Two roosters too many

This is one of the chicks I hatched last year. I only got two out of that bunch and they both ended up being roosters. Too bad, I was really hoping for some hens. Isn't he pretty though? I am keeping him and trading his brother for an Americauna hen to replace the one the skunks killed last summer. They both get along with Mr chicken so until they start fighting, I am keeping them together for now.

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?

Mr Chicken has three new girlfriends

 Actually, he has known them since they were all hatched. They are all new to our flock though. I got them from the same lady who gave me Mr Chicken last year. He was instantly in love and was trying to romance them through the bars of the cage. The original hens were not as impressed.

We are now up to 11 chickens, 10 hens and the king of the castle. If any of you remember Twitchy, that is her in the front. Looking pretty good for a dead chick, huh? Mr Chicken is such a show off!

We will also be getting more chicks next month. I know we got more Australorps but I can't remember what else we ordered. I think we are getting eight total. that would bring us up to 19 chickens if everyone survives. Yikes! Eggs anyone?

Spring fever

I am so totally over winter. Not that we have had much of a winter or anything, I am just ready for spring. Spring usually comes late to the desert, sometimes as late as June. At that point it usually just skips spring all together and snows one day and hits the 90's the next.

Yesterday was a mild day and the bees were out in force. I actually watched one of them bury herself in the chicken feed. She wandered around for a while in it and then just wiggled her way right down into it. Weird little bug. There is something in the feed that really attracts the bees. Every day that it is warm enough for them to be out, they are all over the scratch. The chickens don't seem to like that much and steer clear. I fed them yesterday and am watching close to make sure they don't starve. So far so good.

I have plans to split my hive this spring and am working (nagging) on Hubby to get me another hive built. So far he seems very hesitant. I think he is intimidated by building it. Not sure why, he built a nice big shed for the dogs complete with loft, windows and dog doors. He also built our nice chicken coop. A beehive should be a walk in the park.

I have also been looking through seed catalogs and planning this years garden. We learned a lot last year and are going to make a few changes this year just so things run smoother. We are going to plant the potatoes and onions first (like soon) and the lettuce and radishes last. I got over excited and planted all of the instant gratification plants first last year and had too short of a growing season for the plants with a longer maturity time.

I also put in an order for chicks already. I am going to get two more Black Australorps, and six light Brahmas. I had really wanted some blue laced red wyandottes but I had to order a minimum of 10 and they were over $4 a chick. *sigh* So no pretty hens for me this year. My hens have already started laying for the season and are keeping us stocked nicely.

HURRY UP SPRING!!

absentee blogger

Yes, that is me. I am sorry. I have been crazy busy the last few...umm...months...? My boys started school and I stupidly thought this would give me soooo much free time. Yeah, that didn't happen. I am up by 6 to get my middle schooler (gasp) off to school. As soon as he walks out the door, I have to wake the younger two and listen to them fight as they get ready. I really hate mornings. By the time they are out the door I am exhausted.

I have also been canning. and canning and canning. We had an early freeze this year so I spent an hour and a half outside in a snowstorm picking tomatoes and the rest of the garden produce. Luckily a friend came to help or it would have taken me all day. We picked 16 pumpkins, four watermelons, two cantaloupes and 430 tomatoes. Yes, you read that right. I have 430 tomatoes in various stages of ripeness on my kitchen table. Salsa anyone? I have already done two batches of salsa but neither of them really came out. One was too sweet (it also called for several of my cucumbers), the second called for over a cup of vinegar and that is all you can taste. Sooooo.......this next batch will use the second recipe but cut the vinegar wayyyyyy down.

I canned my peas and carrots together because I didn't have enough of either to bother canning. I got a batch of green beans done and two quarts of tomatoes.

I did end up being a judge for the fair and there was a judges category (whoot) so I entered. I won three blue ribbons! We were up all night judging the hundreds of jars and had to come early the next day to award the ribbons.

The chickens are all molting and the yard looks like a fowl massacre with feathers EVERYWHERE. I wish they didn't do that right before the weather turns freezing cold. Mr Chicken and my chicks are completely clueless as to how to use the cat door we installed on the coop. My older hens are used to it and go in and out several times a day. It is too cold to leave the big door open and it is driving me crazy to have to let them out every morning and catch them every night to put them back in the coop. I hope they figure this out sooner rather than later.

I already gave you the update on the bees. Kind of. I have just gotten scared enough of them that I don't really go out there unless the smoker is fired up and I am in full beekeeper gear. That is just such a pain in the butt that I usually don't get around to it. Plus, my little photographers are not willing to get that close either. It doesn't help that my oldest son is allergic to bee stings.

So there are all of my excuses. I am going to try harder to keep up with this but if I disappear for a while again, I am sorry.

Birdzilla

Meet Mr Chicken.

We found someone to adopt my murderous rooster and my hen molesting duck. My hens got this strapping bird in exchange. Mr. Chicken is a cochen. He was given to me by a friend of a friend because she had two of these guys. He is quite gentleman courting my hens and doing his best to get on their good side. The girls are still a bit apprehensive. They try to fight with him, which is funny because he just looks at them like "Is that supposed to hurt?" I am hoping any chicks from this guy will lay jumbo eggs and be just as gentle as he is. Here's hoping!!

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.

Twitchy update

Twitchy is eating and drinking by herself! I thought I was going to have to dropper feed her forever. Her little tan friend here has taken her under her wing (pun intended) and taught her to eat and drink on her own. This little hen also protects Twitchy and takes care of her. I have heard stories of horses and dogs taking care of each other and basically becoming a service animal for another of their kind, but I never thought of a chicken in that capacity. It just seems odd that she would do this. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful she did, I have just never heard of a chicken doing anything like this.

But WHO CARES! TWITCHY IS EATING! And I don't have to get up in the night to dropper feed her, lol.

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.

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.

Getting geared up for the summer!

Ok so I know I have been pretty absent (ok, totally absent for quite some time, but who's getting technical here?), but there has simply been nothing to blog about for a very long time. But now I have spring fever and I am ready to get ready. What am I doing to get ready, you may ask?
Well, for starters, I have got my garden planned out. Now I just have to wait untill the wnow melts to put that plan into action.
My chickens are getting ready too so I have to get the coop ready for them. This morning I braved the wind and cold in order to clean out the nesting boxes. Much to the annoyance of the hen who was waiting to lay in said boxes. I left all of the hay on the floor because it serves as an insulator and it is still just too cold to take it out yet. So I have one hen laying already and hopefully now that the boxes are cleaned out, the rest will follow suit.
Back to the garden. This year we are planing a new venture that will make my garden produce a thousand times more! Ok, maybe not a THOUSAND times but it will certainly make this year much better. We are going to be beekeepers! Yup, for real. I ordered my bees yesterday and with the next paycheck I am ordering my starter kit which includes my hive. I know this sounds like I am putting the cart before the horse, buying bees before I have a home for them but there is a reason. The bees will not arrive untill May but the hive will be here shortly. I have a neighbor with 20+ fruit trees and tons of flowers. I have a list of flowers that are favorites of bees that I plan on planting this year as well.
I am also working on getting back into the food storage game. Working on toiletries at the moment. A local grocery store has toothpaste and tooth brushes on sale for 98 cents so we got a few to put in the bucket.
I will keep everyone updates on my progress and hopefully this year will be a much more productive year than last year.

Chicken issues

Well, our rooster has been having a few problems.
The first one is his early morning crowing. I think I have this one solved though. He was crowing every morning at 4 AM!! One morning I had enough, I slipped on my robe and slippers and went stoping out to the chicken yard. Slash was half way through the cat door we installed for them and was crowing at the top of his lungs. Right in the middle of his Cock-a-doodle-doo, I swatted him on the rear. He let out a screech and landed about 10 ft away. The next morning he got it again. Now he doesn't crow before six. I am pretty satisfied with the results.
The second issue is a little harder to solve. The hens have been picking the top of his head bald. He was like that when I got him but my hens are just making the problem worse. I have tried putting hit pepper mixed with neosporin on him but that seemed to make it worse. Last night I used black salve and sat down to watch him to make sure they werent going to hurt him more. I watched three seperate hens come up to him and attempt to pluck a feather. They got close enough to strike and caught a whiff of that nasty stuff and walked away. Hopefully this is our cure! I also put vinegar in their water as I have heard this could be caused by a mineral deficency that vinegar will take care of. If anyone has any other suggestions, I would love to hear them!!

The new hen house

The coop is complete! It has six nest boxes that I can access from the outside, a roost near the roof for safe sleeping and a slatted floor for easy cleaning. We plan on putting skirting around the bottom in the winter to help keep them warm. In all it cost around $600 to build. I was hoping we could do it cheaper but even a building this small is expensive to build. We figure it will take about two years of 5 eggs a day to pay for the coop. Wondering if it was really worth it?

Chickens

So my little springtime chickens are rapidly outgrowing their pen. Ok, I lied, they outgrew it a long time ago. But the point is, I need to build a decent coop. One that is roomy enough for them and safe as well. The safety issue was brought home yesterday morning when I was awakened by screeching chickens. I jumped out of bed in time to see my neighbors dog drop one dead chicken and grab another as he ran by me. I chased him into the back yard where he dropped the second chicken (now dead) and grabbed my duck. I rescued the duck and captured the dog. The neighbor was horrified and after locking the dog up, helped us clean up the mess. He spent the whole day trying to find the boys new chickens. He gave us the number of a friend who had too many birds and would let the boys pick any they wanted and even as many as they wanted. The youngest chose a nice little laying hen. My oldest son however chose the one bird we have absolutly no use for.

This is a black polish crested, or something like that. The poor bird can't even see past his feathers. I woke up this morning and wondered what ungodly creature was dying in my back yard. Then I remembered that I had an adolescent rooster, he thinks he is tough stuff now that he is the only male in a yard full of hens. Lucky guy thinks he just hit the jackpot.

But I started this post to talk about coops, not freak roosters. We need something that we can move someday if we sell this house, we really don't want to build another one. I think we could figure out a way to build just about any design so it could be taken apart and moved in peices. We both liked the looks of this pen and it would be fairly easy because we have a spare dog kennel to use as the outdoor part of the coop.

What do you think? Does anyone have any good ideas for a chicken coop? I would love to hear them. Oh and the adolescent freak rooster needs a name. We were thinking some heavy metal rock band name because he looks like a head banger to me.

Extreme Home Makeover: Chicken Coop Edition

As of Memorial Day, I no longer have chickens in my garage! Hooray!

Brett the Logger lives on a couple acres in a part of town fondly called "the valley" by the locals because that's exactly what it is. A long, narrow river valley that is still mostly small family farms, owned and operated by what are now the third and fourth generations to do so. Brett lives in a house that was built by his granddad back in the 20's. Also on the property is a good size shed complete with large root cellar, and a chicken coop that dates back just as far as the house.

Until we started our little chicken farm, it had fallen into a sort of disrepair, and was being used mostly to store random junk. But the coop was large enough for what we'd need, and was already semi-equipped to handle the chickens. It also has several little handmade gadgets and jimmy-rigs that we probably never would have thought of (like a detachable roost board). Sean the Crabber is currently staying with Brett and they together had come up with a pretty decent scheme of how to fix up the coop.

Memorial Day morning I went out to the Valley to help the Boys with the last of the renovations. Now, Sean has a lot of grand ideas, but Brett seems to be the one who ends up actually making it work. They had already partially framed out and fenced a large yard for them to run in, but that was about it. The Boys got to work on the yard and I sent about cleaning out the coop.

Inside I luckily found about 50 different handmade garden stakes that are who knows how old, but in perfect shape. We set those aside for use in the garden (which will probably get sent out tonight or tomorrow). I cleaned and swept it out, laid down some shavings, then set up the new water fount and feeder.

We doubled the chicken wire (in preparedness for ninja raccoons) and buried the edges about 12 inches deep in the soil for weight. We grabbed the chicks and threw them in. They seemed pretty timid at first, but head out into the yard and started in on the bugs. I went out to see them this morning, and boy did they fatten up fast! I'm not sure if it's the bugs, the more or less unlimited feed, or a combination thereof, but gosh are they getting big.

Hopefully come September or so we'll start getting eggs. Ryan the 3L's aunt gave me some tips on how they keep they're chickens laying year round, and I found some great nesting boxes that we are going to hammer or in the next month or so.

Cross your fingers!

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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