Too young for mommy-hood

A few weeks ago one of the chickens disappeared.  No sign of feathers or anything.  A couple weeks ago we got rid of our last rooster because he kept chasing people.  Sometime between last night and today another chicken went missing (thanks to the son not propping the coop door open and the birds all getting locked out at night, during a storm until I found them after 10PM.

So I went looking.  I was determined to find evidence of where this one went.  I finally saw something, and from a distance she looked like a bloated dead bird.  I thought maybe she got hit by a car and this was her body on the side of the road, wet from the storms that keep coming through.

I was scared to even touch her, well really I was grossed out.  I was scared she'd be cold and dead and gross.  But her eyes were open, not blinking, for a solid two minutes and I thought a bird wouldn't die with it's eyes open, would it?  I finally reached down and poked her and she turned and started attacking my hand.  So I reached down with both hands to pick her up.

These were all of the eggs under her!  I handed her off to the boy and gathered the eggs.  She'd been sitting on these eggs through the storms!  All but two were warm, although I'm not sure if any are fertile since we got rid of the rooster.  She was not happy but we moved everything into the coop.  They're all the same color so I suspect she's been laying in this spot, by the road for awhile now and then decided, during the storms, it was time to sit and become a mom.

Where have we been

Two years ago we decided that we wanted to move to Iowa. I had done a lot of research on cost of living and teacher salaries and came up for a weekend visit.

We had to downsize everything. Our chicken flock had gotten really small due to predators and we sold the rest. We sold nearly all possessions that weren't family memories and heirlooms. Then we listed the house for sale.

The house sold and in June of 2017 we drove to Iowa with a uhaul.  We planned to rent for a year while we found a town and house that we loved but it was only 5 months later that we found my dream home.

We have a lot of things to do in our new home but we've started on some.

We have 16 chickies they are set up in a new chicken coop. We have fruit trees that are ready to be planted when the weather gets a little warmer. And we are in the planning stages of a small garden with the plans of having a huge one next year.

So weve been quiet for awhile, but the adventure continues.

Not again, Norma Jean!

I have  no intentions of having more chicks or chickens.  We have enough.  Norma Jean apparently disagrees.

And she isn't sitting on just the 5 eggs I thought she had...

A chick with extra toes??

Our last batch of chicks is now two months old and is finally getting some more regular time outside in a chicken run.

The Polish with a mohawk

Success with integration

Although I had to catch each of the chicks and put them in the coop, and then had to close the door behind each one because they kept trying to escape, they were all up roosting with the big birds when I checked on them the first night. 

The second night they went in on their own. Now I just need the courage to let them free range during the day with the other birds.

Silver Laced Wyndotte Freedom

Candling an egg

I finally uploaded a video of one of the last eggs being candled.  This was three or four days before it hatched.  There isn't much noticeable movement until 23 seconds, and if you keep watching you'll see it continue to move until the end of the clip.

More Chick Pics

We finished our hatch Monday night, with 19 out of the 28 eggs hatching.  We had tossed the 5 eggs that weren't fertile half way through the incubation  process, which means only 4 out of the 23 eggs that we expected to hatch, didn't hatch.  An 83% hatch rate is pretty good, although I feel horrible about those four being developed inside the eggs but not getting out.  I will let the oldest son do egg-topsies to see how developed they were.

Wyndotte's first taste of the outdoors

Norma jeans sits at the window giving me looks every time I get near the coop.  I know she doesn't understand why she's locked up all the time and she simply wants to go find some bugs and treats.

Since I was spending some time outside with the hens this weekend, I decided it was a good time to let the Wyndotte chicks come out of their coop and to experience the fresh air.  They are two months old this weekend and I will probably keep them separate from the big girls for another month.

More babies!

We did it again!  How can you not fall in love with that face!!!

The eggs are due to hatch tomorrow evening, but between last night and today we have had 10 of them hatch.

The Chickies are Roosting

I heard a lot of chirping coming from the small coop when I was locking up at night and this is what I saw when I looked inside.

Perhaps they're more grown up than I though they were.

We're at it again

I shared with some people that I wish I could get some more hatching eggs, and a fellow chicken farmer offered to give me some eggs just so she could test the fertility of them.

We already have too many birds, I know this, but it's addicting, and with our recent loss to the foxes (two this week), I think I just want to be safe and have birds laying like crazy this spring and summer.

So I accepted.  We met up today and she gave me 18 eggs.

They are pure bred Dominiques, pure-bred Buff Orpingtons (we actually bought a few chicks from her last year and the three that survived the foxes are gorgeous), a pure-bred leghorn,  and two pure-bred Polish eggs.  I'm not a fan of the Polish birds because they look funny, but I know it wouldn't be hard to find someone to take them if they hatch.

I decided to throw all of my green eggs that we got from the coop today (and three that we got in the last few days and have been sitting on the counter) into the incubator as well, in the hopes that maybe the chicks would grow up to lay olive eggs, which are pretty popular among the chicken crowds.

That's 10 of our eggs plus 18 of hers, which makes for a very full incubator.  I'll candle them in a few days to see if there are signs of life.  This is so exciting. :)

Chickie Problems

We've been wanting to move the chicks out of the basement for a few weeks, but with those frighteningly low temperatures last week, that plan had to be put on hold.  Last night we cleaned up the chick area and moved NormaJean and the babies into a smaller crate that we could take outside.  They had to be stuck in there overnight, but today I moved them out to the smaller coop.  

They'll be in there until they're old enough and big enough to be outside in a run.  I think I will need to put a heat lamp in the coop for them this week, but they should be okay otherwise.

The bad news was that I noticed two of the chicks have something wrong with their vents.  One looks much worse than the other.

I brought both of them in the house and gave them a bath in warm water.  They actually were settling in to it and closing their eyes to rest.

They weren't as happy and relaxed when I got their backs wet and cleaned off their vents.

Once we got them cleaned up, we rubbed some Preperation H on their vents as I had that from last year when we had the guinea keet with the vent issues.  We set them in a tub with hand towels while we got things ready for them and they didn't seem to mind.

For now, they're in the living room with a heating pad under the tub and a heater pointed at the tub to keep them warm and get them dried off.  They're moving around and eating and drinking, I just hope that whatever is wrong will heal itself so I can move them out with the other chicks soon.

Grow Chickies Grow

The chicks are getting bigger and have a lot more feathers now.....

Norma Jean is protective

Norma Jean is a very different mom compared to Silkie Sue.  Each time that we go down near their area in the basement she plants herself in front of the chicks and puffs herself up as large as she can.  She's definitely protective and will attempt to attack our hands in order to keep us away from her babies.  

Luckily, I was still able to get her and the babies out of their pen and into a storage tub so I could clean everything up.  She could easily have hopped right out of the tub, but she wasn't about to leave her babies.

The Chickies are doing well

We ended up having 12 chicks hatch, which is amazing.  We only had 2 bad eggs out of the 14 Silver Laced Wyandottes which I think is great odds.  All of the New Hampshire eggs were bad.  I did send an email to the seller and she said that she would send me more in the spring if I paid for the shipping.  I'm not sure if I want to do it all over again with the same seller, so we will see.

I hope this never gets old

Yesterday morning, the incubator went on "lock down."  For the final three days of incubating the humidity needs to be increased and the temperature needs to remain constant.  Chicks can stay in the incubator for 24 hours after they've hatched and if they need to be removed at 24 hours because there are other eggs hatching, it needs to be done quickly.

The eggs aren't due to hatch until Friday morning and I thought they would hatch from Friday morning until Saturday during the day since they won't all hatch at the same time.

This evening, I started dinner and then went over to check the humidity and temperatures, which I tend to do several times a day.

I immediately saw a pip!

I screamed!

Then I heard it peep and I screamed again!

I searched the eggs as best as I could looking for signs of other pips and found more!

The egg on the left has a pip at the top right edge

There is a pip next to the number 2 on the 3 egg from the top

There are six eggs in all that have pipped that we can see.

Pipping is where the chick will break it's beak through the shell and create a hole.

I even took video of the eggs because you can hear them peeping at us and the eggs will rock around.  It is so amazing!

I am hoping that they will hatch before I fall asleep because I'd hate to miss it! :)

The first video is the first egg that we saw that had pipped.  It is shaking all over and just a few seconds into the clip you can hear it peeping.

In the second video I set the camera down on top of the incubator and you can hear peeping and see two eggs shaking around.

We did go downstairs to see how Norma Jean was doing with her 4 eggs and I couldn't hear anything and she still looks completely mad at us.

Her "Evil Eye" is much scarier than my own!

Chickies are Coming!

We candled the eggs again two nights ago and this morning it was time to take the eggs off the egg turner.  They're suppose to stop turning for the last three days before they hatch so that the chicks can get lined up and ready to pip and hatch.

I candled them this morning as I took them off the turner and set them in the incubator again and I saw signs of life in all of the Silver Laced Wyandottes, which is great news.  There were three New Hampshire eggs that were clearly bad so I pulled them out and one New Hampshire egg that I think is bad but I'm not completely sure, so I left it in the incubator but off to the side.  

 

It won't be cool to have all of the New Hampshire eggs be bad, I'm wondering if they were even fertile when they were sent to us.

The best part is that I got a video of a candling and you can see movement inside the egg.  Watch this clip and pay careful attention at about the six second mark.  I hope other people squeal with excitement like I did.

The First Candling

We finally candled the eggs that are in the incubator.  The eggs have been in the incubator for 7 days and the eggs themselves are between 10 and 14 days old.  I'm no expert when it comes to candling but I know we should be able to see some solid forms inside the eggs at this point.  While we did see some signs of life. we didn't see very many.

We candled the New Hampshire eggs first.

Egg #1 definitely showed signs of life.  The dark mass in this picture was moving around, coming closer to the shell and then back towards the center.  We also saw some of the lines that I believe are veins.  It was a good start to our candling adventure.

Egg 1

Just asking for trouble

A friend of mine emailed a few of her chicken people (that includes us) to see if we wanted to order any chicks for an April delivery.

This is going to be trouble.

The place she is ordering from has some pretty birds that I have been interested in so I know I will end up getting some.  I'm not not sure what the smartest move is.  If I wanted pure bred birds to breed, I need to keep them in separate chicken runs so they won't mix and have mixed breed birds, but if I do that, then I should focus on just a few breeds and I like having a pretty variety.  Decisions are tough.

The breeds I am looking at that I think I would like to have are:

Columbian Wynadotte

Black Jersey Giant

Silver Laced Wynadotte

How can you not see how gorgeous these birds are?  They're all known for being good egg layers too.

The only other one they had that I have thought about is a Blue Orpington.  I have a few Buff Orpingtons now and I think the Blue's are pretty, but they're also $13 more than the first three that I like and I feel like I'm not that serious of a chicken breeder.  I'm not a chicken breeder at all!

Blue Orpington

Tomorrow we are going to a chicken show for the first time.  It's about an hour away but I thought it would be interesting to see and there is a chance I could buy something.  I don't think it is too likely, but there's always a chance.