Becca White, 10, holds one of the chickens she and her family raise on their farm south of Onaga.

Feeding time at the White farm includes the dog and a cat.

Chickens on the White family farm examine eggs in the basket.

Nathan Woodyard feeds greens to his chickens.

Nathan Woodyard collects an egg from the chicken house on his farm east of Westmorland.

Eggs from happy chickens

By Paula Glover
It’s part of a country lifestyle that is coming back – raising chickens.
“People are increasingly interested in where their food comes from,” said Scott Beyer, poultry expert with Kansas State University. “If people have the time and the space, people also like feeling more independent and responsible for their own food production.”
For Nathan Woodyard, who lives with his wife, Kim, west of Westmorland, raising his own chickens is part of a life that harkens back to his childhood – his grandfather raised chickens. The choice also includes raising as much organic food for the family as possible.
Karen White and her children, Elizabeth, 15, and Becca, 10, adore their chickens. Their farm south of Onaga, farmed by husband, Paul, includes cattle. When the kids found a 4-H bucket calf to be too labor intensive, the kids switched to chickens. Now, their 28 chickens lay 22 to 28 eggs a day.
“They are just a joy to watch,” Karen White said recently.
“When we feed them, it isn’t hard to pick them up,” Becca said, demonstrating. “See when they lay their wings back, it means they want to be picked up.”
The Woodyard and White families are part of a nationwide movement toward food grown close to home, sometimes with an emphasis on organic, and generally including a focus on humane growing and harvesting methods for live animals.
Larry Cowdin, manager at Orchelyns’ farm supply said the demand for information from newcomers to chicken raising is so great that they host “Chick Days” in the spring, featuring talks on raising chickens. He said there are still many with 4-H projects, or people who for years have raised poultry for meat, but new people want specific “how-to information.”
With the right zoning, even city folks can get in on the action, as it isn’t illegal to keep chickens within the city of Manhattan. There are restrictions, however. The chickens must be quiet, clean and contained and the zoning is such that in the RS suburban areas and R smaller family residential, it is acceptable to have a small flock, but the restrictions are set so that the chickens have to be penned and 100 feet from a property line. Most homeowner’s lots don’t allow for that much set-back, noted Chad Bunger, a planner with the city of Manhattan.
“Right now, it’s rare, but we could see more chickens,” he said.
Riley County currently restricts chickens in the A1 and A3 zones, with no livestock allowed, said Steve Higgins, zoning enforcement office. In zones A4 and A5, livestock is allowed, including poultry. However, the county is in the process of examining zoning regulations, and it is possible that some day, poultry could be allowed in the A1 and A3 zones. For example, a person could keep 8 to 10 hens. “As long as you’re taking care of them, it would be OK,” he said.
“It is a matter of a healthier way to eat,” Higgins said. “It helps to maintain a healthier America.”
Beyer agreed that most people are motivated by a desire for healthier foods.
“Health seems to be more important than saving money,” he said. “In reality, it is hard to meet the prices from big producers. Sometimes people are interested in a different breed of bird than the meat in the stores, or are concerned about animal welfare.”
In the last year-and-a-half, he’s seen a definite upswing in people keeping chickens.
“There’s no doubt people are concerned in addition to the people who just want to do something different,” Beyer said. If a person wants to raise livestock, he suggested beginning with poultry.
“Poultry are easy to raise,” he said. He suggested starting with pullets if a person was concerned about raising chickens from that are just hatched, or hatching them on their own.
“There’s a lot of information available on raising chickens,” Bayer said. Although there is some mis-information on the Internet, K-State maintains a web site: www.asi.k-state.edu/poultry and he said farm related magazines like Mother Earth News and Grit Magazine tend to offer accurate information and specialty issues on poultry.
Hank Will, editor of Grit Magazine, said that the trend or raising chickens is part of a resurgence in interest in vegetable gardening, and “ways to take additional charge of your food supply.”
Their special issues on poultry are popular, he noted.
“Plus, people are realizing that chickens are gorgeous, not all are stark white. There’s a real appeal to raising a farm animal,” he added. He thinks that the growing interest in chickens is part of people seeking to feel safer in many aspects of their life and to reduce expenses. Friends of his who own hatcheries reported to him that they had trouble meeting orders for the last couple of years.
In the Woodyard family, keeping chickens is all a part of a general effort to live more closely to the land, Nathan Woodyard said. Right now, the family has barred rock and turkins, and are keeping some roosters separate to fatten them up for the pot. There are four laying hens and a rooster in the coop. He’s recently hatched some eggs in an incubator that used to belong to his wife, Kim’s father. Kim grew up with raising chickens in the Wamego area.
“It is part of our livelihood,” he said. “It goes a long way to have closeness to what you grow, to be close to nature and your land.”
Woodyard has gone so far as to share his love of the small farm he and his wife bought a year ago, by posting videos on YouTube – just search for flatheadcat4U to see him plant potatoes or wait on the gravel truck for a load of gravel for the driveway.
“It is a joy for me, not really a chore,” to care for the chickens, “it is just what life is when you are doing what you enjoy,” he said.
Raising chickens has been both a joy and heartbreak for the White family, as twice their flock has been destroyed by marauding dogs. Bayer said the number one predator of chickens is generally the family dog or stray dogs.
But the White’s persisted, and are planning on expanding the flock to 50 chickens just a couple of years after beginning their chicken adventure. The family currently has Red Star hybrids, white Leghorn, Golden Laced and Columbian Wyandottes.
“The chickens are great,” Karen White said. “We enjoy watching them.” The chickens are allowed to free-range in the evenings when the family is home, but are penned during the day and locked in the coop at night.
“We haven’t had nearly the number of bugs as before,” she said, because the chickens eat bugs while out foraging.
To make the chicken raising successful, Elizabeth White suggested that people do their research ahead of time, and she thought for first time growers, that buying pullets, rather than chicks, might be the way to go.
“It is great to know you accomplished something when you set out to raise poultry,” Elizabeth White said.
“There’s something to be said about knowing where your food comes from,” Karen White said, noting that the family also butchers their own meat – chickens and steers.
To offset the cost, but also because the family cannot eat 28 eggs a day, Karen White sells the eggs. She sells to people who want fresh eggs, and those who are old enough to remember farm-fresh eggs from their childhood when more people raised their own poultry. But some people want to eggs are interested in free-ranging hens also.
“One woman told me she wants eggs from happy chickens,” White said.

Appeared in Manhattan Mercury, April 29.

Chris Wilson, new president of American Agri-Women

Chris Wilson: Rising to defend agriculture through American Agri-Women

By Paula Glover
A tour of Ron and Chris Wilson’s farm south of Manhattan includes Nigerian dwarf and Toggenburg goats, llamas, Shropshire sheep, Pony of the Americas, Paint, and quarter horses, chickens, a couple of rabbits. Some are 4-H projects, but all are part of the couple’s agri-tourism business. On the more than 550 acres, the family also farms pumpkins and small vegetables, corn, hay, soybeans, wheat and grain sorghum, along with raising cattle.
When Chris Wilson speaks about the future of agriculture as the new president of American Agri-Women, she speaks from her lifetime in farming, the current tourism and farming business, and preparing for the future in agriculture for her four children.
Wilson has been a member of American Agri-Women since 1978, when she joined after graduating from college in Illinois. Following a stint with the USDA in Washington D.C., she and her husband now live in Kansas, where Ron was reared. She began a two-year term as president in 2009, which will end at the annual convention, to be held in Wichita in 2011. She has also served as president of the Kansas Agri-Women organization.
There are many challenges facing agriculture and women in ag, Wilson said. To help women rise to the challenge, American Agri-Women is using social media such as twitter and Facebook, along with developing a television show. The show, which will air in May on Direct and Dish networks and be available to PBS stations is part of a grant from the USDA to outreach to farm and ranch women. The shows will also be available on the group’s website, www.americanagriwomen.org. The episodes will focus on risk management, farm programs, and topics like how to market grain. The programs will also include a visit to a farm.
Wilson said there are many issues of concern to American Agri-Women. The return of the estate tax will adversely impact families trying to maintain an inter-generational family farm, she said. One of the most pressing needs is to bring the truth of animal agriculture to the general public in response to attacks with “documentaries” such as “Food Inc.” and attacks from groups such as the Humane Society of the United States.
“We need to respond with the facts,” she said. “We need to continue to increase yields in order to feed the world, and do it with the right soil and water conservation measures.” The group’s web site features responses to “Food Inc.” and gives fact sheets on the importance of American agriculture.
“The stakes have never been higher in the challenges to our industry,” she said. “The messages to the public from media portray an agriculture that is not made up of family farms, but of U.S. Food being produced in a factory, where workers and animals are abused by ‘big agribusiness’,” she said.
“Nothing could be further from the truth, as 96 percent of all U.S farms are still family farms, and they produce 82 percent of our food.”
Wilson recalled talking to a friend in the same 4-H club with her children, who was troubled by the allegations in “Food, Inc.”
“These negative images are reaching our friends and family members,” she said. “There are great opportunities to tell the true story of agriculture in our local communities.”
Other issues of concern of the group include health care for long term security and retirement. Also a concern is agriculture labor, as one in six ag laborers are foreign-born and in some states there are not enough laborers. In addition, the group has a program called American Grown Goodness designed to provide a way for growers, processors and marketers to identify their American grown products. A logo identifies the product as American grown.
“We are also looking to bring in the next generation of women into the group,” Wilson said. American Agri-Women has been a group focused on legislation and national issues. But in addition, younger women seek networking and mentoring and need opportunities to develop leadership skills, she said.
Wilson comes from a farm family in Illinois, where her father still manages the family farm. As with many farm families, both she and her husband have off-farm jobs in addition to the agri-tourism and farming. During the legislative session, Chris lobbies the state legislature on agricultural issues. Ron works for Kansas State University in the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development. He’s also a cowboy poet, known as the Poet Lariat.
The couple has four children. Joanna, 18, is planning on attending K-State in the fall, majoring in animal science, hoping to become a veterinarian. They also have 12-year-old triplets – Stephen, James and Elizabeth, all active in 4-H.
The agri-tourism business evolved naturally, and Chris Wilson said she was initially a little surprised at the number of people who would be interested in visits to the farm. The farm, the Lazy-T west of Zeandale, now hosts such diverse groups as pre-school classes from Manhattan, a camping group from the Boy Scouts, to weekend visitors or a corporate picnic. They hold a spring roundup, fall festival and tours of the original barn on the site, built in the 1860s and now on the National Historic Register. They offer chuck wagon meals, hayrack rides, barrel train rides for the kids, and cowboy poetry.
“I have learned so much as a member of American Agri-Women through our conventions in different states,” Wilson said. “I’m glad to be able to serve as their new president.”

Appeared in Grass and Grain

Enjoying the Greater Prairie Chickens - Part of the adventure of viewing the prairie chickens is getting up early, going to the blind before dawn, and spotting the chickens as they do their courtship display.

After dawn - After dawn, the Greater Prairie Chickens cease their display, and it is time for the satisfied birders to head out for some breakfast.

Greater Prairie Chicken viewing early morning treat

By Paula Glover
It takes a particular type of dedicated bird watcher to get up hours before dawn, and spend a couple of hours hunkered down in a blind – but it is done to see a special bird, the Greater Prairie Chicken. The Prairie Chickens will gather in a mating ritual each spring, continuing through mid-to-late May.
Manhattanites are fortunate because just to the south of town the Konza Prairie Biological Station is a prime spot for viewing the chickens, with the assistance from a volunteer from the Konza Educational Education Program. On Friday morning, April 9, seven guests were met by long-time volunteer Hoogy Hoogheem.
Hoogheem explained that the bird watchers need to be in the blind at least a half hour before sunrise, in order not to startle the birds. The birds come into the lek, the term for the area in which the males display for the females, about dawn and will stay for a couple of hours. Hoogheem said that this is the bird version of “a singles bar” where the female comes to seek a mate.
What makes this a particularly interesting experience is the display the males put on, puffing out special sacks on their neck, which are bright orange. The display also includes a low hooting moan, like air blown across the top of a bottle, and a variety of clucking and foot stamping.
On this day, five males entertained two females, persisting even after Harrier Hawks flew overhead and also landed nearby.
“She’ll walk through and take a look,” Hoogheem said. If the two birds mate, it is over in a moment, he said, and the female will lay one clutch of 14 to 18 eggs, but the survival rate is low due to predation from hawks, foxes and other threats.
Hoogheem moved to the Manhattan 15 years ago, following a visit when his son was stationed at Fort Riley. From Boston area, where he spend 42 years as a school psychologist, he and his wife decided that Manhattan would be a good place to retire.
“The Greater Prairie Chicken in on the lists of birds to see for many birders,” Hoogheem said. He noted he’s had several times when people fly in just for the experience.
Suzanne Robb and a friend, Lynn Heidgerken, came to celebrate Robb’s birthday.
“I am fascinated with the whole prairie ecosystem,” Robb said. “The time of day adds to the adventure. This will take us out of 2010 – it is a timeless event.”
“We like to do something and see something that few have seen,” said Heidgerken. “You never know when you will have a transforming moment.”

The Konza Prairie Biological Station is owned by the Nature Conservancy, and research is done by Kansas State University. For information on visiting the station or scheduling a tour, visit www.keep.konze.ksu.edu or contact Annie Baker 785-587-0381, keepkonza@ksu.edu

Many local opportunities to begin bird watching

There are many prime birding opportunities for people in the Manhattan area, said Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent.
Particularly now, during the spring migration, Tuttle Creek Lake and Milford Lake provide excellent spots. Milford Lake’s wetland area provides a chance to see water birds and shore birds, and uniquely due to the timber area nearby, an “incredible diversity” of other birds.
“So much of the state of Kansas is privately owned and not available for wildlife opportunities,” he said, that Manhattanites are fortunate to have so many places nearby.
He also recommended Moon Lake and the Pet Cemetery on Fort Riley, near the main post and the old territorial capitol. He said even the city parks in Manhattan can be a good place for birdwatching.
There are several websites to assist the beginning birder including www.ksbirds.org from the Kansas Ornithological Society. He recommended the book “Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots” by Gress and Janzen.
There is also an upcoming birding conference in Wakefield, April 23 to 25. The festival features several birdwatching outings and talks by experts. More information is available at www.kansasbirdingfestival.org or by calling Vanessa Avara at 785-238-3108.
“In April and May, there’s a blast of species coming through the area in a short period of time,” he said. “Birdwatching isn’t as much about what we are going to see, it is what we might find. It is like looking for buried treasure, and it is a great chance to be out in the natural world.”

Article in Manhattan Mercury Sunday, April 18, 2010