New Chicks Continued

Since my last blog in September about our home-hatched chicks, we've had a few changes to our backyard flock. None of these are really good changes.

A few weeks ago, Rihanna, foster mom who hatched and raised the chicks, died. I'm not sure why, especially considering she'd finally regrown her feathers and was looking a lot more healthy and less like a turkey vulture. I've learned over the years that even though we protect them from predators and try to keep their environment healthy, chickens are still vulnerable to unknown illnesses. If I notice a chicken has slowed down, I prepare myself for losing her.

Then just this week, Beeker died. I was not surprised as Beeker was now one of our oldest hens at 7 years. Although she willingly helped Rihanna raise the chicks, Beeker did not lay any eggs in the past year, a sign that her body was post-henapausal. Still, Beeker's adorable little pure-white Silkie presence will be missed.

Beeker and Rihanna in happier days

It's hard to mix the bantam (miniature) breeds of chickens with the standard sized ones as the smaller ones get picked on. Our rooster, Ed Sheeran, is technically a bantam also being half Silkie and half Frizzle, but as a male, he's larger and dominates. So in essence, I have to worry less now about making sure the little ones get their fair share of food and roosting space.

In addition to the deaths of our remaining bantam hens, we have gradually come to accept that our two Frizzle/Welsummer chicks are the wrong gender for egg laying; we have two cockerels. I'm not often wrong (just ask my husband and kids...not), but I was way off on these chicks. Or call it believing what you want to be true. Originally named Charlotte and Cindy, I now just call the little rascals Frick and Frack.

Frick (middle) and Frack (left)

Bobbing for Beetles

It's summer time, the living is easy and my chickens are loving it. It's also time for gardening and dealing with the pests that come along with it. One reason I wanted chickens was to have a natural means to take care of the ticks and other bugs. One of the most infamous garden pests is the Japanese Beetle.

I read an idea in my Backyard Poultry Magazine (I know, you probably thought I read Cosmo) that I decided to modify and try to not only rid our yard from Japanese Beetles, but to also provide extra nutrition for our 18 hens and one roo.

From our friendly neighborhood Holdridge Home and Garden, I bought a beetle trap which works by suspending a pheromone attractor over a bag. Plastic supports hold the magic aphrodisiac in place, also keeping the bag open and wing inserts prevent the buggers from crawling back out. There's a zipper at the bottom of the bag for easy emptying. It's a clever invention in theory, but I wondered as I looked for a place to hang my beetle trap if it would really work. Doubts were quickly dispersed as Japanese Beetles started bombing me; I was blocking their flight paths toward their hearts' desire.

 

 

The magazine article suggested not allowing the bugs to collect in the bag as they become disgusting pretty fast in the summer sun and you want to feed live, healthy critters to your chickens. The author suspends his beetle trap over a ten gallon bucket, both hung over a hook. The beetles fly to the trap and fall through the open bag to the water below which effectly holds them hostage.

Trapped Beetles Await Their Fate in the Bag

Not having a hook already set up on our yard and too lazy to do anything about it, I came up with an alterative. Since the goal is to provide extra treats for the chickens, I had to have a way to serve the beetles without allowing them to fly away and escape the eager beaks. The beetles are very fast flyers and if they are just dumped out on the ground in front of the chickens, most will escape. I know, I tried it. So every day or so, I unzip the bottom of the beetle bag and let the day's catch drop into a waiting bowl of water. Beetles are not good swimmers so they cling to one another, forming little beetle rafts which also keeps them from getting away easily.

Water Bowl Waiting to Receive the Beetle Bounty from Above

Lunch!

I then take my water bowl of beetles and serve it to the waiting flock who devour them in about 30 seconds. Bobbing for beetles has now become part of our routine.

 

Shopping for Spring Chicks

Spring will come, I promise. I know this not because of the weather conditions, but because the local feed stores are starting to get in baby chicks to sell.

For those who may be newer to the chicken fancy, there’s a multitude of information that can be found online. I still find Backyardchickens.com to be an invaluable resource for everything from preferred breeds to healthcare to coop designs.

Since I began keeping backyard chickens almost 6 years ago, I have acquired new chicks every year, one way or another. My original flock of nine has grown to 20. I have expanded in part because I like so many different breeds that I had to have at least one (or two) of each kind. My flock of 20 is represented by 10 different breeds of chickens. I like the variety I get with the different colors of eggs and having chickens that I can easily tell apart.

I have found that as my older girls decrease their egg laying production, it helps to have new pullets to continue to supply my family with eggs. Although hens are clearly most productive during their first two years, they will continue to lay as an older hen, just not as often. We have a hard rule to not cull our chickens as these are our pets. The older, and by older I mean three years and up, lay primarily during the longer days of spring and summer, then take a sabbatical starting in the fall. I look at it as the younger girls paying into the social security fund of the menopausal ones.

I have obtained chicks utilizing different methods; by ordering them online from a hatchery in the mid-west, feed stores, hatching my own eggs, mail-order from a breeder and directly from breeders at poultry shows. I have yet to attend a chicken swap meet, but that’s an idea too. I would prefer to get them all directly from the breeder as those chicks are generally most likely to fit the standard for the breed. I was amazed when I saw the Buff Orpingtons at my first poultry show as they were easily twice as large as our online-ordered Buffy. I also trust the health more from breeders as opposed to mid-west hatcheries, although I have no personal experience to support that.

I have, however, encountered a few issues when shopping for chicks at a poultry show. The breed I want may not be available or even at the show I choose to attend. I have had the best luck purchasing young adult chickens at poultry shows. I suggest Googling “Poultry Shows” to find show and swap meet dates in your area.

Most chicks purchased from a feed store originate from the big hatcheries in the mid-west. The feed stores are merely the middle man. They are already sexed to be all female unless straight run is indicated. Feed stores usually carry four to six of the more popular breeds. In Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and other states, the law requires that buyers must purchase at least six chicks at one time. I was told this was to limit frivolous single Easter chick purchases and protect the chicks from those who are not likely to know what they are doing. Chickens are flock animals so a single chick is not going to be happy or healthy. I have been able to get around the six-chick rule with a couple of feed stores after I explained that I already had a backyard flock, it was after Easter already and I didn’t have room for more than three new chicks. Although you can have the immediate satisfaction of selecting your chicks at a feed store and taking it home that day along with all the supplies, the variety of breeds are limited. If you want a Polish Crested with its crazy Cruella Deville hair, a cute Silkie or a Marans hen that lays chocolate brown eggs, don’t look at Tractor Supply.

My very first chicks arrived from Meyer Hatchery in Polk, Ohio. The reason I initially chose Meyer was that it was the only online hatchery I could find that would ship as few as three chicks. Most hatcheries require a 15-25 minimum order, depending upon the time of year. With an online hatchery, your choices are much greater. I found it easy to pick and choose which breed and color I wanted, easy because the websites include descriptions of the chickens (personalities, cold/heat tolerance, egg color), hatch dates, and whether I wanted all female, male or straight run (mix of both genders).

If you do encounter a problem with a minimum chick number requirement, one can often find fellow chicken keepers to split the order.

My chicks arrived when they were two days old at my local post office. They had nesting material and heating packs in their special live chick box. Because newly-hatched chicks still have a yolk sack on their abdomens which provides them with 72 hours worth of continued nutrition, the best age to mail chicks is the day they emerge from their shells.

I have had limited success with hatching my own eggs. I don’t have an incubator, but the one thing a Silkie hen is good for besides looking cute, is sitting on eggs, no matter what the source. I have used my Silkies to hatch a friend’s pheasant eggs and eggs from other hens. The problems I experienced were infertile eggs (read rotten), a low hatch rate (only one out of four eggs ended up as a live chick) and not getting girl chicks.

Along with many of the chicken fanciers of the world, I only want female chicks or  pullets (young hens under the age of one year). Roosters are not necessary to get a hen to lay eggs, plus they have a reputation for becoming aggressive toward humans. Many towns have ordinances which will allow chickens to be kept in backyards as long as none of them ever crow. Crowing is not just a morning activity, but one that begins around 4 am and continues throughout the day. I have come to regard a rooster’s crow as nature’s music, but if we lived in the burbs, I wouldn’t want to subject my next door neighbors to the music blasting from my backyard.

Statistically, half of all eggs hatched will result in male chicks. It is a major disadvantage to be a boy in the chicken world. Realistically, people don’t need half of their chickens to be male. Hens not only lay the eggs, but they are quieter, gentler, and, if one is so inclined, better to eat. If the chicken reproduction world were as advanced as the dairy industry, the gender could be pre-determined. Dairy farmers also only need female calves, but they are now able to artificially inseminate their cows with semen that is already divided to produce only girls. My wish would be that scientists could come up with a way to ensure only female hatchlings and avoid a lot of the chicken gendercide.

There are those who proclaim the hatcheries to be the enemy because they end up killing the unwanted male chicks. The animal rights activists push the vegan agenda with their hatchery abuse videos. However, the video I’ve seen represents the factory farmers who raise chickens for the big companies like Purdue.  While I would agree that factory farming methods are disturbing and inhumane, not all hatcheries should fall under the same label.

The hatcheries that cater to the local farmers and backyard breeders seem to be a lot more humane in that they’re selling pets and heritage breeds. These hatcheries try to place as many boys as they can by having local sales. Some hatcheries use the male chicks as extra packing warmth with other chick orders. In the latter case, this means that if I ordered six Silver-laced Wyandotte pullets, I may also receive an equal number of little cockerels in whatever breed that wouldn’t sell.  

On the other hand, your local chicken breeder will also end up culling unwanted roosters, just at an older age. I’ve been to poultry shows where the breeders were trying hard to sell us roosters because otherwise they’ll end up slaughtering whatever cockerels they didn’t sell when they got back to the farm.

Some suggest that when ordering online to only order a straight run of chicks which is supposed to be an even mix of genders so as not to discriminate against the boys. Realistically, with so many people ordering pullets only, those who order a straight run may receive more than 50% male chicks. Until the day arrives where the only male chicks that hatch are those that are wanted, I try to be practical. It is much easier for me personally, since I don’t eat my chickens, to only bring in pullets to begin with.

As surely as the snow will melt and the mud will dry, little peeps will be arriving regularly. They may come to the post office, the feed store, the poultry show or with your neighbor. With so much cuteness and promise of the best eggs ever, it’s time to start shopping.

Out of My Way Already!

The blizzard of 2015 is coming, a "Nor' Beaster" they say. The supposedly historic storm that will wallop the northeast, particularly the coast, has gotten everyone in a tizzy. Normally, being closer to the coast has the benefit of giving us six to twelve inches less snow than our neighbors will receive one hour west. My husband the boy scout has made his preparedness list: firewood inside for the woodstove, water jugs filled, batteries, bird feeders filled, chicken coop prepared. And of course, bread and milk. Don’t know why the last one; we’re mostly gluten free and lactose intolerant.

This morning, while the snow was still whispering of the threat to come, Jay and I cleaned out the chicken coop and put down lime, diatomaceous earth and fresh shavings. The dogs came out with us.  Our geriatric Golden Retriever, Chardonnay, lives for this kind of weather. Snow is heaven for a Golden. For Coraline, the short-haired Shar-pei mix, not so much.  She wears her pink jacket when it’s cold and has a low tolerance of the whole precipitation thing.

The chickens’ water and food dispensers were filled. The water and its heater were brought inside so when the storm hits, the girls and the new rooster, Sam, can stay closed up comfortably inside. They have a heater in their coop to keep the worst of the chill off, as long as we have power. As we worked, the chickens were everywhere we didn’t want them to be; in the way of the rake and shovel, clucking ahead of me while I focused on my tasks at hand. I finally asked Jay to offer them scratch outside to try to give me some room to work.

Sam and his girls

Coraline became tired of waiting for us to let her back inside, and as she has been known to do, let herself back in by pulling the door handle down. Cory will shut the door behind her, but only if we are there to instruct her. We were still working outside and didn’t notice the wide open back door for a few minutes. A couple of cats wandered out, marveling at the snow. I heard a “Crap!” and looked up to see Jay rushing to the door to close it, cats running back in as he approached. Cory was shut in the house. Fortunately, she doesn’t know how to open the door from the inside.

Back in the house and outside chores completed, Jay looked out the window and noticed a small bird that wasn’t acting right. At first it appeared that the tiny black and grey Chickadee was carrying a thread. Then it became apparent that it was entangled and tethered to the tree by the thread. Jay held the bird while I worked to get it loose from the almost invisible thread that was wrapped around its body. Even its foot was bound to a flight feather. The little guy was frightened, but still had the wherewithal to bite us. Fortunately, a Chickadee bite isn’t as powerful as that of a chicken. After about five minutes, the thread was separated and the Chickadee flew away. It would have been a great viral video moment had anyone been there to record it. We feel so fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time.

Most of the storm preparation completed, Jay went upstairs to take a call for work. I decided to fill the dogs’ five gallon water jug. I got our big red Maine Coon, Pipsqueak, out of the sink so I could fill the jug. She still hovered close by, supervising my actions. “Could you move?” I asked while putting her on the floor. Why do the animals always have to get in the way when I’m busy? They always seem to be right where I’m walking or about to sit.

I looked out the kitchen window as the snow gently covered the ground, dusting the black smoke cat who was wandering around the bird feeder. Crap! We missed one. Tina is our adventurous, and pregnant, female. I turned off the running water and rushed to put my boots and coat on. Jay called down to me to ask where the kitten was.  He couldn’t find little Kate in our master bathroom where she is supposed to be and her mother, Kiss, was frantic.  I had a new priority and yelled, “Tina is outside!” as I went out in the snow.

I circled the house, calling and looking under bushes. Normally if a cat gets out, it will instinctively hide under our deck. Our cats are exclusively indoors so the great outdoors terrifies them. Except for Tina, that is. She's an indoor cat, but a rebellious one. The last I’d seen of Tina was when she was leaving the bird feeder area and headed toward the front yard. Tina had kept several steps ahead of me and also circled the house where I found her sitting calmly by the back door once I caught up. Apparently the adventure had lost some of its fun with the reality of snow and cold. I opened the door and Tina sauntered in. Wiping the snow off of her coat, I lectured all the creatures surrounding me about the dangers of going out. Didn’t they know there was a blizzard coming? Be grateful you don’t have to live outside, dammit!

Jay called back downstairs. Did I know where the kitten was? Jeez! I had a good idea since I’d heard the cabinet doors under our bathroom sink opening and closing before. Under the sink, behind closed cabinet doors, we have a laundry drop to the washing machine downstairs. The drop is about two feet before the clothes land in the basket. I had done most of the laundry, but there were still dirty clothes in there. I reached up and opened the cabinet over the washing machine and pulled out the basket of clothes. Sure enough, cute little 5-week-old Kate the kitten sat there nestled in the laundry and looking very comfortable in her new bed. I took the kitten back to her anxious mother upstairs and, using a bungee cord, secured the cabinet doors.



Kate the laundry princess

Enough drama with the animals already! Can we just get on with the blizzard? Check back with me tomorrow to see if I need digging out.

Counting Chickens Before They Hatch

Last summer, a season which seems like a dream right now with the umpteenth snow falling in Connecticut, Jay and I discussed chickens.  We had a backyard flock of twelve, eleven hens of various breeds and one awesome Cochin rooster named Aslan.  We had lost two hens during the summer to unknown causes.  Lucy the Rhode Island Red and Righty, a Silver Spangled Hamburg, were found dead in the coop.  Our coop isn’t big enough to handle a lot of chickens so our discussion centered around replacing the hens we’d lost, not adding more than two. 

I love having the pale green eggs laid by our two Easter Eggers/Americauna’s, Faye and Flo, but they are going on five-years-old and don’t lay as often.  I reasoned that if we were going to add another hen, she should be an Easter Egger as well.  Jay suggested we hatch our own chicks, but I was not sold on the idea. 

We have two Silkie hens, Mumbles and Beeker,  who seem to always be broody.  Silkies are known for being broody which means they feel a need to sit on the nest for weeks at a time with few breaks in an effort to hatch whatever may or may not be underneath their bodies.  Silkies are often used to hatch eggs the natural way (no plug in incubators).   I had read that hens which are Easter Egger crosses will still lay green eggs which would be our case; Easter Egger/Cochin mixes.  If we hatched our own, the ideal would be to get one or two female chicks who grew to look like their father, but laid green eggs.  The worst case would be hatching another rooster.  That’s the risk of hatching your own eggs as opposed to buying chicks that are already sexed.   We have a no-kill policy with our flock so gendercide was out of the question. 

I wanted to wait and go to a poultry show to buy chicks from a breeder where I could be guaranteed of the gender.  The coop is small, so adding males would only take up unnecessary space.  Roosters are not needed for hens to lay eggs and I was afraid of them fighting each other.  If we were to add chickens, they really needed to be female.  Also, since our Silkies had hatched eggs before for a friend, I’d learned that the chances of getting viable chicks were slim.  It’s heartbreaking to watch an egg hatch only to have the chick die before it can exit the shell. 

So I compromised.  We’d try to hatch our own and if it didn’t work, we’d go an upcoming poultry show and buy a sure thing, a young pullet or two.  This gave our birds almost a month to produce home-grown chicks (hopefully little girls). 

Faye and Flo cooperated and gave us two eggs each, two days apart, then went on their merry ways.  Most hens just lay the egg and go, trusting society to raise their children, or not.  They don’t care.  I wrote the laying date on each egg with a Sharpie so I would know when to expect hatching.  Beeker and Mumbles were both broody so I put two eggs under each hen.  Twenty-one days later, two eggs were rotten, one hatched a dead chick and we got one live chick.  The live chick came out of the darker green egg which told me that Flo was the biological mother.   I was skeptical, but Kelsey said she’d had a dream about the chick; it was a girl and we had to name her Penelope.  Kelsey was often clairvoyant when she was younger so I felt somewhat reassured.

Newborn Penelope hides under foster mom Beeker

 We set Penelope up with her foster mom, Beeker, in a cat carrier in our fenced-in garden.  It was late August so the outside temperatures were perfect for a hatchling.  I studied chick pictures of Cochins and Easter Eggers to try to determine who Penelope would take after.  Our rooster is a partridge color, absolutely gorgeous with his patchwork of colors and his long, copper-laced teal cape feathers.   Partridge-colored hens are plainer than the roos, but still more attractive than the Easter Egger golden brown.   Penelope looked just like a baby Americauna/Easter Egger with her chipmunk black stripe.  The only difference was that she had feathered legs like a Cochin.  Oh well.  I just hope she remained a girl. 

When Penelope started chest-bumping her mother and her neck grew longer, like a cockerel’s, I got nervous.  What’s the male form of “Penelope”?   Peter?  I watched You Tube videos on how to determine the sex of a chick and tortured little Penelope by holding her upside-down, her mother clucking at me anxiously while I examined the chick’s vent, a.k.a. “hoo-hoo”.  Nothing popped up which would indicate a little roo, so maybe Kelsey was right.  Of course, professional chicken sexers can make mistakes and I was only You Tube trained.

Penelope and her fluffy white mother were inseparable, even as the child outgrew her mom.  After about a month of keeping them confined to the garden, I put the two in with the flock.  They were accepted pretty easily as the others were used to seeing the little peeping chick run around by now.  If another hen came near Penelope, little two-pound Beeker would challenge her.  Silkies are a bantam breed which means they are mini chickens.  Bantams are about half to a third the size of our other hens so the sight of Beeker chest-bumping another hen was almost comical.  Penelope’s sire is a Cochin, one of the larger breeds of chickens and weighs in at nine pounds.  For the chicken people out there, Cochin’s also come in bantam size, but ours is a standard.  She should be a big girl (again, hoping she’d stay a she). 

Aslan the rooster.  Beeker is the white fluff directly behind him.
 

Penelope (center) with the flock.  Her biological mother, Flo, is left of her in brown.  Foster mom, Beeker, on the far right.

 

Finally, Penelope’s feathers started coming in during her second month.  Her Easter Egger down feathers and black stripe was replaced by the brown coloring of a partridge colored hen, complete with copper-laced teal feathers on her cape.  Definitely a girl, and a partridge color to boot! 

Penelope as a teenager

If there was any doubt, Penelope started laying eggs in January.  She still doesn't look like a mature hen, more of a teenager.  Penelope's eggs are a pale green like the other Easter Eggers, but a darker sage color.  Her eggs are still small because she’s young, but I expect the size will increase.  We have our first home-grown chicken to carry on the green egg laying in exactly the color and gender we were hoping for.  

Our tray of rainbow eggs.  Penelope's are the center two.

 

A Rooster and a Gentleman

Back in January, I blogged about our new beautiful, but imposing Cochin rooster we named Aslan. At the time, I was very hesitant to introduce a rooster back into the flock because the last one we had became aggressive toward humans. However, between my family’s pleading and the rooster’s breeder who insisted that Cochins are gentle giants, I relented.

Aslan

Aslan was a good decision. He reminds one of a dinosaur when he runs, mostly because you can actually hear his footsteps, like timpani pounding on the ground. His crowing is minimal, especially when compared to the neighbor’s rooster half a mile away who seems to crow non-stop. The most astonishing observation of Aslan is how caring he is.

I first observed Aslan’s nurturing instinct when I left two eggs I’d collected on the ground while I did something else. He clucked and circled the eggs repeatedly, acting concerned that his future offspring were left unattended in the open.

Recently our bantam hen, Millie, became sick. She had a neurological problem that became increasingly worse and started remaining in the coop on the floor. As time went on, Millie not only had trouble walking, but could no longer fly or keep her balance. We had to put her up in the nesting box at night and take her down in the morning. When I finally took Millie to the vet (Dr. Cindy Brown in Mystic specializes in birds and loves chickens), she was put on a homemade diet, supplements and antibiotics to see if the cause was a vitamin D deficiency. The other possible causes were cancer or Marek’s disease, but I was unwilling to spring for x-rays and blood work. Millie had to be isolated in a small cage to keep the other chickens from stealing her food. Aslan immediately became concerned, first by looking for Millie in her normal spot on the floor, then by clucking around her in the cage which was placed near the coop. In the end, I had to have pretty, sweet Millie euthanized as her condition worsened.

We often give our chickens leftovers to supplement their diet of layer pellets. The hens come running as the goodies are tossed on the ground. Aslan runs to eat too, but unlike the hens who will steal from each other, he’ll stand back and let the girls go first. He has a bigger body to nourish, but he doesn’t need the calories the hens do to produce eggs.

Our blueberry and raspberry bushes traditionally provide summer treats for the chickens too. As we pick the blueberries, the chickens will stand around and on top of our feet, waiting for the next berry to fall their way. The hens rush in like bridesmaids trying to catch the bouquet, grabbing and running with their prize with the others in hot pursuit. Aslan seems to just supervise and provide. He will actually pick up a fallen berry and, instead of gobbling it down himself, carry the morsel to a hen and drop it in front of her. Who knew a rooster could be such a gentleman?



Blueberry  Opportunities

Just Pecking Around

I blogged over a month ago about our new chicks, Meringue, Nestle and Narnia.  They have been integrated into the rest of the flock now for a couple of weeks.  The newbies are still at that cute, friendly stage where they follow people around the yard and don't mind getting in your lap.  I took the opportunity today to take pictures today of our flock of 17 with my cell phone. 

Meringue and Nestle

  

Everytime I tried to take a picture of the 3 chicks, Narnia would run up to me and be excluded.  So I finally just held her.

 

Later, the 3 little girls rested so could get my shot.

Meringue, who is the mixed color Orpington, so far is living up to her breeder's promise of becoming quite large. Her sire is reportedly a 14-pound roo. She and the little Buff Orpington, Narnia, are living up the Orpington reputation for having the best personalities. Nestle, the Black Copper Maran, is more shy.

Millie, our Mille Fleur Bantam Cochin, is the prettiest little thing, but it seems like she's always broody and sits in the nesting box a lot.  The other two bantams are Silkies and they also go broody a lot.  Cute, but poor egg layers.

Aslan, our Partridge-colored Cochin rooster, is still magnificent.  He's very good with the little ones, but the crowing commences at 4:30 am.

Chicks at the water with the rest of the flock.  Buffy, our original Buff Orpington is on the right beside Chad, the Light Brahma. The fluffy white thing on the left is Beaker, our white Silkie.

It seems that many of my Facebook friends think of me as the chicken guru now.  I've actually been tagged by people I don't know.  I am by no means an expert on chickens, but I have learned a lot in the past three years.  My best resource continues to be Backyard Chickens. 

What started out as dream of three hens now has blossomed into a flock with 16 hens and one rooster with 13 different breeds represented.  I love the looks of the various breeds and their eggs (which is mainly why I have so many now), but it has the added benefit of being to tell the chickens apart easily and name them.  Pets first, egg providers second, garden compost third, dinner never.

Size Does Matter - If You're a Chicken

This past weekend, the family (husband Jay, daughter Kelsey and myself) went on our planned excursion to the poultry show being held at the Big E, an hour away. Our plan was to purchase a couple of the large breed hens we’d admired so much at the last poultry show we attended in November where we bought another Silkie and a bantam Cochin, both very small girls.

Millie, the bantam Cochin hen

The Mallory Complex Building at the Big E was divided into two areas, birds for sale and show birds. Only one person was selling chickens in the large fowl category, the rest were bantam (miniature) chickens or breeds that didn’t interest us. So we zeroed in on Steve who had a few cages of very large Cochins. Unfortunately, his hens were already marked as sold and we didn’t want a rooster….or did we? We could wait a couple of hours for Steve’s friend to come back from the farm where he’d gone to get more hens to sell, try to talk one of the exhibitors into selling their show chickens (after judging) or consider one of the three colorful cockerals (male chickens under the age of one year) Steve still had available. Jay admired the cape of feathers on the males for fly-tying purposes (a fly-tier will pay as much as $90 for a scalped rooster cape of outstanding quality), Kelsey wanted to get the rooster and go; I was the hold out. As we stood there and debated, two other buyers came up and offered to buy Steve’s chickens. I was being pressured.

I did not want to take a chance on another aggressive rooster, like our previous one who had to be sold. The downside to not having a rooster though is that they truly become the leader of a flock and will protect their hens from predators, often to the death. These boys were the size of a hawk, but a lot heftier. A rooster has no influence on a hen’s egg-laying ability, just whether or not the eggs are fertile (something we don’t care about). The Cochin breed is known for being big, friendly and fluffy; the gentle giant of chickens. Interestingly enough, our bantam hen Millie is a Cochin too. Same breed, just two extreme sizes.

You guessed it; I gave in and we got ourselves a roo. He barely fit in the large cat carrier I had, but we placed him in the back seat and happily left, me still in disbelief that we’d just bought a rooster. His clucking is a low, resonant sound, a deep James Earl Jones-type of voice. “How about naming him Mufasa?” I suggested to Kelsey. “He’ll be like the King of the Jungle, a protector of his flock.” Kelsey came up with a better name, Aslan, the lion character from The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.

Since we had to go through Hartford on our way home, we made a detour to Whole Foods to pick up gluten free foods for Kelsey. Kelsey has Celiac Disease so we are constantly looking for food that will work for her. We filled our grocery cart and finished by picking up lunch while were there. As we sat in our car in the Whole Foods parking lot eating lunch, I thought about what a wonderful family day it’d been. A brilliant cockeral in the back seat, a happy daughter because she’d found the gluten free mega-load, and a delicious meal for three hungry people. Aslan even got to share in our Whole Foods bounty.

Normally, there is a proper way to introduce a new chicken to the existing flock, just as there are best practices for bringing a new kitten home. Chickens, however, can be evil toward new-comers and tend to attack those perceived as intruders or weak. I hoped that with Aslan’s size and gender, he wouldn’t get hen-pecked, but he’s very young. My hens may not be impressed with a teenage boy. With previous new clucks, I put them in a cage near the coop so everyone could get used to seeing each other for a few days. In this case, the temperature was expected to be about 9 degrees overnight so leaving a chicken in an exposed cage was out of the question. I ignored Kelsey’s suggestion of keeping a rooster in her bedroom. Aslan squeezed through the door of my bigger cage and stayed there until dark when I placed him on an empty perch in the chicken coop. Chickens are blind and helpless in the dark so the hens had no choice but to allow the stranger with the deep voice to nest with them.

In the morning I opened the coop doors and calm, cool Aslan strutted out of the coop with his new harem and began to eat the scratch off the ground. This was the first time the hens got a good look at Aslan out in the yard with them. The first challenger was Pilgrim, our Plymouth Barred Rock, then Lucy, the Rhode Island Red. Both tried to spar with him. A couple of fluttering chest-bumps from the big guy and the hens quickly figured out the new boy was no push over and backed off.

Aslan is doing great so far. I constantly marvel at how truly magnificent he is with his multiple colors and his feathered legs. I took my scale out and weighed him; he’s 9 pounds. He should weigh about 11 pounds when he’s fully grown. He hasn’t picked on any of the girls and has started crowing, albeit an adolescent crow. The hens respect him and no further aggression was observed from anybody. When I let them out in the afternoon to range in our yard, Aslan stayed right with his new flock, returning to the coop to roost when it got dark. It’s been such an easy integration with a large rooster into a flock of hens. Normally it can take weeks for a flock to completely accept new pullets and even then the smaller ones will always be at the bottom of the chicken hierarchy.



Aslan with his new flock

In the cat world, the males rarely dominate the females. Boy cats will “Yes Dear” the girls, staying out the way if she’s in a bad mood and savoring the times she is affectionate. With dogs, we’ve all heard of the little dog bossing the large dog. For them, and for people, an assertive personality is all that’s needed to be in charge. In the chicken yard, however, size does matter. It doesn’t hurt to be the only boy either.



Aslan the Magnificent

Talking Chicken

A few weeks ago, we suffered a chicken casualty with our backyard flock; a hawk killed our best Americauna hen, Billie. I had driven home after spending the morning at the horse barn where I volunteer and spied the hawk perched about 30 feet up in the trees. It flew off when I got out of the car so I felt better. It wasn’t a large hawk as birds of prey go so I rationalized that if it isn’t big enough to carry its prey away in its talons, most of my chickens would be safe. The chickens were huddled up under our deck, as close to the house as they could get and making a nervous growling sound.

Later, I let the dogs out and noticed their interest in something on the ground. I knew it couldn’t be good. I found Billie, beheaded and partially eaten. Naïve perhaps, but I’d not considered that the hawk would kill its prey and eat it on the ground. The rest of the chickens had undoubtedly seen the whole thing and although chickens aren’t the brightest birds, they were badly shaken. It was days before the girls would venture out from cover without first looking skyward and then running to the next safe place. We buried Billie next to Frodo, the red Silkie we lost last year to a hawk on almost the exact same date. Although I miss Billie and the perfect pale green eggs she laid, I realize we’ve been lucky with predators. We have lost one chicken annually to a hawk. We live in a rural area surrounded by woods and populated by coyotes, foxes, raccoons and fisher cats. Unlike our cats, chickens must live outside. We have since added coverage with a tarp to their chicken yard and limit their free-ranging on our property to their enclosure surrounded by electrified net fencing. The girls seem to like the extra overhead and it will also help to maintain a larger snow-free scratching space for them in the winter.  The perfect set-up would be an 8-foot high fence with poultry netting over the top, but we’re still resisting the commitment of money and effort it would take to make that happen.

Chicken Coop Addition

Meanwhile, we had been kinda-sorta looking for a couple of older chicks to add to the flock. Daughter Kelsey wanted another Silkie and I fell in love with the Mille Fleur colors some of the other breeds come in. Mille Fleur is French for “many flowers”; the coloration of mottled gold, black and white. I found out about the Boston Poultry Show in North Oxford, Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago so we planned a family outing to go chicken shopping. I contacted the person in charge of the show to make sure that there would be chickens available for purchase in addition to those being shown. One of the false assumptions people make who come to cat shows is that all the cats there are for sale (most are not), so I didn’t want to make the same assumption and go to a poultry show for nothing.

The show was being held in an open barn area on a cold Saturday, something a teenage girl doesn’t take preparing for seriously.  Kelsey’s Converse-covered frozen feet cut our visit short, but not before we had a chance to admire ginormous chickens who were there for the competition under the category of Large Fowl.  "Ginormous" is the only way to describe these birds.  We have a Jersey Giant hen who is supposed to reach 10 pounds, but she is a light weight compared to the large fowl breeds at the show who were the height of a hawk and much broader; probably four times as large as my standard breed chickens.  The first thought was that a gargantuous rooster like this would be incredible flock protection against the birds of prey.  Then again, if he sees people as a threat as many roosters do, that could be a major problem.  I don’t want to risk being flogged by a feathered pterodactyl roo. 

However, we came to look at bantam (miniature) breeds. We ended up buying a white Silkie for Kelsey and a Mille Fleur Cochin for me, both females, and named them Beaker and Millie respectively. Our backyard flock is now at 14 hens.

We really enjoyed talking chicken to others at the poultry show. They told us about the next show which will be held indoors at the Big E the weekend of January 14-15. For more information, check the website of the Northeastern Poultry Congress. I think a couple of big girls are in our chicken cards next.

Millie, my Millie Fleur Cochin

Beaker, Kelsey's white Silkie

Not Exactly Spring Chickens Anymore

Over two years ago, ten baby chicks arrived at the Ledyard Post Office in a box addressed to me and we became backyard chicken hobbyists. I still have seven of those chicks and have since added more. Along the way, the rooster and two hens were sold, we lost a couple of hens to predators, hatched a couple of chicks and gave them back when they turned into little roos; now we have a flock of 13 hens. To those who may still wonder, yes, hens lay quite well without a rooster. We have a diverse flock of four Americaunas, two Silver Spangled Hamburgs, a Silkie, Jersey Giant, Light Brahma, Rhode Island Red, Red Star (a mixed breed), Plymouth Barred Rock and our favorite, Buffy the Buff Orpington.

Foster, one of our Americaunas as a baby chick

Last spring as the days became longer and the snow finally melted, egg production got up to nine eggs daily. Now we’re averaging four eggs per day. My original hens are reaching the age of less egg production, chicken menopause if you will. Chicken farmers often routinely cull the flock every two to three years and replace them with new pullets. That way their egg production keeps up with demand and they don’t end up with hundreds of less productive hens. We, however, have chickens as pets so although Foster hasn’t laid an egg in weeks, there are no plans to “off” her.



The Americaunas - Flo, Foster and Billie, Faye in back

I was aware that hens’ egg production slacks off considerably after a few years, but was curious as to other causes of fewer eggs. I turned to the Back Yard Chickens website and found an article written by J.C. Hermes which goes into more detail. In general, egg production is affected by age, temperature (hot or cold), breed, light, nutrition, stress, broodiness and molting. The article is written about the White Leghorn chicken, an excellent egg laying breed normally used for commercial production. The author states that the young hen starts laying at 35 weeks old, lays 265 eggs annually, her peak production lasting 10 weeks after which the eggs gradually come less frequently.

The egg production from my girls has slacked off more than normal even taking the shorter days into consideration so I’m leaning toward age as a cause. A couple of hens are molting so they are excused from laying for a few months. A molting chicken has to put all her energy into growing new feathers, not making eggs. Pilgrim, my Plymouth Barred Rock hen, is currently broody. Pilgrim prefers to sit on the nest than lay eggs, so she’s excused for now also. Once Pilgrim gets past this hormonal phase, she’ll go back to laying again.


Kelsey with the Peeps

As for other possible causes, I don’t regard my hens as stressed birds. They range freely in our yard and have continuous access to layer pellets, oyster shells for calcium and water. They come running to us in the yard, a behavior reinforced by the receipt of our leftovers. They don’t peck each other’s feathers out until bald spots show, a sign of overcrowding or an active rooster. I did notice that after Hurricane Irene came through, egg production dropped markedly for days afterward. The storm followed by the constant noise of my neighbor’s generator probably caused them more stress than it did my family.

I have a heater in the chicken coop for the cold winter nights which keeps the temperature above 35 degrees. I do this not for egg production, but to prevent my girls from getting frost bite on their combs and wattles. This year I may add a light. Egg production is definitely influenced by the amount of light exposure with the normal recommendation being at least 12 hours daily for maximum egg laying. I’ve noticed that if the weather is overcast and rainy, the following day’s egg production will be smaller. Likewise, sunny days yield more eggs.

Backyard breeds like mine are not expected to be major egg layers. My hens all look different and their eggs reflect their diversity; they can be small, large, white, blue-green, brown or freckled. I usually know each egg’s creator by name. I got the chickens for several reasons; pets, pest control, garden fertilizer and the most delicious, beautiful eggs. We don’t need a bunch of eggs, but it’s kind of special when your breakfast has been produced by someone you know personally.

Counting My Eggs

I'll bet you've been thinking, "We haven't heard about Sharon's chickens in a while.  Wonder what they're up to?"  Well, the girls have been busy scratching up bugs, leaving poop around for the dog to clean up, laying eggs and a couple are preparing for motherhood.  In a previous post on the tendency for some hens to become broody, I mentioned that when the broody mood strikes a hen, she'll sit on the nest all day and night, taking a couple of short breaks to eat and drink.  She'll bristle and cluck menancingly (ever heard a chicken growl?) when I lift up the cover of the nesting box in an effort to scare me away from her nest.  Some will bite when you reach under them.  A broody hen will stop laying once she thinks she has enough to hatch and start sitting on her eggs so that they will all begin incubating at the same time.  This is how birds get their clutch to hatch within a 48-hour period even if it took 10 days to lay all the eggs.  A fertilized egg remains in a state of limbo until incubation commences.

Mumbles - Blue Silkie

In this day of mass egg production and plug-in incubators, most modern hens have the broody trait bred out of them.  If you don't want new chicks running around all the time, but just want eggs for consumption and healthy chickens in the backyard, broody gets in the way.  Some hens, however, are naturally broody and can serve the purpose of being a surrogate mom if one wants to hatch chicks the way that nature intended.  Such is case with many Silkies, the funny looking chickens with hairy legs and fuzzy hair that stands up on top of their heads.  We have one Silkie, a little blue one named Mumbles.  Silkies are well-known for being a broody breed and are often used to hatch other hens' eggs the old fashioned way.  Silkies are a bantam (miniature) bird, weighing less than 2 pounds.  On the other end of our chicken spectrum, we have Thelma, an 8-pound Jersey Giant. 

In casual conversation with fellow volunteer Lorraine at the horse farm, I learned that she not only had many chickens, but also had pheasants.  She was interested in hatching her eggs, but none of her birds had the maternal broody instinct.  I'll remind the reader that I do not have a rooster, so although my hens lay daily, none of the eggs are fertile.  Lorraine has both genders of chickens and pheasants.  I was at the point where I needed to break Mumbles of her broodiness, but after talking to Lorraine, we decided to give Mumbles a job.  

We put 8 tiny, dark green pheasant eggs under Mumbles, removing the golf ball decoys to encourage the other hens to lay in other parts of the nesting boxes.  Hens like to all lay in the same one or two locations, even to the point where one will stand on top of another.  They will cue up like women waiting to use the public restroom, waiting for one hen to finish delivering her egg du jour (which can take over 30 minutes) just to use that particular nesting box.  The empty spaces on either side of the laying hen are ignored unless there is another egg (or golf ball) there to indicate that this is also a suitable place to leave one's egg.  Even with the golf ball decoy, some hens insist upon using the same box each time. 

Once Mumbles started happily incubating her pheasant eggs, Thelma decided she wanted to go broody too and took over Mumbles spot.  Mumbles was dedicated to sitting on her eggs, but with her small size, it's too easy for the larger hens to push her off the nest.  If I did this the right way, I'd have a separate nesting box caged off just for broody hens.  The problem is getting a hen to adapt to a new space once she has started sitting.  I tried bringing Mumbles inside, setting up a large cage for her and the eggs.  Like I'd suspected, she was so freaked out at the move that her unhatched babies were forgotten in her anxiety.  Back out they all went. 

Thelma - Jersey Giant

Toward the end of the pheasant eggs' 24-day incubation period, Thelma had all the pheasant eggs and Mumbles had two golf balls.  I tried splitting the eggs up so each hen would have a job, but the other hens would inevitably push Mumbles off her eggs.  None of the other hens would dare challenge Thelma from her spot so I gave in and just let her take all the glory while poor Mumbles hovered protectively over her Titleists.  She's not that smart, but little Mumbles is committed. 

Finally, the pheasants started pipping their eggs.  It can take a day or two for a chick to work its way out of its shell enclosure.  Unlike mammals where the mother's body does all the work to push the baby out into the world, the process of hatching is completely up to the chick which has now outgrown its womb.  The really incredible part was being able to hear the peeping and pecking and feeling the heartbeat in my hand while holding the egg.  Unfortunately, hatching takes a toll.  When the hatching started we had 7 eggs as one had broken in the nest previously.  Two chicks went through the process of hatching only to die immediately.  Two eggs never hatched.  Three eggs eventually revealed viable pheasant chicks.  We were amazed at how large the chicks were compared to their egg.  It was twice as much chick as egg. 

Pheasant egg hatching

I had told myself that if hatching eggs worked, fine.  If not, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.  However, I stayed home the day the eggs started hatching, checking on the eggs every hour or so.  I was even out there at 10 pm with a flashlight.  My concern was that I'd learned from the wonderful resource of the Pheasant and Partridge Forum on Backyardchickens that pheasant chicks are so wild that they will not stay with their surrogate mother, but will run off.  I wanted to make sure I brought each one inside to the cage I had set up with a heat lamp as soon as it hatched.  Hatching under plain heat doesn't work either as they need the humidity, otherwise the egg sticks to their feathers and inhibits their movement.  Once a midwife, always a midwife.  Who was I kidding?

New Pheasant

Pheasants are beautiful birds and most often used for hunting.  Their feathers make gorgeous fishing flies, hence my husband's interest.  The pheasant can not be domesticated like the chickens.  They require a separate, completely enclosed area which allows them room to fly.  If given the chance to escape, a pheasant will take off; no thank you's, no parting gift, no last glance over the shoulder, just gone.  They can't be mixed with chickens as they are likely to pick up diseases from them.  They are actually known for attacking chickens and each other if the conditions aren't spacious enough.  Pheasants are truly wild and since we like having pets and didn't want to do any new construction, we declined Lorraine's offer to keep any. 

Lorraine has since gotten an incubator, a method I would employ if I wanted to hatch a lot of eggs simply because it leaves less to chance.  She did, however, give us eleven fertilized hen eggs to try when she picked up the pheasant chicks.  Thelma and Mumbles are at it again, partly because I feel guilty for taking their babies away.  I drew a black line around the fertile eggs with a marker to differentiate them from our other eggs.  Lorraine has agreed to take any chicks back that we don't want.  Hatch date is May 21st.  I'll keep you posted. 

Pheasant Chicks