Teddy is ready to be a dad.

Teddy looking out  for his girls.

Here are some pictures of the "new" birds taken in January. Teddy is growing into his role as the man of the coop.  He is still unsure of the older birds, mostly because they run and peck at him any chance they get.  He is very protective of his sister hens, though, and they stick by his side as they roam the yard.  Teddy is actively fertilizing those that will let him, which is currently Louise, Lydia and Nellie.  Nora was blessed to receive an incubator for Christmas and we look forward to hatching some eggs sometime soon!

Chicks from a Friend

Baby chicks at a few days old.

Chicks from Mrs. Fontana

By: Nora

On July 23, we got 3 more chicks from the Fontana family. We named them Lydia Louise and Teddy. Roger is their dad. Teddy and Lydia's mom is probably a barred rock. We're not sure who Louise's mom is. They were born in an incubator at Mrs. Fontana's house.

(Note from Mom: Roger is the rooster who we raised at our house and then gave away because we were unable to have roosters.  This was Roger's second batch of hatched chicks.)

Lydia

Louise is in black, with the others at 3 months old.

A small black hen, (the smallest) who

I would say is “curious”.Whenever I dig a

path in the snow, she is always the first

to follow it.

Louise

Louise at 2 months old.

A white and black hen, (my favorite)

who if I hold for a long time, will

follow me EVERYWHERE!

Teddy

Teddy at 2 months old.  He doesn't have his gold feathers yet.

A barred rock rooster with gold.

His noises can be SO funny,

and he himself is cute.

Barbara the Brave

Barbara was the first little chick to figure out how to jump up on things.  Our brooder box had to continue to get taller and taller in order to keep Barbara in the box. 

 

Even as an older pullet, Barbara is always the first to greet us.  She makes it furthest out of the run to attempt to forage with the older hens and is quick to come even to our 6 year old.

Now at 5 months old Barbara has a tall red comb.  We think she will likely be the first of the new chickens to lay eggs.  We are patiently waiting for some of Barbara's finest.

Rosie becomes Roger

When we ordered four hens I thought for sure an additional four was too many.  We quickly grew fond of each of our hens and it seemed that four could be a good number.  However, as time passed we grew suspicious of our favorite "hen" Rosie. 

 Rosie/Roger at 7 Weeks

Some of the signs we saw:

Rosie was always very friendly to humans, but she greatly enjoyed attempting to fight with the other hens.  As soon as they all got outside to play Rosie would be jumping at and herding the other hens.

Rosie's legs were always a little bit bigger than the other hens.  She developed little bumps (spurs) on her legs at an early age.

Rosie's comb began to look red-ish at about 6 weeks.  S/He was an Easter Egger so her comb never got particularly large, but definitely had the right color.

Rosie always had beautiful feathers.  We were sure she would grow up to be the prettiest in the flock.  As more and more colors began to appear, especially that brick red color, we knew that this was not hen patterning. 

And lastly, when Rosie made that funny screeching noise (early attempts at a crow), we knew that Rosie was in fact a Roger.

Roger at 8 Weeks

It turns out Roger is a very beautiful type of Americana called a Golden Duckwing Rooster.

So what does one do when a hen turns out to be a rooster?  We would have kept him, but it is illegal in our town.  In fact I'm pretty sure the 2 weeks of crowing that we withstood did enough damage to our relationship with our neighbors.  The options were not great, but we were hoping to find someone we knew to adopt him into their flock so that our daughter could have an easier transition.

Enter: Happy Ending...

Thankfully we found a family from school to take Roger.  They were in fact very excited to have him join their flock of 11 hens.  We went to visit him after he had settled in and found he was very happy in his new coop. 

 Roger at 4 Months

 Look at those fantastic feathers!

Here is Roger trying to share a treat with Nora.  

What a sweet young man, he never forgot his ladies!

New Chickies 10 days old.

 

Amelia, Easter Egger, love those puffy cheeks!

 (left to right) Barbara, Rosie, Nellie

Nellie in front, Amelia and Rosie behind.

 Barbara, Rosie, Amelia and Nellie: enjoying some time outside the box.

Chickens on my lap, by Nora.

Here I am with Barbara and Amelia on my lap.  So cute!

Chicks With Some Grass, written by Nora

Nellie Amelia Rosie and Barbara did not like a little bit of grass. Then Rosie saw a piece of grass. She had it in her beak and they liked it (*note from Mom: the other chicks chased Rosie). ps chicks do not like grass- hens do like grass.

An additional note from Mom: One hour later the chicks are enjoying the patch of "grass" and dirt so much they are trying to dust bathe in it. Silly chickens!

Two Weeks Old

 First day out in the yard.  You'll notice the fence behind where the big hens hang out.

Barbara the Brave sitting on Nora's lap.

 (left to right) Barbara, Nellie, Amelia, Rosie

Introducing a New Blogger: Nora

My six year old daughter Nora will now be posting on this blog. We will share the work at first, but my hope is that she can take over someday (these fingers are tired!).

Meet the New Chicks

Here are the new ladies within hours of their arrival they were already eating, drinking and sleeping. 
More pictures below:

Cornelia (Nellie), Barnevelder

Barbara, Barred Rock

Briana Rose (Rosey), Easter Egger

Amelia, Easter Egger

Adding to the Flock

With the decision to not sell the house and the new fence for the chickens, it took no time at all to order a new set of chicks.  We were able to get them before it was too late and only had about a week to wait before their arrival.  Thank goodness for that because our 6 year old asked about their arrival about 5 times a day. 

We ordered this set of chicks from a different company than the first set of chicks- Meyer Hatchery.  They would arrive on Tuesday, August 6th from Ohio.  We originally thought we'd get three chicks, but ended up getting four.  This will bring our total number of hens to eight.  This time around we thought less about production and more about color.  We wanted some pretty hens with pretty eggs. 

Here's what we chose:

One Barnevelder Hen.  This is a Dutch breed that lays dark brown "chocolate" colored eggs.  It is also a very pretty bird with a black head and neck and a gold laced body and tail.

One Barred Rock Hen.  This hen is a black and white and lays brown eggs.  We chose this hen to replace the little hen we lost from our last flock.  The barred rock is thought to have been bred from a Dominique hen so they share the same kind of coloring.

Two Easter Eggers.  Easter eggers come in all different feather colors, have a muff and beard and lay green, blue, or pink eggs.  We're excited to see what color feathers and eggs our hens will have!

Making a Greener Pasture

We've wanted to add more hens to our flock for some time now, but were delayed in this as we attempted to sell our house.  We eventually came to the conclusion that it was not time to sell and thought about how we might make our current 1/3 of an acre work better for our current hens and a possible flock expansion.

It turns out this was pretty simple.  We purchased 200 feet of farm fencing from Tractor Supply and spent an afternoon hammering in stakes and putting up fencing in the yard.  The girls now have a significantly larger area to roam around in and surprisingly have NOT destroyed our grass! 

The ladies free range all day, from 6am till 8pm.  They know to head back to the coop in the evening and have found some nice spots to hide when predators (mainly our resident red tail hawk) are nearby.  The first couple of days I thought for sure I'd come home to four dead or missing hens, but it turns out the ladies are pretty good at taking care of themselves. 

We've enjoyed watching them in the evening as they chase bugs and run around.  They are so tired at the end of the day that they often will come over and sit on my lap to have a pre-bed nap. 

While we were not able to sell our house and purchase something else with more land, we are finding that our little 1/3 acre in suburbia is turning out to be just perfect for us and our flock.

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...

Getting ready for eggs.

The anticipation is killing me! I can’t wait for the day when I walk out to visit the hens and there is a pile of beautiful brown eggs in the nest to greet me. It shouldn’t be long now!

All the sources say that hens will begin to lay eggs between 18 and 20 weeks of age. Some say that this may be later if hens reach this age while it is cold or they are molting.

The hens are 18 weeks old this week, just in time to greet the lengthening of the days on December 22nd. Is this the perfect set up for getting hens to lay eggs for Christmas? Well we think so!

While waiting for the ladies to start producing we made them some super cute Christmas stockings and purchased some nesting eggs to place in their stockings (and shortly after in their nests!). We found some super cheap nesting eggs at Hobby Lobby. The eggs are coated paper mache and were 35 cents each. At that price I won’t mind when they get all dirty!


Below:
As the ladies head in for the night, Maggie stops to have a look at the stockings.

Due for an update?

The chickens are now 16 weeks old!! I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed. They still seem like babies to me, although they have certainly grown quite a bit!

I’ve been wondering if they are going to continue to grow or if this is their full size. When people come to visit them they marvel at how big they are which makes me think they are full grown. But when I see pictures of full size hens I think, “my ladies can’t be full size, can they?”

Whether they will be bigger or not remains a mystery, and honestly I don’t notice how big or small they are anymore. There are only two hens that I still allow to perch on my lap and they can both fit fine so who cares how big they are!

On that note: there have been some changes around the coop. Nora and I used to visit the chickens everyday. We would sit in their run, they would sit on our laps, etc… Well, the weather has gotten colder, we are letting the ladies free range in the yard more often, and over time some of the ladies grew indifferent to being held and sitting on laps. Alice, the Speckled Sussex, will still sit on my lap for hours if I let her and Francis, the Dominique, is trained to jump up on my lap when I tap my knee. The others just kind of hang around, and although they are friendly, they do not enjoy sitting on laps or being held. We have graciously accepted this.

The girls LOVE to be out in the yard. We made them a fenced area to roam around in and they would stay out there and sun bathe all day if we let them. We generally, however, only let them roam around when we are home as we do have a neighborhood hawk and other birds of prey. The hardest part about this is getting them all back in the run when their time in the yard is over. As soon as you get a few in, you turn to go get the rest and the few you had in are out again!

I have come up with two strategies for getting the hens back in the run. The first strategy is: wait until the sun goes down. The ladies have trained themselves to go in the coop to roost at night. I find that often when I go to close them in at night they all stare at me from the roost as if to say, “it’s about time you came out and shut the door!”

The second strategy I learned from my in-laws. My mother in law told me that if you pick up the lead hen and put her in first then the others will follow. Well my immediate reaction was- we don’t really have a lead hen! But each day I would try this technique with a different hen and eventually on the day I got to Jane, sure enough all the other hens slowly followed her in. Fascinating!

Here are some pictures of each of our 16 week old hens:



Alice, Speckled Sussex.
Check out that crown and waddle! Alice is the loudest hen, she makes groaning noises every time we get near her, but she is also one of the sweetest. Totally content to sit on my lap for as long as I’ll have her : )



Francis, Dominique.
Love this lady! Francis has the cutest noises- a very low trilling, very distinct from all the others.



Lizzie, Delaware.
I once stayed away from Lizzie, (she has managed to peck both Nora and I in the eye twice!) but I have since started to enjoy her again. As long as I remember not to get too close to her she is quite pleasant. Always interested in knowing what’s going on, her curiosity is quite humorous.



Maggie, New Hampshire Red.
I don’t have many good photos of just Maggie (that's Maggie on the left). She is quite skittish and keeps with her companions. She really is a sweet hen.



Jane, Black Australorp.
This photo shows Jane in a most flattering fashion. She has the most beautiful irridescent sheen to her black feathers. Jane is definitely one of our biggest ladies- second in comb and waddle size to Alice.