Category: Copper

Tough Decisions – Copper moves on

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens, Copper1 Comment
Don’t send me away, I’ll be good!
Tough decision time – I like Copper, he’s been a very nice rooster. He is big and beautiful, and well behaved. He gets on fine with the other rooster too. Only problem is, he loves the ladies! A little too much. The ladies are getting tired of getting attention from two roosters. Every time I go check on them I find hens sitting on the chair, or up in the trees, trying to get away from him!
 
He can’t reach me up here!
So I decided eight hens just wasn’t enough to spread out the attentions of two roosters, so one had to go. Since Copper is related to a couple of the hens, I decided to keep the unrelated rooster, Big Blue. Plus Blue is a cochin and I’m getting cochin chicks in March, so that will give me the opportunity to produce more pure cochins next year.
Surprisingly, I found someone on the Portland Chicken List who has 30 hens and a very tired old rooster, and wanted a vigorous young rooster. So he is boxed up and ready to go to his new home. Hopefully he’ll fit right in there, and be making friends with all the new ladies in no time 😉

Chicken update – Penny’s babies

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens, Copper1 Comment
 
Here are my two roos. The buff roo is one of Penny’s chicks, all grown up now and looking quite a bit like his father, Big Bird, except he also has feathered feet and pantaloons! Unlike Big Bird he has been very mellow, stays clear of people and plays second-fiddle to Big Blue.
 

This is his sister, who is the only feather-footed hen I got out of that batch. She is still filling out, but she definitly has the pantaloon thing going on.

Everyone has been doing fine. No sign of the hawk in a couple weeks now. The young hens have recently started laying, and so I pick up 7-9 eggs every couple days. It’s nice to finally have eggs coming in again. I’m kind of looking forward to chick season this year. Although I had planned to just slip feed-store chicks under any broody hens this year so I wouldn’t have to deal with roosters, I’m kind of curious to see what the chicks will look like coming from my buff hens and the blue cochin rooster, so I think I’ll let nature take it’s course and see what we get.

Chicken-vision

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, chickens, Copper1 Comment

Barclay watching Chicken-vision. What’s on tonight?

Barclay is frustrated by Copper’s presence in the house. He thinks Copper should be out in the yard being chased, like my other bad wandering chickens. I had Barclay trained to where he would watch a chicken walk by without chasing, but lately I have had four pesky chickens who know how to escape the orchard and go wandering the yard, and I never know when we’re going to walk out the door and find them there, and so he has gotten into the habit of chasing them again. Hopefully he’ll learn to ‘leave it’. As I work with training Copper, I’ll work on Barclay too.

This has been a busy chicken-day. After shuffling the chicks around I moved Mom and her 8 chicks into the empty tractor. Then I opened up her side of the brooder so the turkeys could have twice as much room. Of course the new side of the brooder was scary, so they all stood on their side and stared at it with long necks and big eyes, but refused to walk over there! Then we ended the evening by powdering chicken butts again. Penny still has mites, and so do two others. Everyone else looks fine. So we powdered them one more time. I might have to do it again next week. I hope they get over this soon!

Shuffling chicks

On By stefrobrtsIn chicken tractor, chickens, Copper, turkeys1 Comment

Yesterday black mama hen started hatching her eggs. I’ve seen 4 or 5 chicks so far, but she’s keeping them hid. They are in a brooding box in the shed, and it’s not big enough for them, so I need to move them out to a chicken tractor so they can scratch around in the grass. However the tractors are full. Time to shuffle some chickens.

So I took the tractor with 7 chicks


And added two of the chicks from the tractor that only has three.


The remaining chick I put in a dog carrier so I can work with taming him. He is Penny’s only chick out of the first set of chicks we hatched. He is a Buff Cochin, and he has feathered feet and legs. I think he’s super cute, so I thought it would be fun to work with him a bit. I’ve heard you can clicker train chickens, so I thought I’d give it a try. His name is Copper.


In the turkey brooder the turkeys are getting HUGE! They are almost as tall as the gallon milk jugs I feed them out of.

Because the turkeys are getting too big to stay in the brooder much longer, I am giving the extra chicks to one of the boys in our 4H llama club who is also in chicken 4H. That way the new mom and chicks will have one tractor, and the turkeys will have the other, and I’ll be DONE with raising chicks for the season.