The Wisdom of the Radish

by Lynda Browning

  But now the pendulum is swinging back, and urban agriculture is all the rage. For reasons that range from eating locally to reducing carbon footprints, more and more Americans are raising their own animal products—from backyard hens in Los Angeles to rooftop honeybees in New York City. In cities big and small, residents are raising mini-flocks of egg layers. Although some cities have ordinances in place banning backyard chickens, many others allow them. And many of those cities with prohibitive ordinances are eliminating them in the face of populist pressure. Experts put the percentage of U.S. cities that tolerate backyard chickens at about 65 percent.22 Big cities like Los Angeles and New York have no limit on residential chickens, so long as you don’t invite any loud-mouthed roosters to join the party. In our region, the Sonoma city council has passed an ordinance allowing sixteen chickens and eight rabbits on any city parcel. Every year, more cities join the ranks of the chicken-friendly, allowing their residents to dabble in small-scale fowl raising. If thousands of urbanites with no farming background can raise chickens, why couldn’t I?

  Which brings me to the abject terror of picking up thirty tiny, helpless creatures from the U.S. Postal Service. The very same USPS that delivered my brother’s eighteenth birthday present drenched in water, missing several key gift components, with an apologetic note at the bottom of the box essentially stating that “shit happens.”

  Shit better not have happened to my chicks. At 8:00 a.m., an hour before the post office officially opened (and fifteen minutes after fruitlessly searching the first, incorrect post office), Emmett and I headed around back—the one instruction I’d managed to receive from the postal worker over the phone—to the “authorized personnel only” loading area. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, we found a woman loading up her postal truck.

  “Excuse me,” I said, a little embarrassed, “I’m here to pick up chicks.”

  It occurred to me later that some women might find this suggestion offensive, but the postal worker seemed to take it in stride.

  “One sec, just wait here,” she said, and disappeared.

  Within a minute, she returned with another postal worker who bore a peculiar package: a perforated cardboard box that was peeping rather indignantly.

  “We got a shipment of crickets this morning, too,” she said. “I was beginning to feel like a zookeeper.”

  She handed me the package. Thirty birds plus a box: oddly lightweight, just a few pounds.

  “What did you get?” the first postal worker asked.

  “Chicks,” I said, grinning widely.

  “I know,” she said, smiling kindly at my idiocy. “What kinds?”

  I rattled off the breeds: “White Leghorns, Ameraucanas, and Rhode Island Reds.”

  “Rhode Island Reds will eat you out of house and home,” the woman informed me. “White Leghorns will lay their hearts out for you. And Ameraucanas will be your friendliest, nicest birds.”

  “I take it you’re a chicken fancier,” I managed.

  “I used to be,” the lady replied. “Now I’m a truck driver.”

  Not really knowing how to respond, and hoping this wasn’t an omen of things to come, I bid her farewell and turned toward my station wagon.

  As I gingerly placed the cheeping package in the trunk, I felt equal parts thrilled and terrified—terrified that not all of them had survived the journey from Fresno, and thrilled to be in charge of thirty baby creatures. Not to mention the inherent exhilaration involved in a bizarre experience. Picking up thirty live animals at a closed post office: definitely weird.

  Dropping thirty chicks in the mail with no food or water may seem cruel, but chicks, who have recently absorbed their calorie-rich yolk sac, are well equipped to travel during their first three days of existence. In a natural setting, eggs in a given clutch hatch at different times—and the mother bird doesn’t get off the nest to lead her brood to food until all of her young have hatched and dried off. Having an extra supply of calories for those first few days enables the earliest hatchlings to survive until mama’s ready to feed them. So although nature wasn’t setting out to aid the mail-a-bird business, genetic survival mechanisms nonetheless helped spawn a multimillion dollar hatchery industry.

  Still, mailing tiny creatures isn’t without peril. The little ones, lacking a hen’s warmth, can get too cold and die. Often the immediate cause of death is suffocation—the birds pile together to stay warm, and the weaker ones end up on the bottom. For this reason, most hatcheries either require a minimum purchase (twenty-five birds for body heat) or charge extra to send chicks in insulated boxes with chemical heating pads. And only a few hatcheries ship year-round—many close up shop for the coldest months.

  How could you not fall in love with these guys?

  Back at home, Emmett sliced through the packing tape and peeled back the lid. All thirty of the little fluff balls within were walking, huddling together, or tilting back their heads to tell me exactly what they thought about their current accommodations. Judging by the loud cheeps and fluffed feathers, they were unimpressed.

  I hoped they’d find their new home more to their liking. Over the past few days, I’d readied a makeshift brooder: a ninety-quart clear plastic tub outfitted with a ventilated lid I’d fashioned out of wood and hardware cloth. The setup was floored with paper towels for the chicks’ arrival and spruced up with a plastic waterer and a small galvanized trough full of chick starter (a bulk mixture of grains). A red 100-watt flood lamp rested on the hardware cloth, emitting rosy warmth. All in all, a cozy, habitable place—far more inviting than the chilly cardboard shipping box.

  They were ruddy brown, pale yellow, ocelot striped—Emmett and I began to move each impossibly tiny bird from the cardboard box into its new home. As I placed each downy baby in the brooder, I dipped its beak in the water so it would know where to go for a drink. Then I peered at its rear end and released it onto the paper towel floor.

  My new flock. Little did I know that, from that moment forward, each hour that passed, each time I refilled the feeder, each problem I had to troubleshoot would create another opportunity for me to fall in love with these brainless, adorable little creatures. Innocent though they were, those thirty birds would form the gateway drug for a full-fledged poultry addiction—the sort of hit that breaks hearts.

  It all started with the pasty butt.

  “Don’t forget to check her bum,” I reminded Emmett as he transferred a Rhode Island Red chick.

  I’d been reading up on chick rearing, which meant I was painfully aware of all the hundreds of things that can go wrong with newly hatched poultry. Top on the list was pasty butt, a condition sometimes caused by the stress of shipping. Excrement could supposedly crust over the bird’s vent, preventing it from eliminating waste. This sounds neatly scientific, but what it really means is that a new, anxious chick owner will spend the first seven days constantly inspecting thirty baby bird butts, and wiping as necessary.

  Well, not exactly wiping. Since chick butts, unlike human baby butts, are festooned with feathers, extracting excrement is complicated. In the following few days, I’d employ scissors, dampened towels, warm-water chick bidets (in saucers, no less), and the “fingernail pull”—a technique that I’d eventually become quite good at. None of the books I had read on chick raising had mentioned that chick poop is like glue. On various websites, longtime poultry owners recommended removing the tiny feathers around the vent, which is where the fingernail pull comes in—but pull too hard, and you’re likely to rip off tender skin, which causes a problem worse than pasty butt. Basically, the best technique of all is to pray like hell that your chicks don’t have pasty butt. (And if they do, to keep reminding yourself that these are the intimate sorts of experiences that form the basis for all strong relationships. A friend in need is a friend indeed.)

  We checked each chick for pasty butt before introducing them to their new home.

  “Is this pasty butt?” Emmett asked, showing me a chick.

  “Ummm, I
don’t know.”

  That was our other problem: while all the books warn of the dangers of pasty butt, not one of them actually bothers to show a picture of it. Which led to Emmett’s valiant attempt to pick off the chick’s dried-up version of an umbilical cord—where it was connected to the yolk sac—which was located just below its vent.

  “It’s not coming off.”

  “Okay, just leave it, it doesn’t seem to be getting in the way of anything. The vent’s up there, not down there, right?” I pulled an Ameraucana chick in close. Her vent contracted and opened in pulses, a pink little O answering in the affirmative.

  In short order, the thirty chicks were transferred into their new home. They huddled beneath the heat lamp, a solid multicolored mass of fluff: pale yellow, pinkish red, mottled and striped brown, and black and gray. Emmett and I hovered over the brooder for a few minutes, just watching—entranced as the chicks jockeyed for position, each one trying to move into the middle of the mass for warmth. A few ventured out into the greater brooder space—the biggest world they’d yet known. I almost cheered when one figured out that the trough was for food, and began pecking at the chick starter.

  And then it hit me: I was hooked. And I had to admit (to myself, if not to Emmett) that the lines of argument I’d used to swing the poultry debate over to my camp were, well, somewhat beside the point. I’ve always had a knack for constructing convincing arguments to get what I want. (When my single mom was considering getting a gun for safety, I convinced her to get a puppy instead.) And the root of any desire usually lies far from the smoke-and-mirrors way it’s expressed.

  I think the real reason I’d just ordered thirty chickens was that deep down, I’m a dog person. I crave acceptance and adoration; I thrive on the sense that other creatures are relying on me. Acquiring chickens satisfied the desire for something that would respond to me, something I could mother a little. Something that might make me feel more at home in the unfamiliar landscape of Sonoma County. Something that would give me roots. (Or let me nest. Whatever.) While Emmett worried about how to keep our operation light, transferable, unbound, I was trying desperately to anchor myself to the sticky clay soil of the Russian River Valley. Even if we were to move in a year or two, I needed to feel like I owned some piece of this land if I were going to make it through this first season. And since I didn’t literally own the land, at least I could carve out a space for my chickens to scratch and peck. A place for them to leave a layer of rich, fertilized soil, to take the pasture and make it into eggs. To take dirt and give me gold.

  Unlike Emmett, I’m not fully satisfied by the simple joy of growth. I find pleasure in eating food I’ve grown, but it’s not enough. Frankly, I derive more pleasure from receiving rave reviews from a customer, from the sense that my hard work has provided sustenance for another human. Emmett is a patient person and attentive; he enjoys details, and the silent, slow-growing vegetables suit him. When I met him I noticed right away that he was filled with an uncanny, quiet confidence and sense of purpose—something I didn’t understand because it was so different from my need for affirmation. He doesn’t speak unless he really needs to and is certain his thought will contribute significantly to the discussion. When he does say something, his sentences are well thought out. Not me; I lack any sort of filtration system between thought and speech. It runs in my family: none of us knows what we’re saying until it’s said.

  All of which somehow seems indicative of the differences between animals and vegetables. Vegetables have a certain charm—and they do require constant attention—but when it comes to personality, they’re not exactly the life of the party. Vegetables don’t require the commitment that animals do; in a few months, you’re done with them. You simply pull up and move on. Whereas chickens—crazy, unpredictable, needy—make the farm home.

  Emmett probably understood some of this, in the way that someone you’ve lived with for years automatically grasps your subtext. He gamely went along with my mental math—how many dozens per week, and how much money earned? Why chicks and not laying hens? He probably suspected my hidden motivations, but he chivalrously kept his thoughts to himself.

  As I watched a day-old Rhode Island Red chick tilt back her head to swallow a sip of water, I tried to convince myself that we were doing this for the right reasons.

  It’s surprising how quickly life with thirty chicks in the garage starts to feel normal. At the farm I sowed seeds with abandon, racing through tasks and constantly pestering Emmett for the time, eager to rush home to check on the babies. When I was home, I could barely be pried away from my hover position over the brooder.

  There were, of course, the midnight checks—when I tiptoed into a dark garage, groggy-eyed and stumbling, making my way toward the red glow of the heat lamp. (Hell or hearth, it’s anybody’s guess.) Top on the nighttime checklist was temperature: for the first week, chicks’ living quarters should hover around 95 degrees F. I didn’t have a thermometer, but I did have the observational ability to judge the chicks’ comfort level. If the chicks were spread out across the brooder—some eating, some sleeping, distributed regardless of the location of the heat lamp—they were doing okay. If they were as far away from the heat lamp as they could get, lying down and panting, they were too hot. Huddling under the heat source, too cold. Thus far they seemed pretty happy with the temperature: once they warmed up from their USPS experience, they started careening all over their new habitat.

  Then there were the morning rituals. Each day, I rose early to squeeze in some chicken time before we headed over to the field. In order to get each chick used to human contact, I hand-transferred the chicks from one ninety-quart container to a second ninety-quart container with fresh paper towel bedding. Some chicks squealed like a cat in a car; others fell asleep on my palm, basking in the radiant heat of my hand. Once that was done, I topped off the food, replenished the water supply, and watched chick TV until Emmett told me he was leaving whether I was ready or not.

  Then there were the transitions of growth: from paper towel bedding, which is recommended for the first day or two while the chicks learn to identify their food, to grown-up bedding. From one container, which is big enough for the first seven days, to two containers. (And then three. And then four.)

  Transitions were where the biggest hiccups occurred. Take, for instance, the seemingly simple transition to grown-up bedding. Most poultry books recommend pine shavings, approximately one inch deep, placed on the floor—it prevents feces from sticking to the birds’ feet, keeps the brooder smelling fresh, and provides a textured, insulating bedding for the birds to sleep in. However, the only pine shavings I could find in the local hardware store boasted a big warning label: NOT FOR USE IN ENCLOSED SPACES: USE ONLY IN OPEN ENCLOSURES. Maybe I’m too easily scared off by the use of all caps, but I decided to go with a second option listed in one of the more esoteric guidebooks: peat moss.

  So I returned home, covered the brooder floor with peat moss ... and the chicks immediately determined it to be lunch. An internet source revealed that if the chicks ate peat moss and then drank water, the peat moss would expand fivefold in their stomachs, killing them. This spurred an emergency return trip to the hardware store to get the pine shavings, all caps be damned.

  After the peat moss scare subsided, the pine shavings opened up a new world. Now the little ones could scratch the pine shavings with their feet, kick it all around the brooder, and then peck through it to find bits of spilled food (and/or eat wood, which does not expand considerably in water). The chicks lay in the pine shavings, fluffed their wings, and kicked the litter up into their feathers to take a “bath.”

  I found this pecking, scratching, and dust-bathing behavior to be really cute until I realized that really, it wasn’t so different from having a poop-throwing monkey in the house: feces in the food, feces in the water, feces on the animals. Feces on the human caretaker, too.

  These are the things the poultry books don’t tell you. Namely, that you’ll spend an hou
r a day picking chick-kicked poopy pine shavings out of the feeding trough and waterer. That you’ll think you’re the only person who has ever done this, that something must be wrong with the design of your waterer/feeder/litter/chicks. There isn’t, of course. (Just like there isn’t anything wrong with the baby who fills up diapers with poop four times a day.) It’s part of the process. You can try elevating the waterer and feeder above kick-level by placing them on a two-by-four pedestal, but that just opens up a new can of worms: the waterer or feeder capsizes, which results in wasted feed or soaked litter, respectively. Soaked litter, of course, can grow toxic mold, which can kill chicks. Drenching the fecal matter also releases a powerful ammonia smell, which can harm the birds’ small, developing lungs. (That, the books tell you.)

  In other words, as a novice farmer, most of what I needed to know about raising poultry couldn’t be found in a book or a class, or even in the spoken advice of a fellow farmer. I had to learn the hard way, by doing. I will admit, though, that I had one decidedly twenty-first-century resource at hand: BackyardChickens.com, “the #1 destination for the information you need to raise, keep, and appreciate chickens.” If there’s one tool available to Greenhorn farmers that our predecessors lacked, it’s the Internet.

  For starters, the Web didn’t exist at all when today’s oldtimers were first learning the ropes of farming. But even now that these older farmers have home computers, let’s be honest: most folks over fifty just don’t have the same knack as us young’uns when it comes to getting the biggest bang for our Internet buck. The numbers support this assertion. A 2008 survey by the American Farm Bureau found that 90 percent of farmers age 18 to 35 have cell phones and computers, and 99 percent use the Internet.23 As recently as 2009, only 61 percent of all farmers owned or leased a computer and 59 percent had access to the Internet.24 So, while information technology use is growing rapidly among farmers of all ages, it is the youngest of us who have been able to hit the ground running.