In the Coop & Around the World - November 25, 2018

Meet The Flock: The fall molt has been underway for quite some time—the Hipster Hens are going through the process of losing their feathers and gaining new ones. The process is predictable, first the head feathers, then down the neck, then the body, and finally, the long feathers on the wings and tail.  While the process is predictable, the rate varies a lot from bird to bird. Most of the hens have a mixture of old feathers, pin feathers that are growing into new feathers, and new feathers already in place. Some of the hens, though, seem to want to get things over with quickly and go through a hard molt, these girls are covered with embarrassing bare patches along with lots and lots of pin feathers. Then, there are the two Salmon Faverolles in whom I can detect no molting at all. Moe, pictured here, is still covered in old feathers and is quite pleased with her appearance when hanging around with her scraggly and patchy friends. Pride cometh before the fall, Moe. You’ll get your pins and patches as well—it’s just a matter of time!

Cold weather has come to stay to this part of Minnesota. Here’s a shot of the Coop 1, my pride and joy, and home to many of the Hipster Hens, in its winterized version. Coop 1 occupies a corner of my pole barn and is 24 feet long by 8 feet wide by 8 feet high. The ceiling is made of 1 1/2 inch foam insulation sandwiched between 1/4 inch chipboard, with occasional vents along the edges. The bottom half of the walls are are four foot high 3/4 inch plywood covered by 1 1/2 inch foam insulation covered with 1/4 inch chipboard. The top half of the walls are four feet of hardware cloth. To winterize the coop, as you see in this picture, all I have to do is fasten foam insulation over the hardware cloth and tape the seams, and the coop which is open to summer breezes becomes closed and cozy for winter.

Here’s a shot from the inside of the coop - a pretty comfortable place to spend the winter! I think the Hipster Hens would give it a thumbs-up, if they only had thumbs

Unless the weather is too frigid, I open the pop door every day so everybody can go outside. I put a wooden box in front of the pop door to prevent drafts from blowing in from the open door. The box is open on the back—the side against the door opening, and also on the side.

I provide a little supplemental heat with two heat panels that are mounted on the wall under the roost. They’re plugged into a thermocube that turns on at 35 degrees—so the panels provide some heat on the coldest days and turn off automatically when the temperature is above freezing.

I’m sure if they were given a choice the Hipster Hens would rather live their lives in perpetual springtime. But since they do live in Minnesota and there is a winter to get through, I think Coop 1 is a pretty good place for them to live. For more information about the necessities in winterizing you coop, take a look at “Battening Down the Chickens”—a post I wrote about that very subject a couple of years ago.

Finally, I’d like to say a few words about the recent election as it pertained to chickens. California voters passed Prop 12 which will make a huge positive impact on the lives of laying hens in California AND in facilities in other states who sell eggs to California—and that’s actually a lot of hens. Not everybody supported this legislation - many in the Big Chicken industry were against it, of course. But some animal rights groups like PETA were opposed to it because they thought that it didn't go far enough in protecting animals from cruel practices. Seems to me that any legislation that gets chickens out of tiny cages is a step in the right direction. I’ve written more than a few words about Prop 2, which California voters passed in 2008. Prop 2 proposed to free chickens from cruel battery cages that 75% of all hens lived in then.

What’s a battery cage? Well, imagine a bunch of hens crammed into a cage so tightly that each hen has only 67 square inches of floor space (A standard sheet of printer paper is 93.5 square inches, so if you imagine a hen sitting on that sheet of paper, she doesn’t even get the whole sheet.)  These caged hens can’t do any of the things chickens naturally do—no dust-bathing, scratching in the dirt, or nest building.  In fact, the cage is so crowded they can’t even manage to flap their wings or turn around.  What can they do?  Well, they can stick their heads between the bars of the cage to get food and water, and they can lays eggs—right where they stands (they roll down the slanted wire floor to a conveyor)—and that’s it. They stand in one place for their whole lives—sentient egg machines deprived of any sort of dignity or freedom to act like chickens.   

While Prop 2 intended to change all of that, its success did not mean an immediate victory for abused hens.  The proposition itself dictated that the new laws would not take effect until 2015, and of course, once the vote was in, a whole bunch of lawyers immediately began to construct a whole bunch of lawsuits.  After the 2008 vote, Prop 2 still had a long rocky road to travel before the 2015 implementation.   And unfortunately, once Prop 2 passed into law, it became clear that its language was too vague.

Proposition 12 updates and clarifies Prop 2—to make cage-free farms a reality this time around. It also adds provisions that would mandate more humane treatment of cattle and hogs. In addition to protecting animals, these new regulations will improve food safety and protect small farmers. Seems to me this is win-win-win!