Winter is Coming

I moved the 8 week old chicks out to the small pen today.  The ducklings are supposed to hatch next week and I need the room in the nursery for them.

The days have been lovely and warm, but the nights are getting cold.  So we ran a power cord to the small pen and hung a 100 watt light bulb.  When I went to check at 6pm the kids were still hanging in the yard. They know how to get into the hutch, though, so I'm hoping that they have some survival sense and go upstairs for the night. 

Egg production is down.  I'm getting 4 eggs a day from the hens, and one from the ducks.  The Welsummers still aren't laying, and neither are the Americaunas. 

The chicks I raised from eggs think I am mama, and they follow me all around the yard. Until they run into Maybelline, the Great Pyr. Then they head back to the house. 

Today we were all hanging around in the yard, and Inky the black cat was sneaking on a hen.  She turned around and pecked him but good.  Ink retreated.  Far.  Score one for the chicken. 

I put extra straw in the duck house, added some pine shavings to the other houses, and plugged in the lights.  I expect if we all survive the winter we will have fabulous egg production in the spring. 

No Chickens Were Harmed in the Making of this Post

Today we moved the small pens into the sunshine.  The leaves on our oaks don't fall until spring, for the most part, so that nice shady spot we picked for spring and summer was too shady for winter. 

We've been tallking about it for awhile, but this morning while I was doing my house chores I heard Big Daddy fire up the tractor, and I knew it was happening.  Unfortunately, I was still in my nightie and flip flops, but I threw on one of his jackets and went out to see. 

The Ducks were first- he hooked up some straps and drove backwards up the hill to the spot I deemed perfect,  dragging the pen up the hill.  The Ducks seemed to enjoy going for a ride, and they definitely liked the new sunny spot right next to the big chicken house.  I filled up their bath tub- they have an old enamel baby bath- and fed them, then waited for him to hitch up the chicken pen. 

The Chicken Pen had to be lifted in the air- it's not sturdy enough to drag.  So he hitched it up and raised it into the air with the bucket-and the bottom fell out.  There were chickens cascading out in every direction.  Our old dog Buddy got so excited at the sight he ran into the fray.  I ran down shouting "No, Buddy, No!" and he fell back.  Poor dog, I'm always ruining his fun.  I was also laughing hysterically, which slowed me down. 

I grabbed the net- or what's left of it-and went into chicken recovery mode.  Maybelline the Great Pyr helped me corner one of the little brown hens, and since Mike had the chicken house sited by then I had a place to put her.  Then I went after the others with some bait.  They hadn't eaten yet, so a bit of feed in a bucket brought them all around.  I had to climb down into the creek bed to get to them though, which is a bit swampy.  They all gathered round and I was able to grab four of them, two by the feet and the other under my arms.  There was still one little white one left.  Mike went down into the creek bed with the net and snabbed her.  She yelled like she was being killed, but she was ok.  Americaunas make a strange noise when they are alarmed, not like the other breeds. 

So that was our excitement for today.  Again, I wish I'd had someone there to take some pictures, because it must have been quite a sight.  I hope the next time he decides to do anything with the pens he waits until I am dressed with shoes on. 

Firing up the Incubator

My husband gave me a gift a few months ago- the  gift of making babies whenever I want to.  Wait!  Don't leave! He got me a Hovabator incubator with an egg turner so I can hatch my own eggs. 

This is the most fun I've ever had with an appliance....I've hatched three batches of eggs so far.  Today my Ancona Duck Eggs arrived so I am waiting for them to reach room temperature so I can put them into the Bator. 

The Anconas are the Black and White spotted ones. 

I have two Anconas now, and they are really great ducks. They are cheerful and put up well with their pen.  It's too dangerous to let a duck free range in my neighborhood, so I need to have animals who are ok with living in a pen.  And I'm getting lots of eggs.  But I wanted to introduce some lighter patches into my strain of Ancona. So I bought some hatching eggs from a lady in Lawrence Ks via Ebay.  They came in the mail today.   There are nine of them.  I found 15 in my own ducks nest.  So I am going to incubate 24 eggs for 25 to 28 days.  If half of them hatch, that would be really good.  I would be inundated with ducks.  I will probably get far fewer. 

How Do I Get My Hens To Lay?

My Welsummer and Americauna pullets won’t lay an egg.  It’s very frustrating, because I’m going through a lot of feed, and they really should be old enough.  The three Americaunas were hatched on April 25^th- so they are 26 weeks old.  The Welsummers  are about 23 weeks old. 

My other pullets delivered right on time- around 22 weeks old, so I never read up on this before. Now I’m trying everything I can think of to put them into the mood.  I put a light bulb into the house, I’m feeding them very generously, I’m keeping the young birds in a separate pen so as to keep a calm atmosphere in the Big Coop.  Nothing.

They say the combs and wattles will begin turn red when a hen is ready to lay.  The Welsummers are beginning to pink up, the Americaunas are not. 

I’ve seen the Welsummers in the hen house checking out the layer box. I have always just had one big box, and all the girls laid in the same nest.  Maybe the new girls don’t like that.  So today I took an old milk crate out to the coop with  a little bed of straw in it. I stuck it in the coop.  Everyone rushed in to look at it.  New  furniture! 

I’m hoping for a breakthrough this week.  Even my husband has noticed that my flock is underperforming.  He asked if I couldn’t do something to make them go.  I told him I have serious conversations with them every morning about their purpose in life, the cost of feed, my performance expectations…They just aren’t very responsive.  I mean, they talk back, but they are kind of snarky. 

Any ideas?

Chickens and the Common Cold

When the nights grow colder, or even in the spring when the nights grow warmer, chickens tend to become ill.  I wasn't prepared for how fragile my flock was until one of my hens got a cough.

Chickens cough and sneeze and get runny noses.  Beaks. They get a rattle in their chest and start to look droopy and sleep during the day.  They don't try to get away when you go to pick them up. This little girl settled in against me like I was her mama.

 I went down to the local feed store and asked what I could do for my hen.  Unfortunately, no one there had any chicken experience.  So I called my vet.  They didn't work with chickens, so they couldn't help me.  I hit the internet and found www.backyardchickens.com, a fabulous resource for folks like me.

 I found a thread that described upper respiratory diseases in chickens, but there  was so much there I couldn't really diagnose the chicken or decide how to treat her.  By this time she was really sick, and dying.  I wrapped her in a towel and put her in a box on the dryer and she died that night.  And another chicken was sick.  Oddly enough, it was one of the same breed, a Buff Orpington.

My husband works with elderly people, many of whom have lived around here all their lives and kept chickens back in the day.  He described my problem to one of his ladies.  She told him the Buff Orpingtons are "delicate".  I Googled the breed and learned that their feathers do not repel water, like other chickens do.  Ah ha!  It was a rainy spring, and they got wet and took a chill. 

So I drove 25 miles to my local hatchery and asked them.  Hallelujah!  They knew. They sold me some stuff to put in the water and advised me to separate the sick chicken from the flock. By the time I had the right stuff and a plan, all three of the Buffs were dead, and it was too late for the Buffs.  But the other hens were just fine.  Good to know. 

The next time I had a sniffling chicken, I had antibiotics to give her immediately. I pulled her out into a crate  on the porch and nursed her back to health.  Truthfully, though, if a chicken gets this once she will get it again.  And it's not always by breed.  I have some very hardy Americaunas, but I brought home one batch that all came down with upper respiratory disorders.  This is a threat to the rest of the flock.  I don't want to breed those animals, I don't want to spread disease, so when the ill ones passed I was ok with that. 

So, what I learned was that to pull the sick ones out and isolate them.  Try to keep appropriate medication on hand, because the only way to save a hen is to treat her quickly.  If in doubt, call the folks who sold you the chickens.  They know the most about what kind of disease you might be dealing with and they have what you need to treat them.

Birds of a Feather.....

I have heard the old saying- birds of a feather flock together.  Until I spent time with chickens I didn't know how true it was.  I figured we were talking about chickens flocking, ducks congregating, but it's more specific than that. 

Birds of certain colorways and breeds stick together.  My three Welsummers travel together.. a threesome in all things, feeding, hiding, complaining.  My Buff Orpingtons slept together.  Birds who are able to identify another bird exactly the same breed as themselves stick together. 

My first few birds included a brown leghorn and a white leghorn.  They came from the same flock. The White Leghorn was the alpha female in my new flock, and the brown one was at the bottom- picked on and abused. When the brown one  became ill, the white hen herded her into a dog crate that I had near the hen house and stood guard against the other chickens. 

Chickens are mean to sick chickens.  There is some sort of instinct that they pursue to kill sick chickens.  They run them out of the house and let them die.  But Alpha ushered her friend into a box with food and straw and stood guard at the door.  In the end, the little brown hen died.  She had serious wounds from the rooster that she did not recover from, despite my best intentions. Still, I was impressed by Alpha's loyalty. 

So, birds of a feather really do stick together.  Unto death. 

The Flock

This has been such a great week on the farm.  The weather is gorgeous, we got some much needed rain, but it's not too muddy .  Not too hot, just cold enough to feel good.  I spent a lot of time in the yard with my poultry and my guardian animals- all of us just sitting in the sunshine. 

My flock is eclectic.  I have purchased birds at farms, at fairs, and at the hatchery.  I've hatched a few of my own, which is a whole other post.

Big Boy, Alpha, Mary Todd (in yellow) and her sister

I have a Rhode Island Red Rooster named Big Boy.  Big Boy was attacked by dogs last spring and is now sans tailfeathers.  He looks funny, but still fulfills his prime directive. The oldest chicken in my flock is Alpha, a bossy female White Leghorn who still lays one white egg a day. I think she must be 5 years old.  Amazing.  I have three Americauna hens, two Cinnamon Queens, one Golden Comet, and three little Welsummers in the big house. I have 6 little chickens- 3 months old, in the little chicken house, and three little hatchlings in my living room.



Left to right, Male Ancona, Female Welsh Harlequin and Female Ancona

There are three ducks, too.  A pair of Anconas and one Welsh Harlequin.  They are my husbands pets. Well, he really wants to eat some, but they are such good egg layers that we may breed them instead.  I bought them from a lady down the road who had a coyote kill most of her flock and wanted out of the duck biz.  It turns out that Anconas and Welsh Harlequins are rare and in danger of dying out so I don't think we will be eating them until we build a flock.  If then. 

I kind of have two flocks of chickens going.  The first one is my egg laying flock.  My goal is to get 300 eggs a year from each hen, and a variety of egg colors.  Some of my little hens are from my best layers, so I'm looking forward to strengthening the laying ability of my flock.  I have white eggs, pink, green, an occasional blue, brown and dark brown layers.  Pretty pretty eggs!


My second flock is of Welsummers. Welsummer is a dutch chicken- the chicken of Kelloggs Cornflakes fame is a Welsummer.  They are good layers of dark brown eggs, and they don't eat much.  They are also fairly uncommon.  They are very personable and chatty hens that follow me around if they have something to say.  And they have a lot to say.  They chew me out when I'm late with breakfast, or if I'm absent for a couple of days.  I have three hens in the big house, and two tiny roosters and a hen in the nursery right now. 

The winter will be harder- I'll be trying to keep the houses warm and the water unfrozen.  But right now it's perfect.