We have more chickens!

Our boys needed more females around (5-8 girls per roosters) and I wanted to have more eggs laid each week so I've been looking into getting more chickens.

I finally found a lady selling five brown chickens for a decent price about twenty minutes away from us.  So we picked them up last week.  They were kept separate from our flock for three days, and then they were allowed in the coop and chicken run with them, but not out to free range.

This morning I went out and caught, pet, and talked to each one, before carrying it out of the chicken run and letting it go to free range with our flock.  They are much friendlier and more calm than our original birds and they seem pretty happy to be out and about today.

Molting

Our champion chicken is molting... her feathers are falling off and they will regrow.  I have never heard of this before so I had to look it up (and asked the vet to confirm the diagnosis when she was out for the goats).  Apparently birds will do this about once a year where they shed their feathers and then need to regrow them.  It takes a lot of energy and so they will stop laying eggs during this time and it can take up to 4 months to regrow their feathers.

She looks pretty gross and I feel bad for her, but I guess this is just part of life.  Bird life.

Goat stealing and pneumonia

We will probably never find out why the neighbors keep taking our animals, but it happen again. 

Johnathon came home one day and all three goats were missing.  He knew something was wrong because they don't leave the yard even if they get out of their pen so he went next door and found them.

They were locked in a pen that is about 20 feet by 15 feet, with 30 other goats.  He was hysterical because those goats are for meat and can be killed at any time and because the male goats were mounting our three girls.  He knows better than to call me when I'm at work but I heard something while I was teaching and checked my phone - two missed calls and seven texts from him.  I called back thinking he was dying and he told me what the problem was.

He managed to get them out of the pen and dragged and carried them back home to the pen. 

Over the next few days we built their pen higher and stronger to keep them in.

But within 24 hours the goats were all showing signs of illness.  Jenny was having coughing fits that lasted 30 seconds at a time.  Carrie had green snot and a cough and Kelly was also starting to cough.

My google searching said they had pneumonia.  Yet another illness that is deadly with goats. 

Other than having a vet come out or me having to inject them with antibiotics, my only choice was oral injections of some medicine I could get at the feed store.

Every day for five days I had to go catch the goats and force the syringe into their mouth.  Each day they got smarter and catching them became nearly impossible because they remembered all of my tricks so I was only able to get the medicine into Jenny and Kelly for three days.

Even with Carrie getting the medicine for five days, she wasn't showing signs of improvement so I finally had to call the vet.  They came out and diagnosed an upper respiratory infection in each of them and had to give each of them a shot.  I've never heard the goats scream the way they did when they got those shots, it was horrible to hear.  The vet said that the medicine does burn when it goes in but that they should only need one shot and they will be cleared up in a week.

The next day each of them had a HUGE (I'm talking baseball size - not exaggerating  where they'd gotten the shot, but I haven't heard very much coughing and they are are already eating better.  We spent an hour building the fence higher and now there is only one 10 foot section that is four feet tall, the rest is about 5.5 feet tall.

They're back

A couple days after we got the 5 guinea back (the second time) from the neighbors, I decided to try to let a couple birds out during the day.  They constantly try to stay together so I was hoping that the ones we let out wouldn't go far and I could let them back in at night. 

A few hours later they weren't anywhere to be seen.

A couple hours after that Johnathon came in saying there were FIVE birds outside the run.  Sure enough, the three "free" birds had disappeared and somehow found the 2 birds that had been missing for over a week. 

We got them all back in and we have had 7 guinea in the run ever since.

We have started letting some of them out each day.  I've found that as long as one bird is in the chicken run, the others will come back to the cage at night.

I only wish that I could tell which birds are let out each day so I can be sure they all get a chance.

We don't want to get weeeet!

The goats have been getting out of their pen again...

The other day it was raining lightly when we got home... the goats were out, but by golly they didn't want to get wet!  Good thing our canopy was out...

The Guinea update

So after 4 months the guinea disappeared one day.  They just weren't at the coop that night.  I told Johnathon to find them the next day after school, he looked and couldn't find them.  That night I received a couple texts from the neighbor saying the birds were by the road and he was trying to herd them back to safety.  He offered to catch them until I came, I said no and went out to look for them.  We looked for 40 minutes in the dark but never saw or heard any of them.

A few days went by where we were looking everywhere for the birds.  Then I asked a friend of mine that was going to the barn to see if our birds were there.  Sure enough the neighbors had caged the birds and never told us.  We went over that day during a big rain storm and got them back.  They'd been in a 10 x 10 dog kennel with about 40 chickens.

We put them in our kennel and closed the top so they couldn't fly out.

A few hours later we saw a couple eggs on the ground.  They're laying eggs now.

Two days later, they were gone again.  Somehow they had gotten out of the roof.

We hoped they'd come home that night, but like before, the neighbor caught them and caged them that same day and we only found out when Johnathon went snooping around.

A few days later JOhnathon went over and got them back.  There were only 5 there, 2 are missing.

He put them back in our kennel and we sealed off the roof so they can't get out.

It's been about 2 weeks now and we still don't know what happen to the 2 missing birds.  The ones we have are laying eggs but not as often so we think the two that went missing were females.  They're still trapped in the coop because I'm worried if we let them out they'll go near the neighbor's barn again and he will cage them up.

How to fix a guinea

Yesterday we caught the guinea, which has become hard.  They are definitely strong birds and with toe nails as long and sharp as his, we don't really want to get close to him.

Every day we've had to let the free-range chickens out of the coop and chicken run and then let the new chickens and the injured guinea out of the coop, but only into the chicken run.  At night we put them all back into the coop and leave the guinea in the chicken run so that no one pecks at him.

We could tell that his hurt leg was incredibly swollen and it also now has a greenish bump on it.  It still doesn't feel broken, at least not a major break, but we can't figure out what is wrong.

On the way home today we stopped off at the feed store and picked up some anti-bacterial wound cleaner for animals, some medicated feed with antibiotics in it, and some electrolytes for the water.  We put the new chickens in the coop so he would have the chicken run to himself and then treated the bird with the wound spray and left the food and water out for him.

We didn't see him drink the water or eat any of the special feed, but hopefully things will improve soon.

Another guinea is down

Today was a day of rain and thunderstorms.  They were pretty crazy, but it came in spurts.

In the morning, I looked out the window and saw six guinea.

Six.

We have seven.

Guinea travel in packs and when they're separated they go crazy trying to get back to each other.

Johnathon went outside and walked through the woods on both sides of the house towards the neighbors' properties and behind the house where the goats are.  I figured a wild animal or the neighbor's dog must have gotten the bird, but he couldn't find any sign of the bird.

Four hours later we got in the car and headed down the driveway, but stopped half way there because the guinea were all about 50 feet from the main road.  Normally the cars driving past us on the road will scare the guinea back up towards the house, but I knew if I drove towards them, they'd probably go out to the road.  So Johnathon and I got out of the car to walk towards them and then herd them back up towards the house.

It was as we were getting out of the car that I realized there were seven guinea again.  I was relieved that nothing had happen to the seventh bird, until I realized that he was hopping around on one foot.  It took awhile, but we eventually caught him and carried him up to the kennel.  We couldn't see what was wrong with his leg, it didn't feel broken, but he definitely wasn't using it and didn't want us touching it.

We put him in the chicken run with the chickens, but the rooster immediately pecked at him.  We herded all of the chickens into the coop and closed them in and then left the guinea in the chicken run by himself before we left.

Tomorrow, we will have to investigate what's wrong and try to find out how to fix it...

And their shenanigans continue

The boys broke the original screen door to our mud room, several times, during our first 4 months in our home.

The original screen door

We were without a door for a month or two before I finally bought a pretty new screen door and installed it a few months ago.

Carrie had pushed through the screen on the bottom half of the door to get into the mud room awhile back.  I left it the way it was partly because I hadn't bought the tool to push the screen back into place, but also because I knew Carrie would just push through again.  The screen served it's purpose to keep bugs out, and Carrie would simply come into the mud room looking for treats, and then just walk back out when she was done.  Almost like a doggie door.

One day last week, the goats were out.  This isn't anything new, in fact we often will open the gate and let them out when we're working the yard.  I'd rather let them out, then to have them jump or climb out.  And once they're out, they typically go right back in when we open the gate or shake their food dishes.

I was done with my work outside, but the goats needed some more time to graze, so I headed inside.

Carrie followed me in, but I stopped her from coming into the house.

I sat at my computer and started working....

And then I heard a bang.  And a crash.  And a bigger thud.  I yelled and jumped up to run out to the mud room to see what they'd knocked off the shelves...

Are you kidding me?!?!?!

They literally ripped the door and the hinges from the frame!

I'm not sure which goat did it.  I am guessing that Kelly came in and tried to jump out the top screen and may have gotten stuck half way through.  Or maybe it was Jenny trying to get in, and not fitting so she just ripped the door off.

The only good news is that the screen isn't torn, so I will finally buy the tool to push the screen back into place, and once I replace the broken part of the door frame I can re-attach the door.  I'm going to be smart and buy a metal grate to cover the bottom of the door to keep them all out this time.

Our First Egg

Sunday night we received our first egg

It's a pale green color.  Here is another picture - I put a stick of chapstick next to it for a size reference.  The plate it is on is white, and the towel is brown - for color references.