Chicken Update

Hey All,
Today we had the first chicken task force meeting and it went REALLY well. We are definitely on our way to chickendom. We have outlined the report we are making for risk management (who I have e-mailed to set up a meeting) and are making progress for our deadline on Friday. We still have plans to use Annika's coop design with possibly a few alterations, including 1/4 inch wire instead of chicken wire to keep out pesky and harmful animals, and possibly a piece of wood on the bottom to keep out rats and make the area easier to clean. We estimate that the coop will cost about $200 (based on a design and estimate we found online)- which we can apply for from the Sustainability Fund. Before we can really decide how many and what kind of chickens we should get, we really need to get the go-ahead from Risk Management and Facilities, but we went ahead and looked anyways. We thought, in terms of egg production, that we would initially get 5 chickens which would produce about 5 eggs/week -- we thought that was a pretty reasonable number of eggs to start with. In terms of types of chickens, we are looking at Araucana (blue and green eggs, quiet, docile, etc.), Barred Rocks (black and white speckled and reliable) and possibly some New Hampshire Reds (we have kind of ruled these out for the moment, but please let us know how you feel about them). We were going to order them online, but again, if anyone knows any local hatcheries let us know! Joellen Anderson suggested that we "adopt" abused chickens from bad mean farms, but we decided that initally it would be pretty difficult as it will be the first time for some of us working with chickens. We really want to look to this in the future, but we want to make sure that we can actually give the chickens everything they need before we any that have already been abused. If you are interested in being on the taskforce e-mail us at feastoxy@gmail.com. Just wanted to update people on the progress we are making. Get excited for this week, it's about to be jam-packed with fun activities!

-Giulia