Outside

Sorry Folks, We’re All Sold Out… of Baby Chicks

The pandemic ignited an interest in backyard gardens and raising animals By Laurel Brauns

Since the early days of the pandemic, some grocery store shelves were bare for days as supply chains slowed. Around the same time, Americans heard stories from abroad of strict lockdowns: People couldn’t even leave their homes. Who knew if the store would even stay open?

The combination of shortages and pandemic panic spiked interest in a back-to-the-land movement here in Central Oregon. As people dig their own gardens and build their own chicken coops, local stores have run out of seeds and chickens. Today, if you want to buy a baby chick in Central Oregon, your only choice may be to order the little ladies online.

“We had a couple of weeks where we sold out within an hour and 15 minutes,” said Joel King, the lawn and garden to raise cattle and other large animals for the first time.

manager at High Desert Ranch & Home in Bend. “We were taking more than 50 calls a day after we sold out. I made a gross under estimation when I ordered our birds this year,” King said.

“There was one week where it was crazy, a mob scene, people were over-eager and weren’t staying 6 feet apart,” King said. “But most weeks customers were well behaved.”

HDRH specializes in rare and specialty breeds of chickens, which have historically been a niche market in Central Oregon. One example of rare breed in high demand is the Ameraucana chickens—also known as Easter Egg chickens, nick-named for their unique gene that produces greenish-blue eggs.

But this year, there were some weeks that King couldn’t be picky about breeds and instead gratefully accepted more common breeds from hatcheries that had some extra chicks. One of the most popular American chicken breeds is the Rhode Island Red known for its brownish-red feathers and bright red head. King said he sold many of those.

It’s been exciting to see a surge of interest in self-sustaining practices like pandemic gardens and raising livestock, King said. He’s meeting many new customers, some who have actually begun

Christy Tanner

I guaranteed them room and board for life, and when they went to chicken heaven I took them out to BLM land for the coyotes to find them. — Liz Lotochinski, chicken enthusiast, real estate broker

“The cleanest food you get is the food you grow yourself,” King said. “Livestock teaches kids the way life works, the good things and the bad things. We hope the animals are well cared for.”

Singing the chicken’s praises

Liz Lotochinski has been raising chickens since 2007 and organized the Annual Chicken Coup Tour for many years to educate the public and raise awareness about the benefits of the animals.

“The reason I got into them in the beginning is because they are small, curious, friendly and deliver a present every day,” she said.

She’s not surprised chicken movement is on the rise.

“The pandemic has offered us a bit more time we didn’t have before,” she said.

Lotochinski was a chicken connoisseur of sorts, and collected a variety of breeds including the Barred Rock (Plymouth Rock) chicken. This breed has thin zebra stripes circling their bodies from their black and white feathers. She also treasured her Ameraucanas, especially for their “Martha Stewart blue” egg shells.

“There is nothing like a homegrown chicken egg with the bright orange-yellow yolk,” Lotochinski said. “It all depends on what they eat, the different kinds of scraps they get and of course, how they are loved.”

Lotochinski never ate her hens, though she said she still buys “grocery store” meat from Costco.

“I guaranteed them room and board for life, and when they went to chicken heaven I took them out to BLM land for the coyotes to find them,” she said.

Chickens, kids, a dog and an occasional elk

Christy Tanner is Lotochinski’s tenant in Redmond who decided to get chickens when the pandemic hit. Tanner’s husband is an archery-only elk hunter.

Christy Tanner bought chicks during Easter in order to be prepared if the family needs a protein source. She says the chickens bring a lot of joy to her three young children and mini Australian Shepard.

“We wanted to be more self-sustaining,” Tanner said. “We have three young children and a mini Australian Shepard. He likes to play with [the chickens] and he doesn’t hurt them. It’s fun for the kids to grow up with backyard chickens and learn how to take care of them, and we’ll be better prepared if we need a protein source.”

For Tanner, actually getting chickens was a challenge. She wanted to get them on Easter Sunday, but the local stores were sold out. So the family drove to Green Drive Mercantile in Culver, where they picked up a few unique breeds.

“We wanted a breed that would be good with kids. Silky chicks are fluffy and funny looking, but they only produce about 160 small eggs a year,” Tanner explained. “The other two were New Hampshire chickens whose egg count is around 280 a year.”

For people who are interested in buying their own backyard chickens but can’t find them available locally, Lotochinski recommended Murray McMurray Hatchery, which will mail the chicks right to your door.

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Through a FAN advocate at each school in Central Oregon, Family Access Network is working to help kids flourish in school and in life.

From Sept. 2019-April 2020 FAN helped families thrive by connecting them to:

Clothing

3,380 children & parents

School Supplies

1,851 children

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Call 541-693-5675 or visit familyaccessnetwork.org to learn more

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This Memorial Day Weekend, shop local while supporting a good cause!

Visit the link below to view a list of participating businesses that will be accepting donations for Bethlehem Inn, a non-denominational facility providing shelter, help and hope to those experiencing homelessness in Central Oregon.

www.bridgeourcommunity.com/codirectory

Boxing Up Owls

Give owls a place to live. Then band them for study By Jim Anderson

One of the things I enjoy about growing older is that I still have the getup-and-go to join old friends who not only share what I love to do, but never miss the opportunity to do so. Like when Dick Tipton sent me an email about a saw-whet owl using one of his kestrel nesting boxes to raise a family.

Tipton is a master at building nesting boxes; they’re a work of art. He got into the business when he crossed trails with Don McCartney and his American Kestrel nesting box trail. And I got into kestrel banding when McCartney’s boxes began to produce lots and lots of kestrel babies for me to band.

This all got started almost 20 years ago when McCartney called me about a nesting box he had built for small owls and wanted my thoughts on where to put it. I thought the Delicious Fire area out near Tumalo Reservoir would be perfect since the sprawling sagebrush meadows that burned were healing, and the new greenery coming on would support a plethora of rodents that small owls go for in a big way.

We went out there together, located a small group of trees that escaped the holocaust and decided on a healthy pine on the northern edge of the unit. We put the box up about 12 feet above the surface, facing the north and the meadow, leaving Nature to take its course.

Almost immediately, McCartney called me to report an American Kestrel had moved in, and that began a love affair between him and our smallest falcon that has gone on to heights today beyond belief.

In the course of McCartney’s incredible box-making pursuits, he has installed over 300 “small owl” nesting boxes all the way from Brothers to Sisters—all being used by kestrels. It wasn’t until Tipton got into it in the area northeast of Sisters that we actually got our first small owl using a kestrel box to raise a family. It was a Northern Saw-whet owl.

The area that Tipton volunteered to place nesting boxes and watch for kestrels covers about 45 square miles between Sisters and the Grandview area, and it takes Tipton and Marj, his wife, many hours and many gallons of gas to cover it each spring. Tipton has hidden all his 27 boxes from people, because the gun nuts have shot so many of them to smithereens just for the fun of it.

When he asked if I wanted to band the babies I promptly answered, “Yes!” without considering his penchant for hiding boxes. Consequently, it was a longer hike from our vehicles than I really wanted to make, what with my heart and lung problems.

What saved me were our pals, Ken Hashagen and his dear wife Ann Nora coming along. Ken carried my banding stuff for me and that relieved the great

Jim Anderson

Yep, that’s a Northern Saw-whet Owl teenager.

Ken Hashagan

need I have for oxygen when exercising. Ken was my kestrel sub-bander for years and is now a U.S. Geological Survey Master Bander. Hopefully, he’ll take over banding Golden Eagles when I go out among the stars.

Getting the small owls out of the box is always a challenge, but Tipton’s longtime experience of helping to band kestrels came to the fore, and he delivered the five babies to our group flawlessly and happily. He also provided us with a wonderful clue as to what the owls were eating as they grew up. He noticed the tail of a kangaroo rat lying in the bottom of the box as he was sending owls down to us.

Which brings up an interesting point about saw-whets. As the babies grow, the parents move out of the box and just bring in food, dropping it and quickly leaving. By the time the owlets fledge, the box (or tree cavity) is crammed with pellets and the remains of dead prey, which is enough to gag a maggot.

Banding is, of course, a one-at-atime activity, so while I was banding the babies with the help of Marj, my wife Sue and Ann Nora looked them over for parasites. Ken took that opportunity to line them up on a dead juniper branch and photographed them just like Herman T. Bohlman and William L. Finley —Oregon’s first Bird People — did with the same species way back in the beginning of the 1900s.

Banding will hopefully provide more data on how long these little guys live and what they do in winter. In the 1990s, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology set up a study on migrating owls, with more than 100 owl banding sites, trapping them in mist nets, eventually banding thousands of small owls.

In October of 1999 a banded owl landed on a fishing vessel in the Atlantic Ocean, 70 miles offshore near Montauk, New York. It would be sensational if one of Tipton’s little owls turned up on a fishing vessel out on the Pacific, or Hashagan was notified in 2040 that one of Dick’s owls was discovered in the same box it was raised in with a family of its own…

In Case You Missed It: Video! Jim Anderson stars in a Source video about making bird boxes. Find the video on the Natural World page of bendsource.com.

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