Broody chicken update

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about one of our chickens going broody.  I got a dozen fertilized eggs from a neighbor and put them under her.  She did her job and dutifully sat on them.

On June 15 my wife went out to peek at her and noticed cracked egg shell.

I went out with her later and picked up the hen (who was not happy about that).  The birds had hatched.

When I checked on them the next morning I found 3 unfertilized eggs and some broken shells in the nesting box

 I guess she pushed them out of the nest.  Instead they were sitting in the corner on the floor.

When I got home from work that night the mother hen and 4 of the chicks were on the ground under the coop.  The rest of the chicks were still in the coop.  I had to reach into the coop and get them out. 

Aww...

 

 

They follow her around everywhere and she's been showing them how to be a chicken.  I've seen them out in the yard, but mostly the stay by the coop.  She gets real defensive and puffs up huge whenever anything approaches. 

I managed to get them into the chicken tractor tonight.  I propped up the front of it and they wondered in there.  Then I pulled out the prop.  I think they'll be better off in there.  Last night they slept under the coop and the night before that I had to help them in.  The chicks aren't big enough to get up the ramp and into the coop on their own. 

One of the chicks didn't make it.  It hatched and it's legs moved a little bit, but it never got up and ran around like the others.  On the second day it was cold and stiff.  As luck would have it...  The neighbor I got the fertilized eggs from had some in an incubator.  Two of them were further along than she thought and they hatched!  So she brought them over and we stuck them under this chicken.  It's hard to count them, but we think there are 11.  That math doesn't work out in my mind (9 hatched, 1 died, 2 from the neighbor should be 10).  I don't know.  Maybe there are 10.  Or maybe I stuck 13 eggs under her and 10 hatched.   Whatever, all I know is that there are a lot of them.  Maybe I'll even have enough that they won't all be eaten by hawks.

Broody chicken

We had a chicken go broody last Saturday.  She planted herself in the nesting box and I haven't seen her come out since.  My kids said that they've seen her come out a few times for food and water, but she doesn't stay out long.

Last year we got a broody chicken and 5 chicks from a neighbor.  We lost all of the chicks to hawks.  I contacted her again and asked about getting chicks to put under this bird.  She suggested that we just let her hatch fertilized eggs.  That sounded like a good idea to me.  I went picked up a dozen fertilized eggs tonight.  Then I removed the bird from the nest box, put the eggs in, and sat the bird on top of them.  Now I just have wait 3 weeks for them to hatch.

Chicken update

Last fall we got three new chickens.  They were still young at the time and weren't laying any eggs.  We weren't getting many eggs from the older birds either.  We were averaging maybe 1 egg per day.  Oh how things have changed.

Winter generally isn't a good time for eggs.  The chickens lay less due to the shorter amount of daylight.  That changed in the Spring.  We're now getting 5-7 eggs per day from 7 chickens!  I'm very surprised by this.  I expected the 3 young birds to lay well, but 4 of the birds are 3 years old now.  They're cranking out the eggs even though the amount of eggs is supposed to drop off with age. 

One of the new birds.  I don't remember the breed.

Buff Orpington

Dark Brahma

In addition to getting a lot of eggs, some of them have had double yolks and are downright huge!  We haven't figured out which bird is laying them. 

The chicken swap.

I wrote recently that our chickens are providing very few eggs.  We get one a day on average.  I was telling this to one of my neighbors and she asked me if I wanted to swap out some chickens.  She'd give me some younger ones for some of my older ones.  That sounded like a good deal to me.  The only issue was determining which birds to part with.  I ran the idea by my kids.  They wanted to keep four and swap out three.

Below are pictures of the three new birds.  My kids have named them, but I don't remember what their names are.  

These birds are quite big.  We're hoping that they're big enough that the hawks will leave them alone.  None of them are laying yet.  I'm guessing that they will be by spring.

It took them a few days to adjust to their new surroundings, but they seem to be doing fine now.  The other birds sure do give them grief.  I find the pecking order thing rather amusing. 

An update on the layer chickens - Fall 2014

I don't write about my chickens frequently.  That's probably because there isn't a lot to tell.  They're easy to take care of.  I lock them up at night and let them out in the morning.  Every 3-4 days I add food to their feeder.  That's pretty much it.

It's infrequent that anything changes.  We added a few birds to the flock in August, but most of them didn't make it.  The good news is that the one remaining chick is doing well.  She's as big as the mother hen now.

The bird in the middle is the last remaining chick.

The other thing that has happened recently is that their egg production has fallen drastically.   There was a time when we had 6 birds that we would get 4-6 eggs per day.  Now we have 8 birds and we're lucky to get 1-2 eggs per day.  Sometimes we get 0. 

Part of that is due to the time of year.  They lay fewer eggs when there is less daylight.  I think the big issue is age.  From what I've read, the prime egg laying age is 6-18 months.  Most of my birds are more than 2 years old.  The new chick isn't old enough to start laying yet, and I don't know the age of the mother hen.  She still sticks close to the chick.  I don't know if she's still playing mother or if they've just formed their own little group.  Regardless, she's not laying.

I'm ready to start culling the older birds.  I'm willing to put them in the freezer, but my children won't let me.  They want to keep them around as pets (which they pretty much are).

My barred Plymouth rock is molting again.  She did this last year.  Looking at the pictures from then I'm guessing she's going to look a lot worse before she looks better.

10-26-2014

She looked good on 9-14-2014.

My Rhode Island Red molted in June.  She looks pretty good now.  She's the only one that still lays eggs reliably.  Most of the eggs we get come from her.

The latests news regarding the new chicks.

We lost another chick today.  We have one left.  My wife heard a commotion outside and went to see what was going on.  She saw the one remaining chick under the deck with the rest of the layers.  The mother hen was have a tantrum by the coop.  We're pretty sure that a hawk got it.

I'm actually kind of glad.  The chick that was taken had a pretty bad scissor beak.  We noticed that the top and bottom of its beak were not aligned when it was about a week old.  It got progressively worse.  I talked to a few people and the consensus I got wasn't good.  It was suggested by two people that I euthanize the bird.  It was noticeably smaller than the other chick.  I think it had a difficult time eating and drinking.  That would have only gotten worse with age. 

The scissor beak bird is the one in the lower right.  This picture was from a few weeks ago and it wasn't much bigger than that today when we lost it.

The last remaining chick is almost as big as the mother hen.

New chicks after three weeks

I has not been a good week for the new chicks.  We started the week with five and ended the week with three.  I think we lost both of them to a hawk. 

On Thursday my wife and daughter went out to check on the rabbits.  They came back inside and a little while later my wife heard the mother hen freaking out.  She went outside and two of the chicks were in the front corner of the yard and the other two chicks were near the back fence (they never spread out like that).  The mother hen was in the middle of the yard.  The fifth chick (the bright yellow one) was nowhere to be found.  I searched the yard and the woods when I got home and found no evidence of it anywhere.  It didn't show up when it got dark and I didn't hear it peeping.  They make a lot of noise when they get separated.  Something got it, and got away in a hurry.  

The very next day we were sitting at the dinner table.  I looked out the window and saw the mother hen freaking out.  She jumped up and landed on the fence.  I jumped up, called for the dog, and ran outside.  All of the full grown layers were hiding in the bushes.  The three remaining chicks darted across the yard to get to them.  They were all visibly spooked.  I checked for the lost chick, but it was not to be found. 

So we're down to three.

I was in the yard for quite a while this afternoon.  I wanted to use some firewood to make room for more firewood (I have trees that need to come down).  So I built a fire and watched it burn for a few hours.  The chickens hardly came out from under the deck and when they did, they didn't get too far.  One time while they were out I got up to take the above picture.  The mother hen made a loud squawk and all of the chickens ran back under the deck.  They're really on edge.

New chicks after two weeks

I got new chickens two weeks ago.  They seem to have integrated themselves into the rest of the flock just fine. 

The chicks still stay pretty close to the momma hen.  Once in a while one will get separated and squawk like crazy until it's reunited with the rest of the group.  They go all over the yard now. 

I've had at least two occasions when they've made it out of the yard.  One night I went out to close the coop and only one of the chicks was in there.  I searched the yard but couldn't find the rest of them.  So I started walking the outside perimeter of the fence.  It didn't take long to find the mother hen sitting on top of the other four hens.  I'm not sure how they ended up on the wrong side of the fence.  My guess is that they went under the gate.  Another time I came home to find the chicks in the yard and the mother hen on the other side of the fence.  I'm not sure how to explain that one. 

Another update on the new chickens.

I went out to close up the coop and put away the feed tonight like I always do.  I checked the pen with the new chicks and much to my surprise they weren't in there!  My first reaction was panic.  I didn't know if they got under the fence and were in the woods.  Maybe they were under the coop.  Maybe they were somewhere in the yard.  No.  They were in the coop with the rest of the birds.  Go figure....

 

I hope this works out OK.  She's locked in there with the rest of the layers until I open the coop tomorrow morning.  I haven't seen her interact much with them.  There was some fighting initially, but now I think she pretty much just stays away from them.  I could be wrong about that.  I'm not here much during the day to see them interact. 

New chicks after one week.

We've had the new chicks for a week now.   We didn't have any issues with the hen accepting them as her own.  We've been keeping them in a pen on their own so the other layers get used them being around. 

So tonight I decided to prop up the front of the pen to let them out.  Guess what happened?

Our Rhode Island Red chicken promptly went  into the pen and started eating the chick feed. 

I buy them soy-free, GMO-free, organic feed and she decides to eat the starter feed for the chicks.  This was a first.  When I first got the soy-free stuff, I put it out along side the Purina pellet feed that I had been using.  They ignored the Purina pellets and only ate the soy-free feed.  My wife thinks that she's just showing the new birds who is boss.  That could be the case.  She's at the top of the pecking order.

 The new hen and her chicks did venture out of the pen, but they didn't go far.

Momma hen is very confrontational and is ready to defend her babies!  She's spazzed out at the dog more then a few times this week.

The hen and her chicks made their way to feeder under the coop.  I don't know if they ate any of the feed there or not.

I'm going to start letting them out every day from now on.  There were a few skirmishes between the mother hen and some of the layers, but I think she can hold her own. 

Adding more chickens.

My neighbor, the one who gave us our first batch of chickens, found a good deal on chicks and ordered some.  She ask if we wanted any and of course we said yes.  I told her that I'd take 4.  That way we'd end up with an even flock of 10.  To make things even more interesting she offered us a broody hen to raise the chicks.

I had planned on putting the hen and chicks in my original chicken tractor.  I attempted to move it into my yard and it fell apart.  I didn't realize how much it had rotted.  The wire mesh on it is still good so I'll salvage that for another project.  I had to use chicken tractor v2.0 instead.  That was fine.  I just want to keep them contained until the current flock gets used to them being there.

Chickens have no night vision.  So it made sense to make they hand-off at night.  My neighbor came over around 10:00 with a cranky hen and five 1-day old chicks.  That was one more than we asked for.  I can't complain about that!  The hen was in no mood to be put in the tractor.  She wouldn't stay still so we could put the chicks under her.  I got a box and put some pine shavings in it.  Then we put in the chicks, sat the hen on top of them.  Then the box went into the shed for the night.

I went out to check on them the next morning.  The hen thought that she had hatched eggs.  And...  She was not too happy to see me.  She squawked a lot.  I picked up the box and moved her and the chicks into the chicken tractor.  They stuck together.  The chicks thought she was their mom.

This picture was taken right after I put them in there.

The hen continued to squawk loudly for quite a while.  I could even hear her inside.  I can only imagine what my next door neighbors must have thought.  Luckily the squawking eventually stopped. 

One chick slipped out.  The rest are under the hen.

This is a new experience for me.  When I raised chicks in the past, I kept them in the garage under heat lamps.  I never had a hen to do the work for me.  I have to check the food and water, but she's taking care of the temperature.  I don't have to adjust a lamp higher or lower, or change the bulb from 100w to 75w to 60w.  I won't have to change out the messy pine shavings and the garage isn't going to stink! 

The hen is taking her job seriously.  My dog came out to sniff around the pen and she freaked out.  She was jumping and flapping her wings and had all of her feathers puffed out.  The dog seemed confused.  None of the other chickens have ever done that.  I got her away from the pen and back into the yard.  Then the hen calmed down. 

I plan on keeping the hen and chicks in the tractor for a week.  That should give them some time to get used to being here and it'll give the current birds time to adjust as well.  At that point I'll prop up the tractor just like I did for the last round of broilers.  Then they'll be able to explore as they please.