It's officially fall, but the garden growing season continues! Our young scientists continue to provide care to our garden and harvest delicious goodies. Although some of our plants are reaching the end of their life cycle, the eggplant, for example, is producing more fruit now than previously. To date, we have harvested FIFTY-NINE pounds of food grown within the front Lab garden. The harvested food has been enjoyed by registered program participants, our turtle Spaghetti, and the chickens. It's our very own self sustaining microfarm!
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It's been a week with our new hens and they've recently begun to enjoy unsupervised time with our elder hen, Spicy Mildred. Chickens over 15 weeks of age, and under one year (who are not yet laying) are known as pullets. This is more commonly referred to as the chicken's teen years. Due to our location in the northeast, we opted for chicken breeds that are tolerant to extreme temperatures, particularly the cold New York winters. Our flock consists of one Red Star, known for its large brown eggs. The Red Star is a hybrid hen, developed in the 1950's by breeding three more popular types known for their egg and meat production. Our two other pullets are Americaunas, derived from the Araucana chickens brought to the United States from Chile. They are extremely hardy hens which are best known for their blue-green eggs. This week, our young scientists have begun meeting our flock and making name suggestions. Soon, you'll be able to vote on names while supporting the Brooklyn Chicken Club.
Your support makes amazing things possible. Thank you! We had heavy overnight rain, which has delayed next steps in finalizing our walk-in coop. It also meant that our new pullets weren't particularly interested in exploring the great outdoors anyway. They've been spending their time in our wooden coop with attached run. This coop is big enough to house three full grown hens, making it great temporary accommodations for three small pullets. The sun was out today, so we opened the door to run to let them explore. None ventured far, but did get close enough to meet Spicy Mildred. So far, she seems very curious about the pullets, spending lots of time watching them from outside the run. Given the huge size difference, we'll be introducing them gradually to each other. If you've been following the Kiddie Science social media accounts, you'll notice that we've been up to a little bit of a lot recently. Thanks to the ongoing support of the Roehr Family Foundation, we're excited to share with you the expansion of the Brooklyn Chicken Club! Young scientists will have increased opportunity for unique, hands-on experiences caring for urban chickens while learning more about ornithology, the local ecology, and sustainability. Before diving into more details, its important that we share with you the recent passing of Rocky, the seven year old Barred Rock who arrived to us this spring to enjoy luxurious retirement. Since we knew her time would be short, we decided to focus our full attention on keeping Rocky happy and spoiled while she was with us. We postponed expanding our backyard flock in order to avoid causing Rocky any stress and to ensure there were no distractions in her care. Highly curious and intelligent, we feel honored to have been part of Rocky's life.  Although certain Rocky's passing was due to natural causes, we proceeded with caution and Spicy Mildred spent some time alone in quarantine. During this time, Spicy was thoroughly entertained as the Lab backyard went through slow yet dramatic changes. She enjoyed when the wooden coop and run was moved and cleaned (yummy bugs were hiding underneath), and was curious during the building of the new coop began. It's been a week and Spicy Mildred has smoothly transitioned to her new coop and has laid eggs in the new nesting box as well. Delivery of our aviary has been delayed, but soon as that arrives, our flock will have an enclosed backyard space which will also provide young scientists with walk-in access. With two coops, our new chicken friends have a cozy and safe place to transition to life at the Kiddie Science Lab. No names yet (you'll get to vote on that!) and so far the introduction has gone smoothly. The hens are approximately 20 weeks old, which means they're pullets (teen chickens). Currently, our flock consists of two Americaunas, a Red Star, and a Black Australorp named Spicy Mildred. |
