Jeepers Peepers!

The best time to set hens to have the best, largest, and most kindly chickens is in February in the increase of the moon, so that she may hatch or disclose her chickens in the increase of the next new moon, being in March; for one brood of March chickens is worth three broods of any other.*

Jeepers Creepers, where'd ya get those peepers?**

Every year we raise a new batch of kindly chicks to add to our flock.   The feed store in Archer sells pullets from the beginning of February through the middle of April, but the real excitement begins in late January when they publish the weekly schedule of Chick Days:

02/05/15  25 RHODE ISLD RED PULLETS

                   25 BARRED ROCK PULLETS

                   25 BUFF ORPINGTON PULLETS

                   25 AMERAUCANA PULLETS

                   25 FRENCH GUINEA ST RUNS

Craig and I pore over this list with the fervor that others save for their spring seed catalogs.  Chick Days represents winter's end, anticipation, rebirth and renewal, boundless possibility.  We are tantalized by twenty or more breeds of hens, not to mention turkeys, guinea fowl and partridges.   Is this the year to take a chance on AST FRIZZLE COCHIN BANTAM?

But we are practical farmers.  Above all we want hens that are good layers, predisposed to be docile and friendly, and not inclined to brood.  That eliminates motherly girls like cochins and silkies, as well as breeds that prefer to be left alone, like anconas and leghorns.   We're in Florida, so heat-tolerance is always a good quality.  Heavy breeds are less likely to fly over the fence into the pasture or our neighbors' yards.  Craig likes colorful eggs.  I like beautiful birds, but they're all beautiful birds.

Our first ever flock consisted of two Rhode Island Reds, two Plymouth Rocks, and two black sex-links (the always-female issue of a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen).   Both Reds and Rocks are quintessential American birds, popular on small farms, and good for both eggs and meat.  Our Rocks were white with black and gold flecks and the sex-links were black with rust and gold, all of them speckled and sparkling and glinting in the sun.  I thought they were the prettiest birds I'd ever seen until we got our Buff Orpingtons, golden yellow beauties with bright red combs.  They strut picture perfect against the green grass and lay lovely large light brown eggs.   I thought they were the most beautiful birds I'd ever seen until we got our Brahmas...  

So, Craig and I work our way down the Chick Days flyer.  There is a vocabulary you have to know.  Pullets are formally hens under a year old, but used here simply to indicate the chicks are all  female.  Bantams are smaller counterparts of full-sized breeds.  ST RUNS or "straight runs" means the chicks have not been sexed and will be a mix of pullets and roosters.   We google our favorite chicken fact sites.  Dominiques are handsome and thrive in both heat and cold, but wait, they're light and can be flighty.  Naked Necks get 4.6 stars from Backyard Chickens but they look like something out of Dr. Seuss.  Cuckoo Marans lay enticing chocolate colored eggs but are down as good brooders.  So many chickens, so little time.  Finally we settle on Speckled Sussex pullets.  Affectionate, intelligent, curious, almost dog-like, they are neither broody nor flighty and are consistent producers of large brown eggs.

Alas, when our Chicken Day comes, the Speckled Sussex don't arrive as scheduled.  The hatchery has substituted Blue Hamburg bantams.  The feed store clerk and I are equally nonplussed.  The bantams are out of the question -- they are flighty and will lay small white eggs -- but I am not leaving the store without some peepers.  I purchase four partridge Ameraucana pullets.  They are GORGEOUS.  Buff with brown patches  running from the crown of their heads through the center of their backs, framed by a brown stripe on either side.  They are such sweet babies they don't run away when I try to pick them up.  They will lay pale blue eggs. They are the Best Chickens Ever.

Ameraucana peepers, one day old.

Our little peepers will live in a galvanized steel tub in the living room with an infrared heat lamp to keep them warm.   We'll hold them on our laps whenever possible to get them used to human touch.   In a couple of weeks their permanent feathers will grow in and they will be able to stay outside in a dog crate on warm afternoons.   Eventually they will range free in the sunshine and sleep in the chicken palace with the big girls.  They will forage for seeds and bugs and lay eggs with incredible orange yolks.  With luck they will live well beyond their egg-producing years and die of natural causes.   It is a good life for a chicken here at Itchy Dog Farm.

* Advice from Gervase Markham’s A Way to Get Wealth, 1625, as excerpted by Jeff Kacirk for his Forgotten English Calendar entry for 16 February 2015, and sent to me by my friend Charles Husbands.

** Start of 1938 song by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer.

Postscript:  Unless you buy from your farmers' market, the eggs you are frying for breakfast likely came from a factory farm where thousands of birds are crammed together vertically in battery cages in windowless sheds.  Each hen has a space the size of a piece of notebook paper on which to live out her life.  She will never see the sky, scratch the earth for bugs, or splash in a dirt bath.  Her beak will be clipped (without anesthetic) so that in her misery and boredom she doesn't peck herself or others to death.  She may have such a serious calcium deficiency from over-production of eggs that her bones are broken.  Happily her life expectancy is short and she will soon be slaughtered for food scraps.  

The River Styx

In Greek mythology, the River Styx, or River of Hate, was one of five rivers separating the underworld from the world of the living.  The others were Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe, or Woe, Lamentation, Fire and Forgetfulness, respectively.   Although Ovid's Metamorphoses puts the ferryman Charon [Kharon] on the banks of the Styx, all Greek and most other Roman accounts have Charon and his dragon-tailed dog Cerberus ferrying the souls of the dead across the River Acheron.  Nonetheless, Styx was the principal river of Hades, circling it nine times before draining into the Stygian marsh.

In Alachua County, the River Styx flows from a swamp in the Longleaf Flatlands Reserve to Orange Lake.  It is part of a conservation ecosystem known as the Lochloosa Connector, linking Newnans Lake in the north through Paynes Prairie to the River Styx and Orange Lake. In the summer I don't think I could afford enough mosquito repellent to keep me alive for an hour on the Styx, but on these glorious, mosquito-free, North Florida winter days a paddle up the river is far more like Paradise than Hades.

Towards Orange Lake

The best place to put in is at the bridge over County Road 346 in Micanopy.  It's an ugly, aging concrete slab bridge but it does have a wonderful view.  Just over the bridge is a pull-off where you can park your vehicle and carry your boat down to the river. Go downstream and you will ultimately end up in the spacious waters of Orange Lake.  Turn upstream and the water carries you a mile or so into strand swamp before the vegetation becomes impenetrable.  You may start out under blue skies but it gets darker and darker the further you paddle.  You skirt towering bald cypress with buttress roots and hear creatures plopping into the water, hoping turtle not gator.  You wouldn't be surprised to see Bigfoot.

The area includes the Micanopy Cypress wood stork rookery and is known as the home of nesting pairs of these threatened birds as well as Florida black bear and river otter.  Craig and I have never seen anything so remarkable on our paddles, but even the usual wildlife is stunning.  Bald eagles are common, as are ducks and all manner of wading birds including herons, egret, ibis and limpkin.  Anhinga are rampant.  These beautiful birds swim submerged in the water with only their long, S-shaped necks above the surface, giving them their other name, Snakebird.  They are often seen resting with their wings stretched out to dry.  They are all over Florida but I've never seen so many in one place as on the Styx.

In mythology, the poisonous waters of the Styx could confer invulnerability to the gods but were toxic to mortals.  (Achiles' mom dipped him in the Styx as a baby, but the heel of his foot where she held him stayed dry, hence Achiles' heel.)  The water was so corrosive it could only be contained in a horse's hoof.  It is now believed that the real life Styx is a stream called Mavroneri (Black Water) in the Peloponnesian mountains. Even now, locals avoid drinking the water and say it corrupts drinking vessels.  Recently researchers at Stanford have proposed that the Mavroneri may have contained a lethal bacteria-produced poison, calicheamicin, and more, that water from Styx/Mavroneri might have been used to poison Alexander the Great.

Heading upstream

The water of our River Styx is stained mahogany red and has the faint but unmistakable odor of Cypress swamp.  So far as I know it is neither poisonous nor corrosive, but it does have magical powers.  A shaft of sunlight through the trees can turn dark water into gold, and a heron rising from the weeds can make your heart fly.





A few follow-ups on earlier posts:

Elinor is back to her normal sweet self, and egg production exceeds our capacity for egg consumption.

Number 9 is still spending his days with his sandhill crane friends at the Beef Teaching Unit.