Hatching Day--June 25, 2011

After a few bumps in the road during Clucky’s incubation, hatching day arrived last Saturday. At about Day 13 I had come home to find her on the wrong nest box with her clutch exposed and cold on a 60-something degree day. I quickly got out the dog crate and set her up in there, but was now wondering if anything would hatch after about 4 or 5 hours of chilling. Rookie mistake not to pen her up with her own nest right away, but a survey on the Backyard Chickens site gave me hope, and I waited out the last week with fingers crossed.

The housing dilemma remained unresolved until the last possible moment. The spa is unfinished and the two A-frame coops I ordered the day I bought Clucky’s eggs have not yet arrived. Meanwhile, driving home from Marysville last weekend, we passed a most excellent dog kennel for sale by the side of the road. The price was right, so I now have another enclosure. It’s a monster at 10 x 10 x 6 ft., and once covered in hardware cloth, set up with an A-frame, and added to the run with another length of electric fencing it will be just the thing for broodies and babies. I can see it from here, but there’s a long way to go with it. Meanwhile, Zen has gone broody for sure and Rachel’s giving it serious thought....

Friday afternoon I got home from work and noticed Finn was not among the (diminishing) group of non-broody chickens that met me at the gate (as they do every day when I arrive anticipating the scratch I give them). He came barreling out of the coop when he realized I was there, but he’s usually right there to meet me. Found Clucky on her nest as usual, clucking softly. Hens and their chicks “talk” to each other right before hatch, so I was feeling hopeful. And after dark when I went to close them up, there was peeping!

Saturday morning, there was still peeping, but there was also a strong smell coming from underneath Clucky. I was afraid a chick had died, so in the afternoon I checked underneath her as well as I could since she was sitting in the back of the crate beyond my easy reach. I had to actually put my head and shoulders inside the crate and I seriously ruffled her feathers in the process. She was nice about it though and did not go for my head! I found her on 6 live chicks and two unhatched eggs leaving one unaccounted for (apparently hidden up under Clucky’s wing). One of the eggs was peeping madly, and I found no evidence of a dead chick or exploded egg so I removed the broken eggshells and quickly put everything else back under her. More waiting......

A stupid amount of mental and physical effort early Sunday resulted in a temporary enclosure attached to the inner compound where they will stay until they are big enough to handle the electric fence.

By Sunday morning there were seven.

We ended up with two lavender Orpingtons,

....one blue-laced red and one gold-laced (I think) Wyandotte,

...two Barnevelders and one speckled Sussex (Finn and Rachel’s baby). They’re all doing fine and are very cute. Clucky’s being a great mom, except for abandoning her chicks for the coop in a sudden rainstorm. She called them, but they couldn’t figure out the ramp, so I ran out and rescued them.

It’s a little stressful. My numbers have doubled in one fell swoop and I still have more broodies. Some of these babies will be boys (I can already make some guesses), so they will have to find new homes. But for the time being, all is well.

Counting My Chickens

A day or two after Memorial Day I noticed that Clucky might be broody. I watched her for a couple of days and she was showing all the signs: spending days and nights in the nest box, “growling” and raising her hackles at me when I tried to pet her, and puffing up once out of the box. She’s pretty young still at just 30 weeks--I didn’t expect this until next summer, if at all. I also recently read that young pullets sometimes try on broodiness for size and then snap out of it, but I also know that it is sometimes impossible to “break” a broody and they go on to starve if not allowed to raise chicks.

I considered my options. I could try to “break” her, but if she was serious about being broody, I’d rather let her raise some chicks. My plan would be to sell the boys and keep the girls. I didn’t want her to set her own eggs (or those of any of my other pullets except Rachel) because then the offspring would be mixed-breed, and while that would be fine for the females, it would make it hard to sell off the males. I could set Rachel’s eggs and get more speckled Sussex, but I saw this as an opportunity to get some additional breeds I’ve had my eye on.

Some time on the internet led me to Nellie from TheFancyChick.com who sells hatching eggs from some of the breeds I’ve been interested in and who is also located near enough that I could drive there to get the eggs rather than risk having them sent through the mail. So after a day of phone tag, it was arranged, and yesterday morning I went on a road trip and picked up my eggs (after checking on Clucky one more time).

I didn’t want to get too many for this first time, especially if Clucky snaps out of her broodiness before the eggs hatch, but some extras were included. So I ended up with 2 lavender Orpingtons, 1 blue/black/splash Orpington, 3 Barnevelders, and 2 blue-laced red Wyandottes. I also put 2 of Rachel’s eggs under her for good measure.

We didn’t get off to a great start. When I arrived home, I went out with the eggs and some scratch, and knowing treats were in the offing, Clucky came off the nest for her share. This was fine--it’s what she’s been doing every day, and it gave me a chance to put the eggs in her nest without disturbing her. I went back inside to give her a chance to settle back in. Meanwhile, my farmer neighbor (and the rest of central Ohio) has been taking advantage of our dry spell this week to get his crops planted at last. The tractor in the field right behind the coop must have spooked the chickens because when I went back outside, Clucky, Finn, and Goldi were pacing outside of the electric fence. I hazed them back in, but Clucky stayed off the nest long enough for me to think she’d given it up for good. She did return eventually, and now this morning seems dedicated to her task. So now we wait.....

I also have to consider how these potential babies will be raised. Best case scenario is that I can leave them in the coop and Clucky will keep them safe from the other chickens and raise them. This would be the easiest for me since I wouldn’t have to deal with re-introductions later and wouldn’t have to worry about additional housing until the boys got old enough to be a problem. However, the electric fence would be a hazard to little chicks for at least a few weeks--they could get trapped outside, or worse, entangled in it, and I would also have to start feeding everybody chick starter again until the babies got to be 18-20 weeks old.

I’m planning on another coop for Clucky and her brood--I know I need one anyway for any birds that would ever need to be separated, but the additional expense gives me pause. We could use the as yet unfinished “spa” for the inner run, and I could buy another string of fence which my charger should be able to accommodate. Steve, with visions of chicken hoarding is mentally rolling his eyes. Stay tuned.....

More Eggs

Friday was the first day that I found 6 eggs when I went to collect them. This means that all the girls are laying and I will have to get busy trying to find some buyers!

I don’t know for sure which egg belongs to which pullet, but I have some guesses. I AM pretty sure that the light colored one on the bottom left is from Rachel the speckled Sussex, because they were the first to appear and the breed is known for producing cream-colored eggs. Because there are three (in the middle and on the bottom right) that look roughly the same, I am assuming that they are from the three Orpingtons. I have no idea about the last two, but I fervently hope for little Belle’s sake that the giant double-yolked egg is from Zen the Giant hen. But there are no guarantees.

Early this spring, Steve constructed some 2 x 4 frames upon which we piled pine boughs (stripped from the trees by the ice storm last winter) thinking they would provide some cover and protection from hawks. I don’t know if they’re working, but the chickens love to hang out under them and I have not seen any hawks around. Friday evening I saw a small bird fly out from one of them when I went to put up the chickens for the night, and found a cardinal nest with 3 eggs!

This is pretty interesting, but I’m not sure how it will work out for the cardinals. They’ll be mostly safe from mammalian predators inside the electric fence, but once the young fledge the chickens themselves may kill them. I’ll try to watch and keep the chickens inside for a few days when the time gets near. Of course the eggs have to hatch first and the female cardinal bolts off the nest every time I enter the run, so the incubation may not go well anyway. But I’m hoping for the best for the cardinal family!

Building the chicken spa

Flicka and Finn

Our weather is warming up at long last, and I see already how hard the chickens are going to be on the grass in their run.

Outside things are greening up, but the grass inside never had a chance and the wooded portion of the run has already been thoroughly mulched.

The endless rain this spring has made everything a soggy mess which doesn’t help--I can hear the chickens squish along as they run.

The Spa

Ever since I got the chickens off the porch last winter I have wanted to have a spare coop of some kind. At some point I will have a sick chicken or broody hen which will need to be kept away from the others and I have no intention of having them back inside if I can help it! I’d also like to use less (no) chemicals on my lawn so I started planning a mobile hoop-type chicken tractor “spa” which would be sturdy enough to serve as a permanent run someday with the addition of a small coop inside and surrounded by electric poultry netting. For now, I'm planning to add a small run-in shelter and just toss a couple of hens inside during the day. Steve has worked hard on it in his spare time and it’s shaping up.

Finn, caught here in an awkward preening moment.......

.....is growing up to be a handsome boy.

He’s starting to get a little feisty with me however and I’ve had to chase him and carry him around to remind him who’s boss. Mean roosters have never been on my radar. The whole time I was in college working daily with large numbers of chickens I got attacked by one rooster one time. I hear they can be a big problem though and I have no intention of putting up with one. My friend is getting some meat birds processed in the fall and if Finn turns out to be vicious, he will join them. I bet he tastes like chicken..... For now, he’s settled down and stays away from me when I’m in the run. So far, so good.

Goldi in the nest box

I am beginning to be awash with eggs. At least four of the hens are laying, and one is producing huge, double-yolked eggs.

Belle and Flicka

The girls are looking more like mature ladies now and I think everybody’s about as big as they will get.

Clucky

The First Egg!

The first one!

Last Wednesday evening when the chickens were exactly 21 weeks old, I found the first egg lying next to the feeder in the coop.

The last grocery store eggs ever!

It was very tiny--bantam-sized (seen here next to normal sized grocery store eggs), but I fried it up and it was delicious! Another one appeared yesterday so it looks like we're off and running.

Flicka and Belle

I'd been thinking they might have belonged to Belle because she appears the most mature with a red face and a well-developed comb and wattles......

...but this morning it's Rachel who's showing signs of laying, constantly moving in and out of the coop and rummaging around in the nest boxes. There'll probably be another egg today!

Finn and Goldi

Meanwhile, I heard Finn crow for the first time over two weeks ago, but so far he's only doing it in the privacy of the coop. Fine with me and the neighbors!

Clucky and Zen

I've seen him do the "wing dance" courtship displays for a couple of the Orpingtons to no avail--they each edged quickly away. On the other hand, Belle runs to his side often (maybe for protection from the more dominant pullets), but I haven't seen him courting her.

Zen and Rachel

Flicka

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.

A Long Winter

At 13 weeks, the chicks appear to be chickens although they still sleep in a pile on the floor in a corner of the coop and they’re still months away from laying eggs.

It’s been a tough winter so far--the coldest since the 1970s blizzard years I’ve heard. The chicks went out to the coop during a thaw before New Years and it has hardly been above freezing since, with most days not getting out of the 20’s and nights in the teens and single digits. I worry a lot, but the birds seem to be handling it well for the most part. The coop is utterly draft-free--my biggest worry there is how much ventilation I should provide during these bitter nights. They do seem comfortable in the coop--apparently they feel like I do when I’m in my Carhartt’s with hat and gloves.

They like to pick off the snow from my legs and boots.

There have been some issues. Early on I noticed a lot of feathers from all the birds on the floor of the coop and I suspected feather-picking. I never spotted the culprit, although if it was only one chicken, it had to be one of the Orpingtons. I checked them all over carefully for bald patches, found none, and increased their protein with black-oil sunflower seeds and backed off on the carb-heavy scratch mix. The loose feathers seem to be decreasing, and I haven’t seen anything that resembles aggression in anybody.

Another thing I worry about a little is that they refuse to go out into their run if there’s any snow at all on the ground (and there nearly always has been this winter), so by their own choice they’ve been cooped up all winter. This has got to increase their boredom which will certainly contribute to the feather problem above. On the other hand it’s just as well they aren’t pining to roam since the inch of ice we got last week has totally incapacitated the electric fence and a hawk hit a window during a strafing run just a few days after they initially went out.

The latest issue is that one of the Orpingtons (I think it’s Goldi but I confess to no longer being able to tell them apart) has developed a reddened face and a constant head-flicking that goes along with a low-pitched sort of growl-cluck. She seems uncomfortable, but I can’t tell what her problem is. Yesterday, I looked her over, decided that perhaps her face is irritated from the cold and spread a little Vasoline on her skin (recommended to prevent frostbite), which of course irritated her even more.

Everybody else seems happy and healthy. Since I’ve lost track of the Orpingtons I haven’t been able to determine a pecking order. I notice Belle and Zen tend to hang back, one or more of the Orpingtons is always first to venture outside if they dare to go, and that Rachel is happy to approach me. They’re not exactly hand-tame anymore; they always retreat to the far corner when I come in, but if I stand still they come right up.

The groundhog predicted an early spring this year. We’re ready!