Some Words on Molting...

What did we do before the days of googling?  Even my 5-year old is familiar with the phrase, “let’s google that” and repeats this often when Mom and Dad don’t have an appropriate answer to her question.  A word of warning folks- do NOT let your 5-year old google on her own.  Lots of dangerous stuff out there!

As our hens arrived at and passed their first birthday we attentively watched their egg production wondering if those girls might loose some momentum.  When Jane, my daughter’s new favorite hen, didn’t lay for several days I started to get nervous.  For those of you who don’t know me, I get nervous at just about any out of the ordinary behavior.

Then came the feather loss.  It started with a few scattered around the run, then followed with large patches of feathers everywhere!  Not to mention the usual dominant protective behavior that Jane once exhibited had since retreated for a very stittish, run for your life sort of survival technique.  Jane just sits around in dark corners most of the day, head tucked into her neck, tail down.

 Views inside the coop and just outside the coop, that is a LOT of feathers!!

You can imagine the worry that set in.  What is going on with Jane?  I googled just about everything.  Was she egg bound?  Mites?  Something stuck in her crop?  I meticulously cleaned the coop- no sign of buggies.  I checked her bottom to feel for eggs- no such luck there.  I fed her water with oil in it- she didn’t appear to have any problems producing poo.

Thank goodness for the art of blogging.  On a desperate search for some help I came across this blog post: http://mayalassiter.com/2009/09/this-chicken-is-molting/

YES!  This is our Jane!  Well, minus the laying eggs part…  Upon further research I discovered that actually it is totally normal for all chickens to go through a molt in the fall when the days get shorter.  They usually do not lay during this period and the amount of feathers they will loose varies from a few here and there to almost a fully naked body. 

Jane, missing almost all her neck feathers...Eek!

Here is Alice at the beginning of her molt- mostly feathered, but definitely missing some tail feathers.

I was so relieved to figure out that this is normal behavior.  When my favorite hen, Alice, stopped laying eggs and dropping feathers here and there a few days later I was comforted in knowing that this was just a molt.

Jane's neck feathers starting to return, this is a couple of weeks after she lost her neck feathers.

I can now see on both Jane and Alice the signs of new feathers coming in on that bald skin.  What an interesting thing to watch!

Here is Alice, she lost all her tail feathers, but the new feathers are now emerging.  Poor Alice looks a little like a teenage chicken again!

I hope that our own googling will someday help comfort your anxiety about a near naked chicken, happy hen keeping!

Favorite Chicken Treats

I apologize for not posting in a while. I’m afraid there isn’t much to report! All the ladies are doing great, enjoying life and even getting into a little bit of trouble. I thought I’d take some time to mention 2 treats that our ladies love. The first is yogurt. Yup, plain old yogurt. No sugar or flavorings added, just spoon it onto an old plastic lid or in a shallow bowl and watch your ladies gobble it up. It is a delicious and also healthy treat as the probiotics in the yogurt will help your chickens digestive tract the same way it is so good for humans. This is my daughter’s favorite thing to watch because Alice (our beloved Speckled Sussex with unusually large waddles) gets yogurt all over her chin/waddles and then shakes her head spraying yogurt all over everyone and everything in sight. We then watch as the hens eat the yogurt off of each others backs where it has been sprayed from Alice’s chin. Certainly this is something worth trying with your chickens if you also have a long waddled lady. Here’s a picture of our Lizzie (Delaware) and Jane (Black Australorp) devouring some yogurt. Notice Lizzie’s beak is covered in yogurt- yogurt is her personal favorite!

Also of note is another treat, particularly good for hot days. I first discovered this treat on a hot summer day when all my ladies were panting. I tried putting ice in their water, giving them fresh cool water, letting them hang out under a shady tree…nothing helped what seemed to be excessive panting. I read that chickens love watermelon and if you freeze your leftover rinds they will love to peck at them on a hot day. Viola! Panting problem solved. Those ladies pecked at that rind for over an hour leaving nothing but a thin green skin. Upon finishing they were cooled down and refreshed. Certainly we all eat watermelon in the summer and wonder if there is a better way to use those old watermelon rinds than just throwing them in the compost bin. Try freezing a few and see how your chickens like them. We always keep a good supply in the freezer for those hot steamy summer afternoons.

RIP Frances

We unexpectedly had to say goodbye to one of our hens this past weekend. What a sad thing for us, I’m tearing up as I write this…

We went away this past weekend for less than 36 hours and came home to find one of our favorite hens laying dead in the chicken run. We still cannot say exactly what happened, mostly because we are unwilling to perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. We believe that Frances became egg bound sometime during the day on Friday or Saturday and passed early in the morning on Sunday.

Frances (Franny) has always had a more difficult time laying eggs. She was known to spend a few hours on the nest before laying her egg. This would make the other hens, who also wanted to lay on that particular nest, quite ornery. We think this was something genetic for her. That she would always have had trouble laying and that although we may have helped her in this case had we been home, there would eventually have come a day when we would not have been able to help.

We feel awful about her death. We are sad that we did not detect her “illness” earlier, that we left for the weekend thinking everything was fine, that we were not attentive to the signs she may have been sending. Mostly we feel sad for our daughter (it was her favorite hen and the only one who would sit with her) and for the other hens (they have clearly noticed her absence).

We feel blessed that our daughter was actual prepared for this event in a dream on Thursday evening. She told us over breakfast on the Friday morning before Frances died that she had a nightmare in which “mom and I found one of the hens dead in the run”. When I asked her which hen it was she said it was Frances. The following days were filled with discussions about what dead hens look like, why things die, etc… I believe this was God preparing her little heart for the ache it would experience later that week.

I spent the day after Frances’ death comforting our daughter and helping her to move on. I also worked on cleaning the coop and run top to bottom, just in case it had been a case of worms or mites that killed Frances. I’ve added Diatomaceous Earth to their feed and throughout their run and coop, hearing that this is a natural remedy for worms.

Our daughter is already talking about getting a new chick to replace Frances, to which our reply has been- let’s wait for the other hens to settle in to their new life as a set of four. We did plan on getting more hens someday, but it seems too soon to add to our flock. We’ll have to see how the next few weeks and months go.

We are slowly recovering from our loss, but we will always feel like something/someone is missing. Frances was the sweetest hen, our little lady and friend. Thank you, Frances, for being a part of our life, even if only briefly- we have been blessed!

A bit more plump.

I thought we were due for some new pictures. These pictures were taken when the hens were about 6 months old. You can tell that they’ve changed (fattened up!) quite a bit from my last pictures.

This is Maggie, Lizzie and Alice (left to right)
drinking water out of an old yogurt container:



And some of the girls watching our daughter slide down the slide:




All the ladies are laying eggs now and we are getting between 3 and 5 eggs each day. We can tell (for the most part) whose eggs are whose. This is very helpful because it helps us determine who is laying more regularly than the others. For the most part everything we read has held true. Details below:

Most of the hens take a day off of laying every 3rd day. So for example Alice will lay an egg in the morning on Monday, in the afternoon on Tuesday and will not lay on Wednesday (repeat cycle). This is with the exception of one hen, Jane.

Jane is our Black Australorp. We read stories of Black Australorp hens who laid an egg every day for the first year of laying. We did not expect this, but it is indeed true. Since Jane has started laying we have had an egg a day from her. Big round brown eggs! Very cool.

We had also heard great things about speckled sussex hens making great pets. For proof just read about this woman’s speckled sussex hen, Lenore.
http://blog.mypetchicken.com/2012/02/13/for-the-love-of-a-chicken/
Alice, our speckled Sussex is no different. She is the first to our back door in the morning, pecking and scratching at the door asking for snacks. She is often let through this back door into the kitchen and dining room where she browses for scraps of food on the floor. She is the kindest hen, always happy to sit on our lap and have a nap always eager to please.

I previously wrote about having trouble getting the hens to go in their run after they had been out in the yard. This is still sometimes an issue, but I have found a very favorable solution. It turns out we don’t really have a lead hen, but I’ve found that I am actually the “leader” of the hens. They follow me around everywhere. Why, you ask? Well, I’m the one that gives them treats, cleans their coop, feeds them and gives them fresh water, closes their door at night and opens their door in the morning. I am truly the one that they look to for protection and provision. What an incredible responsibility! That being said, if I want them to go in the run all I have to do is walk in there and they all will follow. What a simple solution!

Eggs

We now have more than one chicken laying eggs, but we're still not sure how many or which ones! I know of two that are definitely laying and what their eggs look like. I thought it might be helpful for others to see what the eggs look like.



Above is pictured what I believe is 4 eggs from 4 different hens. I'm guessing this based on their differences in color and size- but I can't say for sure. The two eggs on the left are from unidentified hens. My best guess is that the furthest left is from Maggie (our New Hampshire red) and second one from the left is from Lizzie (our Delaware). The third egg is from Francis (our Dominique- my daughter's favorite hen) and the last one, all the way to the right is from Alice (our Speckled Sussex- my favorite hen).

The ladies are loving this warm "winter" that we're having. We're loving that it is encouraging them to lay eggs!

That's all for now...