Chicks!

Last year, I wrote about all our disappointments with chicks and our eventual success.  This year, I'd been watching for hens to go broody.  My barred rocks started to sit and as they hatched two chicks last time, I was hopeful.

They'd been sitting for about a week when I went into my chook run and was shocked to see four tiny chicks running around.  It became quickly clear that their Mum was one of the shavers.  I hadn't even known one had been sitting, she must have had a hidden nest somewhere.  I was shocked as I'd always been told that shavers were hopeless breeders - they're too small to generate enough body heat and not sufficiently attentive to their chicks - but this girl just proved it all wrong or maybe she's the exception.

Shaver Mum with four day old chicks

The next day, though, she only had two chicks with her.  We never found out what happened to the other two.

Two weeks later, while I was looking in some of the usual odd spots for eggs, I found one of my leghorns sitting on a nest.  I hadn't noticed she'd gone and was also surprised to see her broody.  I bought two leghorn hens about four years ago and they'd never shown any sign of it previously.

The following week, I went to check on her again, in her little hidey hole and saw what looked like a dead chick half under her.  I wasn't sure and she was still sitting, glaring at me so I left it alone.

The next morning, I went out to see the chooks and she was by the gate with eight tiny freshly hatched chicks at her feet.  Eight!?!

Five out of eight chicks with Leghorn Mum

When I went back to see where she'd been sitting, all the remaining eggs were her own - they're bright white and distinctly different from the brown eggs I get from my shavers or the creamy whitish ones from all my other breeds.

The barred rocks were still sitting.

Each day when I go to feed them, I do another head count.  There are now 11 chicks.  Two bigger ones that are probably about 4 months old now - one dark (Miss 12 has named it Weka) and one white with a funky top-knot (I've named it Blondini), eight smaller white chicks with the odd black spots that are about 3 months old and one single chick from my other leghorn who is now about 2 months old.

Weka and Blondini - the two on the right.

Some of the white chicks getting a bit bigger

It's interesting to note that of all eleven chicks, only one (and it's one of the smaller ones) has a visible, noticeable comb so far.

Meanwhile, my barred rocks have given up.  I have a shaver and an austrolorp playing constant swapsies between two nests (both full of eggs).  I thought I heard a new chick peeping this morning but neither hen would move enough to prove it or show it off to us.

Hubby keeps asking how we'll know whether they're hens or roosters.  I keep telling him when they either start crowing or laying - until then it's pure guesswork.

The Chick With Two Mums

Every year several of my hens go broody.  Every year I get excited and watch for signs of chicks.  Until now, every year I’ve been disappointed.  I’ve heard so many theories about why it never happened.

Howard, our first rooster was a bantam, he arrived with his mother Mrs Wolowitz.  I called him Howard after The Big Bang Theory character because of the way he’d sidle up to my hens (who generally were bigger than him), do a little dance and try to jump on.  He didn’t give up even when they wouldn’t have a bar of him, he’d puff himself up until he nearly exploded and keep on trying.

The dog killed him.  I’ve since trained the dog to leave the chooks alone, he was still a puppy at that stage and would chase anything that ran.

Then I bought Captain Jack.  A big beautiful Australorp rooster.  I still got no chicks, but only Mrs Wolowitz, my little bantam hen, ever got broody and she’d change which nesting box she was sitting in every couple of days, so there was never any chance of eggs hatching.   I got a few more hens and was given Midnight - another big beautiful Australorp rooster.  Midnight and Captain Jack didn’t get along.  I spent several hours cleaning up the blood and cleaning Midnight’s wounds.

Captain Jack (after the fight)

Captain Jack died, not sure what from, so Midnight became cock of the walk.  By then though, he was servicing 50 hens.  I was told that he had too many hens and that the ratio should be somewhere between one rooster to 6 hens up to one rooster to 10 hens (depending on who you talk to).  Dad said to look at the condition of my rooster, if I had too many hens, he'd be in poor condition and thoroughly hen-pecked (the origin of the term is a literal thing).  He was always fully feathered and looking fantastic, all showy and glossy and proud.

Midnight after the fight

Last summer, one of my hens sat from September until late March to no avail.

Then we got two new roosters with the turkeys.  Roofus and Rory.  They found their way into the chook run with my old girls, although it took Roofus about two weeks of roaming free (and crowing from about 4am outside our bedroom window) to find his way in to meet the girls and Midnight.  They all seemed to get along okay, so I figured that three roosters to 50ish hens was a much better mix.

Roofus (in the middle)

Rory

Midnight died - probably from old age and then there were two.  We lost a few hens along the way as well and were down to 43 ish - they are hard to count.

My hen that sat for 6 months went broody again and for the first time in several years, I was feeling hopeful.  She's been sitting for about a month and was joined in her nesting box about a week and a half ago by another hen.

On Monday I was excited to see we had a chick hatched.  I called Miss Eleven in to see and she was quite excited by it too.

On Tuesday, that chick was dead.  Not sure how, but it looked a little flattened.  There was another that had only made it halfway out of it's shell and never got any further.  

I could have cried.  Although chose to remain excited about it since this was the closest we'd gotten in five years and five roosters.

On Thursday there was a new chick, living and peeping at us.  I wasn't going to get my hopes up.  I cautiously checked in on Friday and it was still alive, in the corner of the nesting box.  Both hens that had been sitting suddenly got all worried and both came back and sat on it, glaring at us.  It had made it to two days, I was more hopeful.

Today (Saturday), it was outside with both Mums, neither straying far and both making their special "talking to baby" sounds.  I can't be sure which of them was the one that sat for the whole duration since they're both Barred Rock hens and close to identical.  I thought maybe that "I will cut you" expression I had been getting from the one who was broody for longer would give it away, but she seems to have lost that now that she's hatched a chick.

I also thought that maybe the newcomer would continue to sit on the remaining eggs in the nesting box.  I was wrong, she can't bear to be parted from the chick either.

Meanwhile, we have a chick with two Mums.

What a Week!

This has been quite a busy week for me.  I apologise for the lack of posting.  With everything else that has been going on, I’ve found it difficult to just sit down and think clearly enough for a post.

On Saturday Miss 7 had a friend’s birthday party.  I weeded a little more of the tomato patch before the heat won again.  More sunburn on the back of my neck.

Miss 7's Small Salmon

On Sunday was Hubby’s work Christmas do, we went to Sharvin Lodge and fished for Salmon in the pond before a bbq lunch.  Miss 7 caught one, Hubby caught one and I caught two.  We only brought one home however, there were others who had been trying all day and caught nothing.  Miss 7 showed remarkable patience and perseverance for someone her age and is keen as mustard to go fishing again.  She even helped Hubby clean it.  My rule (as someone allergic to fish) is you clean it if you want to eat it. Fish head and guts buried in my tomato patch too.

Miss 7 Trying to Cut the Head Off

On Monday was Miss 7’s school breakup assembly.  It was a fun few hours watching the different classes present folk dancing and I must say I’m impressed at the way all of the leaving Year 8s had taken on roles as wet day monitors and new entrant buddies.  The night was topped off by Santa arriving in a fire engine.

On Tuesday, we’d arranged to pick up the two new boars and 15 hens.  A conversation on Sunday night with the lady who was giving them away had revealed that her rude and cheeky neighbour had helped himself and left me with only 4 hens.  What could I say?  They were free.  She was pretty angry at him though.

We got there, knowing in advance that no one else was going to be there - she’d shown me previously where to find them.  We couldn’t find the pigs anywhere.  There was no sign of them in their paddock.  We walked through, calling them, rattling a feed bucket, we checked in their house.  There were no pigs in that paddock.  These are rather large black Kune kune boars, it's not as though they'd be too difficult to see.  They were nowhere to be seen - or heard.  Now all of my pigs even grunt in their sleep. We heard nothing

Two New Hens With Howard Off to the Side

We were only able to catch 2 of the hens before the rest took off and hid in the neighbouring paddocks too.  It was raining, we’d been mucking around for about an hour in the rain and had 2 hens for our troubles.

Master 14 had been having a conversation with someone on the internet about some Kunes that they were giving away.  They had lots of all sorts of ages and needed to find homes for them.  He sent me a phone number by text.  On our drive home from our failed mission I decided to ring this number.  We arranged to go over the next night as they were all exhausted from a day hay-making and almost ready for bed.

On Wednesday, Miss 7 finished school at lunchtime.  We went into town to do a little Christmas shopping and by the time we made it back home we were both hot and cranky.  I got a text from the lady whose pigs we were supposed to have picked up the night before asking if we’d changed our mind since they were still there.  I told her they weren’t in the paddock when we looked and so yeah, we’d changed our minds.  She was adamant that they had been there.  Now I’m not saying that she was lying, she had nothing to gain from that but they must be the sneakiest ninja tree-climbing pigs you ever saw.  My mother suggested that they may have been out for an early evening flight.

We went to have a look at these pigs when Hubby came home.  The lady I’d been talking to wasn’t there, but her husband came out to help us.  First we saw the boars.  They’re not full Kune kunes as some have a longer nose than is normal for a kune, but they all seemed to have the tassels.  We chose the smallest one as he had the nicest nature too.  He’d also been getting picked on by the other two bigger boars in that paddock.  He was fairly easy to catch and lift onto the trailer.  Hubby moved the truck around to where the sows were, because I also wanted a young sow as company for Darla.

Mildred Being Shy

George is Not Shy

First we had to meet Honey.  Honey was in the paddock next to the sows, he’s a beautiful honey coloured older boar who had retired from being a show pig at Willowbank.  He was lovely, but needed to be kept separate from the others.  The chap we were dealing with picked out the sow he thought we were okay to take.  His wife has some favourites you see and although they’ve got too many, she’s a bit attached to most of them.  I offered to leave my phone number in case it was the wrong one but he wasn’t worried.

Catching her wasn’t quite so easy.  She led Hubby and this guy to quite the chase all around the farm before they finally caught her and lifted her onto the trailer.

Getting them back off the trailer at home was somewhat challenging too.  But we did it and Darla wandered around to meet the new arrivals.  We’d named them by this stage.  He was quite laid back and easy going while she was more highly strung and unfriendly so George and Mildred it was.

Darla’s greeting for Mildred was to run up behind her and bite her on the bum.  I yelled at Darla and she settled down.  Who knew?  She ran up to try the same thing (I’m guessing) with George, but as she got closer I think she realised he wasn’t another girl and settled down.  He spent the next half hour following her around with his nose pretty close to her bum.  Hubby commented that she didn’t seem that interested in him until I pointed out that she wasn’t walking away very fast.  If he was a problem she would have run, she was walking just fast enough to keep him interested.

On Thursday, Miss 7 and I went and did our weekly grocery shopping.  I also made a side trip to the Gluten Free shop to see if they had any GF sponge cake like they did last year.  I was in luck - if I’m making trifle for Christmas lunch, I want to be able to eat it too! 

I got home to find a couple of panicky texts from Miss 16’s boyfriend asking me to ring ASAP.  She’d collapsed and been taken into hospital – she was fine now, but eating and drinking water would be a good idea before she went out in the heat for future reference!  I told her off for not looking after herself.

I noticed two sheep in my front paddock.  We don’t have any – so I rang the neighbour and let him know that a couple of his had snuck through the fence.  I wasn’t really worried but thought he should know.  They snuck back through to his side about an hour later.

We went back into town Thursday night for some Christmas shopping with Hubby.  It was tense because money is very tight this year. We decided to get a plastic tree for the first time ever.  The thing is with four cats and a puppy, I can’t see any tree surviving for very long!

And today is Friday.  The 21st of December.  The Summer Solstice and if you believe all the hype (which I don’t) it’s also The End of The World As We Know It.  Well, its nearly 10am now and looks to be a lovely summer’s day so far!

Keeping Chooks

'Helping' to weed the garden

We’d always planned to get chooks.  Even when we were living in town.  When we found out what the local bylaws were and saw that friends had them in their backyard we started planning for having chooks.  That didn’t happen, so it became one of the first things we planned for when we moved out here.

I researched hen houses, I read up about space requirements, I gave Hubby the basic plans for the perfect chook house. When it was finally finished (the chooks were in boxes beside me) we dubbed it the “Chookie Hilton”.

The reality wasn’t quite so flash.  It leaked when it rained, it had holes and gaps, the door made a horrendous racket when opened (it caught on the corrugated iron around it) and you had to climb over the perches to muck it out.

Our first chooks came from a local guy who buys in the hens that have finished their first year of commercial laying.  Some have always been free-range and some have come from battery farms.  These six were supposed to have come from a free-range farm, but I noticed that they didn’t perch - they’d sleep in their nesting boxes instead.  That suggested that they hadn’t been free-range at all.

I had always thought chickens were fairly stupid, I soon learned that this really wasn’t true.  I also learned that they were clever escape artists.  One in particular soon earned the name Houdini.  After a few months, we stopped trying to keep them in their poorly fenced area.  They’d figured out that if they went through to the paddock next to them, they could roam freely and were often seen scratching around on the side of the road.  We didn’t lose any on the road though.

After a few months, one got sick.  She wouldn’t move at all.  I picked her up and put her in the chook house because she’d been staying outside.  She immediately got picked on by the other five.  A friend suggested that she might have been egg-bound.  I hopped on the internet and looked it up. The only symptom that didn’t fit was that she’d been like this for more than two days and was still alive.  There were a number of ways recommended to fix this, although many were contradicted by the next website.  The only one that I had the facilities to do was a warm bath.

So I bathed my hen in the laundry sink.  She perked up quite a lot while in the water but I soon noticed that one of her legs was curled up and she wouldn’t move it.  I dried her off and made her a nest in the corner of the chook house.  Miss 7 made sure that she had food and water within reach.  She lasted another 4 or 5 days before we found her dead.  It was a little upsetting, but as we’d been told when we moved here - if you have livestock, you’ll also have dead stock.

We were getting 3 or 4 eggs a day from our 5 remaining girls.  After a while we decided to increase our little flock.  I got in contact with the same guy and he offered me a cheaper deal if I got a few more.  In the end I bought 10 new hens.  The day before I went to pick them up I found another one of my hens dead.  I didn’t know what she had died from and she’d been partially picked over by something so I didn’t know if a predator had killed her or she’d died and the rats had been at her.

I mentioned this to the guy I bought the hens from and he threw in an extra one for free.  He also said to keep an eye on them. He’d lost a few recently but a feed of dog roll had perked them all up.  This was the first I’d heard of giving hens meat.  They love mince and dog roll, it turns out and the dog roll contains a lot of vitamins and minerals that they really need and don’t always get from other sources of food.

When I got the new girls home, I made the silly mistake of letting them out of their boxes outside the hen house.  We spent several hours chasing them around the paddocks trying to catch them before giving up.

These poor girls were a ragged looking bunch.  They didn’t have many feathers on their necks and none on their bums.  Their bums all looked rather red and raw.  Apparently they’d come from an organic free range chicken farm, but one that locks all their hens in a barn until about lunchtime and the nesting boxes had a high rough front to them and they scraped their bums getting over it.  They looked a bit funny for quite a while when their feathers started growing back - first the soft white downy feathers in little patches and then the bigger normal feathers.

After a couple of months, I had a flock of healthy looking birds.

It took us some time to find out where they were hiding their eggs.  My son found a stash of 30 eggs in a shed - more than half were still okay.  I found another stash of 20 in a pile of cut branches under the trees.  Soon we had more eggs than we could reasonably use.  Hubby mentioned it at work and got several offers.  We were selling at least 5 dozen a week at his work, this was more than enough to cover the cost of their feed.  We got told off for selling them too cheaply - I was happy with $4 per dozen, but our first customer refused this and gave us $5 instead and told us that this was what we were going to charge now thank you very much.

This went on for about a month when I spotted a ferret.  It ran under the house, right in front of me.  I found a dead chook, half dragged under the feed shed and gone altogether an hour or so later when I went out to bury it.  We bought a ferret trap, but hadn’t figured out what to bait it with.

About 8:30 that night, Hubby heard one of the chooks making a racket.  It was dark, they should all be asleep.  Armed with torches, we went looking.  There were none in the chook house, but a pile of feathers suggested that at least one had died there.  We couldn’t find any in their normal roosting spots but found several piles of feathers.

Hubby pointed out to me where he thought he’d heard the chook and when we stopped to listen, I heard something that sounded like eating.  We went over to that spot and there was a tiny ferret eating one of my hens.  Her head and neck had gone already.  Hubby grabbed a broom and a rake and chased after it.  We were standing by the hen, discussing how to deal with it when the ferret came back.  It ran over our feet and started to drag the chook (which was about 4 times it’s size) away.  Hubby lined it up carefully with the side of the broom and whacked it.  It squeaked but got up and ran away.  Hubby chased after it, trying to thump it, he got it a couple of times judging by the squeaks, but it kept getting up and running.

I suggested that we put this chook in a box with the only entrance through the ferret trap.  As we were trying to set this up, the ferret came back and we went through it all again.  The cheeky little bugger had almost no fear of us and was determined to haul away it’s prize.

We set up our trap and left it.  Master 14 wanted to be a part of this, so he stood guard armed with a rake.  He came in after an hour and a half, he’d hit it a few times but it had gotten very wary of him.

The next morning was a silent one.  We couldn’t hear any of our girls at all.  Normally their little noises were the first things we heard in the mornings.  Hubby went out and had a look in the paddock.  There were four more dead chooks that he could immediately see.  There was also a ferret in the trap.

So we caught it, he said, how are we going to kill it?  I’d been thinking about that and was going to fill a fish crate with water and drown it.  That way we didn’t have to let it out of the trap first.  Just throw the whole trap in the crate and leave it for a while.  We were filling the crate and hauling it over to the trap when Master 14 yelled.  He’d picked up the trap to have a look at the ferret and accidentally let it out but had managed to put the end of the trap down on it’s hind legs and tail.  It was hard to believe that this tiny and beautiful little creature had devastated my flock so quickly and brutally.  It took 3 blows to the head with a log splitter before it finally died. These little things are almost indestructible.

It took until late afternoon before I saw any of my living chooks.  A grand total of 3.  In the space of two days we’d gone from having 15 to having 3.  The remaining 3 wouldn’t go near the chook house.  They started perching for the night on the deck.  It drove Hubby nuts as the side effect of this was a small mountain of chook poo on the deck every morning.  You couldn’t leave a door open because they’d come inside and eat the cat biscuits.  If I was weeding in the garden, I’d have help.  If I sat outside, I usually ended up with one on my knee.

We pulled the old chook house down and built a new one.  The second one is completely hole free, it doesn’t leak and is much better laid out than our first attempt.  They started to lay in it, but unless I fed them right beside it or the weather was really bad, they didn’t spend much time in it.

We got a puppy who took out another one.  He didn’t kill her, just broke her neck and left her alive.  Then another got sick and died.  We were down to one.

Hubby wanted any more chooks that we got to be contained so we started work on a big chook run.  At a party we met a couple who were moving into town and couldn’t keep all of their flock and certainly not their rooster.  We gained Howard the rooster and his mother Mrs Wolowitz.  We’re back up to 3.

I saw in a mailing list email a lady who is giving away her flock (and 2 pigs) so we’re picking up 15 new hens on Monday.

Keeping chooks is an interesting pastime, but not one for the faint-hearted.