Mom and the chicks are safely stowed away in the chicken tractor, which is now parked in the orchard. So they can enjoy the company of the other chickens, without all the drama of fighting over food, getting attacked by cats, and mom leading them on adventures into the yard with the dogs. Plus they have their own food and water so I can make sure the chicks get a good start eating chick food – because I think the big chicks were stealing most of it and they really don’t need it anymore.

I’ll add a pic tomorrow, we had to wait until dusk to make the move. Once Mom had taken the chicks into the coop for the night, we snuck in and I stole them out from under her one by one, and handed them to Dave who put them in a box. Then I picked up Mom and we carried them all out to the tractor. There was a bit of fussing, but last I checked they were pigging out on chick food, so I’m sure the excitement was already forgotten.

This morning I was in the orchard throwing out chick feed for the chicks, and the chickens all came running, including Big Red, completely ignoring her brood of chicks lagging behind. When I heard a peep/squeek and looked up to see Mighty had sprung out of the bushes and pounced on one of the tiny chicks! Before I could get over there Mom ran over and kicked her, so she dropped the chick and ran by me on the way out, and I landed a swat on the butt as she went! What a bad kitty! Afterwards I couldn’t tell which chick she had caught, so hopefully it’s ok, but if one kicks off in the next few days we’ll know why. Tonight Big Red and the chicks are moving into the safety of a chicken tractor until the chicks are bigger than McNugget size.

Later I let the dogs out unattended, and when I went to check on them I saw Big Red had hopped out of the orchard (despite my attempts to keep them fenced in) and Barclay had been chasing her around. She can only get in and out by hopping over the gate, so he was blocking the gate. I got him out of the way and she jumped back into the orchard, but unfortunately whatever fun he had before I arrived has him all wound up to chase chickens. I did have him trained to ignore them, but that’s all forgotten after a little chicken chasing .

Last night I came home and heard a loud ‘peep peep peep’ coming from the orchard. I hurried down to see one of Reds little chicks IN THE WATER BOWL! He was up to his fuzzy little butt, and he couldn’t jump back out, so he was peeping for help. Funny thing was, all the chickens were ignoring him, even Mom who had taken the other 9 chicks over to the chick feeder. Lot of help they are! So I went in and rescued him (he had no problem with this, he seemed glad to be picked up), and dried him off a bit on my shirt then took him over to Mom. I leaned over and showed her what I had in my hand and she fluffed up like ‘hey, that’s one of mine!’, so I put the chick in front of her and it ran over to rejoin the other chicks and they all went off about their business. Then I put a flat rock in the water bowl so if anyone falls in again they should be able to get back out. Poor little chick!

I spent about 45 minutes sitting in the grass watching Red and her chicks yesterday afternoon.

Baby chickens are amazing! shortly after hatching they are walking around and scratching for food. Not like other birds where the parents have to bring them food, chicks are ready to go.

Mom was scratching around for bugs, and they would all rush to see if she found anything. She would sometimes step right on a chick, or bury them in debris if they were standing behind her. I guess that teaches them to stay out of the way!

And they’re SO CUTE!!!!

Last time Red hatched the eggs I gave her after she turned broody, so she hatched a bunch of buff orpington babies. This time she saved up her own eggs and hatched those. So these are all Red crossed with Big Bird (the Buff Rooster we had). They all have a little smudge on top of their head, and a dark streak behind their eyes, otherwise they look just like the baby buffs did. It will be interesting to see how they look when they get their feathers.

It was warm and sunny, and the chicks were getting sleepy. Occasionally a lone chick would start to tip forwards, and it’s eyes got heavy…

until it was completely tipped forward with it’s beak on the ground 🙂

Some managed to nap sitting up

This morning I was out playing with the dogs and the chicks were making quite a fuss, peeping and all. I went to see what was up, and saw a flash of red..there’s only two red chickens in my coop, and one of them is in the brooder sitting on golf balls right now.

Yay, it’s Big Red! She has returned, and she brought a whole herd of little peeps with her! 9 or 10 by our count. They’re really hard to count, they follow mom around like a cloud!

Barclay pointed out the empty eggshells in the nest. So here’s the funny part – the nest is in the backyard. In the overgrown old garden. No more than 10 feet from the chicken pen, the water trough, and the gate to the orchard. In other words, this whole time she has been sitting on her eggs literally under our noses! How come the dogs never bothered her? They must have known she was there, but she wouldn’t run and flap – she probably just fluffed up and hissed at them, and the dogs backed off. Even when our friends visited with their dog Sam, who chased the rooster around the garden, she was right there in the middle of it not budging off her eggs – what an amazing Mom! Now, how did she lead that little troupe of chicks from the backyard back into my carefully secured chicken pen?

Glad to see everyone is home and safe!

Big Red is still missing. I’m fairly confidant that she is hiding somewhere hatching eggs. My main concern is that now that I have secured the chicken orchard, she will show up with a clutch of chicks following her and NOT be able to get back in with the other chickens. And of course if I let the dogs out and they find her with a batch of chicks – well, the results could be tragic.

The orchard is big, she could be in there somewhere, holed up in the blackberry bushes maybe. We’ll just have to see what happens.

In other news, I was watching the baby chicks, and I think only 3 or 4 of the 9 chicks are roosters – that will mean a lot more eggs next year!

The new blue roos are making themselves at home. They seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order for now, but someone has to be. Might as well be the new guys.

The chicks are feathering out.

Once you have feathers you have to spend time preening them. Check out the guy bottom right 🙂

And they have discovered they can jump up on the chair and have a view over their entire future kingdom.

Today I finished putting chicken wire around the orchard fence in an effort to contain my wayward chickens. Floppy the Hen has been getting out everyday, and we find her wandering around the backyard. This encourages the dog to chase chickens, and allows her to hide her eggs somewhere in the yard (so today I only got 2 eggs out of the coop). Of our 8 hens, Big Red is missing, Little Red is broody, the black hen is mothering chicks, so that leaves 5 hens to lay eggs – Penny and the four buff orpingtons. Since a hen lays an egg every day and a half or so, it about makes sense that I’m getting 2 or 3 eggs a day. I’ll be glad when everyone gets back into production, we have friends waiting for eggs.

Today I also put the new roosters into the orchard. I let everyone out into the yard together, and gave them scratch and slowly lured them back into the orchard. There was a bit of fussing and pecking, but I’m sure the new roosters will figure out their place in the flock.

Update: I haven’t seen a wandering chicken since I finished the fence – yay, and I’ve gone from 2-3 eggs a day to a steady 4 – seems like somebody WAS hiding her eggs from me!

I threw some bread into the pen and enjoyed watching the hens and chicks scurrying around gobbling it up 🙂 this is the FUN part of having chickens!

Today I got two new roosters from Sharon at SnoKit Farms. She had a couple extra blue cochins, and I thought Penny would enjoy having some other cochins waddling around the pen with her, so I said ‘bring them on over’! They have not been handled so I’m going to keep them in the chicken tractor a few days and see if I can make friends with them. I’d also like to finish the chickenwire fencing around the pen before I let them loose, else the other chickens might teach them bad habits and I’ll be stuck with even more wandering chickens!

As for Big Bird, he made his own bed, and I do not regret a thing. He is gone now, and we’ll hope these new roosters stay friendly and we won’t have to go through this again. Sharon, who has about 200 chickens of every color and size you can imagine, said that is one thing she will not put up with – mean roosters have to go. They can’t be retrained or reasoned with. So we did what we had to do.