Made by Hand (16 page)

Back home, we carried the supplies and tools to the pool pump station. After unraveling the electrical conduit, we discovered it wasn’t long enough. I drove back down the hill to a small but well-stocked hardware store to buy a longer piece. When I told the clerk what I needed, he asked me what I was planning to use it for. When I told him I wanted to power my automatic chicken door, he acted like he didn’t believe me. I remembered that I had taken a movie of the chicken door opening and closing with my digital camera. I pulled it out and showed him the clip.

“That is so cool!” he said. He was just as impressed with it as Carla had been. He called over the other two clerks and asked me to show them the video. A woman customer got into the huddle, too.

“Wow! That’s really neat,” said one. The woman asked where I lived.

“Right up the hill.”

“And you actually have chickens now?” She was incredulous.

“Yep, six of them.”

“Are you going to eat them?”

“No, they’re pets, but we eat their eggs.”

“Really? They lay eggs?”

“Sure,” I said. I gave her the whole
Omnivore’s Dilemma
rap about how the yolks were orange, round, firm, and bouncy, unlike the pale, flat, runny yolks you get with store-bought eggs. The small crowd looked at me with amazement and no small degree of respect in their eyes. I was being recognized for being a DIYer, someone who could get things done. In a society where most people solve problems by buying solutions instead of making them, even inept DIYers like me are regarded with a degree of awe.

Returning home, still basking in the glow of the admiration of strangers, I found my dad at the pool pump, getting started on the wiring. He had unscrewed the electrical power panel and stuck the probes of a voltmeter into a pair of terminals. It read “117 volts AC.” He turned off the circuit breaker so he could attach the wires from the electrical cord we’d just purchased. I was glad he was around, because I would have had a very hard time figuring out what to do. When he ran into trouble attaching the wires directly to the terminals, he cut some of the wires that were already attached to the power panel’s terminals and used wire nuts (colored plastic things that look like tiny ice cream cones) to splice the wires together.

With one end of the cord taken care of, he wired up the outlet box to the other end and attached it to the interior of the chicken coop. I plugged the appliance timer into the outlet and plugged the drapery puller into the timer. We turned the circuit breaker back on, and I tested the door by turning the wheel of the timer until it clicked at the 6 a.m. mark.
Whirrrr
—the door rose! When it stopped, I turned the wheel until it reached the 9 p.m. mark.
Whirrrr
—the door shut.

I shot another video of the door in action and posted it to my blog. Mister Jalopy e-mailed me right away: “I watched the door open/close video three times! It is mesmerizing! Good job, Mark!”

Who knew that making a chicken door could be so beneficial to one’s self-esteem?

The chickens had no problem learning the operation of the door. They walked down the ramp when the door opened, and walked up the ramp when it started to get dark. The door closed at 9 p.m., after they’d been inside for an hour or so. They were laying eggs in the nesting box, which I retrieved through a little access hole in the coop wall.

For a week, this arrangement worked without a hitch. Then, one Saturday morning, our life of chicken bliss was shattered. I awoke to the sound of my chickens squawking. I checked the clock: It was 6:15 a.m. That meant the automatic door was open and the chickens were out. Still sleepy, I didn’t think much of their clucks at first. But they kept at it. The sound they were making was unusual. A bad feeling crept over me.

“I’m going to check on the chickens,” I told Carla, who was just starting to wake up.

Outside the dawn light was weak. I saw four chickens standing on the sloped part of the property above the coop. They were standing tall, with their necks straight and long, and were clucking loudly. They all stared at the same spot down the hill. I turned to see what they were looking at. A skinny gray coyote was standing on our side of the fence. I felt a gush of panic and yelled, “Get out!” The coyote scrambled up the chain-link fence and disappeared into the scrubby vegetation of the valley below.

My heart pounding, I looked for the missing two chickens, but I already knew I wasn’t going to find them, at least not alive. I walked down to where the coyote had been standing. Before I got there, I found clumps of black-and-white-striped feathers in the grass. I was surprised by how many there were. Then I saw a chicken slumped against the fence. She was lying upside down, with her legs exposed. One of them had a green cable tie around it. Hazel had been killed. She was the kids’ second-favorite chicken, right behind Ethel. The two of them were the boldest, friendliest, and most inquisitive hens in the flock. I looked around for another chicken body but couldn’t find one.

I went in the house to tell Carla the news. She followed me out, and I explained what had happened. She started crying. I looked at the leg bands of the four surviving chickens: Darla, Jordan, Daisy, and Rosie. That meant that Ethel, the black-banded hen, was gone. I looked around, but there was no sign of her, except perhaps the feathers blowing from one clump of weeds to another. The coyote must have carried her over the fence.

Carla was upset not only because the two chickens had been killed but because she had warned me about the coyotes and had (correctly) believed I hadn’t done enough to ensure the chickens’ safety. She’d told me that she didn’t think the fence was high enough to prevent coyotes from getting over it. I’d been wrong, and now our two favorite chickens were dead.

It had been a bad idea to bring the chickens here, where coyotes were rampant, I decided. “Maybe I can find someone to keep them,” I thought. I’d have to make a decision about it, but right now I needed to come up with a way to keep the chickens safe for the rest of the morning, until the coyotes went to sleep. I sat in a lawn chair and played chicken shepherd while Carla went back into the house.

After the sun was fully out and I felt reasonably safe that the coyotes wouldn’t be coming back, I took stock of my building supplies. I had some extra chicken wire and some fencing posts, so I spent about an hour making a circular enclosure surrounding the coop. It was only four feet high, and no match for a hungry coyote, but it would keep the chickens contained so I could keep my eye on them. When I completed the makeshift enclosure, I had to gather up the chickens, which wasn’t easy, because they were spooked and ran away from me when I got near them. Eventually I managed to collect them all and deposit them inside the wobbly circular boundary. I didn’t feel great about leaving the chickens alone, but I went inside and made breakfast for the family, frequently going out to check on the chickens.

After breakfast Carla called a few of her friends and told them what had happened. They were all self-styled coyote experts, offering suggestions about what could be done. One said we needed to line our perimeter with razor wire. Another suggested an electric fence. One friend said we needed to bait the area with poisoned meat.

I went online and looked at the Los Angeles County Web site about dealing with coyotes. It recommended building six-foot fences with fourteen-inch angled extenders all around. The site also said that the entire fence “should have some sort of galvanized wire apron buried at least 4 to 6 inches in the ground, which extends out from the fence at least 15 to 20 inches. The apron should be securely attached to the bottom of the fence. Coyotes are very adept diggers and prefer to dig under fences rather than jump them.”

This seemed like a tremendous amount of hard, expensive work—exactly the kind of DIY project I loathe. What’s more, I doubted it would work. With a piece of property as large as the one we were living on, and with a great deal of the perimeter bordering the canyon wilderness, the coyotes would surely figure out a way to breach the barrier. I decided I’d much rather build a coyote-proof pen attached to the coop where the chickens could spend their daylight hours, even if it meant that their free-range days would be over. I knew it would take some planning to make a pen that was both secure and attractive, but first I needed to make some kind of temporary pen better than the flimsy chicken-wire fence I’d slapped together. I drove to Home Depot—I was becoming the cornerstone of their business by this point—and bought eleven metal fence posts, fifty feet of wire screen, and one hundred cable ties.

When I got home, Carla told me that I wouldn’t be able to start working on the new enclosure, because we had to get ready for Jane’s sixth birthday party and I needed to pick up the cake and other snacks. Besides, the house was still in a state of disarray because of our recent move—every room was filled with unpacked boxes. I’d been out of town for the last few days, so I hadn’t been able to help unpack. And the little time that I had been in town had been spent almost exclusively on dealing with the chickens.

“I’m going to write my own book,” Carla said. “It’ll be about living with a crazy chicken man.” She realized that the stuff I was doing was necessary, but she also said that my DIY projects were exacerbating the stress that always comes with moving into a new house.

After the birthday party, my friend Mark, who happens to be a contractor, came over to help me put together a better temporary chicken pen. It was late afternoon, and dusk was approaching. I felt rushed. Doing this project was a lot different from the slow-living projects I’d been working on. This was a matter of chicken life or death. It was DIY as a necessity, not as therapy or a hobby. After pounding in the fence posts and attaching the wire screen to them, Mark and I made a roof beam out of a three-by-three piece of lumber and draped the chicken wire over it. Now the fence would be completely closed in. The automatic chicken door led directly into the pen. I laid a blue plastic tarp over the chicken wire to provide some shade for the chickens. The finished structure wasn’t nice to look at, but I hoped it would be good enough to protect the hens in the daytime.

Mark had to leave to pick up a relative at the airport, so I continued to work on the pen myself, figuring I had about an hour and a half to go. I happened to glance down at the area where the coyote had hopped over the fence. On the other side, I saw a mass of black-and-white feathers that I hadn’t noticed earlier. I dropped my tools and walked down the slope to see what it was. When I got close enough, I realized that it was a chicken—and it was alive.

Had one of the four survivors managed to escape the new enclosure and somehow get over to the other side of the fence without my knowing it? It was beginning to get dark, and I needed to get the chicken back on our side of the fence before a coyote grabbed it. I climbed over with difficulty and dropped down to the other side. The hen was peeping quietly. I picked her up and looked at her leg band. It was black.

Ethel! She had survived the coyote attack!

I quickly examined her body for injuries, but the tough little bird seemed to be in perfect shape. I called to my brother-in-law, who was in the backyard, and handed him the chicken before climbing over the fence myself. Then I shouted for Carla and the kids to witness this minor miracle.

I set Ethel down by the waterer, and she started drinking. For several minutes she continued to drink. She was really dehydrated. Her mood was odd, too. She didn’t seem as perky as usual, which I attributed to the shock of being carried over the fence in a coyote’s mouth.

Carla said, “Are you sure she’s OK?”

“Yes,” I said. “I checked her.”

One of Carla’s friends, who was also visiting, brushed some of Ethel’s back feathers aside, revealing missing feathers and deep lacerations on her back and under her wings.

“Oh, no!” said Carla. “She’s hurt. I’m calling the vet.” She ran into the house. Ethel continued to gulp down water. When Carla came back, she said the vet wanted to see the bird right away. My sister-in-law, Melissa, took Ethel to the vet so I could finish building the enclosure.

Melissa returned with Ethel an hour and a half later. The vet had stapled up three deep bite wounds on the chicken’s back, given her a dose of pain medication, and prescribed a tube of topical antibiotic. She still seemed to be in shock, warbling softly every few seconds. Melissa said the doctor gave her the option of an oral antibiotic but said that if we gave her oral antibiotics, her eggs would be inedible forever after. I didn’t quite understand that—didn’t the poultry industry regularly pump all sorts of antibiotics into chickens as a matter of course?

I consulted Google about eggs and antibiotics, and the only thing I could find was a discussion about it on a backyard chicken keepers’ forum. People who had given antibiotics to their chickens said they simply waited a couple of weeks for the medicine to flush out of their chickens’ systems and then resumed eating their eggs. Nevertheless, I decided to hold off on giving Ethel oral antibiotics unless she didn’t respond well to the topical treatment.

Another thing we needed to figure out was where to keep Ethel while she was recuperating. The vet said that the other chickens would sense Ethel’s weakness, attack her, and peck out her staples. We would have to keep them separated for at least a couple of weeks while her wounds healed. Fortunately, Melissa had a large, unused dog cage at her house, which was within walking distance of ours. I brought Ethel over, spread some wood shavings on the concrete floor of the cage, and gave her some food and water, which she consumed with relish. For the next two weeks, I would have to walk over to Melissa’s twice a day, irrigate Ethel’s wounds with a cleaning solution, and apply the antibiotic.

When I visited the next morning, Ethel seemed to be doing well. She was eating and had even laid an egg. By that night, she seemed to have slowed down a bit, but I attributed her sluggishness to the fact that chickens like to go to sleep early.