April/May hatch

Yes I am crazy. I am going to incubate some eggs. I have a bizarre assortment of birds and I would love to see what kind of chicks I get out of them. My roosters are blue laced red wyandottes. My hens are cochins, silver laced wyandottes, black australorpes, rhode island reds, barred rocks, buff orpingtons, naked necks (google those for real), and auracaunas. I have made my best guess on which hen layed which egg so it will be interesting to see if I am right.

I am also helping one of my friends, TinCanAssassin with a homeschool lesson on chicken development. Just for kicks and giggles, I am going to post everything here for you guys as well. Here is a hatch calender for reference.

If I start these tomorrow, they will hatch on my sons birthday. I think he would like that.

Chicks are here!

   The egg in this picture pipped last night. I stayed up late to watch for progress and saw none so I went back to bed. This morning, Hubby got up at 4:30 to go to work. I got up with him to check again and saw that the egg had a much bigger hole in it. 

   But more exciting, the egg next to it had completely hatched out! The more the chick moved and chirped, the more the egg next to it would crack. I woke the kids up to see the new chick and they stayed up to wait for the second chick too.

    Before too long we could see a little beak poke through the hole, grab a piece of shell and shake. Then the chick would reposition and rest. Then the beak would break through a new section of shell and again the chick would reposition and rest. Then went on until the baby had "zipped" almost all the way around the whole egg.
   You would see the whole egg expand and quiver as the chick inside would stretch, trying to break free. A few more pecks and she would try again. It didn't take as long as I thought it would, and with one final stretch, she kicked her way free of the egg.
   I went in the other room to let her rest and dry off. I checked on them again thirty minutes or so later and panicked. The first chick to hatch was hanging by her head from the heating element in the incubator. I yelled for the kids to come help me and one of them held the lid while I freed her from a pretty horrific death. I am very thankful that the heat didn't come on and burn her alive while she was hanging there.
   The humidity in my incubator was already comprimised, so I went ahead an grabbed both chicks and handed them to the boys who were waiting with outstretched hands. They snuggled with them for a few minutes while I set up a dog crate to use as a brooder.
   The babies are now running around and are all fluffed up in the crate. I hope I get a bunch more that hatch, but if not, I will still be happy with my two fluff butts!

ARGHHH! Stupid rooster!

   When I was in Utah last week, I bought a dozen fertile eggs to hatch in my incubator. I also gathered eggs from my hens over the next few days because I want some cochin chicks! Last night I candled my eggs and was really excited to see that my wyandotte eggs are developing nicely. Then I got to the eggs from my hens. Nothing. Not one little speck or blood vein in those eggs. Nothing at all. Mr Chicken just might be in trouble.

Did I mention he's mean?

No chicks :(

I made an order with Meyers Hatchery months ago to get my spring chicks. I went online yesterday to see when exactly they would get here and how many I would be getting. There was no history of my placing an order at all. I know I ordered them because I remember picking an arrival date sometime in the first week of June. I also ordered a basket to carry my eggs in and chose the option to have that sent separately. I called the company and the lady that answered the phone told me that if I chose a breed with a limited availability for that particular hatch date, I might have ordered more than they had available and the system would have kicked my whole order out. Great. So now it's too late to order any of the chicks I wanted and Murray McMurray wants a minimum 25 chick order. I really don't want that many chicks. Does anyone know of another hatchery besides these two that they could recommend? If not, they I guess I will pick up the Australorpes at the local feed store and forget about getting the Cochins or Brahmas. Maybe hatching some of my own Cochin eggs would be the way to go.

Twitchy update

Can you guess which one is Twitchy? No? She's the little black one in the front. I can always tell which one she is because she is still smaller than the rest, her tail is always down and she doesn't hold her head as high as the others. Besides those things, she is absolutely normal. When I told her story to the lady at the feed store where I bought her, I was offered a job, lol. She was amazed that Twitchy lived through her attack and that I actually put the effort in to save her. I just hope she can bulk up enough to make it through the winter.

Fun facts about chickens

Fact #1 A hen will sometimes kick a newborn chick out of the nest if it is a different color then she is.

Fact #2 A newborn chick can fall a long ways and be ok.

Fact #3 If you pick up tough little chick, it will imprint on you and scream if you put it down...ever.

Fact #4 That cranky hen will sometimes refuse to take spoiled chick back and attack it if you try and make her.

Fact #5 Spoiled little chick chirps at such a frequency to give surrogate mom a headache...chick gets her way yet again.

So you get the drift of what my day has been like? I learned all of these facts within about an hour of finding spoiled little chick this morning. I also found out that a little dog I had been babysitting ran one of our laying hens to death last night. So I lost one and gained one this morning. Too bad the one I gained will not lay until late this fall. (If she even turns out to be a hen). I have chickens in five different places right now because no one gets long. I have my three remaining laying hens in the chicken coop. I have Twitchy and her sisters in the chick pen in the chicken coop. I have the murderous rooster in the dog run. I have the setting hen and the other 6 eggs in a dog crate in the garage. And spoiled little chick is snuggled into my sons neck and for the moment mercifully quiet.

Progress report for Twitchy

Twitchy learned how to eat and drink today!! I dipped her beak in water a few times and it was like a light bulb went off. She crawled right into the water dish and drank until she looked like she was going to pop. She even fell asleep standing in the water dish. I put some food in my hand and she took a little. She was much more interested in the water though. I think she just might make it.

Twitchy

Twitchy was attacked by my rooster on Tuesday. He put his beak through her brain. I was there when it happened and saw her die. An hour later she was rolled up onto her chest with her head rolling around. I put her in a box and waited for her to die. The next morning she was on her feet. The day after that she started to walk. Yesterday she was acting and looking normal except for the fact that she has forgotten how to eat or drink. I have to force feed her several times a day. This morning I went out and she was all but dead. She was gasping for breath and couldn't hold her head up. I gave her some electrolites and put her under the heat lamp so she would be as comfortable as possible. I just went out to check and see if she was gone and she's starting to perk up. She's cheeping and looking like she just might make it. What a tough little bird!

Chickens

Remember the chicks I got last year? They are now big and laying eggs every day. I also bought 5 more chicks this year. That should give me 10 eggs a day next year, right? That was the plan.....until one of my hens decided we needed 11 more chicks.

She looks happy to see me, right?

I will post pics if and when they hatch.

So......yeah.

So I got home today with my fluffy little chicks. I get them set up in the garage with a heatlamp and some nice warm pine shavings. I went outside to get the hen set up...and she was off the nest. The eggs were cold, and she had absolutely no interest in the eggs. I put her back on the nest and tucked a baby under her and she stepped on it on her way back outside. I now have baby chicks in my garage. Yay.

Broody hens

I have a hen who has gone broody (for those of you unfamiliar with chickens, this means she is mean as a rattlesnake and probably more prone to bite. Actually it means she wants to be a mama but she's still mean.) and I want her to be able to hatch out babies. Because I don't have a functioning rooster at the moment, her own eggs won't do. So, I have two options. I can get some fertilized eggs and hope she stays on them long enough for them to hatch (She's already been setting for a week now) or I can buy chicks and hope she accepts them. So tomorrow I am going to go buy two chicks and put them with her. If they are still under her by the next morning, we are good to go and I will buy a few more. If she rejects them, I will raise them myself and get her some eggs. I guess I just feel bad that she has been so miserable and cranky and gets nothing for it.

Spring time

We finally seem to be getting some spring weather and so I thought some cute pics of baby animals are in order. I have decided to raise a few chickens for eggs this year. We got two Buff Orphingtons, two Rhode Island Reds, and two Barred Rocks.

RIP Poachy - A Chicken Update

Firstly, I'd like to say Poachy was a good little chicken. Fairly quiet, minded her own business and wasn't one of my master's of escape (which kept her on my good side). Sadly, Poachy passed away from unknown causes (although I expect a scuffle with Yoko was to blame) early on Mother's Day morning. I was a little upset in the morning, but I know she's in happier hen coops somewhere in the great farm in the sky.

The chicks are getting huge. They are going through an amazing amount of feed and water (well, compared to two weeks ago anyway) and I'm cleaning out their pool every other day as their pooping habits are equal to their eating habits. I did have some issues with chicken ninjas (or at least that's what I'd call them) who habitually hopped out of the pool and ran around my garage. I was not a fan of chicken ninja'ing, so I snagged a roll of chicken wire and wrapped the pool. They still managed to fall out as they kept trying to roost on the edge of the pool in the one damn exposed corner, which of course was next to impossible to reach once they fell in. I dropped a water filled old milk carton into the corner and wa-la, problem solved. They fight over who stand on the top of the bottle and I'm not fishing them out nearly so often.

I did however learn this morning though that chickens under duress can squeeze themselves into a rolled-up bale of chicken wire, which they then can't get out of. That was an interesting experience, that's for sure.

Now that they are getting a bit bigger and losing their feathers it's become a bit of a game to guess what breeds they are (I never did ask the people at the feed store, I keep forgetting). Gracie thinks that Chicken is a Barred Rock, and after seeing some pictures I think I agree.

Noodle, Poopbutt, LouAnne, Turtle, Drumstick, Yoko, Benedict and Scramble are the larger white chicks. Gracie thinks they might be Araucana's, but after looking around at pictures I'm thinking they are probably Leghorns. And just a note, I don't care how good tempered people say chickens can be. All the above named chickens are assholes. Yoko is the leader, and if she keeps up this attitude, she'll be the first to go to the happy hunting grounds.


McNugget, Huevo, Shelly, Omelet, and Dark Meat we think are Rhode Island Reds. I wish the pictures I took of them could really do them justice. They are turning a beautiful reddish-rust tone now from the creamy yellow they were when I picked them out. They are super sweet, a little skittish but not one of these 5 (and formerly Poachy as well) has EVER pecked me. The asshole chickens take care of that part.


All and all, my little suburban chicken thing seems to be going well. Probably this weekend the chicks will be moving out to the Logger's ranch to their newly-refurbished chicken coop, and I'm going to hose the hell out of my garage.

Here chicky, chicky...

If you couldn't tell (or didn't read) the quote of the day yesterday, I finally got baby chicks. A friend of mine (who shall be hence forth known as the Logger, because well, that's what he does) has a good chuck of land not far from me with an orchard, space for a garden and a chicken coop.

We'd been discussing getting chickens for awhile, but hadn't made any firm plans. Yesterday I had planned a trip to see Lila, but it got canceled for unforeseen reasons and the Logger showed up shortly afterwards for donuts for the Boy. His friend (The Crabber, because again that's what he does) has been working to fix up the chicken coop, and the Boy and I went along with them to town to get some supplies. We stopped at the feed store to look around, and they had just gotten a couple batches of chicks. Before we knew it, we somehow were walking out of the feed store with 15 chicks and all the various supplies.

We got 8 white egg layers, and 7 brown egg layers. 8 are white, 6 are yellowish and one is black (so the boy can easily identify his). I'm not sure which breed they are because we forget to ask, so if you know, please let me know. Their names are Chicken (the Boys), LouAnne, Turtle, Drumstick, Noodle, Poopbutt, Scramble, McNugget, Omelet, Benedict, Poachy, Shelly, Huevo, Yoko and Dark Meat.


The chicks are staying in my garage for a bit until the weather gets warmer and we've finished the coop. It's actually sort of sweet to go in the garage and hear "peep peep peep-peep-peep". They have all survived so far (have I mentioned I'm pretty adept at killing things completely on accident?) but I figure since none of us know much about chickens it'll be a little trial and error least for a while.

Keep your fingers cross, and I'll pray to the Chicken Gods.

Quote of the Day

Ryan the 2L: Are they done yet? I'm hungry.

Me: No.

Ryan the 2L: Why not?

Me: They aren't insta-grow food.

Ryan the 2L: Are they boneless?

Me: They are baby chicks Ryan. They don't come in regular and blob.

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