Neighbors

I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that we have neighbors who actually want to be neighborly. It is mind boggling, I tell you.

Our next door neighbors are super friendly. Our dogs, on the other hand, like to pick fights with each other. Hopefully we can introduce them to each other soon so they can stop bickering between the fence whenever they are outside. Anyway, the neighbors recently acquired chicks and have been very interested in our coop, watering system, the whole chicken-chilada. Last night after a Tour-de-Coop, we sat around and talked some more, getting to know each other better. We’ve hung out before, and the more I get to know them the more I like them. It is great to have neighbors you can be friends with, but it saddens me if and when we have to move out because the guy who owns the house is ready to move back in.

Neighbor Chicks

Our friends and family usually will either walk right into the house or knock lightly then walk in. Rarely does our doorbell ring except for the landlord or solicitors.

Last night there was ring of our doorbell. Our dog was unimpressed as she was apparently napping until I got up to investigate. It was one of our neighbors asking if we had some time to answer a few questions about chickens because they just got some chicks. We immediately said yes. I know, we’re geeks like that.

Ready to put our chicken knowledge to the test, they started in with how much heat and light the newborn chicks they had just picked up from one of the local feed stores as we watched them roam around inside a Rubbermaid tote. After we told them what breeds they probably have, we moved on to the backyard where they had to possibilities for building a chicken coop. Now, their available space is actually less than ours, but they have a dog run on the side of the house and an old playground with a built-in play house their kids are all too old to use. Both of these areas would be perfect for keeping chickens with just some minor adjustments. We’re going to have to have them over to take a look at our coop to get an idea of what the chickens would need. 

New Additions

Last week we added four new additions to our poultry family in hopes of having our broody hen raise them. She wanted none of it and is still broody.

“I want ducks,” my husband said with a giddy childlike grin, eyes twinkling.

“Um, okay,” I responded in my usual pessimistic, doubtful attitude I reserve for the absurd and unfamiliar.

So he got a couple ducks, mallards to be exact from some guy he met in Battle Ground off a Craigslist post. Kendra, our broody hen, was introduced to them late one night and was so freaked out by them she went to the opposite side of the ferret cage they were in and left them alone to freeze. Long story short, I decided to pick up a couple more chicks at the feed store that had been there for a few weeks to raise with the ducklings since they were going to require a lot of care and have the same basic requirements. Well, except that ducks like to swim and chickens freak out over such a thing. I have a feeling a kiddy pool will be a near-future purchase for them.

Bad Decisions

Do you ever make decisions that seem like a good idea but in hindsight make you want to go back in time and slap yourself? That happened last night.

About one-thirty in the morning my husband suddenly asks while we are lying in bed if I made sure the chicks were put up for the night. Crap. After telling him I’ll go check, he gets up and does it himself. I should have known that something was wrong when he didn’t come back for over half an hour. Sure enough, two were dead and one was barely breathing. This morning the one he tried to save didn’t make it through the night.

A couple things ran through my mind last night as I tried to fall asleep but my brain was not having it. The first being that while I thought they would be big enough to be out in the run with the older girls, I didn’t think about how cold it is still getting at night, and the second is that I should have put the heat lamp in the henhouse if the chicks were going to be out in the coop until they were fully feathered.

So now what? Do we take this as a learning experience for next time or as an omen that we shouldn’t get any more chicks for a while?

Raising Chicks

The best two days of having chicks is the day you bring them home and the day you put them outside. It’s like having kids.

A month ago we brought home three new chicks. Over the course of the last month I’ve taken the liberty of videoing their growth up until just a couple days ago when we decided (against our better judgment) to put them outside with the rest of the chickens. Honestly I meant to take more video, but, well, I didn’t. I’m hoping that since they wouldn’t let us show them how to roost or behave like chickens they will learn faster from the big girls, but that might be farfetched. These three are probably the dumbest chicks we’ve ever had and we’ve had a lot. Oh well, I can’t wait until summer when we’ll be blessed with green and blue eggs once again. It will add a little variety to the pink, tans and browns we’ve been getting.

New Chicks Outside

Sometimes you make decisions because it is the right thing to do. Other times you make decisions because it’s better than Cornish game hen substitutes.

Okay, so I wouldn’t have culled and cooked the new chicks. Yes, I know they are only four weeks old and the weather is still a bit crummy. But it was time to put the new chicks outside with the rest of the hens. They’re just so messy! I’m sure I’d feel differently if they ever wanted to be held and cuddled, but these three are so skittish that we decided once they were big enough to reach the feeder in the coop’s run we’d put them out. Well, they’re close enough.

I’m thinking it might be best to go ahead and put their water and food in the henhouse in a corner for the weekend until they get used to it since I see this morning they haven’t exited down the ramp. That or they haven’t figured out how to do so yet. It happens. The last chicks we had our Dominique hen raise took a week to figure it out and they were raised inside the coop! I guess we’ll see how it goes over the weekend.

Chicks

Yesterday we did a very bad, bad thing; we got chicks. Oh well!

Raising chicks is not a very complicated matter. However, it does take a little work to make sure the chicks turn into well socialized hens. After our last round of chicks that we decided to let a broody hen raise, we figured it would be best for all involved to raise them ourselves for the first month and a half before putting them in with the rest of the flock. Not that there is anything wrong with letting a hen do her motherly duty, but, well, those two hens she raised are quite wild and timid around us, unlike the rest of the flock who will all let us pet and hold them. The advantage of having us raise the chicks and handling them everyday (okay, whenever we go into the garage to look in on them) is they should, in theory, be easy to handle by us.

So the big question is, what in the hell were we thinking?! I’ll be honest, we weren’t. We went to the feed store to get chicken food and left with three new chicks to add to the flock. But aren’t they just so cute?

Eggs!

After months of anticipation, the chickens are finally laying again. Well, at least a couple of them anyway.

Calculating the age of our hens, we’re pretty sure it is time to get a few more to add to the flock. The biggest question is to either let the Dominique raise them from chicks once she goes broody or to raise them ourselves for the first couple months. While it was nice not to have to worry about the chickens at all because we had a hen to do all the work for us, those two girls are what most would consider wild chickens. They’re ultra skittish around us when we approach them and never let us pet them either. Personally, I think of them as pets who give us delicious eggs for breakfast and cakes, so I would like to be able to handle them every once in a while.

We still have a few more weeks before our feed store will be getting any chicks. In the meantime I keep checking their website for word on what breeds they will be getting so we can determine when we’ll be adding to the flock. Methinks this time we should just get a bunch of Americaunas so we can be assured of blue or green eggs in the basket to add to the variety of browns and pink.

Kendra's Gone Broody... Yet Again

Our broody hen we gave chicks to earlier this summer has decided to go broody yet again. I’m not giving in to her demands.

It seems that our perfect mother hen wants to be a mother again. The chicks we got back in June are growing so much, one of them, Harmony the Cuckoo Maran, is practically the same size as Kendra right now. The other two still look like chicks, just that White Witch Willow the Rhode Island Red is tall and skinny while Joyce the Speckled Sussex is short and plump with huge breasts.

I have a feeling before too long it’ll be the cage for Kendra, this time without the bottom tray so that air will flow under it through the mesh. I don’t know if we should put her inside the hen house like we did while she was brooding the chicks or just set it outside in the run where there will be a breeze. But one way or another, we’ll break her this time, as she doesn’t seem as intent as she did this spring. Still, it’s annoying.

Chickens in the Yard... Mostly Ours

I let the chickens out yesterday while I watered and weeded the squash and bean gardens. I did not anticipate visitors from the other side.

No, this isn’t about ghosts, but rather other chickens. That is to say, chickens other than ours. After I was done weeding the squash and bean garden along our back fence behind the vegetable garden, I came inside to get a drink of water and wash up as well as sit and cool down. What can I say, manual labor and I are not friends, even fifteen minutes of weeding gets me all hot and sweaty and out of breath. No sooner had I swallowed my first sip of water, my partner asks, “Is that one of the neighbors chickens in our yard?” Sure enough, it was.

Now, a logical person would have simply gathered the bird and taken it back over the fence to go back to its home, but I grabbed the camera and snapped a few pictures of the bantam chicken and watched her as she had her first taste of freedom in perhaps her life. You see, the neighbors behind us keep their chickens locked up at all times and they never get to scratch around in the grass. Upon further inspection of both their coop and our fence, I found where she had escaped her home and found sanctuary in our yard. My partner and I decided to watch her for a while then just let her be and perhaps she’ll find her way back.

The new chicks are now growing quite quickly and spending a lot more time away from their mother. It’s sad they have to grow up, but at the same time I can’t wait to get our first chocolate eggs from Harmony, the Cuckoo Maran! I’ve noticed that of the three new chicks, the Speckled Sussex, Joyce, still spends most of her time in Kendra, her mother’s, shadow.

Eventually the mystery guest found her way back into her own yard but needed help from one of her owners to get into the coop. It got me wondering why people keep chickens if they have no intention of letting those chickens be, well, chickens. I’m not saying that they should let them free range or anything, but perhaps a plywood floor that absorbs all their droppings and releases the nasty odor into the surrounding air isn’t the best option for their health or anyone else’s for that matter. I’m sure that if they were to get rid of that floor in most of the coop except where they have the dog kennel the chickens use as a nest box and sleep on top of it at night and simply had a dirt floor they’d be much happier. Then again, the small amount of dirt around the perimeter has much evidence of previous escape attempts, or perhaps it is the only way they can properly give themselves a dust bath.

Anyway, I’d hate to end this post feeling sorry for chickens that don’t belong to us, so I also took pictures of the garden, namely the leek flowers that have been covered in bees since they bloomed. Our dog, Lucy, ran up the steps to the upper part of the backyard just as I snapped this picture.

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad...

The good news is that the chicks and their mama seem to be fully integrated into the flock. The bad news is that we unexpectedly lost a hen.

After four days together in the coop, it seems Kendra and her chicks, Harmony, Joyce and White Witch Willow, are getting along fairly well with the rest of the flock. Occasionally I will catch Anya desperately trying to hold on to her place in the pecking order but she seems to be relenting to the fact that her status as Number 4 is now back to Number 5. The chicks have also taken a real liking to Dawn, our head “rooster” and Number 2 in the pecking order (Buffy is Number 1, of course, and nobody messes with Buffy) and like to hang out with her, much to her dismay. She seems annoyed when the chicks want to hang out next to her, kind of like I am with kids, but goes along with it until she finds a way to focus their attention elsewhere or just walk away when they aren’t looking, which is also a lot like me. Hmmm… I think my chicken and I have a lot in common. Is that weird?

Anyway, so yesterday as I was checking the temperature I watched the little ones fly out of the henhouse for a drink of water, and all the hens were busy having a dust bath or walking back and forth between the food and water. About ten minutes later I decided to go collect the eggs for the day. Now normally when I open the back door all the hens will line up at the front of the coop to see if I am going to let them out and I saw all but one… a cause for concern normally, but only ten minutes before I had seen them all so I wasn’t too worried even though Cordelia wasn’t there. As I walked up to the coop I saw why. Now this isn’t the first dead chicken I’ve come across, but it is the first time I’d seen one appear fine and then just die a few minutes later. I took her out of the coop and examined her for signs of trauma but she had no wounds of any sort on her. The only thing I noticed on my second examination of her after collecting the eggs was that she appeared to have a prolapsed vent, but I didn’t see that a minute earlier so I don’t know if that was the cause or if it happened postmortem. Either way, our green egg layer is gone.

And so it is that the three new additions to our flock seem to be doing well, while one member hasn’t fared well at all. I’m not sure what killed her because she’d been eating and drinking normally and even layed an egg that morning. It may have been the heat or maybe she was just good at hiding her illness if she had one. The only thing abnormal about her was that her eggs appeared to have extra bumps on the shells rather than being smooth like the rest of our layers. I just wonder if I had gone out there fifteen minutes before if things would be any different. But…

… you take them both, and there you have, the facts of life.

Integrating

In theory the caged chicks and mama should be fairly familiar to the other hens by now, after all they share a common space. Of course, theories are just that.

Wanting to make sure that our mama hen Kendra and her chicks were completely back into the regular coop and not inside the cage inside the henhouse before we leave town so our housesitter wouldn’t have to deal with two sets of chickens, I simply opened up the cage, threw down some scratch and kept them all in the coop. For a few minutes this seemed to be working just fine and the other hens were keeping to themselves, busily scratching around for cracked corn bits. But as soon as the scratch was gone, it was apparently pick on Kendra time.

The hen I was most concerned about pecking the chicks is Dawn, our head “rooster.” She is really a hen who has a dominatrix complex and has taken up the duties normally performed by the rooster. However, she seems completely at ease with the new chicks and Kendra, as does our head hen, Buffy and the other oldest hen, Tara. The middle girls, or as I commonly refer to them, the Mean Girls, Anya, Vamp Willow, Darth Rosenberg and Cordelia (which, now that I think about it, they were named appropriately as these were all mean girls on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) were especially aggressive towards Kendra. Every once in a while one of the chicks would get a peck, but nothing out of the ordinary for new chicks, but poor Kendra seemed to be getting the brunt of their wrath.

I’m not sure if it is jealousy or if they all enjoyed their time one up on the pecking order, which with Kendra back, they were challenging to retain their status. I don’t know if Kendra will stick up for herself while the chicks are still relatively small at only four weeks old, but hopefully she’ll put them all back into their place in a couple months when the chicks are bigger and no longer require her protection.

So with them all out together all day yesterday I went to check on if I needed to put mama and babies back into the cage for the night, but instead came upon Kendra with the chicks under her wings on the top roost in the henhouse. Upon further inspection a half an hour later when the rest of the flock went up to roost she was on the lower roost but with the same stance so I left them alone. Today I will see just how well they do and am hoping that by tomorrow the majority of the pecking will stop so I can take the cage out of the henhouse and open up the third nest box. I’m thinking that in the meantime I should still keep their food in the henhouse at least until I run out, just in case the Mean Girls decide they can’t eat from their hopper.

New Chicks Outside

Since we were debating on letting the little ones loose with the big ones, we decided to test out how well they interacted during the day under our supervision. The verdict was a definitely another week… at least… in the cage.

While the big girls were out wreaking havoc on everything their little scratching feet and plucking beaks could reach, we opened the cage inside the henhouse with Kendra and the three baby chicks to let them roam the run. Quickly we decided to go ahead and open the run door so they could go explore outside too if they wanted to. This of course meant that it was a free invitation to the other girls to meet the little ones, which my first thought was a fear that Dawn, our head “rooster” (aka, hen with a dominatrix gene that activated with the absence of a real rooster) would attack them, but she seemed either uninterested or had already accepted them into the flock, much like our head hen, Buffy.

Anya, on the other hand, our Black Sex Link, didn’t particularly care for the babies and quickly started pecking them and attacking Kendra. Oddly, Anya is pretty sweet, albeit curious, towards us, but she is above Kendra in the pecking order and Kendra’s chicks would be below her and she was definitely making that point. Intervening only slightly, we moved Anya by throwing down scratch in another area of the yard and all the other hens ran over to gobble it all up.

With a few moments of peace, Kendra quickly showed her little ones, Harmony, White Witch Willow and Joyce, where the water was, where the food was, where the grit is and how to scratch for the bits that fall out of the holder, and how to take a dust bath, which is one of her favorite things. Eventually they all made it outside to wander the yard but I failed to get any good pictures of that, save one where they are all just outside the door to the coop.

The rest of the chickens left Mama and Babies alone, that is, until it was time to put them away. Vamp Willow and Darth Rosenberg both put up a fight with Kendra as if telling her she wasn’t allowed back in. That was pretty much enough for us to realize it was too soon to let them all out of the cage inside the henhouse, so we managed to get Kendra and the babies into the coop first, closed the door, and scooped them up one-by-one and put them back into their tiny one room chicken condo for at least another week. Hopefully by then the little ones will have grown enough to fly out of the way and reach the roosts in the henhouse.

New Chicks: 1 Week Update

Babies grow up so fast. One day they’re helpless little creatures who rely on you for everything and the next they’re jumping up and down learning how to “fly.”

The three new additions to our chicken coop and their adopted mother are doing really well. They are exhibiting some of the curiousness the other chicks we hand raised at a week old, but at the same time if they are scared will run behind Kendra who would probably protect them with her life if need be. Yesterday as I took a peek in on them to fill up their food and water I saw them trying to use their wings to fly. The wing feathers are usually the first to come in, so naturally they would want to test them out.

I can tell that Kendra is anxious to get out and stretch her wings and legs but also doesn’t want to leave her babies unattended so the next clear day I’m going to kick the big girls out of the coop for a while and let Kendra and the babies explore the run area free from the other seven hens. While she won’t be able to play in the grass, at least she will have a protected area to teach her chicks some new things.

While I was originally thinking it would be best to wait until the chicks are three weeks old before taking them out of the brooder cage, I don’t know if Kendra can wait that long. We’ll see. If the chicks look big enough to fly out of the way of the big girls next week then we will, and if not I guess they’ll have to stay in the cage with mama. There are a couple places on the cage where I could take the wire mesh off as there were holes for the old feeder (it’s an old ferret cage from my partner’s dad) that would be perfect for the little ones to climb through to get away from the big ones. If need be I’ll do that and leave the cage where it’s at so Kendra can have some leg room and the little ones will still have a protected space.

But for now they all seem to be enjoying learning how to be chickens from their mother. They scratch the floor and peck for food and are quickly learning how to use their wings to jump higher. Unfortunately we still haven’t named the Speckled Sussex. Hmmm… perhaps Kennedy, but with Tara still in the picture that could be awkward. Maybe Miss Calendar? Glory? Drusilla? Darla? Ahhh! Too many names to choose from!

New Chicks: 3 Day Update

Well, it has been three days since we stuffed three chicks under our broody hen. So far I’d say this experiment is working out beautifully.

While most people would frown upon experimenting with live animals, we both were pretty confident that Kendra would take to the new chicks. Why we were confident is beyond me. It must be from the sheer fact that she has refused to give up hatching out some babies, and also the fact that her breed is proven to be one of, if not the best parents in the chicken world. This would also apply to Dominique cocks too, who, if we still had Xander, would be right there with the chicks helping Kendra out. Of course, if we still had Xander, we wouldn’t have had to go buy chicks. I miss Xander… I do not miss his crowing.

So while I was inspecting their cage for piles of poop that needed to be removed, I noticed the chicks all scattered about being chicks: Exploring; eating; drinking; attacking straw; trying to steady themselves. I fortunately had the foresight to bring the camera this time and quickly snapped a few pictures before the other chickens caught on to what I was doing. I managed to get a few close-ups of the babies, including one of White Witch Willow (Willow for short) being taught how to eat by Kendra. Alternate Universe Cordelia (Cordelia for short), however, thought I was giving them treats or something and wanted in on the attention and as soon as she plopped herself in between me and the brooder cage, all the chicks ran behind Kendra and she fluffed out to protect them. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of that, for I was busy shooing Cordy out of the henhouse and instead locked up the cage.

I still had to change out the water and add more food to the feeder and figured I’d wait until my partner got home from the post office so he could check in on them while I attended to the refills. Of course, Cordelia was in his business too, curious as always for new gossip to spread and completely unconcerned for the welfare of anyone but herself. Hmmm… I think she was named appropriately.

As it stands now, the three new additions to our seemingly ever-expanding chicken addiction are doing splendidly. Of course, with these chicks being raised by a hen instead of by us they’ll probably be considered “wild chickens” and won’t take to the occasionally petting the other girls enjoy. Then again, we don’t have to constantly attend to their every need and deal with the insane amount of dust they’d fill our garage with, and in my book, that is well worth the effort to let these chickens be chickens.

New Chicks

So we finally broke down and did it. We got some chicks for our broody hen.

Kendra has been broody since the last week of April, which means it has been about six weeks. A normal hatch takes three and she has shown no signs of wanting to give up, so us being the good chicken parents we are decided that when the local feed store down the street got their last shipment of chicks we’d pick up a few for her if she hadn’t gotten over her broodiness. As luck would have it three of the four breeds they were getting in were ones we wanted with the fourth being one we already had, so if we were going to get chicks that would be as good a time as any.

Now, mind you, this was a crapshoot from the get-go whether or not the hen would take to the new chicks, so just in case I made sure we had everything we needed to brood them in the garage for a few weeks. I had already put Kendra in the brooding cage inside the henhouse in the coop, which in and of itself was an accomplishment as I had wanted to put the cage over the nest boxes but as luck would have it, the cage was less than an inch too big. Instead I placed one end on the ledge to one of the nest boxes and the other on the lower of the two roosts propped up with extra 2x6s to level it out. Ghetto? You betcha. But it is in the coop and the other girls can gawk and still access two of the three nest boxes and get to their preferred upper roost. I put cardboard along the sides where the chicken could peek in just in case any got too curious and wanted to peck the poor little chicks once they were inside or Kendra since broody hens act weird and chickens don’t like weird acting chickens and try to run them off or gang up and kill them.

So yesterday I planted some flowers in the morning and just before ten decided it was time to go to the feed store to see if their shipment had arrived yet. As luck would have it, the guy had just gotten back from the post office and had barely put them in the brooder when I got there. He hadn’t even turned on the heat lamp yet! I felt bad for some of the two week old chicks that hadn’t sold, but we needed day olds if we were going to pull this off, and besides, we already had the breeds of two week olds anyway. Informing the man at the counter that I wanted one Rhode Island Red, one Cuckoo Maran and one Speckled Sussex, he went into the back room and picked them out.

I don’t know what it is about chicks, but they are just so darn cute! Hearing their little peeps from inside the box I had to take a peek at them before taking them out to the car. It seems silly because we’ve done this so many times, but it is just like getting any other pet… you just want to hold them and squeeze them and love them and call them George. Not that any of them will be called George. Actually, I don’t know what we will call any of them just yet as I haven’t really picked out names. The Rhodie will probably be a Willow of some sort because I’m uncreative like that, and I’m leaning towards Harmony for the Maran, but the Sussex I’m not quite sure what to name her. Looks like I’ll have to watch some Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes to figure out a good name!

After bringing them home, I immediately put them into a larger box with a little water and food under a heat lamp to keep them warm. The best time to introduce new chicks to a mother hen is at night after they’ve all gone to roost so we needed to keep them warm until then. I didn’t know if it would be warm enough and waited to see if I needed to move the lamp closer, but they almost immediately stopped peeping when I put them in the box which means the temperature was just right.

And so we waited until about ten at night and my partner and I walked up to the coop with chicks in hand ready to make the swap for the few eggs I had put under Kendra when I transferred her to the cage a couple days ago. As soon as we opened the cage to put the first chick in it was as if her whole manner changed and she lit up like a new mother. I pulled the two eggs out from under her before putting in the second chick and as I was putting the third chick in she was busy fluffing out her feathers to take in her babies, who instantly stopped peeping and took shelter under her. It really was quite a sight and we hoped that her instincts would still be there in the morning.

I was up all night worrying about what to expect in the morning. Would she have abandoned the chicks? Did she peck them to death for intruding on her space? What if they fell out of the cage and the other hens ate them?!? I know, dramatic, but my overactive imagination is sometimes impossible to turn off. Grabbing the camera, we both set out before my partner went to work to check on the new family. The other hens were already out and about when we opened up the door to the coop so they were at least leaving Kendra alone. Upon opening the henhouse door we saw she was still sitting pretty much in the same place we left her last night, feathers all fluffed out and making soft clucking noises. Now came the moment of truth, how were the chicks? I opened the cage and she didn’t try to leap out, which was a good sign. Moving her slightly we saw tiny legs under, which quickly scooted further in to keep warm! Success! Mama and babies seem to have taken to one another! Now comes the fun part of seeing how well she teaches the chicks to be chickens.

Side note: If you look really close in this last picture you can see a pair of legs under Kendra next to the waterer.