Category: 2011chicks

Chicken update

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, chickens1 Comment

I took the front off of Mama Hen’s brooder box a couple days ago and let her and her chicks have free range of the shed – it was the only way I could put their water where the chicks could reach it and Mama couldn’t bury it in chips! Today the sun was shining (though it’s still cold) so I opened the door and let her bring them out into the sunshine for a bit. (the pictures are blurry because I was taking them from the deck of the house with my longest telephoto lens, and that STILL made Mama nervous and she decided to take them back inside to get away from my prying eyes)

I also removed the front of the brooder for the older chicks, and let them move around the shed. Of course they have led a sheltered life, so it was all very scary for them! (ignore that poopy water, it gets changed twice a day – messy birds!)

 I let the hens into the shed as well so they could go through to the backyard. They stopped to steal the chicks food and hang out, giving the chicks their first look at what they would grow up to be someday!

 
Fluffy butt! That’s Beautiful, my super-friendly chicken.
Last week I gave Handsome the Rooster away. Once he had the flock to himself and the other roo was gone, he became very mean to the hens. He would chase them down, corner them, jump on them and rip at their neck feathers. They were all looking frazzled and hiding in the coop to get away from him. I put him on CL for free and he was gone within a day. The girls have been much happier and more relaxed without him around!
 
Enjoying the sunshine in the tall grass

Mama hen decided to move into the main coop area, and took her chicks to dig out a comfy corner.

I think she’ll take care of them just fine.

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Mama hen hatched 8 chicks!

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, chickens4 Comments

Eight new baby chicks, some yellow, some blue, and one looks kind of gold – how cute! Mama hen is possibly the meanest mama hen I’ve ever met – she growled at me just for daring to LOOK in the brooder box, and when I went to put a waterer in there the chicks could drink out of she puffed up and came after me! I think I’ll let her rejoin the flock, if anyone goes near her chicks she’ll kick their tailfeathers into the next county!

Meanwhile in the other box the chicks are all feathered out and looking pretty good. They are at the scraggly age. There’s also a couple roosters hidden in there.

Can you spot the baby rooster?
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Black rooster is gone – chicks move out to the coop

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, chickens2 Comments

The black rooster went off to a new home yesterday, where he will have 8 hens all to himself. He should be very happy there!

Have you ever seen chickens so evenly spaced?

The remaining rooster ‘Handsome’ is happy to have his hens all to himself now. No more squabbling with the other roo or ‘sneak attacking’ the poor girls!

Meanwhile, the chicks are a week and a half old, and doubled in size – there’s not enough elbow room in the indoor brooder. Time to move out to the coop. But there’s a broody hen in the brooder box!

So I scraped up enough materials around the house to build them a new brooder box. This one is only 3×3, but it will be fine for a while. I had 20 chicks comfortably in the 4×4 box until they were 8 weeks old. I think 14 should be ok in the 3×3 box until they are close to that, and by then the broody mom and her chicks will have moved outside.

I think it will be nice to have two brooder boxes available for when I have broody hens, or if I decide to get 2 different types of chicks someday.

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Chicken update

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, chickens, navi2 Comments
 The 14 chickies are doing fine.That thing they are standing on is the shell of a cucumber they ate this morning.
Under Navi’s watchful eye! She loves to go in the room and watch them, but I don’t let her watch them unattended!
They’re getting big, and getting feathers on their wings already. Any idea how hard it is to hold a flapping chickie in one hand and take a picture with the other – it’s hard!
Out in the coop, one of my young hens went broody on me. I don’t know why my old hens don’t do that, but last year the only hen to go broody was my youngest one too! So I gave her ten eggs to sit on and moved her into the brooder box. She seems happy, but now I need to make a new brooder box for my indoor chicks to move into!
One of her lovely sisters 🙂
Some of my older girls. I feel bad for them, they have muddy backs and their feathers are all roughed up from the roosters jumping on them all the time. 
So I decided to give the girls a break and find a new home for my biggest rooster. He really is huge! I put him on CL and ten minutes later I had someone from not far away wanting to come pick him up this weekend. Perfect!
I’m keeping this guy. He’s awfully pretty, and I love his colors!
I think I’ll call him ‘Handsome’ 🙂
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Lost one!

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks1 Comment

One of the chicks just wasn’t as active as the rest, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to make it. Sometimes they have some internal problem where things just haven’t developed correctly. Sure enough, he passed away this afternoon. So I’m down to 14 chicks.

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Chickies 2011!

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks4 Comments

It’s chick season!

Today I picked up 15 little peepers from the feed store. Buff Orpingtons, my favorite 🙂 Since the weather is so cold, I decided to start the little guys in a rubbermaid tub in the house. Once they’ve got a good start I’ll move them out to the big brooder in the shed. As cold as it is, if the heat went out they would freeze – but inside they’ll be safe.

Cute little guys! The dogs are going nuts because they can hear the peeping, but they are in the packing room so the dogs can’t go in and bother them. The grate over the top protects them from curious cats.

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Workin’ hard around the yard

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, barclay, chickens, farm, garden, jack, naviLeave a comment

We had the most beautiful weather this weekend (our weekend is Tues-Wed). This is why we live in the NW. It was sunny, and in the 50s on Tuesday, 40s today. Perfect weather for getting a bunch of hard work done before the ground either freezes up solid again, or melts completely into a mud puddle.

So I started out with a project that has been nagging at me for a couple years. Several years ago I put in a raised bed garden in an unused part of the yard, and it didn’t really work out there, so it sort of got abandoned, it was hard to mow around, and because it was made of concrete blocks with the holes in them, it was a hazard for the dogs who have been playing around it (especially just recently), and it needed to be removed. But who wants to remove 30-some concrete blocks that are sunk into the dirt and seem pretty permanent? Nobody. But it has to be done.

So I got the mower and the lawn cart, and took a load of wood chips over to the garden area (no point driving over there without taking something along for the ride). I shoveled a bunch of fresh chips onto the path where it was getting bare and muddy. It’s going to take several more loads.

Fresh wood chips on the left, ground that needs some more on the right.

I took the cart over to the drainfield area and started loading up concrete blocks. Each one had to be wrestled out of the ground, wiggling them back and forth like a loose tooth. I loaded 12 into the cart at a time and took them over to the area outside my garden next to the compost piles and..

Used them to build a new compost pile area. I really needed a new compost area to put the alpaca poo I’ve been scooping up every morning.

So that was all yesterday. Dave helped a bit but by the end of the day I was beat. Those concrete blocks are terribly heavy! But I’m really happy with the compost area.

Today I headed right out this morning and got to work on the next thing on my list – the semi-annual cleaning of the chicken coop. (this is the after picture).

The deep bed method had backfired on me as it piled up faster than I was keeping up with it. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to find time to get out there and clean it up. I cleared out THREE heaping wheelbarrow loads – and I think it’s an 8 cubic foot wheelbarrow! That’s a lot of crap!

I spread the chicken poo thinly over the beds in the garden and put the rest in the new compost pile. Then I took all the straw I removed from the alpaca shelter (which was old straw, sheep poo and pig poo from last year) and scattered that over the chicken poo. I’m hoping all this will break down by planting time (May around here) and make for happy plants this summer.

Back in the chicken coop I got the brooder all cleaned out, because the feed store is getting chicks this weekend, and I want to get some. This way they should be old enough to start laying by winter. In this picture I’ve put straw in the brooder, but I’m going to change that to chips, because I think the straw will be too hard for the chicks to walk on.

Some of my girls moved right back into their clean home. They were a bit put out after being banished from the coop all day while it was being cleaned. Next on the to-do list – put up a piece of plywood to hide the insulation from the chickens. I don’t know how they  get to it to tear it up, but they do.

In the coop the dogs help clean up any poo I missed – yuk!

A beautiful end to a very productive two days. I shoveled until I had nothing left in me! It’s great to finally get all those chores done. Now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend!

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