My chickens were more interesting than me???

 I checked the stats on this blog and shockingly I was averaging close to 500 readers per post!!! I have another personal blog and I rarely get 100! That means people clearly preferred my chickens to me by 5 to 1... hahaha!  It's all good, I prefer most chickens to people! Lol

Checking in.

 I went on to raise many show quality birds after moving back to the family farm. Unbelievably that was ten years ago already. My peak was a few years ago at 200 birds.This winter however I decided to take a brake from chickens and I sold the last of my birds last fall.

 I joined a few clubs in the beginning and met a lot of great people. I enjoyed the hobby greatly. Gracie the Cochin bantam went on to have a lot of chicks and her own family line of pure Cochin chicks. She died in my lap on mother's day at a very old age. Cochins became my favorite breed and I ventured into different colours. Chico the rooster also added to my silky line but I sold him because he remained grumpy. To this day people come up to me and tell me they have descendants of my stock, which feels good to know.

Cough, cough, Dusty!

Does this blog still work? Hello, hello?

Just an update!

I'm still out on the farm as my Mom can not be left alone and I still do not have access to the net way way way out there. I'm using a friend's computer. In the chicken news the birds from the auction were better left there. I will never buy from an auction again. Most turned out to be roosters and they also carried some sort of disease with them.

On the good side I bought Gracie a husband, a purebred Cochin rooster. I bought some other breeds as well. The most surprising news is that as of now, Tina, Edna and Gracie are all mothers. Even in our cold Canadian winter, they all hatched chicks. Tina and Edna will not be a year old until end of May. Edna had her chicks on Boxing day. Like their mother Gracie, they make good mommies!

Take care chicken people.

My Robin

Meet Robin, of all the new chickens I bought, Robin and her mate Rusty are my favourites. They are Wheaten Old English bantams. Both will let me pick them up no problem and Robin will get into my hands for warmth when she feels cold. Sorry the lighting in the barn is not that good.

Robin making her first camera appearance!

The little house I made for Robin and Rusty so that they can eat and perch in peace. Being the smallest and youngest, they get picked on a lot.

I realized my mistake in not having one of the other chickens walk in just to show you their small size, Robin is actually the size of an American robin at the moment and she will not get much bigger.

Buyer beware!

Just a quick post about the "buyer beware" part of an auction. I remember the woman who sold me Lucy and Melda, saying bird auctions were a lot of fun but there was a lot "buyer beware" on the buyers part. Some people are honest and there are good deals but I also found that it seemed to be a dumping ground for unwanted roosters. It was not so bad when people labeled their boxes as roosters, the thing that bothered me is the tricks some crafty chicken people try to play on buyers. Example, a box labeled breeding pair of chickens. It may have been a rare breed that people are looking for with a beautiful rooster and hen or pullet. However what the box really contained was an older rooster with a young rooster, making the young one look like a hen. I was stung twice, one box was labeled three pullets but when I took them out of the box, there was only actually one hen, in my excitement of buying I did not check closely. The roosters it turns out, have a slight colour pattern that the hens do not, so this was no accident. Also in my box of one rooster with two hens, turned out to be one hen, one rooster and one young rooster of mixed breeding, giving at first glance the look of a hen. I could tell in a few minutes of letting him out of the box that he was a rooster. Again I feel that this was done on purpose. I know some boxes of pullets went sky high in price, so I can't help wondering (and feeling bad) for those buyers when they open their boxes and realize that there rare pullets, are actually roosters made to look like pullets.

There was also a trick of putting an old hen in with young pullets, still I would not be as upset with buying an older hen than being stuck with an extra rooster or three. If you get the chance to go to an auction, then remember this warning.

This was the only thing that slightly ruined my first experience of an auction. I already had three roosters, I certainly did not want more. The 3 brothers have become aggressive with all the hens and that leaves me with no choice, especially they harass Gracie their own mother non stop and in doing so they have sealed their fate.

Another vid about my new chickens.

They are starting to be named. I will put of pictures with their names later. In the next vid you will see that Gracie and her family are not happy at all with the new comers, they do not mix in together at all, even after a week and you can hear their complaints to me about the "others".

Un-happy campers.

I'm in the process of buying more if I can get a good deal! ;)

The Bird Auction!

I was able to go, yaaaaaay! At first I was a little too shy to start buying anything but I did bid on a few chickens. It was a lot of fun as it was my very first bird auction. They did not have any cochins so I was not able to buy Gracie a husband. They had White Wyandotte hens (pullets) and Columbian Wyandotte roosters. I was shocked at how big they actually were, I guess I am so used to little Gracie. Even Lucy and Melda are a lot smaller and they are my big girls. I did not get them however, I kept bidding on them but they were going too high, $50 for a pair of hens, I thought that was too high for me, plus the people would have just bid me higher. The roosters went for $15. I also kept trying to get a pair of snow call ducks as they are so cute and pretty to look at, however all call duck pairs went for $50 and over. If anyone does not know about call ducks, they are mini ducks that are kept as pets, this way you can make a small pond and have duck in it. I think they are cute. There were no runner ducks either and only wild turkeys, but a person needs a permit for those.

A car load of chickens!

I kept watching two boxes with three buff brahmas in it. Also boxes with old english bantams, they are so small, I really wanted some.

I got one of the boxes with the three buff brahmas, a box with two black old english bantam hens and a pair of wheaten coloured old english bantams (rooster and pullet). I also saw a young barred rock pullet in a box so I bought her. At the end of the sale they were selling rooster/hen trios mixed breed bantams. Some went as low as $5 for the three of them. I bought the last box, they look like Japanese crossed bantams. Well any way I ended up with eleven new bodies but most are so small it takes about four of them to make one Lucy or Melda.

Here is a clip of the new chickens after I took them out of their boxes. I let them have full run of the barn because this way there was very little fighting. The clip is just after bringing them home but now a week later they have formed a new flock together. Gracie and her brood do not mix, they stay off by themselves. I am happy to say that little Gracie is the alpha hen of the whole group, even against the big barred rock hen she held on to her crown. I am also happy that Gracie is no longer alone in the chicken world, when she feels the need to do battle, her daughters Tina and Edna are right by her side to back her up.

There was also a Black Jersey Giant Pullet, she was huuuuuuuuge! She was actually very ugly as her comb had not formed yet, making her look like some type of bird that a person might see eating dead animals on the side of the road.

It was a lot of fun and I would go again in a second but I learned about "buyer beware" and I will blog about that later.

In the chicken news.

Steven's Chicken news.
Head line!

Dog attack!
Chico and the girls received a bad scare this week as their pen came under attack by two large hounds that escaped from their kennel. Lucky enough the pen is made of heavy corn crib wire and the hounds could not tear through. Dan arrived home from work to find two hounds running around and around the coop barking and trying to get in at the girls. There were another pack of dumb dogs still back at the kennel barking encouragement to the trespassers. Dan was enraged when he saw what was going on and the dogs ran for home when they saw him. He felt really bad for the girls because he figures the dogs were after them all day as a path was worn around coop, plus any flowers or shrubs near by were trampled. He said everyone was outside standing tight up against the wall as far away from the fence as they could get, he figured since the door is near the fence, the hens would not go in. Also I'm so glad Dan put large flat stones around the bottom of the pen, the wire goes into the ground but if the dogs worked at it all day, they probably would have gotten in.

Bird Auction.
This Saturday coming is the bird auction, I have it in my little mind to buy something! I love a good auction but have never been to a bird auction. I believe this will be the last one in this area for the year so I really want to go. Boy oh boy I hope nothing comes up to prevent me from going!

To hatch or not to hatch?
A man not far from my parents farm is selling an incubator, it has only been used twice and I wonder if I should try to buy it or just let Gracie do the work next spring. I found a place that would sell me eggs from rare breed chickens, I think I will wait to see what happens at the sale first.

Time to leave the nest, no really!

Before:

Remember this picture?

After:

My only white chick turned out to be Rico. A bit bigger than mom at only four months.

Sorry the picture is not better but it was hard to get them to stop moving, plus it was raining out and they are in the barn. Rico is off one of the red-sex links (Marlene) and Chico.

I think this is Edna(or maybe Tina Turner), she is Gracie and Chico's daughter. Edna and her sister Tina love me, they come up to me all the time and pick at what ever I am holding, or my boots, or my coat or my buttons. They more closely look like Silkie hens than they do Cochin hens. An odd thing but a good thing about all four of Gracie's chicks off of Chico, is that they are all good at flying. Even though Chico being a Silkie can't fly and Gracie being a Cochin is not that great at flying, their four kids being hybrids have no problems going over four foot gates like nothing was even there. I think this gives them a better chance against something like a fox if it got into the barn, if something bad like that happened, my poor Gracie would be the first to get eaten.

In the next clip you will see Gracie with all her chicks. She still calls them to food sometimes but lately I notice she attacks the roosters to drive them off, especially Rico. You will see Rico Rooster, Silver (silver necked rooster), Fern (all black rooster), Edna Chicken and Tina Turner the little hens, good luck telling them apart. Here I am letting them run around the barn, (sigh, I miss the cows).

All the boys have started crowing now. Fern showed signs of being a rooster since he was about three weeks old and yet he is the bottom of the rooster pack, he only started crowing a few days ago. Rico started crowing first but now does not crow that much. Silver crows a lot during the day like his Daddy Chico.

In this clip, Fern shows off his new pipes, Tina Turner makes her guess spot at the end of the clip.

Sorry this last clip comes out so dark when I post it.

Which came first, back to the beginning.

My very first chickens were two meat birds, my parents bought them for me as an Easter gift. The rooster became very large and very mean so we had to eat him. The hen however I wanted to keep, I did not understand at the time that these white rock cross chickens often die from being so large and growing so fast. I was crushed when my hen died and my family still tease me to this day about being heartbroken over her loss. Well I had raised her from a day old and she would let me pick her up and carry her around. Sadly I never thought to get a picture of them, they were certainly a nice pair of birds and they put the chicken liking bug in my little brain.

The following spring I bought 5 more chicks with two being Black Star hens. That fall I bought four leghorns and two bantams. Giving me the original six layers and two mothers that would start my poultry dynasty. I took out some old pictures and scanned them for the blog.

The original six layers, the black hen closest was Queenie, so called because she was the boss and would rule the house until the day there were no more chickens. She was my pet and a sort of replacement for Casandra my very first hen who died. Yes I know I'm a little obsessed with chickens but a lot really do have personalities (chickenalities????). Second in command was the other black star, I never gave her a name and a year later I sold her because she became a constant egg eater. Queenie was mostly black like Melda and the other looked a lot like Lucy, I think that is why I have a soft spot for my black girls that I have now, even though they are the biggest brats of the bunch.

My pretty leghorns, some had names but I forgot them now. Leghorns always get a bum rap with back yard flock owners, as if it was their own fault for being shoved into cages. I am in Canada with cold winters and they were super layers. They could run around and eat bugs as good as any chicken. They were a little more nervous when I first got them but as soon as they saw I meant no harm, I could soon pet them as well. I would later use them for cross breeding and their daughters were always some the best layers also. My problem was getting a good rooster to mate with the hens, so often it was more about getting a good functional bird and not about the actual breed. Oddly enough the leghorn cross roosters were the best tasting, they were smaller so it was a bit of work but they had great tasting meat. We never ate any hens however, even when they got old, people often bought a few just to have some chickens around.

My absolute favourite chicken of all time, even to this day, was the little bantam in the background. I called her Grannybanty as she was one of the older girls when I bought her. She is standing beside a hen she had just finished raising. The hen was from Queenie but I thought it was cute that she was raised by Grannybanty with such a size difference. She hatched five eggs for me at that time, all girls and all grew big like this hen. So small she could only cover four or five normal eggs but such a good mother that most chickens were raised by her. Sometimes she wanted to hatch three batches in one of our short summer seasons.

After raising the big girl above, I let her hatch a bunch of her own eggs. She had five little chipmunk coloured chicks, I flipped out when I saw the cute colour, I did not know there were chicks like this. Again this time I was lucky with only 1 rooster, so 9 hens and one bantam rooster out of ten eggs, I think she earned her keep that year. If anyone can take a guess at her breed, please feel free as I would certainly like to have more like her. She had white ears and laid small cream white eggs. I got her with a younger mate who was all black but had white ears and white eggs as well. I did not take a picture as it was not as good of a mother and always hatched rooster chicks. Like I said, she was so small that she could cover 5 normal eggs nicely but I did not want to take a chance as more may have been too much to keep warm.

Any way that was my first flock and I made a little pocket money selling eggs to my teachers and neighbours. I really enjoyed those years. I will share more older pics later.

Filling in the gaps.

Just to point out how easy it can be to have chickens, I live in the city. No, not as in city chickens but as in an apartment. The girls are in the city limits only I keep them at Dan's. My parents farm takes three hours to go there and back so it was too far to have chickens. My Dad also did not like to have chicken because he did not want to have to end up taking care of them when I was not around. Dan on the other hand is only 30 minutes from me and since I was stuck there all the time anyway, he let me keep the girls there. Dan ended up really liking the chickens and so when Dad became ill, he had no problem taking care of them. That is also why I tried to have large containers of feed and water, I did not want Dan to have to worry about feeding them etc. I felt if he was kind enough to let me keep them there, I did not want to impose on him any more than him collecting the eggs when I was not around.

When Gracie had the chicks, since I was back on the farm, we both felt it was better to have her with me. I have to move back to the farm to take of the place and my mom until she sells, so I am giving up my apartment in the city. This week Dan said he is really busy and feels the girls are no longer getting the attention they deserve, so it looks like the girls will come to live with me also. Dan said he will think about it as he has grown to like having them around. I told him I would take all or some of them with me.

I turned the timers back on to give them more light, they have slowed down with their laying, only two to three eggs a day from six hens and some are starting to molt. I know moving them will probably make them stop laying unfortunately. I'm not too crazy about getting Chico! If the girls stop laying then I will let them rest, I will just give them scratch feed and turn off the lights until after New Years.

In other chicken news, Oct 17 is a bird auction, I really want to go to this auction as I missed every other one since last spring. We will see and I will take pictures if I can.

Also I found a small hatchery only two hours from me and they have a system to deliver, better yet they have rare breeds that most others do not carry. I have a price list and will contact them in spring for chicks if things are going well.

Its a boy boy boy girl girl!

I'm sorry about not posting much these days, there is no internet access at my parents farm but I will try to change that. My mom is not coping well after the loss of my father, she has memory issues and the loss of Dad has made things much much worse. I will have to move back to the farm until mom can sell it. For now she wants to wait until next summer, too many changes for her right now and I agree.

No pictures at the moment but Gracie and the kids are having a great time. Gracie who lived in a breeding cage when I bought her, now has an 80 feet long by 36 feet wide barn to run around in during the day. When I'm not around they have to stay in a coop that Dan built in the barn for them because raccoons have been know to open the windows and get in, it is for their protection. The chicks are four months old now so I can see for sure what I have regarding male or female. Let me say first that the sexing trick of picking them up and watching if they lift their feet (meaning rooster), did not work for me. Some of the chicks that went limp turned out to be boys instead of girls as the trick said hen chicks drop their legs.

It turned out that three of the chicks are roosters and only two are girls. They all have feathers like their mothers, none are silkie looking like their father Chico. One of the boys has a bit of purple colour in his comb and wattles like the silkie. The girls look like silkie hens however with their little puffy hair dos. I mostly call them "the girls" because I can not tell them apart anymore. I had called one Tina after Tina Turner with her spiky hair and was going to call the other one Edna ( I think Edna sounds like a funny chicken name) but I stopped since they look too much alike at the moment, maybe later something will change. I think they should be good mothers next year being silkie and cochin mixed, two mothering breeds. Yes, Gracie still tries to feed and take care of them, talk about a real "mother hen" some of the boys are crowing and she still wants to baby them! Next year I will separate her from her batch after 8 weeks so that this does not happen again. Still no luck in finding certain breeds that I would like to have. A lot of people in this area are all selling the same thing, Silkies, hybrids, Ameraucanas, Polish chickens or chickens that are all mixed.

As for the garden, for the first time ever, we did not have frost until a few days ago. Gardens usually are finished in our area by the first week of September. I did not get a picture but it looked good and we were getting a lot of meals out of it, that is until one night when a family of raccoons got in and chewed up everything. They ruined almost the entire garden but they should have learned there is a catch .22 to most situations! This year the bears are very bad in our area, the wild berries failed and they are hungry. We don't mind sharing our apple trees with them but they really are a stupid animal. They broke off the smaller trees and destroyed large branches on the bigger trees just to eat a few apples and then move on to the next branch. There will be no apples next year on these damaged trees and then what will they eat. I think they deserve to become rugs.

Old is new again

A booklet came in the mail to my parents farm and in it there were articles about people trying to rescue heritage breeds of farm animals. The stories that interested me the most were of course the poultry stories. For those not in the know, heritage breeds are breeds of farm animals that our grandparents or great grandparents used on their farms back in the day. These breeds no longer function in today's markets for different reasons, however they often excel on farms that want to return to a more organic way of living or farms that want to have animals work with each other, example chickens on pastures where cows had been or ducks that eat flies in barns or off other livestock.

It may sound funny to say some farm animal breeds are becoming extinct but it is the truth and sadly those genetics will be lost as well. My girls are mostly hybrids and that is because they were the only breeds I could find when I started to get back into chickens at the time. I was very interested in a story where it was suggested, chicken producers try to sell the old breeds to the back yard poultry keepers. Many would probably be better suited to this type of home flock situation and it would help preserve a breed. It was a little scary to read that some breeds of chickens or animals only have a few breeding females left in my country. If you can and are interested, see if you can find a rare breeds club in your country, find out the chicken breeds that are in danger and may be suited to what you want. I am going to try and get Silver Laced/ Golden laced Wyandottes if I can. They were one of the breeds suggested and I like the look of them. There were also many other breeds suggested that I like, I do not have the list with me but I will put it up later. I think it would be a good idea, this way we can have fun with our small flocks and help out hurting breeds as well.

I have a green thumb besides liking chickens, my garden was way behind this year because it never stopped raining since June, this garden is actually at my parents but since I am staying with my Mom, I planted and took care of it. The clip was actually taken about three weeks ago so things have grown much more now. I am getting lots of vegetables now but sadly our growing season is over and I expect a killing frost any day. I have snow peas (my favourite), red and yellow tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, purple beans, onions, cucumbers, butternut squash, honey dew melons and carrots. For the first time ever, I don't have lettuce. Giant slugs came out and ate all my lettuce.

Oh yes and the morning glories, I just like the look of them, they have now climbed higher than my head and will get an updated picture.

In the chicken news

Regarding the girls, I actually have really good news. If you remember weeks ago I mentioned that Delia seemed to be really sick, she would not go outside and hardly ate anything. Her feathers looked bad, her comb shrunk and her eggs were cracked looking. She always seemed to be the weakest even when we first bought her. I was about to have her put down as she seemed to be in pain, since I became tied up the last few weeks that just never happened. Delia has made a full recovery, her feathers are clean and shiny, her comb is full and red, her eggs are still large but no longer appear to be cracked. She runs around with the others and seems fine, even her vent has shrunk to a normal appearance and she never looked normal in that area.

I have not had the time to baby the girls like I used to, the weather here has been a really bad wet summer and I think it has affected the girls, they lay less than they did in winter with only an average of 4 or less eggs a day. Could be also their ages, the reds will be two years this fall and the blacks are over a year now but I don't think that should make a difference yet. I try to bring them clover from the farm when I have a chance, I think it gives them a boost. Could be also that people in the village where I keep them, like to give them treats, maybe they are eating a lot of junk food instead of their real food. Still they give enough eggs to sell so no problem as they are just pets.

Now as promised, killer Chico Chicken, for some reason he has it in for me! He feels I am an intruding rooster that he must drive away, he never attacks Dan! Must be because I am not around any more.

He is too little to do any damage but I would never walk in with shorts on. Don't worry, I'm not kicking him, I'm just holding up my foot and he is going nuts! He seems to need this competition, once he feels that he has shown me he is boss, he will go outside and crow for almost an hour. He even starts to crow the second he hears a stranger's or my voice. I guess it is the "little guy syndrome" as if to say "theses are my girls, come in here and I'll give you a lesson in who is boss around here"!

Happy place

With the loss of my father, my friend Dan wanted to cheer me up. He knew just the thing to give me a much needed smile. He built a pen for me in my Dad's barn and showed up with a surprise.The pen, but what or who is that inside?

Dan showed up with a large box... with Gracie and the chicks! I was so happy to hear that little cluck cluck, telling the kids "you are okay, mommy is here with you".
These pictures are about a month old, the chicks are actually larger now. The black chicks are half the size of their mother and Paris is taller than her mom since she is off of Marlene. Paris is I am afraid going to be a boy. If so I will call him Rico Rooster, it just sounds like a good rooster name to me. I had thought it was three girls and two boys but one of the other black chicks is showing signs of being a boy or a really bossy chick. In the picture above you can see one of the chicks is a lot smaller than the others, of course this one I baby. She was actually nearly killed by the other hens, that was the day they turned on the chicks for some strange reason.

Gracie is still a good mom, she cuddles all the chicks at night and finds food for them. However she is too good of a mother, she can't let them go. If you look back at the dates they were born you will realize the chicks are over three months old! I was hoping for a second batch but that will not happen now. Maybe because the bantam chicks were so small she never stopped brooding, she is slowly letting them go off on their own but calls them to her if they wonder away. I guess that is why they say Cochins make the best moms but I guess you would have to take the chicks away to get a second batch out of them, at least with Gracie anyway. I am trying to get them to sleep up on the perches at night, however if I don't go in after dark and place them there, Gracie will not lead them up. Paris really wants to sleep on the perches, at night she will walk over and try to get the others to come up with her, she will give up and lay down on the floor but I could tell she is not happy about that so I put them up after dark. I am also hoping this will help Gracie let go and start to lay again.

Farm without a farmer

There is a farm that is sitting waiting for it's farmer, however no one will come, he can no longer tend his fields. My Dad passed away, it has been over a week, it was actually the day I last posted. Things can be hard at times but we are working through it as best as we can, I know many others had to go through it. I may post a little more about it, just for now I need to stop here. I just can't believe most days that he is gone.

Until the cows come home.

Until the cows come home, most have heard that old saying, well they came home for the last time this past weekend. It was a very sad time for us but we had to sell them all. Our farm is remote and so my mother will not stay there alone, she will sell and move into town. It will be the first time since the 1800's that there are no cattle on the farm. Cows are cows and all would sooner or later have to go but there are family lines that have been around since I was a baby, maybe even before then. The cows themselves ranged in age from two years old to fourteen, so we do get attached in some way to them. Like the chickens, some are ding-bats but some are nice animals and I felt guilty as if betraying a friend.


They will all go together to a new home, a much larger farm with other cattle, I told the farmer "good luck, I hope they do well for you". I will take this moment to say my Dad did know how to pick good cattle, the calves were often some of the biggest around by fall, he also took good care of them, a bit spoiled actually, however if they bring in the money, then they need to be looked after. My Dad used to be a cow/calf farmer. This means he kept cows as a breeding herd, they raise their own babies until the calf is around six months old, and then we sell the calf. Some one buys them and then finishes raising them. The cows are never milked, I laugh when people from the city ask me "can't you just put a milking machine on them?" The younger ones we could probably train, but if you were to walk up to an older cow of about six who never has been milked before and "try" to stick milkers on her, you will probably be seeing stars for a while from the kick!

I took some goodbye shots of me bringing them home. They are all gone now and the fields feel so empty, I keep expecting to see one walk out or hear one bawl. I just did not have time to look after them any more but I miss them in a strange way. My Dad refused to look at my film, I think it would be too hard for him to see them come home for the last time and it is sadly interesting that he pretty much entered a coma the weekend they left.

I was calling them from the far pastures to the home farm, watch and see them happy to run home.

Hard lesson learned.

This week I was given a hard lesson in chicken behaviour. When I can get away to see my girls, it is for a much needed stress relief from my Dad's illness. However when speaking on the phone with Dan, he said "I have something bad to show you". When I got there he opened a little box and inside was one of the black chicks, dead. Then he showed me how he had made a larger pen for Gracie and the chicks, inside one of the other black chicks was badly hurt. The hens had seemed to accept the chicks, however it appears that when Gracie felt it was okay to take them outside a few days later, their little pea brains did not recognize the same chicks outside. It looks like they attacked the chicks and I assume Gracie hurried them back up the ramp into the house, not knowing that one was left behind and it tried to get away from the assault by hiding under the ramp. They cornered it there and pecked it to death, I guess the other hurt one almost suffered the same fate but must have made it back up the ramp. The neck looked broken and a huge chunk of feathers were missing. There is no way for any other animal to get them. To me that is Chico's mark, he is dumb as a post like that, if a smaller hen is being attacked, he runs in and attacks the hen worse instead of protecting her or stopping the fight as I have seen smarter roosters do. If I ever caught him hurting a chick, that would be the last straw for him, he is on thin ice with me lately. Chico is actually Dan's rooster and Dan being so good about taking care of the chickens, I hate to ask him to let me get rid of Chico. However I am getting tired of his cranky attitude, he is even attacking the hens when I am around. I joke with Dan and tell him that I'm going to get a large rooster and let it beat the stuffing out of Chico.

I guess this is a lesson, some people let the chicks in with the others only after they are adult size. I never had trouble in all my years of raising chicks, I never lost a chick from an attack. This group of hens are a strange bunch. Dan built a pen for Gracie's gang and Delia was released out on parole as she could not have a hand (wing) in the chick murder. I will wait until the chicks are much bigger to try letting them out again.

The next day while out in the garden I thought of letting a few chickens out with me to run around. I figured nothing would bother them while I was there, lucky I didn't. I kept hearing a strange noise over and over but when I would stop to listen, it would stop also. I looked over at the chickens and saw them all freeze, they softly gave each other a warning sound. I saw something hiding behind a tree every time I looked towards the hens. I walked over to find a huge raccoon crouched behind a tree watching the hens. I really lost it and I think that raccoon did not realize how dangerous a human can be! Live and let live but don't come near my girls and so boldly in the middle of the day with me there.

Anyway I miss my baby chickie, I feel guilty in that if I was able to be there, this would not have happened. Below is the last shot I have of all six together. They are racing around for bread crumbs that Dan is dropping while I film.

Where's my peeps?

Where did my tiny little peeps go!?! They grow so fast, I felt they no longer could stay in the chicken-nursery and decided to release them into the flock. Dan wanted to make a pen for them but I said to first try them with the flock and see what happens. Usually I found in the past the hens would not touch the babies, it was always the mother they attacked. Chickens not being too smart will forget their flock mate after not seeing her for a while.



The black bantam chicks are still small but the red hybrid is growing fast. We named the red one Little Hilton after someone with red hair we know, Dan asked what happens if it turns out to be a girl, so I said we will call her Paris Hilton! The picture is not very clear, sorry they were running around so fast it was hard to get a picture.I locked the other chickens outside with treats for a while to let the gang get used to their new surroundings. After an hour or so I let the other hens in. Most did not pay attention to the chicks, some attacked Gracie but seemed to remember her, after all, the chick cage was in the house with them and they could see her most of the time. However by the second day I could see a trouble maker causing problems.

Jail time for Delia!!!

Delia would not leave the chicks alone, she would herd them into their nest box and then attack Gracie and the chicks, it was none stop and by the end of the day she was getting worse. She was also causing the others to attack the chicks as well. In all my years of keeping chicks I never had a hen attack the chicks, roosters yes but never a hen and not with such obsession as this. Dan saw this as well and before I could return and jail her, he did it. Delia is not well, this may be a factor in making her so cross with the chicks, she seems to always be in pain, she also will be the one to get lice, sick, etc. She always lays an odd cracked looking egg and I have been told this can be a sign of some sort of infection that she has or had. I am thinking I may put her down, she never seems to respond to any treatments and I am afraid of her bringing some sort of disease to the other hens or chicks, especially the chicks.

I was really worried about the big black hybrids and yet they had the best reactions, they ignore Gracie and the chicks as if they have always been in the house. Lucy is still acting broody but never stopped laying, nor does she sit on the eggs. The first day she would go up to the chicks and act protective but in a confused way, not being sure if she should protect the chicks or try to scare them away. Chico is good with the chicks and does not try to mate with Gracie which I was afraid he would. One of the other red hens pecked and chased a chick last night and I think Gracie was at her boiling point, she suddenly attacked the red, grabbing her by the back of the head and not letting go. The red was going to fight but then got scared when Gracie gave her a good trimming, another red ran in to help her sister and Gracie gave her a going over as well, I was cheering "go Gracie, go Gracie, put the boots to 'em" (a Canadian saying). Then Chico ran in and attacked Gracie, that is when I did a tag team and went after Chico. A gentleman never touches a lady, plus Chico never defended Gracie when she needed help so why did he stick his dumb beak in this scrape. The reds went away, they will learn, when attacking a little chick, they will suddenly have an angry mom jumping on their head. Mostly however since Delia was sentenced for assault, the house is quiet, everyone will find their new place within the house.

See how big they are getting.

Camera shy

When I am outside, Chico is constantly crowing. From early morning to late in the day Chico is a non stop wind-up toy. I asked the people around if it bothers them, lucky enough he is not very loud and even the houses across the road do not hear him. I worry about his sons, I imagine I will have to sell all his sons, I do not think the village would enjoy their crowing competitions once they have grown a bit. I tried and tried to get Chico on camera crowing for this post, however he would suddenly go silent whenever I had the camera. I did not know roosters got stage fright... but then again after all he is a chicken, sorry bad pun.

After many tries (which included me trying to crow like a rooster to get him going) I finally caught him on tape. Next mission to achieve, I'm going to capture on camera his kung fu moves. Oh yes, wait until you see that, Chico may be small but he is a master fighter and has a black-belt with some of his kicks, he can be lethal. After much begging and hiding and crowing, I finally got the little singer to sing, next stop "Chickens got talent"!

In my last post John left the comment that a mother hen does not always know best. Yes, true there can be some ding-bats out there, as with any animals or even some humans for that matter. Usually I have had good luck over the years with hens hatching out chicks. My mess ups involved a couple of hens and I quickly learned that if they are a bad mother, then they usually do not get better with age. Some mishaps were; when one bantam hen hatched out chicks, she would stand up and start scratching to feed them while they were still just drying off, this of course would cause her to trample and kill them. I also had a hen that after a week of sitting on her eggs, decided to leave them and go get back into the hen house to sit on the eggs in the main nest. Another hen I tried was a large Ameraucana, I should have known better as she would sometimes eat eggs. I assumed wrong that being broody would stop this. I gave her twelve eggs, after a few days she ate two of them, then all was quiet until half way through hatching I came home to only six eggs left and a huge mess of blood and egg yolk. I was so angry with the hen. At that time I happen to have a very young mixed bantam hen that had just started to go broody but I had no more room to set her up with eggs. Since she was off a really good broody bantam hen, I thought I would give the remaining eggs to her, I figured I had nothing to lose since the other hen would probably eat the remaining eggs. I cleaned up the eggs, kicked out the large hen and grabbed the small bantam mixed hen. She was happy to have a nest in peace where no one was chasing her off. She snuggled the remaining six eggs to her body and just over a week later she was a proud mom to six chicks. Mostly I had really good luck with hens hatching out chicks and like I said, I could watch the mom with chicks all day.