Tag: Chicks

Easter Sunday on the Farm

Today is beautiful, no Easter snow, thank goodness. Bright sun, azure blue sky, calm wind, and grass, oh my it has grown in a week. It must be at least a foot high in the back. It will have to be mowed this week or we will start bringing ticks indoors and I don’t want that. I started the tractor and used it to move some compost and some old wood a few weeks ago, so I know it is running. The lawnmower for right around the house hasn’t been started yet, but it was only used a few times after it was purchased late last summer, so hopefully, it also will run. Fuel is needed for both and since it is Easter Sunday, that purchase will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day, though the little general store/gas station in the town is open today.

The chicks are now more than 6 weeks old and did fine in the coop while I was away, in spite of several below freezing nights. Last night they were all on the perches in the coop, lined up like big girls instead of huddled in a corner. Today they are getting outdoor time.

Though they still sound like chicks, they look like small chickens. They poked their head from the temporary pen into the permanent pen and promptly got pecked. Now the hens and Cogburn have lost interest and the chicks are foraging the long grass for new treasures.

Shadow and the chicks being desensitized to each other. She would lie down quietly by the pen until I moved and then she bolted away. Since the electric fence is now only around two sides of the vegetable garden, the dogs can get right up to the chicken pens and they weren’t used to being able to do that. At first the chickens are alarmed, but I am trying to get the dogs so they don’t activate prey instinct when the chicken flap and run, I would like for the chickens to have some free range time without being chased by the dogs. She did really well and the chicks quickly ignored her. The dogs need to learn that they are farm dogs and can’t chase everything that moves or flies.

And of course there is time for tug-o-war with the big ball on a rope. Ranger was working on drop it and leave it, then I would throw it out into the yard for a chase and tug session.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

April 20, 2014
A Tale of a Lone Hen Protector

During his sleep last night, the lone hen protector had a terrible dream. Cogburn ruffled in his dream, but couldn’t awaken enough to figure out what was going on. In his dream, one at a time, his ladies were disappearing, until there were only three. But he knew he had nine, what on earth was going on. When he awoke this morning, he was startled to see that it wasn’t a dream at all, his coop only contained three of his ladies and a new wooden structure that obstructed part of his kingdom’s perches. He crowed mightily, hoping that the aliens that had abducted his ladies would return them.

Once the tall lady came out to let him out of his coop and give him food and water, he was even more distraught as the aliens had returned his ladies, but alas, he couldn’t get to them. How was he going to protect them from the shadows in the sky?

Then to make matters worse for him, that tall lady crawled into the coop with strange and noisy objects in her hands that didn’t look like food to him and she made lots of noise and commotion in his castle. When she was done, ten small noisy creatures invaded his castle, but he couldn’t get to them. What had happened? Some nearly invisible force field prevented him from surveying his domain and chasing those interlopers away. His beautiful queenly lady that lays the green eggs entered to survey the situation as well, she has always been a curious sort and as the tall lady had piled deep new hay under her perch, she made a nest, but the tall lady kept fussing at her and finally stirred up the nest she had carefully arranged. When the tall lady stirred up the nest, she was in the coop and this upset her king.

Since his kingdom seemed to be totally disrupted and this tall lady seemed to have something to do with it, he decided it was his noble duty to attack her, but when he rose to strike, she raised this long hard object and pushed him firmly away. Being rebuffed and defeated, he decided the only thing he could do was crow at her until she left.

It bothers him greatly that his other ladies seem to be doing fine without him in the other castle, they are even giving the tall lady their daily gems in the new and foreign nests she built for them. What’s a king to do?

April 10, 2014
Moving Days

We have a streak of warm days and mild nights ahead and the chicklets have gotten way too big for the brooder. They are able to cope in the garage without a heat lamp now and get absolutely frisky if taken out in the sun or on a really warm day. They clearly need more space before they start pecking each other. I hung a “Baby Block” toy/feeder in their brooder to try to help and put two perches in there, but they need more room.

They can foul that cage is less than a day. Preparations were made today to do some moving around.

The coop is 4 X 8 feet inside, discounting the 6 nesting boxes attached to the outside of one wall. Since the plan is to leave only the 2 Buff Orpington hens and the 1 Americana hen and possibly Cogburn, but I am leaning toward removing him as well, I have created a divider that will give the 10 chicks 2/3 of the coop and the 3 hens will have 1/3 with 2 nesting boxes for nighttime and egg laying. After they all go to bed tonight, Jim and I will remove the other 6 hens and Cogburn, maybe to the chicken tractor and temporary run.

This is going to stir things up in the pecking order. I installed two nesting boxes in the chicken tractor today, but I anticipate the girls going on strike and either not laying for a while or laying their eggs on the ground. After the coop is opened tomorrow and the remaining 3 hens go out to eat and drink, I will use the staple gun to erect plastic poultry fencing over the new framing and to close off the 4 remaining nesting boxes and the chicks will be moved into the coop. They will be able to see the hens, but for now, they won’t be able to leave the coop. After a few more weeks and some growth, I will make a passageway for them to leave the coop, but scoot back to safety if feeling threatened. For a while, they will have food and water in the coop with them. Once they are large enough to share the coop and run with the big girls, the netting and framing will be removed and they will share the coop. My goal is for the hens to sit eggs for future chicks, but that will either mean keeping Cogburn or another rooster, or buying fertilized eggs and slipping them under a broody hen for hatching. I’ll have to make that decision before eldest son comes in late summer to put the hens in freezer camp.

April 9, 2014
Spring has come to the mountains, finally!

We are enjoying mountain spring at last. Days that are mild enough for long sleeves or a light sweater, nights still cold enough for a coat, but signs abound that Old Man Winter has finally moved south, way south.

Peach blossoms and green grass.

Garlic growing in the garden beds.

On one of my surveys of the outside of the house, I have found many Preying Mantis egg cases, two on one of the spent deck plants from last year.

They will be carefully cut off and placed in the new plants on the deck and we will try to catch the day they begin to emerge. It is interesting to watch the tiny 1/2″ long critters creeping around on the plant leaves.

Sunshine today and though it is only in the mid 50s outside, the 4 week old chicks got some sun time.

They are just past the dinosaur stage and look to have nearly all of their feathers. When out in the sun, they jump and flap, chase each other around the water trough that was their brooder. Today they went back into one of the wire dog kennels, but this time in the garage as they kept tipping the water and spilling it into the trough and the pine shavings were getting too soggy too quickly.

Tomorrow we are expecting heavy rain most all day, so Jim and I will go to the lumber yard and purchase the wood and a roll of chicken wire to create a coop divide. By the end of the week, the chicks will occupy half of the coop, perhaps still with a heat lamp for another week or so and the other half of the coop will be the two Buff Orpington hens and the Americana hen. Cogburn and the rest of his harem will be moved at night into the temporary pen and chicken tractor, tricked out with a new nesting box to keep them separate from the chicks and to isolate them until the day in July or August when they will be permanently removed from the flock.

After a few weeks of adjustment and a bit more size, the coop divider will be removed and the chicks will have to learn the pecking order with the three hens that we will be keeping.

April 6, 2014
Chick Day

Tractor Supply has had Chick Days going now for a couple of weeks, but they don’t carry the breed that I want. My goal is to keep Cogburn, my Buff Orpington rooster, the two Buff hens and the one Olive Egger Hen and replace the other 6 with 10 more Buff Orpingtons. That will give me 13 layers instead of 9 and will give me a pure heritage flock, except for the Olive Egger, whose eggs are just fun because of their color and easy to identify. Hopefully, this will give me a self sustaining flock as the Buffs make good mothers and can raise their replacements and the table birds. A few days ago, I reconnected with the gal that I bought my two Buff hens from last year when they were about 10 weeks old. She has 1 to 3 day chicks and though I didn’t want to raise chicks again this year, I also didn’t want to pay $20 per bird for ones that are only a month younger than the layers I have since I wanted 10. This morning we made a road trip to meet her in a town about an hour from here and did a parking lot exchange of money for 10 new chicks. We took a towel lined cat carrier to bring the peepers home, with a side trip to Tractor Supply for starter feed as they can’t eat the laying mix for the big girls.

I have to admit that they are adorable at just a couple of days old. However when you buy babies they must be kept warm and after my experience of having the brooder in the basement last year, I don’t want a repeat of that, so they are in a makeshift brooder in the garage with a heat lamp, which I also don’t like to use, but have no other option at this point. Last year I used a large black plastic livestock water trough as a brooder, but it is full of split wood in the garage and I didn’t want to have to empty it. maybe later as they grow. The makeshift brooder is half of a plastic large dog crate set inside a larger wire dog cage with the heat lamp hanging from the wire cage. Pine shavings, a chick feeder and waterer in with them and a blanket over part of it, they are set for a while.

Hopefully, this brood will be a success and in 7 weeks they can be moved outdoors, the 6 hens from my United Nations flock will be moved to the chicken tractor for the young ones to be introduced to the coop. Sometimes this summer, those 6 will go to freezer camp and my egg production will drop until the babies are ready to lay.

Hubby says I have an addiction, but at least I limited my purchase to only the breed I want and only females, so we won’t have multiple pens of different ages, and one of them full of testosterone like we had last spring when I bought 21 chicks over a two week period and had half of them cockrells.

March 9, 2014