A Big Week

It’s been a big week for the chickies. I’ve been increasingly concerned about hawk predation after a friend’s big Australorp hen was recently killed and after reading that comparatively small Cooper’s hawks will often strike first and worry about the size difference later. I had gotten large breeds of chickens specifically to remove Cooper’s hawks from my list of worries. They’re common here, but since they always seem to target mourning doves at my feeders, I didn’t think large chickens would be on their menu. We’re in the process of stringing twine over the chicken yard, but Cooper’s are pretty nimble--built for chasing small birds through forests and I don’t know if string will be as effective against them as it would be for red-tailed hawks which tend to dive from perches to kill prey on the ground.

I had also been reading about how beneficial a rooster can be when it comes to warning the flock of predators. None of my girls turned out to be boys in disguise, so I had been thinking about getting three more day-old chicks, with one cockerel among them. However that would require a long wait and another coop for them to stay in until they were old enough to join the others and I’m hesitant to plow more money into the chickens just now (although a separate coop will come in handy one of these days and I should definitely keep it on the to-do list).

Meanwhile it turned out that 4 (out of 7 total) of the speckled Sussex from this original group have turned out to be roosters (the rest of the breeds are all pullets as promised, so I think Privett sent us straight run Sussex). So although they’ve been free-ranging with my friend’s older chickens this winter, I held my breath, skipped the quarantine, and took one of her boys back. I’m calling him Finn.

I put him in a dog crate and set him in the run for the day. The girls quietly filed out and cuddled up. My previous experience with groups of animals has been with cats, so I was taken aback by how well this went. The last kitten I brought home lived in that crate for a month while things got sorted out! When I got home from work and let him out, there was a bit of flapping and sparring, and then it was over. He trooped inside with the rest for the night.

They’re all 18 weeks old now and on the cusp of maturity. Finn has yet to crow and the girls are just beginning to look like hens. Belle in the last two weeks has started sleeping on the roost, but the rest of the pullets still sleep piled up in their original corner next to the water bucket where they’ve been all winter. Since it’s been so cold and brutal and because they are so young, I have let them do this, but I will be opening up the nest boxes in a couple of weeks and I don’t want them to get in the habit of sleeping there. My friend has been spending a lot of time each evening herding her young birds to the roost, and I was prepared to do the same, but then I got the idea of just blocking the corner and seeing what would happen. Sure enough, now they’re all spending the nights on the roost!

I also finally broke down and got legbands to distinguish among the Orpingtons. They were breathtakingly expensive, and I had to buy 100 in a single color, so Goldi is band-free, Flicka (I’m pretty sure) has a green band on her right leg and Clucky (also pretty sure) has a green band on her left. So now I can finally figure out who’s who in the pecking order.

I’ve been letting them out into the “outer perimeter” as weather and fence permit. I saw a big black Lab get zapped by the fence a few weeks ago and he ran to the far horizon as a result, so I have confidence in it when it works, but it’s been temperamental in all the bad weather, and I’ve had a bit of a learning curve with it. I’ve noticed in the past week that Belle does not venture beyond the run. She seems to be the bottom hen of the group and tends to hang by herself. She’s gotten to be my special pet, and I have a big soft spot for her.