Lots of catching up to do!

I'm sorry I haven't kept up with this blog! Lots of changes have happened here. Let me catch you up!

All chicken owners know that sometimes they are going to lose a chicken.  We have lost two since my last post.  Cous Cous was taken by a clever raccoon that figured out how to open the egg box, and Pip was taken by a very brave fox in the middle of the day, while Pip was right outside our house. This happens, and we were sad, but it is the way nature works.  We installed toddler locks on the egg box, and that has kept the raccoon out.

Another bad thing that happened was that someone stole Speckles!  Fortunately we found out who it was and went to get her back.  It is a good thing she was well trained to come when I clap.  We went to the flock where she had been put, and I began to clap.  She came running and was happy to have me pick her up and take her home.  The truth is it is very stressful for chickens to change flocks.  One new chicken in a flock will get picked on a lot. She was happy to come home, but unfortunately had to stay in quarantine to make sure she wasn't bringing in any diseases, lice or mites.  She wasn't happy about that!


Now for the really good news! We have chicks!  In the spring time Melia went broody.  Broody is the word we use to describe a chicken who wants to hatch eggs and raise babies. I kept taking her off the nest, but she was very determined and kept returning. A friend of mine from work gave me some hatching eggs (unlike us, she has roosters - you need roosters to have eggs that will have chicks in them) from her flock.  We put five of them under her and she was very happy to sit on them.

Eggs take about 21 days to hatch. Halfway through Chicky decided she wanted to be a mom too, and started helping Melia sit on the eggs.  Speckles kept laying them new eggs, and I went once a day to take Speckles's egg out of the nest. I marked the eggs we wanted to hatch with an X and a dot.


Three little chicks hatched!  They were so tiny, and so cute!  Unfortunately one escaped the crate and was lost. Melia and Chicky were still trying to share the mom jobs (mostly sitting with chicks under their wings).  I was afraid that the chicks were going to be hurt from Melia and Chicky fighting over who was going to be in the nest, so I took Chicky out.  Chicky was so sad!  She really wanted to be a mom. So, I bought some chicks that were the same age and slipped them under her.  She adopted them and was happy to have her own chicks.

Chicky and Melia with the freshly hatched chicks.

Each mom had her own crate for her chicks. We had to make sure Speckles wouldn't hurt the chicks.

Melia with her babies.

Chicky with her babies.

Now the chicks are six weeks old.  Melia's two chicks are BIG.  They are already almost bigger than her.  One of them is definitely a boy, and I am pretty sure the other is a girl.  They are barnyard mixes, which means they are "mutts".

Left: "Boy" Center: Melia  Right: "Girl"

Pretty sure this one is a girl.

Very sure this one is a boy.

Chicky's three chicks are tiny!  They are light Brahma bantams.  They are very cute, and have feathers on their feet.  They are very slow to feather in and I really have no idea if they are boys or girls. I probably will not know until one of them starts to crow or lays an egg.

Big Eggs!

Cous Cous continues to lay an egg almost every day. Lately these eggs are getting big!  She is a very small chicken so I'm pretty surprised to see the size of these eggs.  Here is a bowl of three of her eggs and one grocery store large egg.  As you can see, they are very close in size.  The grocery store egg weighed 2.1 oz, and Cous Cous's eggs weigh about 1.7 oz.

Here is a picture of two eggs in my hand.  The size difference is a little more obvious in this picture but the eggs are still pretty big for a bantam!

Here is a picture of those two eggs in the frying pan.  Can you tell which one is from the store and which one is from Cous Cous?

Winter

 

This picture was taken when we only had a dusting of snow.  Speckles was the only chicken brave enough to walk outside at first.  Eventually Cous Cous joined her and reluctantly the others followed. 

 

After the last storm that went through we have well over a foot of snow. The chickens are not impressed and none of them are willing to go outside the run.  Speckles is thinking about it, though, and I won't be surprised if she decides to give the deep snow a try.  Her breed of chicken is known for being very good in the winter.

 

Winter means a little more work for us.  We have to take the ice out of the water dish and refill the water often.  The chickens don't eat as many bugs and plants so they are eating more grain.  I also have to shovel the roof of the run.  It's normal for chickens to stop laying eggs in the winter, but Cous Cous continues to lay almost every day. Sadly, none of the other chickens have started laying yet. 

BIG CHICKEN!

We have a new chicken in our flock!  Happy Halloween!

Flock Update

It's been a long time since we have updated the blog!  The beginning of the school year is always busy for us.  We have had a lot of things happen. Here is an update.  Couscous was "broody" for a couple of weeks.  When a chicken is broody it means that they want to hatch eggs, and sometimes they will sit on imaginary eggs.  That's what Couscous was doing, and I had to take her out of the egg box many times a day so she would eat and drink water.  Unfortunately chickens stop laying eggs when they are broody, so we have not had a fresh egg in a long time.
We have had some problems with predators.  Predators are creatures that hunt and eat chickens. Emma was attacked by a dog and went to heaven. The dog was visiting Auntie L. and broke the leash he was on when he saw the chickens.  Last week a hawk attacked Couscous.  I heard her making noise and saw the hawk on her, so I ran outside with a broom and scared it away.  Couscous was hurt and I had to give her first aid.  I cleaned her wounds with saline and put medicine on them.  She had to stay in a separate cage for a few days, but now she is doing well!
The new pullets are doing well and now are getting bigger than Chicky!  Chicky will probably lay eggs soon.  When she does, I will put up a picture of it.

Our First Egg!!

We were very excited to find our first egg on Friday.  We think it was from Emma.  Lately when Leanora tries to pet Emma and Cous Cous they go into what's called a "submissive squat".  They hunker down low on the ground instead of running away.  Pullets do this when they're about to start laying eggs.  Leanora really likes it because she can now pick up Emma and Cous Cous and carry them around.  She looks so proud!
Here is a picture of our first egg.  As you can see it isn't very big.  Cous Cous and Emma are "bantam" chickens, which means they will always be small and their eggs will be small.  (The eggs might get a little bigger. Sometimes when a young chicken starts to lay eggs the eggs are smaller than normal.) Even though they are small they taste really good!  We've had one egg each day since Friday!

The picture below is of the little egg in the frying pan. Isn't it cute?

This is a store bought egg. What do you notice about it that is different?

New Chicks!

A little over a week ago Little L and I drove to a farm in the country (yes, even more in the country than our house!) and brought home two chicks.  They were eight weeks old and still making baby chick sounds!  They came from a large free-range flock, which means that the chickens did not have any fences.  They could go anywhere they wanted and many slept in the trees instead of the coop.

These little chicks were at the bottom of the "pecking order". Chickens have to know who is the boss. They will pick on birds that are the weakest or the smallest, often pecking at them and keeping them from the food.  So these two little chicks were smaller than they should have been, and their tail feathers had been pecked quite a bit.

I put them into "quarantine". Quarantine means they can't go near our other chickens because they might make them sick.  (Chickens can have a lot of different health problems.) So I put them in an extra large dog crate that I made safe for chicks, and put them far away from our chicken coop.  They will have to stay in quarantine for 30 days!  During that time they cannot go near our other chickens.  During the daytime they leave the dog crate and spend their time in a movable chicken pen.  We are going to wait to give them names until they are done with quarantine.

I am glad I put them in quarantine because they have had bloody poop.  Bloody poop is a sign of a disease that often strikes chicks at this age called coccidiosis. They are on very expensive medicine to fix it and I think they will probably be fine.  They also had mites.  Mites are little bugs that like to eat chicken blood. (Yuck!) It is kind of like a dog having fleas.  So I have had to treat them for mites and so far it looks like that is working.  I treated them by dusting them!  (More about that later.)

These little chicks are really nice.  The bigger one is a Speckled Sussex and the other is a Welsummer. Those are two breeds of chickens. (An example of breeds in dogs would be a poodle and a golden retriever - they are both dogs but have different characteristics).  The Speckled Sussex is very tame and will sometimes let Little L pet her. The Welsummer is a little more wild and doesn't like to be caught or picked up. She lets me know with a squawk how unhappy she is to be caught!

Here are some pictures of them on the first day they came home.  As you can see, they were in tough shape. But don't worry because they are doing better and getting bigger.  I will put new pictures up soon.