New Peeps

It has been a long winter, longer than any others I can remember. We've had more snow that North Carolina should be allowed and the kids have been out of school more than their (or their parents') sanity can handle. I'm ready for spring. So what does a chicken keeper do when she's ready for spring? Get a bin of chicks to keep her busy until it actually gets here, of course.

After Pouncey died, I started thinking about new chickens. We'd already discussed adding a few to our flock at some point this year and now that we were a hen down, we'd definitely want to add a few. I like to add at least two when we're upping our numbers, so the newbie has a newbie buddy and isn't being thrown into the flock solo (That's just my preference and isn't some sort a scientific poultry rule by which you have to live). Seeing as it was February, there wasn't any broody hens vying to be a mama out in the coop, so I did what any crazy chicken lady would do and made my husband set up a brooder in our kitchen. And like any good crazy chicken lady's husband, he did it. Within three or four days of looking, I found some and brought home four chicks, two Buff Orpingtons and two Ameraucanas.

My son and I picked them up from Little Birdie Hatchery on a Friday and they'd hatched that Monday. They are the cutest little fluff balls I've ever seen. Look at their grumpy little faces.

In case you aren't familiar with chicks, the yellow chicks are the Buff Orpingtons and the brown chicks with the Cleopatra eyes are the Ameraucanas. Orpingtons are great dual purpose birds and are usually nice and fat and fluffy. They're like Brahmas in their fat fluffiness. The Ameraucanas I'm excited about because they're layers of pastel green or blue eggs. I want some blue eggs! Cross your fingers we have hens. They also have the cutest fluffy faces because they're the chickens that have "beards."

So we now have four fluffy chicks in a bin set up with food, water, shavings, and a heat lamp living in our kitchen for the next however many weeks it takes for them to feather out (realistically something like eight weeks).

They can't keep themselves warm without feathers. That fluff is cute, but it's pretty useless. Without a mama, these babies wouldn't last 24 hours outside right now. We've never tried our hand at brooding. We've had a hen take care of the hard work both times we've previously had chicks. This is going to be an adventure. We'll be learning a lot over the course of this endeavor.

So far I can report that they peep constantly, so constantly that I'm now hearing peeps even when they are not peeping or when I'm in a part of the house where I can't actually hear them. Chicks are tiny, but they've each got a good set of lungs. Trust me on this claim. If you aren't prepared to hear, "Peep! Peep! Peep!…PEEP! PEEP!" for weeks on end, leave the brooding up to your hens or make sure you have a garage or basement or some room where you can close the door and leave them to their own devices. I've mostly learned to block out the peeping at this point. We've now had the chicks for almost five weeks. As you can guess, it's been a busy five weeks, which is why I am just getting around to sharing our new peeps news. I've got a hundred pictures of these cuties from the past five weeks, so I'll be posting more over the next few weeks to get caught up on their progress. Spoiler alert: all four survived and are thriving.

The Birds and The Bees...of Chickens

We're three and a half weeks into chickdom. And you and I both know the most anxiety producing part of this entire venture is whether you're growing hens or roosters.

Because of our city zip code, I've been wishing for two hens, but it's hard to tell anything in the first weeks. You can read all over the internet about sexing chicks. Some methods are based on trends and biology. Some are based on old wives tales. And some are based on good ole old-timer knowledge.  There's the feathering method - hens are supposed to feather faster on the wings and tails than their rooster counterparts. I've read that darker combs in certain breeds mean hen. I've also read that redder combs sooner mean roosters. Some people think that if you pick up a chick the hens will keep kicking their legs while the roosters will not. Apparently, there's a way to tell the sex of day-old chicks by checking their vents. I've also read that chicks who are more timid are hens and the bolder ones are roosters. That last one isn't sexist at all is it? All I've learned is there are just as many methods and theories of telling the sex of a chick as there are breeds of chicken.

Personally, I'm a horrible chicken sex guesser. I don't see what all these other people see. There are hundreds of posts online from people wondering the sex of their chickens. Looking at these posts, you'll usually see fourteen different comments with half of the answers saying the chicks in question are males and half saying they're females. I usually have nothing. Maybe twice I've been able to tell, but that was only because they were super obvious and the owners were in denial (i.e. the rooster already had saddle feathers and were twice the size of the hens). One time I commented on a picture of a buff Brahma that was obviously a rooster. I could tell of it's roosteriness because one of our first four chickens was a buff Brahma that was so obviously a rooster because he was the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. I knew so little about chickens that I had told my husband, "She has feathers like a rooster," about two days before The Chicken Man nicely told us that she was indeed a rooster. Talk about oblivious.

Last year, as many of you who regularly tune in know, we hatched five beautiful Japanese bantams. Three were obvious roosters from early on. They had bigger combs; they got saddle feathers; they had curled shimmering tail feathers. The other two looked like hens. They were smaller and had the straight up pointing tail feathers of the Japanese breed. We were sure they were hens and I was all ready for some tiny bantam eggs to make tiny fried eggs for breakfast. They were beautiful chickens. Until they turned into roosters! They were still beautiful, but it was like over night they sprouted curving tail feathers and the saddle feathers. I was sad. So now, I've decided not to rely on anything until I have an egg laid or I see some serious saddle feathers and tail feathers. That doesn't mean I don't speculate and drive myself crazy thinking about it.

I've already changed my mind twice about our two three-week-old babies. When they were born I figured they'd both be roosters because that was our fate last year. They were maybe a day old when I told my husband that if they indeed turn out to be roosters this year, we are going sex-link all the way next year. That way I'll know from day one what they are and won't get too attached since we can't keep roosters where we live. I also won't sit here and drive myself to drink for two months trying to figure it out! But after the first week I decided maybe we did have a couple of pullets growing up out there. If you believe the old wives tales, we could have two hens. They're pretty skittish and they feathered out on the wings and tails quickly. Both "signs" that you have hens. Well, from what I've seen online, chicks feather so differently from breed to breed and even sometimes from chicken to chicken that it's hard to place your bet on that piece of evidence alone. As for the shyness, well, last year we had five chicks. They weren't too scared of us. But we had a larger flock. They had more buddies to hang with and to help them feel protected . Five is a much larger number than two when you are talking about tiny chicks. No matter how many other chicks I had running around with me, if I were a three-day-old baby chick, I'd freak out and run away too if some giant tried to pick me up. So I'm not hanging my hat on the fact that they're petrified of us at this point.

Today, though, I have a new theory. One pullet. One rooster. The beautiful little bluer-colored Marans, Belle, now has a larger comb than the yellow-turning-to-white one, Rapunzel. So is Belle turning into Beast? Their legs seem to be the same size (Yet another indicator is the girth of the chick's legs: the bigger the legs, the more likely you've got a rooster), so we'll see. Only time will tell. But I seriously want some chocolate brown eggs, so somebody better be growing some ovaries out there.

That's Rapunzel in the back and Belle/Beast in the front.
What do you think? 

Official Chick Count

Our final number is two chicks. Both chicks and Mama are doing well and are happy. They'd like to enjoy some privacy, but we won't let them. How can you leave new chicks alone? You can go ahead and trust me when I say it's impossible.

I removed the rest of the unhatched eggs a little over 24 hours after the last chick hatched. Most of them were full of liquid when I shook them, which means no chick inside. Two were questionable, so I candled them in order to find the air sack and then I pipped them (I poked a small hole in the end where I'd seen the air sack. Essentially, I was doing what a baby chick would do when it starts to hatch.). One exploded as soon as I'd broken through from the pressure that had built up inside. There was a stinky yolk inside. The other was just a rotten egg. So into a ziplock bag they all went and into the garbage can. I didn't want the guilt of worrying about whether or not I'd thrown away an unhatched chick.

The best thing about removing the unhatched eggs is that Mama and babies were out and about in their portion of the coop the next morning. These chicks are much more worried about humans at this age than last year's batch. Last year's chicks didn't pay us much attention inthe first few weeks and we could scoop them up pretty easily with only a few worried peeps. I'm not sure if it's completely temperment or if it's the fact that there are only two of them, but they scurry into the corner when we get into the coop. Because they're on edge, Mama is much more on edge. Last year she couldn't care less, probably because she had four other chicks crawling all over her if we were handling one. I've already been pecked by her twice and they're less than a week old. I'm trying to be more accompdating because of all the commotion I cause when I go out there. I haven't spent as much time in the coop and playing with the chicks as last year. I'm not trying to give some poor little baby chick a heart attack.

Cross your fingers that we get a couple of hens this time. We're doing our part to tip the balance. As I've said, last year's name's were heavily manly with the Star Wars theme, so this year we went with Disney princesses. Please let me introduce you to Rapunzel and Belle.

And We Have Chicks

This morning I checked on the chickens to find one baby hatching out of its egg. What a great way to start the day. We've had three eggs hatch, but one didn't survive, poor little guy. Hopefully, we'll have a few more tonight and tomorrow so Mama has a nice little brood.

The two babies we have so far are peeping away underneath their Mama. They sure are cute.  One is mostly yellow, with some gray spots and the other is nearly all gray. They both have feathered feet, which is a super cute chicken quality. I'm seriously crossing my fingers that we don't get another flock of roosters out of this hatch because I want a chocolate egg layer. Big time.

Aren't they cute? The yellow chick hatched earlier today and is ready to get going. She's already getting curious and is quite the peeper. The gray chick hatched this afternoon. She's still a little shy, but she's interested in her sister (wishful thinking).

We're still coming up with names. After everyone's hatched we'll decide. I'm still thinking about Captain America as a possibility, but think we need some super girly names. Last time the Star Wars theme, male dominated, didn't bode well for hens. So maybe we need a Lola or a Lucy or maybe even a Cindy Lou.

Almost to Chicks

Day 17 of Broody Watch 2012. Erickson is being a great incubator. I couldn't ask for a better broody hen.

Unfortunately, we're down to 11 eggs. Around Day 13 we had a rotten egg explosion. My husband found it and says it was pretty gross. Mama must have dragged it out of the nest box onto the ground because my husband found it a foot or so outside of the box. It was a stinky sack of yuck, so I don't blame her for getting it out of there. We had an egg go missing last year and can only assume the same type of explosion happened. Our best guess is one of the chickens ate it because we never found a trace of it. If you didn't think chickens were gross, thinking about one eating a busted rotten egg will change your mind.

We tried candling the eggs early on around Day 8 and saw a little something in a handful, so hopes are we'll have a handful of little bits running around soon. I haven't had a chance to check them with good results since because Mama normally gets off the eggs in the mornings when I'm at work. With the eggs being such a dark brown, the only way we can candle them is with a pretty powerful light, so my one quick attempt with a flashlight was feeble (the flashlight method worked well last year with the tiny white bantam eggs). So, it'll be a complete surprise how many hatch unless I can steal them this weekend while she's taking a break at the water cooler.

At the start of this brooding, I said I was going to be relaxed this time around and I am proud to say I have been. I only check on her once a day. When it was 100 degrees, I brought her cold ice water every morning. And, that's it. It's easy to be calm when you're prepared. We were smart this time and blocked off the Maternity Ward so we could go ahead and move her into her own section of the coop on Day 8. Last year the eggs started hatching earlier than expected and we already had one chick hatched when I was out there at 6:30 one evening stapling chicken wire to divide the main run from the newly build section. We had to move Mama, newborn baby, and the rest of the eggs in a scramble. This year, experience has led to Mama being comfy and cozy in her own space, my not worrying about her doing her job, and my husband becoming the worrywart. This time he's the one who is checking on her three times a day. Oh, the difference a year makes.

Brooding Sure is Hard to Do

Day 4 of brooding. Our fluffy mama is doing a great job. If not also a weird job.

Erickson spends most of her day sitting on her clutch, of course. She has been fairly smart this time around. When we let the chickens out to forage and give them treats, she takes a break from her eggs, gets something to drink, scratches around, stretches and grooms a bit before heading back in to the coop to take up her post as incubator. She makes some crazy clucking sounds the entire time she's off the eggs as if to call to them so they know she's right outside and not to worry. That or she's warning any lunatics who might try to steal her eggs that she'll peck their eyes out if they even think about touching them.

Now, she's still a chicken. And chickens' brains are only so big. Erickson has proven to be a good brooder and a good mama, so I won't judge her too much, but yesterday we had an incident. Another chicken laid an egg in one of the empty nest boxes next to Erickson's clutch while Erickson was out and about on her daily incubator break. When she went back into the coop she decided to sit on the lonely unfertilized egg rather than on the dozen eggs she has been sitting on for the past three days. I never said chickens were the smartest animals on the planet. She must have taken one look at that single egg and thought, "What do you think I am? A sucker? Why spend my time warming, turning, and rotating all those eggs when I could take care of this one little egg?" My husband checked on her and seeing that she had not made the best choice, at least in hatching terms, he stole the one egg from under her fluff-butt. She hopped up and ended up settling herself back on the correct nest. Maybe I should take back my judgment of stupidity and say that maybe chickens are geniuses. Erickson's no sucker.

Hers can't be the most glorious job in the flock. I'd much rather be Pouncey, who since Erickson's departure from normal flock activities, has taken up the post of frantically pacing back and forth in front of the door to the run whenever she sees human activity. See, it's been ridiculously hot the last two days and I feel bad that Erickson's stuck in that coop keeping a dozen eggs warm. It's like she's sitting next to a space heater and it's 105 degrees outside. Literally. This has to be the worst week for a chicken to be broody. If it we're me, I'd do my egg hatching in the early spring when it isn't so hot. But I guess you can't time these things out like that. She seems to like June-July for hatching chicks. If they hatch right on time, my husband and I might get chicks as our 8th wedding anniversary present. That wouldn't be too shabby. But, how can I top that next year? Maybe a goat or pig will be in order. Hmm...

The Eggs are in the Coop. I Repeat. The Eggs are in the Coop!

They arrived today! Erickson's dozen Marans eggs are here and under her fluffy butt. She's in crazy broody chicken heaven. It's amazing what a dozen eggs can do to a girl. She's been nurturing one (unfertilized) egg that we've been changing out every day for the past four days or so; not wanting a stinky rotten egg sitting around, we'd switch the egg every day with one of the freshly laid eggs from one of our other girls. She seemed fine with the one egg, but if a girl's going to sit in a nest box for three weeks, she ought to make it count.

Now, she has so many eggs she hardly knows what to do! I went out to check on her about twenty minutes ago and she has this crazed serial killer look to her. It's like she was daring me to mess with her eggs so she had a reason to tear out my eyes. Seriously. I wouldn't mess with her right now if I were you.

The countdown is on. Day 1 and counting! I'll keep you updated on this set of chicks just like I did last Spring. Every chicken is so different, I'm sure these little guys will surprise me. Let me start thinking of awesome chicken names now… Lola…Grover…Captain America…

It's a Waiting Game

It's June and we're three days into summer. It's ridiculously hot outside. Twice this week it hit ninety degrees. Today it's supposed to be around eighty-six degrees, but according to the weatherman it feels like ninety-one. Super awesome, huh? The chickens are weathering the heat with their usual indifference. They're keeping a low profile, lying in their giant dirt holes and trying to keep cool with dust baths. All except one that is. One fat Mama is currently trying for a second round at motherhood.

All Spring we waited patiently. Okay. We waited impatiently for one of our girls to go broody. Early in the season we had one girl taking her time to lay eggs and got our hopes up that she was getting ready to go broody. I got my hopes up enough that I picked out what type of fertile eggs I wanted to get and did a price comparison online. But, since I did all that research, she went right back to normal after a day or two and didn't think twice about setting on anything. I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but that's how chickens roll.

Erickson, our Brahma, is trying her hardest to hatch our girls' eggs right now. It makes me a little sad. I tilt my head to one side and make the "bless her heart" face when I go out there and see her sitting on those three unfertilized eggs. Once I walk away though, I forget about the hopelessness of her current situation and think about the exciting possibility of more baby chicks! They're ordered and getting ready to be shipped. I'm ready and raring to go. This time around, I'll be able to wait with excited anticipation instead of furiously scouring the internet for all the hatching-by-broody-hen information I can find. Trust me. There isn't much out there, but that's because you don't need to do anything more than have the hen sit on the eggs. That's it. Last year I was constantly checking on her and worrying and reading about hatching and what I needed to know about chicks when I should have been sitting back with my legs kicked up waiting to hear the little peeps of baby chicks.

I do find it funny that Erickson is the only hen who wants to hatch eggs. I'm not complaining. I love my fresh eggs and if we had a 50% or 75% broody hen rate, I would be tough out of luck on delicious scrambled eggs and quiche. Having three hens be perfect production girls is great. They lay eggs all the time, eat layer feed and treats, hunt for bugs and take dust baths. They are not interested in hanging around in the coop on a bunch of eggs they have to turn continuously for three weeks. It does sound pretty sucky doesn't it? If my butt was as fluffy and fat as Erickson's, maybe I wouldn't mind sitting in there either.

Someone Tell the Chickens It's Spring

If you have chickens, you know what spring brings: prolific egg laying. A happy hen is a laying hen and spring time makes happy girls. With warmer temperatures, sunnier days, and enough inch worms for a football field of hens, our four girls are happy as clams and laying eggs like crazy.

Just as spring began, all four girls would lay an egg every day. Rarely we got only two eggs, some times three, but for the most part we were in full scale production mode. We'd get a dozen eggs in three days time. That's a big difference from the customary one to two eggs a day we'd get through winter.  Who wouldn't be happy with endless beautiful days? Our grass started to grow uncontrollably and apparently there were bugs everywhere because when we let the girls out to forage they became scratching fools - more so than usual. That's one of the things I love about having chickens. Eat the heck out of those bugs, girls. They were hugs fans of the inch worms that took over our yard for about a month, but were never fans of the fuzzy caterpillars. I wouldn't want to eat something covered with fuzz either, so I don't blame them. All the sun and bugs began the most delicious egg season of the year.

Now that spring is fading into summer, the eggs have chilled out a little. We average three every day. With the decline of the inch worm came the decline of four eggs every day. I'm happy with a three-egg day though. We still have a stock pile in the fridge. Those eggs make us pretty popular with our friends and coworkers. They're golden yellow and delicious. Those spring eggs are the best of the season. There's something extra rich, golden and delicious about them. It's the inch worms.

Along with more eggs, we've been having a lot more noise coming from the coop this time around. They are the loudest they've ever been. We can hear them squawking in the house. With our windows and doors closed. At first I thought it was Bossy, our Barred Rock. She's always quite loud after she's laid an egg and she seems to love it best when she can trumpet to the world at 8 am that she's just made something. It can be pretty embarrassing. Lots of times I've found myself standing in the doorway to the backyard listening to her go on for three minutes at the top of her lungs while I think, This is why you need to have chickens in the country and not the middle of the city. We've been lucky though. We have great neighbors who don't mind the occasional BA KOCK! at the break of dawn.

Even though we've been fully launched into summer days of ninety degrees, I'm still waiting for the other thing that spring is supposed to bring: a broody hen. I want to try our hands at hatching some more cuties. But alas. Chickens do what they want.

Growing Chicks

When we decided to let our broody Brahma hatch eggs, I was terrified, as I've mentioned before. I had no idea what I was doing. And as our happy soon-to-be Mama hen sat on all of these eggs, I suddenly realized we were in way over our heads with this one. Of course, I kept that little piece of thought to myself as my husband was originally less than thrilled to get chickens in the first place. He had grown to love them and was totally behind the idea of letting our Brahma hatch some eggs to get over her broodiness, but I felt like this was my venture so I needed to know what I was doing. And, I assumed my husband expected that I knew what I was doing. Why else would I have been so hung ho about hatching chicks? I am the chicken lady in our family. So, I took to the internet and checked out a new chicken book from the library (I'm nothing if not a planner and researcher) and I've already written about hatching those cute babies.

Once they were here, I scoured all of my resources including the two chicken books I already own and could find little in terms of a timeline for my expected babies. I wanted pictures. I wanted charts. I wanted to know what to expect and when to expect it. Now, I understand that all chickens are different. Raising chicks is like raising children in the fact that all the "What to Expect" books and the parenting magazines warn you that all children are different and some develop at a slower or faster rate than others. But I seriously wanted some sort of flow chart to follow so I'd know what to expect. Why hasn't anyone written a What to Expect When You're Expecting Chicks book? It could start with the development of the chick in the egg as it's sat on by the hen. Then the chapters could be divided by week with each week having a description of the types of things your chicks should be doing and thing they might start doing. Then it could answer common questions people have about raising chickens. I mean, this sounds like a money maker to me. I've read the chicken forums. People raise chickens and hatch eggs and have no idea what they're doing. This sucker would be a huge seller in hardware and feed stores. Just saying.

I'm going to give a basic timeline for the clutch of chicks we hatched. I'm going to start at hatch and go through 8 weeks. They're a few days away from being 11 weeks old. The biggest changes happened between hatching and 8 weeks. The past few weeks they've mostly just grown and integrated more and more with the flock, so in terms of development it's not as exciting as those first 2 months. You may find that your hatching experience is different or that your breed of chicken developed differently or at a different pace. I completely expect that to be true and I'd love for you to share your experiences below. I've only experienced the hatch of one clutch, so that's all I have to go on.

This is the story of 5 Japanese-Old English Game Bantams. Keep in mind they are super tiny since they're bantams. Let's get started:

Week 1: It took three days for all of the eggs to hatch. When they first hatch out, they're super tiny and look wet, but within the first hour they become the fluffy little chicks you expect. They make constant peeping sounds.

This is the first baby to hatch. She's less than an hour old.

Here they are on Day 2.

Week 2: They are all out and about. They stick to Mama as closely as possible. When she finds food she makes a particular clucking sound that alerts them that she has something to eat and they come running. They still look like little fluff balls except by the end of this week their wings are feathering out and they're starting to grow tiny tail feathers. The color of their fluff is not necessarily any indication of the color of their feathers. They're easily caught and picked up, though they make frantic peeping noises when you do it. During the day they are super active. They like to scratch around a little in the dirt. They climb all over Mama's back and sit on her. Sometimes they try to burrow under her wings when she's sitting with them. They like to sit in the sun and sun themselves. They take lots of little naps during the day - they'll just plop down somewhere in the dirt and fall asleep. Peeping is still constant. At night, they all climb into the nest box and burrow deep under Mama. You can't even tell they're there.

 They're getting ready for bedtime and are about to climb in and burrow under her wings

 and in the back of the box under her bum for the night. 

Week 3: Feathering continues and the chicks' backs and chests begin to sprout feathers. The tail fathers have grown out longer. They preen themselves obsessively. They still stay fairly close to Mama and she still gives the food call. They eat and drink when they're hungry, but take a lot of cues from Mama. They forage when she does and stick close most of the time, but once in awhile one or two chicks wander off a little in the run and scratch and forage for themselves. They're beginning to realize that if they hide in the corner, they have more of a chance to eat what they've found or stolen away from the others! (Note: This week was the week of the 4th of July. We were out of town most of this week and my sister chick-sat, so there aren't any example chick pictures.) 

Week 4: They're roosting now. They've nearly tripled in size since they hatched. They are now strange chick/chicken hybrids. They have fuzzy chick heads and feathered bodies. Their chests are in the final stages of feathering, so there's still a little fuzz poking out in places. Still constant peeping from everyone. Mama is still mothering them and they mostly stick close to her, but they go off on their own a lot. They generally stick to the buddy system and have at least one other chick around near them at all times. Some of them still try to snuggle with Mama when she's laying in the sun. They even interrupt her dirt baths to get on top of or near her. Personally, we let the chicks out to free-range with Mama at this age. They stick right by her and love scratching for bugs and tidbits all over the yard. She does not let the other adult hens near them and gives a warning call before attacking if someone gets too close for comfort. Their combs are much more pronounced. If you're familiar with chickens and hatching at all, you can generally tell by the comb how many roosters and hens you have at this point (some breeds make this identifying a little harder, so it's not always the easiest task). I can tell that we have at least two roosters at this point. They're very curious. A piece of hardware cloth divided the chicks and Mama from the rest of our flock. The two areas were next to each other, so they could see each other through the wire and spent lots of time contemplating each other. 

Roosting on the mini-roost we put up for the chicks and on part of the coop structure dividing the two areas. 

A close up of one of the roosting roosters. Notice the still fuzzy head. 

Week 5: Their heads are working on catching up with the rest of their body! Feathers are sprouting, but you can still see a little fluff too. They actually look like mini chickens now and not chicks anymore. I won't be able to call them babies for much longer (though I'll continue calling them chicks throughout this entire piece to be consistent). Their combs are even more pronounced than last week and it seems that we have 2 hens and 3 roosters. When they're out free-ranging, the chicks will wander a little farther away from Mama. She's still in their sights, but they'll go quite a few feet away without worrying. One of the chicks is  a free adventurous spirit and goes off halfway across the yard by himself. At the end of this week we integrated the chicks with the rest of the flock. They've been free ranging for nearly two weeks and the adult hens and the chicks have free-ranged alongside each other without any problems (besides Mama getting cranky). A pecking order has to be established, so some pecking and chasing has ensued; otherwise, the merging of the two coops is going well for us. Oh, I almost forgot. Still with all the peeping. 

Week 6: This week is more of the same: they are growing bigger, continuing to peep, loving to forage and scratching for anything edible. They love bugs. Big time. They've gotten the routine down from the big hens. They join in with the rest of the flock when it's time for The Food Lady to appear. They love treats. They are super fast little buggers and it's an event to catch one of them. But you know I do it anyway.  

Week 7: There is no sign of fluff on the "chicks" anymore. Since they're bantams, their size is the only thing that still makes them look like chicks. The roosters have nice tall combs and beautiful iridescent tail feathers. The girls are fat little beauties. They're still growing rapidly. It's not so apparent when you look at them every day, but looking back at pictures from just a few weeks ago shows how much bigger they've gotten. They are just like any other member of the flock. They do everything the big hens do. I haven't seen them dust bath with my own eyes, but I'm sure they must be doing it when I'm not around. That's the only thing that I can't check off my list of "chickenish" things I know they do. They scratch and stretch their wings. They eat out of the big hens' feeder  (even though we still have their chick feeder in the coop) and they've started using the big waterer too. They roost a lot. It's one of their favorite pastimes. Mama occasionally makes a little food alert noise when they're foraging and they still follow her around to a point, but this week seems to show the biggest difference in terms of their dependence on her. They're almost to the point where they are just other members of the flock. (This week also happens to mark the first egg laid by Mama since becoming broody). They're now spending a lot of time establishing a pecking order between themselves. They get into little duels with their neck feathers all fluffed out. It's hilarious to watch.

Scratching in front of their big Mama.

Week 8: The chicks are now simply other members of the flock. Mama is nice to them, but she doesn't help them with food. I actually saw her grab some treats away from some of them when I was giving them their morning treat. They still have a bond with Mama though. When she goes in to lay eggs, some of them follow her into the coop to check out what's going on. They'll hang around near her when they're all hanging out and lounging in the dirt. They seem to have fit into the flock's pecking order. One of the hens, Ochocinco, still throws a peck their way every now and then to keep them in line. They stick together. The incessant peeping continues. They're growing bigger, but there aren't any major appearance changes this week. 

During week 9 I finally saw them dust bathing. It was cute because three of them squished themselves into one of the dust bath ditches in the coop (the hens generally dust bathe in one of a few determined spots in the coop's run). I like to watch them preen. It's so cute because they're so miniature. At week 10 they still have a size disadvantage mostly because of their bantam status. They're getting much bigger though, so space has become an issue in the coop at nighttime. We're passing on the 3 roosters to friends because as urban chicken keepers, we're not supposed to keep them. Next weekend, a few days shy of 3 months old, 2 of them will go off to live in the country with dozens of other chickens. I'm like a scared Mama. I'm worried about how they'll fit in and if the other chickens will be nice to them. I'm sad to see them go. They're my babies. It'll be another few weeks before the last one goes to his new home, so I'm hoping it'll lessen the blow for me.  They're the most beautiful little birds I could've imagined. They're fun to watch, as are our other chickens. They have such huge wings that they can do some pretty good flying. They're can't fly off into the sunset, but they can get some height, especially if they're taking off from our higher roost. 

 The multi-chick dust bath.

Alright, broody Mamas. I'm ready for round 2!

Chick Wisdom

We knew nothing about hatching or raising chicks when we took on the insane challenge presented to us by Erickson, The Broody Mama. And having searched for information online, I know there are plenty of other people out there who don't have a clue either. Here are some useful tidbits I'm calling my Chick Wisdom:

1. Hatching by Broody Hen. I wrote an entire blog post about this topic, but want to reiterate my knowledge here. Hens know way more than you do about hatching eggs. Make sure she has access to food, water, the outside to stretch and take an occasional break and dust bath and she'll do the rest. I know it sounds crazy and you think you have to do something so you don't trust me, but I'm telling you that all you need to do is wait. Have some sort of separate area to keep the Mama and chicks for say one month to six weeks depending on the size and number of your chicks. The one thing to keep in mind (if it matters to you) is the fact that Mama does not lay eggs during this entire process: not while she's setting and not while the chicks are babies. She'll only start laying once she feels like her duty is done and the chicks are "on their own." For us, that was around six to seven weeks.

2. Pasting Up. (This one is important!) Pasting up is a condition associated with baby chicks. Their poop gets runny and cakes up on their rear and vent. It can be deadly because if the vent is blocked, nothing can come out. That's all I'll say. The good news is that it's an obvious problem. You can see if one of your chicks is pasting up as their bum is all caked up with dried on poop. You don't have to pick each one up and scrutinize their bums. Don't worry about how to tell. When you see it, you'll know. One of our chicks, Leia, got pasty. I took him (yes, Leia has grown up to be a rooster.) inside and rinsed his bum with warm water and a washcloth. After he was clean, I set my blow dryer on cool and turned it on at the lowest setting to dry him off a little before I put him back outside with Mama and the other chicks. He made a lot of noise. It will hurt your feelings a bit. Mostly, he was upset to be away from Mama. I had to clean him up twice. Then I kept an eye on him, but all is well.

3. Tiny Chickens. That phrase seems silly, but it was amazing how the chicks were born and within the first few days they were acting as if they were tiny adult chickens. Most of the things your adult hens do, the chicks will start doing in miniature. You figure, of course, they're watching Mama, but some things seemed to be all instinctive. They walk around, scratch at the dirt with both their feet and step back while they're bent over to look at the ground for possible food items. Then, they peck at the ground for little tidbits. They stretch just like the big hens with one wing out and the opposite foot stretched back. They tear at scraps and fling their beaks around trying to break up pieces of food that are too big to eat. They preen their fluff and feathers (as they come in) just like the hens. It's pretty cute stuff to watch.

4. Mama's Help. The mother hen continues to take care of everything once the chicks have hatched. She constantly makes sure they're eating by collecting bits of food (treats, chicken feed, bugs, grass, whatever she can get) and making a particular clucking sound. The chicks know that sound means food and will come running up to her to eat. She puts the bit of food down for the chicks to eat, but if it's too big or the chicks are having a hard time with it, she'll pick it back up and tear at it with her beak before putting it back down for them to try again. She does this constantly, trying to make sure all the chicks get to eat. Now, she won't give particular chicks food. They have to jump in there and fend for themselves, but she will collect enough so everyone has a chance to eat. They still have to be strong enough and smart enough to help themselves. During all of this mama bird feeding, she keeps very little for herself. It's almost all for her babies. The chicks also follow her everywhere. They stay glued to her hips for over a month. They easily learn from everything she does and they stay protected because Mama defends them when another hen comes too close for comfort. She can also usher them back inside the coop if she thinks they're in danger.

5. Pecking Order. As I mentioned in my last post, the entire flock is thrown into disarray by the addition of the chicks. They have to work out their positions while adding to their numbers. In our case, Mama decided she needed to move up in the pecking order now that she did something none of the others had done, so she was pretty mean to the hen she was bypassing in the order. The lowest member on our totem pole decided she was feeling a little froggy and chased the chicks a lot, but it was all because she refused to move down to number nine when she was already number four (four isn't so bad anymore when all of a sudden there are nine chickens). The funniest part of the pecking order drama was the chicks themselves. They were also in a pecking order war, and there is nothing funnier than tiny six-week-old bantams getting feisty. At seemingly random times while they're out foraging, two or three (and at least one time four) chicks will stop scratching and looking for juicy tidbits and stand up straight and tall, fluffing up their neck feathers. Sometimes they peck towards each other a little, but it looks quite ineffective from the sidelines. Then, once they've decided who won, they go back to foraging and all is well. I'm still not sure of their pecking order.

6. Gaining Independence. Around five to six weeks, the chicks start to stray from their Mama. They slowly start to wander off when they're foraging and not worry so much if Mama is right next to them. Now, they don't get too feisty and wander clear across the yard from her - I'm talking six or seven feet away when they're used to staying within a foot or two. At this point, if they get too far away they still freak out and hurry back or "cry" if they don't see her right way. Around seven to eight weeks it's like a switch is flipped and all of a sudden each chick is just another member of the flock. Slowly, Mama won't call them over every time she finds food. Then, she'll start to grab food away from them just as she would from another hen who's lower than her on the pecking order. Initially it's a little sad that she's not being Mama anymore, but then you realize that they're all grown up and part of the flock! For us, the pecking order issues also disappeared at the same point. Everyone worked out their place in the group and they reside harmoniously (for now).

As I took a break from writing this post and looked outside into the backyard, I saw Erickson trying to get away from her entourage of chicks. We're going on week eight and sometimes they decide they want their Mama. All she wants is to go into the chicken house and lay an egg, but they won't leave her alone (they're staying within a foot of her right now). She'd just like some privacy. Man, can I relate.

The Maternity Ward

As the hatch date for our buff Brahma's adopted clutch drew nearer, we started work on The Maternity Ward, or what some people call the brooder. We constructed a rectangular frame, covered it in hardware cloth (better than chicken wire because the holes are smaller and pretty impossible for something to reach through), added a door large enough for our 4 year old to walk through upright and attached the entire thing to the back side of our existing coop/run structure. The Maternity Ward is shown in the picture below.

We left the hardware cloth that was attached to the existing coop to create a barrier between the "big hens" and Mama and her chicks. Then my husband built a small cube on one and a half inch legs and a mini ramp for inside The Maternity Ward to serve as the nest box. During all this building, Mama was happily inside the big coop sitting on her eggs in one of the nest boxes. Once a day she'd go out into the run for food and water, a little stretch, and a dust bath before returning to her place on the eggs.

We weren't prepared for all of this construction and moving, so we finished construction and moved Mama and her eggs the night her first egg hatched! I came home from work and went out to the coop to check on our girls. I heard tiny peeping sounds when I opened the egg door, so I looked around and saw one tiny yellow peeping chick who had probably hatched less than an hour before I'd found her as her fluff was still wet and matted. After about fifteen minutes of scrambling and hammering and stapling, The Maternity Ward was secured to the rest of the coop. My husband bravely picked up Mama while I transferred the unhatched eggs and made a second trip for the newborn chick.

It was two days from the time chick #1 hatched to the time #5 hatched; Leia, #1, hatched on Monday and Bobba Fett, #5, hatched on Wednesday. (My son is in a Star Wars phase). Mama sat tight while the rest of the chicks hatched out. I lifted her up at least once a day after the move to check the progress of the remaining eggs hidden underneath her fluff and because I'm terribly nosey and couldn't help myself. We had two eggs that I didn't think were hatchable: they were either not fertile or the embryos died early on as I had amateurishly candled the eggs with a flashlight at around seven or eight days and again around fifteen days and neither egg looked like the others. I was going by the pictures in a book I'd been using as as guide for all things chicken, Living with Chickens by Jay Rossier. 

We made the hard decision on that second night after the 5th chick had completely hatched out to dispose of the remaining two eggs because Mama will sit there as long as it takes to complete her mission of hatching egg. She won't get off the nest and start caring for her chicks if there are still unhatched eggs, so based on the fact that neither egg had a crack or any sign of hatching and on my candling, which I did one last time before we disposed of the eggs, we took them out of the nest and placed them in the trash inside a plastic bag. It was pretty evident that the last two eggs weren't going to hatch just based on how the rest of the eggs hatched. Almost a day before they hatched out, the chick would start pecking its way out. You can see the start of a crack, which gets larger over time until a hole appears and a tiny beak pokes through. It's a grueling process to watch because some of them are a little slower than others. The runt of our litter took over a day to completely hatch out of her egg. A huge chunk of egg shell was cracked off and you could see her wet yellow fluff and parts of her beak and legs, but she took her time breaking the egg apart and coming into the world. I was terrified each time I went out to check on the eggs because I didn't know how quickly they should hatch out and I kept assuming that I'd go out there to find that half hatched chick had died while trying to get out of her egg. But she didn't and she's now a cute, fast little black and white Japanese-Old English Game Bantam. And she's my favorite of the chicks.

Mama and the chicks lived happily in The Maternity Ward for six weeks. The "big hens" were just as curious about the chicks as the chicks were about them. The chicks would sit and peep at the big hens and the big hens would stand and watch the little chicks peeping around. Before we took down the barrier inside the run, we started letting the big hens and Mama and the babies out into the yard at the same time. There were a few altercations between Mama and the other "big hens" when the hens would get too close for comfort around the chicks, but after a few weeks, the pecking order started to work itself back out and the other hens learned to keep a little distance from Mama and the babies. Size was part of our deciding factor for when we took down the barrier. The chicks were getting big and in need of more space and it was getting close to the time when Mama would decide that the chicks were big enough to fend for themselves.

We took down the barrier one afternoon while all of the chickens were out and about foraging in the yard. The big hens were excited to be able to get into The Maternity Ward when they were lead back into the coop. Mama and the chicks seemed to just go with the flow. Well, that is until Mama had to work out her pecking order issues. Since she'd been away from the flock for over a month, she had to establish her place in the order, which is now #2 behind Bossy, the Barred Rock. Pouncey, the Americauna, got the brunt of Mama's attacks because Pouncey had taken up residency as #2 during all this mothering time. It was a little scary how mean Mama would get. I'm talking ruthless. She'd jump on Pouncey's back and grab ahold of feathers with her beak and peck and claw at her. We'd break them up if we were outside because it was too much for me to handle. While Mama was trying to regain her place as #2, Ochocinco, our Iowa Blue, was trying to hold on to her place at the bottom of the pack as #4. She was (and is) determined not to let any of the chicks get higher than her in the pecking order. She has spent a lot of her time pecking at and chasing the chicks away from her. It seems mean and scary that all of this fighting is going on, but it's an important part of a chicken community that you can't help.

If you watch them closely, you can see the dynamics. You can see that it's the same chickens fighting it out and that most of the time they're not doing much harm. Ochocinco doesn't hurt the chicks. She pecks at them, but for the most part she doesn't actually touch them. Erickson has pulled out a few feathers from Pouncey's back, but they have since worked things out. If Pouncey gets too close for comfort, Erickson puffs up and makes some mean clucking sounds and Pouncey crouches down until Erickson moves on. The chicks have figured out which of the big chickens are friendly and which ones to keep an eye on. They're a flock now. And a pretty nice one if I do say so myself.

Broody Mamas

It just happens out of nowhere. There aren't any warning signs or disaster signals that I can tell. One day you'll go out to the coop to collect eggs and encounter a hen hunkered down in a nesting box. I say "hunkered down" because that's exactly what you'll see: a hen sitting low and fat in the nesting box. She's not trying to lay an egg. I've caught hens a few times getting ready to lay or who'd just laid eggs and they'll high tail it out of there pretty much as soon as you open the egg door. If she sits there and looks back at you over her shoulder like you're crazy for intruding on her privacy, then she's not laying an egg; she's trying to hatch some.

My first tactic to break my Brahma's sudden broodiness was to kick her off her "clutch" (Our chickens generally like to lay their eggs in the same one of the three nesting boxes in our coop). I'd nudge her out of the nesting box by lifting her big fluffy butt to take the eggs she was hoarding and then I'd push her out of the box into the coop and say, "Go on. Get out." She'd make some mean clucking noises at me that I assume where not fit for a lady and then go on out into the run. We performed this ritual for several days with the same results (Isn't that the definition of insanity?). That is, until she started getting mean. After three or four days of the nudging tactic, she started fighting back by pecking at my hand and wrist. It didn't hurt, but it was a bit terrifying. As my husband and I debated our next move, The Chicken Man offered up some fertile eggs and some sage advice: let her hatch some eggs and she'll become a happy mama. We decided to go for it.

One afternoon I went out to the coop after work, checked that she wasn't sitting on any of our hens' eggs, and placed seven little white eggs next to her in the nesting box. I'd read somewhere during my hours of internet research about hatching eggs with broody hens that this was the best way to go. I checked on her in an hour and she was sitting on her eggs, hunkered down fat and happy.

Collecting the infertile eggs everyday was easy from then on. She'd look at you when you opened the egg door, but she didn't much mind that we were in there. Most days we weren't bothering her or her unborn brood. However, I'll warn you that if you get fertile eggs that are the same color as your hens' eggs, mark the fertile eggs with a Sharpie. We had it easy because our eggs were a different color. All of our hens lay brown eggs. Some days we'd open the door to collect eggs and Mama would be sitting on the brown eggs, leaving an empty nest full of white eggs. She's cute, but she's not the brightest. Chickens can't tell color or count, so when she'd come back into the coop after her daily excursion outside for food, water, and a good dust bath, she'd get right on the first nesting box of eggs she saw. At least four times, she got on the brown eggs. I referred back to the nudge tactic. I'd lift her butt, take the brown eggs, and close the egg door. She'd get up and go over to the right nesting box. A few times, to be nice, we'd put the white eggs in the new nesting box with her and she'd situate them all underneath herself. Since we were new to this hatching venture, we could have easily prevented the egg switching by moving her to a separate area earlier than we did, but we weren't prepared and it worked out fine in the end.

With all the egg confusion, you'd think we wouldn't have any eggs hatch, but I realized that chickens have been hatching eggs for hundreds of years. They know better than we do on this one. In about twenty days, Mama hatched out five beautiful Japanese-Old English Game crossed bantam chicks. They were the cutest and tiniest things I'd ever seen. And, she did a beautiful job hatching them.

Half of those twenty days I was busy trying to research what I needed to do to help her and take care of those eggs, but then I stumbled onto a great site http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Broody-Hens-1.html. This site is an amazing five part tutorial on hatching eggs with hens rather than incubators. And, it taught me what I said above: chickens know how to hatch eggs. It's that simple. You don't have to do anything except provide food, water, and a safe place to hatch her chicks. She will do nearly everything else, which includes constantly turning the eggs with her feet or beak every few minutes! It's nothing short of miraculous.

I will say that The Chicken Man was right. She hatched those chicks and she's one happy mama (more on that part later).

You may be thinking the same thing I am: a hen can't tell which eggs she's been sitting on for two weeks, but she knows exactly what to do to keep them alive and then mother them? Sure does.