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"!