There was no form of a bird yet — nothing to it whatsoever — just veins and a beating heart! Our eyebrows were on the ceiling and our jaws were on the floor; we were reverently awed by the creation of life. Sad that this little heart would stop beating soon, it caused us to respect the life that grew inside of every fertilized egg from the very first days of life to the very last.

So, for those interested in raising chickens, but bypassing all the mistakes we made, we hold a class on How to Raise Backyard Chickens, so that you can enjoy raising chickens, eat healthier, do something together as a family, and go into your new adventure knowing what to expect.

Sincerely,

Jeanine Dyer