A couple of months ago, folks from Appalshop/WMMT came out to visit our farm and interview us about the Avian Aqua Miser.  Despite the unfortunate fact that we dipped one journalist in the mud of the alligator swamp, the trio was extremely nice and edited our story into a tight 5 minute piece that you can listen to on their website.  If you've ever wondered how the Avian Aqua Miser came to be, please check it out!

When I sent out an email reminding our past chicken waterer customers that our 2010 photo contest deadline is coming up on September 21, the entries came pouring in.  The photos were wonderful, but many of them also came with stories that I can't help sharing with you.  I'll be regaling you with customer images and tales over the next few weeks --- enjoy!

To get you started, here are a couple of the most beautiful photos we've received so far.  The top one is from Stuart Liptay, who wrote:

Meanwhile, Jennifer Wallace sent me several beautiful photos of her son's flock --- polish/americana, barred rock, buff orphingtons and banties.  I believe that both of the photos I loved so much are of the banties, although I'm not positive.
















Keep those images rolling in!

Mark "met" Douglas Lain through their mutual interest in the physics of consciousness and the disclosure movement.  Douglas seems to be the type of multi-talented person we both enjoy --- he puts together a podcast, has a novel coming out from Tor Books in 2011, and is working on a self help book about urban foraging.

It just so happens that Douglas is also a talented sound editor, and he agreed to put together a short ad for the Avian Aqua Miser.  Download the ad and see for yourself that it's quite easy to tell a kid is adorable without looking into his face.

It's time to pull out those cameras and turn into a wildlife photographer!  Submit your photos for a chance to win a 10 pack DIY chicken waterer kit.  This kit is my favorite size since it allows you to create four bucket waterers, enough to keep most flocks hydrated during a long weekend trip out of town.

Deadline: September 21, 2010

Entry instructions: Email up to three digital photos to info@avianaquamiser.com.  Your photos should be no more than 4 MB in size, and if they're large please send one per email.  If you win, we'll email you back to ask for your mailing address.

What we're looking for: We'll judge the photos based on artistic merit, how cute we think your birds are, and how interesting your setup is.  Did you find a unique way to hang your waterer, or did you put together your DIY kit in a special way?  Did you train your peacocks or rabbits to drink out of your waterers along with your hens?  You don't need to have bought an Avian Aqua Miser to enter --- we're also interested in photos of other homemade, gravity-feed, nipple-based watering systems.  The photos on this post were last year's winners, if that helps you figure out what we're looking for.

Prizes: One grand prize winner will receive a 10 pack DIY chicken waterer kit, along with the bonus ebooks and video.  Several other honorable mention winners will be showcased on our website.

The fine print:
All photos entered in our contest become the property of Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton.  We don't care if you use them for other things; we just want the right to put them up on our website.  Our chickens are cute, but we'd really like to see other people's poultry in action, and to see how our diy kits morph in other people's hands.

Over the last year and a half, our customers have given us a lot of feedback.  Several folks used the wrong size drill bit to make their homemade chicken waterers since the right size is difficult to find at many hardware stores.  Unfortunately, if you use the wrong drill bit, your waterer leaks, which defeats the whole purpose.  Mark finally found a supplier where we can buy drill bits in bulk, so now you can add on the proper drill bit for just $5 when you buy your kit, saving yourself a lot of running around.  For customers with a very well-stocked toolkit, we've kept the lower priced option on the shelves.

Although no one complained about our instructions, I wanted them to be even easier to use, so I revamped those too.  Once I added in a lot of the inspiring photos you've been sending us of your own homemade waterers, the resulting file was 23 pages long!  I figured a lot of people would enjoy the extra information, but others would find it daunting.  To keep everyone happy, I also summarized all of the most important construction information into a one page, quick instruction sheet that we include with our homemade chicken waterer kits.

I hope our new customers enjoy the extra information and even simpler construction!

We love seeing photos of our homemade chicken waterers in action, so I was thrilled when I got an email from Stephen Brown.  He wrote:

His email is a timely reminder that our 2010 chicken waterer contest will indeed be coming up in just a few months.  Now's a great time to get out your cameras and send in submissions while you're thinking about it.  The rules will be similar to those from our 2009 chicken photo contest --- I'll post some real rules in a few weeks.  Meanwhile, if you haven't already, check out the winners from last year and get those creative juices flowing!

Ranch Alacrity hosted a humane poultry butchering seminar in April for a group of young chefs-to-be.  "It really is a lost art, as is almost all butchering," said Titus Blackwood, who demonstrated de-feathering and dressing out.  "There is a resurgence of young chefs learning the art," she added, before explaining that humane butchering is ethical and results in tastier meat.

Titus was joined by Kristin Mahony and Jared Ligouri, who helped teach the seminar for Chef Rick Kangas' poultry class at Colorado Mountain College - Edwards.  Titus described the process of "ethically dispatching" the poultry as follows:

The young chefs took to the process quickly, showing great respect for the animals and a good work ethic.  One former vegetarian commented that he would have found the butchering process appropriate even before he began eating meat again.  Titus noted, "It was very clear to him that our birds had a wonderful healthy life and a humane death.  He still opted out of the dispatch, but he was a meticulous butcher."

"The students thanked me for bringing them out," wrote Chef Kangas, and went on to add that the seminar "will be an experience they will have all their lives and all their cooking careers.  If they weren't before, they are now part of the [Slow Food & Locavore] "movement" for sure!"

If you're within driving distance of Vail, Colorado, or are in the Eagle Valley and would like to learn how to get started in poultry-keeping and/or how to dispatch your birds humanely, please contact Titus Blackwood: 970-926-0345 or titus@llwa.org.

Photo credit goes to Titus Blackwood.

We're running a chicken pasture contest over on our homestead blog.  When will the first forest pasture be completely denuded of vegetation and ready to plant in buckwheat and clover?  Leave a comment over there with your guess and you may win two of our favorite perennials --- bee balm and Egyptian onions.

To read the details, click the link at the top of the page.  I hope you'll all enter!

We turned off the chicks' light when they reached a month old.  With our insulated brooder box, we probably could have taken away their heat earlier, but the weather turned chilly and we had to go out of town for a few days, so we waited.

By then, most of the chicks were fully feathered except for parts of their heads.  Dark Cornish chickens are known for their appressed body feathers that give the birds a less fluffy look than ordinary chickens, and I think they look a bit like little vultures.

I'm used to keeping chickens in tractors, so I was shocked by how quickly the cockerels scratched the floor of their coop down to nothing.  Then the area started to stink.  Good thing Mark was ready with the first pasture area!

When we opened the door of the coop to let our cockerels out for the first time, the chicks weren't quite sure what to think.  What was this big world?  Was it safe?

There was a lot of scurrying in and out for a few minutes, and I remembered why "chicken" is a synonym for "coward."

But before we knew it, they were dustbathing, sunning, pecking, and scratching.  Chicken bliss!

Spring has sprung on our homestead and we're busy weeding, planting, mowing, and finishing up the chicken pasture.  Meanwhile, so many of you have told your friends about our homemade chicken waterer that the orders are flowing in at breakneck speed --- we're thrilled, but that means less time for blogging!

I just wanted to warn you that things might be a bit slow on the blog front for a little while.  Don't despair!  I'm still soaking up chicken trivia and will have lots saved up when the rain forces me back inside.  It's bound to rain one of these days, right?  Meanwhile, if you miss your blogging fix, you might wander over to our homestead blog where we post far more frequently than anyone could possibly wish.

At three and a half weeks old, our Dark Cornish chicks are mostly feathered and I'm considering turning off their brood light.  Mark's insulated brooder box has worked perfectly for the last week, allowing us to downgrade to a lower wattage light while the chicks stay just as warm, and I'm wishing we'd created an insulated section like this from the start.  It gives our chicks a lot more freedom to choose their favorite temperature.  They can loll in the encapsulated heat, or walk just a few inches away and cool down while scratching and leaping.

Speaking of leaping, these chicks are even spunkier in week three than they were in week two!  The coop that originally seemed so huge is now a small playground for our 25 cockerels.  They've taken to leaping up on their brooder box, scampering across the cinderblocks protecting them from digging intruders, and even perching on their chicken waterer.  Yikes!  Mark made them a perch to give them a bit more play space and is hard at work fencing in their first pasture area.

(Those of you who have raised chicks several times are probably bored by our chick updates.  There's nothing really startling going on yet, but we've only raised chicks once before, so it's relatively new territory for us.  Feel free to skip these "they're growing!" posts if you're not interested.  If you do like them and are a new reader, you can see what our chicks were doing in their first week here.)

By the end of week 2, our chicks got spunky.  They already had the beginnings of wing feathers when I posted last, but now they rounded out their full complement of primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries and started making hop-flights to test their wings.

On day 14 of their stay in the brood box, I walked into their room and found an escaped chick skittering across the floor.  The brood box that had originally seemed so spacious was now a crowded mass of pecking, scratching chicks, and they were clearly feeling cramped.  The next day, two chicks got out, and Mark pushed through the abnormal spring heat to make them a coop.  As always, I'm thrilled by his ability to take a handful of screws and some junk out of the barn and make a utilitarian piece of farm equipment for just a few bucks.

We moved the chicks out to their new coop when they were only 16 to 17 days old.  Depending on who you talk to, you can put your chicks outside somewhere between two and six weeks of age.  This is quite a wide variation and will depend on two main factors.  Your weather is the obvious one --- if you're raising chicks in the winter, you will clearly need to keep them inside longer.  Sex is also important since cockerels generally grow faster and are ready to go out on pasture much quicker than pullets.  As a rule of thumb, chickens should have real feathers, not just fluff, if you're going to put them outside without a light source.

Ours clearly haven't reached that stage yet, so I begged Mark to make a little protected area within the large coop where the chicks could huddle together at night.  He came up with an insulated box that will hold the heat from the brooder lamp for another week or two while our chicks mature.  With the extra heat to run to if they get cold, our chicks adore their dirt-floored coop and are now taste-testing everything within reach.  Sticks, stones, ants, and leaves all met with approval, although I'm not sure if they are actually finding anything with food value yet.

Next week --- pasture!  While you're waiting, be sure check out our homemade chicken waterer, perfect for getting chicks off to a healthy start.

I thought you might enjoy a photo journey of our chicks' growth over the first week of their lives.  This photo is a chick fresh out of the hatchery box (probably day two or three of its life).  At this point, they were pure fuzzballs who spent most of their time sleeping under the light.  Heat was critical, and they got easily chilled by even slight changes in temperature.

By day two, one of the chicks had learned to scratch in their feed dish.  On day three, I noticed the first one hopping up onto our homemade chicken waterer's mount to roost above the crowd.

In the second half of the first week, chicks began to show a bit of dominance behavior, run-flying at each other to see who would back down.  They became more active and spent less time sleeping under the light (and seemed to need the heat less.)  I stopped worrying about them dying, and they all grew in wing feathers.

I wonder what week two will bring?

As you can probably tell from my tendency to post far too much, I like to write.  Last year, I put out an ebook about how to create a microbusiness that will pay the bills without taking over your life.

My newest book spans 300 million years, with tales of chemical warfare, murder, and sex changes.  Due to its epic scope, I guess I should be pleased that it only took me fifteen years to research and eighteen months to write and polish.

Sugar Hill: A Microcosm of Central Appalachian Ecology is one part trail guide and two parts stories about our local ecology, flora, and fauna.  The book is now available for $7 in ebook format...or you can just read the whole thing for free on its website.  Even if you never plan to visit southwest Virginia, I suspect the book will explain at least one mystery relevant to your own ecosystem.  I hope you'll check out the related website and let me know what you think!

I've been enjoying working through my thoughts on homemade chicken feed, chicken pasturing systems, and chicken varieties over the last few weeks.  But in the process, I've let a few things slide.  So, this week I'm going to post all of those backlogged entries that didn't make the cut in previous weeks.

First of all, I want to welcome my mom to the Avian Aqua Miser team!  Mom needed a job and we needed some help, so it's a perfect match.  She's been hard at work burning CDs and preparing do it yourself kits, just in time for the chick season to get underway.  She was also responsible for the blog post a couple of weeks ago about wild chickens in suburbia.  Thanks, Mom!

In other news, Mark is engrossed in another chicken-related invention.  I think that his new invention is every bit as exciting as the Avian Aqua Miser.  What is it?  Well, I've promised not to tell until he works all of the kinks out.  Stay tuned!