New Chicken Drama

I've considered getting more chickens, either by hatching them, buying day-old chicks, or by getting some that are ready to start laying, but most of that involves a little drama.  Hatching them means that you will have roosters to get rid of eventually.  Getting day-old chicks means raising them yourself, or, if you have a broody hen, hoping she will do it for you, but being prepared in case she doesn't.  Introducing older chickens to the flock means taking the risk that they will be rejected by the flock.  One of the first times I introduces a new chicken, she got run off almost immediately.  We found her a few days later a few houses away.

I had the opportunity to adopt three Dominiques from a neighbor this weekend.  He had a situation that forced him to get rid of his chickens.  As I am writing this, he still has seven more that need a home.  Hopefully we'll be able to find one.  I got some of his Dominiques because I remember reading that they were all around good birds.  Most people getting chickens want ones that are fairly young, and at 2+ years old, these are probably close to middle-age.  I think I like the chickens as much for the entertainment as I do for the eggs, so it doesn't bother me to have older hens.

Once I decided which ones and how many I could take, it was just a matter of how to go about this.  I thought his chickens were fairly friendly, and I could walk up to one and pick her up - that wasn't the case, but the first one wasn't hard to catch, since there were ten of them in a confined space.  I put her under my arm, walked back to the house and dumped her over my fence, away from my other chickens just to be safe.

With the second and third ones, I decided to use a net to make it easier.  So after dumping the third one over the fence, I went to observe all the chickens to see if there was any interaction, good or bad, but I could only find two of the three new hens.  I looked in every hiding place in the back yard, but no luck - she must have gone over the fence.  I happened to spot her in the front yard - she was just wandering around out there.  With a little luck I was able to catch her fairly easily and put her back in the back yard.  The didn't seem to interact with the rest of the flock, but they weren't being harassed either, so that was good.

The next important time to see how they interact is when it is time to go to bed.  My experience is that the first night can be the hardest for the new birds.  They're somewhere they've never been and may not know exactly where to go, even though the other chickens do.  Once it got dark, I went to see if the new hens has figured out what to do, and they hadn't.  One was in the run, but hadn't gone into the hen house to roost.  I was able to grab her, and open up the house, and put her on the roost, but it was like she physically couldn't sit on it.  I had to try several times before she didn't fall off.  I had never seen anything like that before.

I found the second one nesting under some giant elephant ears near the hen house.  She was easy to grab and put on the roost.  Then I had to find the third one.  I got a flashlight and looked in every hiding place I could find, but no luck.  The one place left was in a large Japanese privet that was growing in the chicken area.  Sure enough, she was roosting in the giant shrub.  I was able to grab her and put her on the roost next to her sisters.

While writing all of this, I've been monitoring the integration process while taking lots of photos, and there is just too much to write about right now.  Print news can't handle breaking news.  Anyway, that's the situation so far.  I will write more later.  Stay tuned.

Spring?

This has been an interesting spring.  With the exception of a warm period in January, it has been kind

of average.  In recent years the weather has warmed up very quickly, like it was a race toward summer.  I was glad this year was looking a little more sane - mid-March and I just started to think about warm season vegetables.  But then something happened.  Since my posts about warm weather and last frost dates, it has turned cold - not bitterly cold temperatures, but a constant cold, with lows in the 30s and 40s.  It's enough to put a damper on spring for some of us.  In addition to the weather, a minor back injury has kept me from getting out in the garden.  Let me tell you what I'm missing in the garden.

One of my top priorities is raking - I know it should be a fall chore, but, when you have a live oak, it is a spring one.  Our grand oak holds onto its leaves all winter and then drops them in early spring.  It's not as bad as it seems - a few years ago I made a shade garden under the oak, so I would just have to rake the leaves into it when the time came.

Get the lawn mower started and mow the weeds - every spring I wonder if the mower will start.  Every year I tell myself that I will do the right thing and run it empty or buy some fuel stabilizer.  I also tell myself that I will change the oil and air filter too.  It wasn't starting earlier this spring, but I added a little fresh gas and it started right up.  Now to do what I always say I'm going to do.

Plant warm-season vegetables - this weekend finally looks like the end of cold weather, which means that I can really start to think about planting corn and squash and beans without worrying about it getting too cold at night.  Some of our coneflowers are even starting to bloom!

Hatch some chicks - now that nighttime temperatures are a lot warmer, it's safe to hatch some chicks.  I haven't completely decided what I'm going to do, but I have two broody hens that want to raise some chicks.  I thought about using some of our eggs again, but I also thought about getting eggs from someone else, so we could have completely different chickens.

I've been a little busy (and hurt) during the past few weeks, but I've got some more posts making their way down the pipeline as we speak.  Stay tuned.

More about chicken fencing and hawk attacks

Since the chickens have been mostly kept behind their new fence, we haven't seemed to have as much problem with hawks.  About half the area has a decent web of monofilament overhead, but the other half is a little more open.  I haven't taken the time to put up the fishing line, and there isn't as much to attach it to - that's going to take a little more thought...and work.

I was working in yard the other day when a shadow caught my eye - a hawk had just flown over my head, just a foot or two above, headed straight for the chicken area.  When it reached the new fence and monofilament, it banked hard and flew up over the garage.  I took this as anecdotal evidence that what I had done was protecting the chickens.  So much for that theory.

Last night was probably as cold as it's been all winter - 29 degrees here. After a cold night hawks are hungry.  About 8:30 this morning we hear the sounds of a hawk attack.  We see chickens hiding in one area, but no signs of a disturbance.  I go inside the fence to look around and it's quiet, until I hear a squawk.  There are a number of small volunteer nandina bushes in the area - I can't decide whether to cut them down, or leave them as cover for the chickens.  I move toward one these bushes and a hawk flies out of it, trying to carry one of the chickens with it.  Before it gets out of the yard it drops the hen.  I was able to catch her and take a look at her and she seems ok for the most part.  Meanwhile the chickens have mostly left the area through the gate that I left open.  The area where this attack happened was the less-well-protected area that I mentioned before.

So now that the chickens are out there's nothing I can do - it's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.  They've congregated in an area against the house, near the back steps and the HVAC and the hot water heater.  It seems fairly safe to me, so I go back the the house.  An hour or so later we hear noises again, and a hawk has tried to get them there as well.  After a while I become curious where the chickens might be hiding this time.  I look all over the yard and I can only find two - one in a nesting box and one in the nandina.  Just after eleven - another hawk attack!  It appears the hen in the bush left to join the other chickens and was attacked the same place as before, near the house.  Ella came out and we were able to grab her and put her with the rest of the chickens.  They were apparently hiding in our covered garden storage area, among the pots and wire fencing.  No wonder I couldn't find them.

I hope they are going to be ok the rest of the day.  We have plans later and won't be around to protect them.  Everything that has happened today has made it that much more important that I work on putting up more monofilament and protecting the chickens better.

Chicken Fence

So, the fence...as of Saturday afternoon it was finished.  I still have a few details to take care of, but it is functional.  Like I mentioned before, I still have a small area to close off on the other side of the garage.  The fence got its test run last Sunday morning and the chickens weren't happy.  One of the smaller bantams flew over it, which made the larger birds even more anxious about getting out.  I couldn't watch that, so I opened the gate.  I felt like I had failed, but it reminded me that there was more to this than just the fence.

I remembered that I thought this might happen, and that I needed to clip some wings.  I didn't have much time left in the weekend, so after the chickens went to bed and it got dark, I went out there and was able to grab each of the smaller hens and clip one wing, and put them back without causing too much of a ruckus.  It will make me feel better if none of them are able to get out - that way everyone will get used to the idea of a smaller space.  When I say "smaller space", I'm still talking more than a thousand square feet as opposed to a quarter acre.  We went through this when we first got our flock, so it's just a matter of time before everyone is adjusted.

Another part of fencing them off was to protect them better than I could when they had the run of the yard - that includes stringing fishing line above as much the area as possible.  I had heard that the fishing line kept the hawks away from the chickens.  I wasn't sure if they saw and stayed away, or they would hit it and become disoriented.  Although they have attacked our flock numerous times, I was wary of doing anything that might hurt the hawks.  I just did some reading around the web and the consensus is that the hawk sees it and stays away.  I hope that is the case.  I still have a few more areas to string it up, but I'm more than half way done.

It's been a week since I wrote this post and the chickens have adjusted fine.  It is different having them fenced off.  We're not able to interact with them in the same way, and they've become more skittish around us, almost immediately.  When they see me, sometimes they act like they want to get out - I still feel like I've done something bad to them!  We'll get used to it, and hopefully they're more protected.  Anyway, I have been letting them out in the evenings.  I just planed my backyard garden for the first time in almost a year.  In the last week the chickens hadn't made it as far as the garden in their evening wanderings, but today they immediately found it.  That's ok - they can't do much damage right now.

My Week Off

I took the week off - one would think that I took a vacation from this blog, but that's not true.  I've been hard at work volunteering at the Master Gardener's office, planting fruit trees at Cypress Gardens, and building a chicken fence at home - and, if I have time, building a few rain barrels.

I'm always afraid that I will procrastinate when I take time off from work - I never seem to get everything done that I had planned.  This has not been one of those times.  My main project was building a chicken fence.  We've had some hawk attacks, and we are also tired of the chickens having the run of the yard, so a fence was in order.  It's been planned for a long time, but it finally got built this week - as of this writing, everything but the gate is finished.  I started out the week very motivated, and the fence was probably three-quarters finished by Monday night.  I had hopes that I could finish by then, because the next two or three days would be busy.

When I had my week off planned, the first thing I scheduled was a double shift at the Master Gardener's office.  I wasn't sure how I would feel about working the whole day, but, while the morning crept by slowly, the afternoon was very busy which made time fly.  Also I managed to work on the fence for a short time before and after volunteering.

On Wednesday I was scheduled to volunteer planting trees at Cypress Gardens in the morning.  I don't usually prefer these kind of volunteer activities, mainly because I feel like I have similar things I can do in my own yard, but I saw an opportunity - I was getting into Cypress Gardens for free, I was getting lunch, and I was planning to spend the afternoon exploring the swamp.  There was a lot of walking to sites where we were going to plant these trees - they were starting a fruit orchard and we were planting these, mostly bare root, trees in a couple of different locations.  The dozen or more volunteers made short work of the plantings and we were fed lunch.  Afterward I spend a couple of hours walking the four plus miles of trails through the cypress swamps.  All of the signs telling you to watch out for alligators became a little unnerving, but I only heard one the whole time I was there.

I thought I would be completely free to do other things by Thursday, but I spent a little more time on the fence, reaching the point of almost finishing the gate.  By the evening, I felt like the week was almost over, but in reality I have three whole days left - plenty of time to do a few more things around the house...

Two of those three days are gone now without much to show for it - at least around the house.  I never really took a whole day off the entire week, so that's what happened on Friday.  It was a good idea too - the cold and flu that I had missed when it happened at my house earlier this year landed at my feet Thursday night.  Luckily I'm only talking about a cold.  It hasn't been bad, but I wish I didn't have it - and I go back to work on Monday.  So, Saturday, after it warmed up, I was able to finish the gate, so the chickens will have a smaller area to call their own now.  I do have a few more details to finish - cut and attach boards so the gate looks like the rest of the fence, and block off a small area between the garage and the fence.  I also have to remove our clothesline that now crosses the fence and put up an umbrella-style one.  I'm in the process of running fishing line over the entire area to deter any hawk attacks as well.  I've heard this a number of places - I hope it works.  Another possible long-term goal is to put up additional rows of fence boards to make it look more like a fence.

More on the outcome of the fence later.

Living With Chickens

Since getting chickens more than a year ago, we've had our share of drama, but nothing compares to what has happened this summer.  When we first got our flock, there was some pecking order issues and they had a tendency to prefer our neighbors' yards rather than ours.   They settled down and we put up more fencing and let them free-range in the back yard during the day.  It was fun having them always roaming the yard, finding insects and chasing each other around.  While our first set of chicks were growing up, they, along with their mother, decided they liked our neighbor's yard.  After plugging most of the holes, they decided the front yard looked good - eventually they were contained.

I was growing the bulk of our vegetables in the back yard, but I knew having chickens might be a problem.  I postponed planting the garden in order to let the chickens dig around in it, thinking they might mostly leave it along after I planted it - they did not.  I experimented with fencing off the garden - it kept the chickens out, but it kept me out too.

This summer has seen hawks attacking our second set of chicks and Robin being attacked by our rooster, who, we think, is under the impression she is another rooster.  We thought the dogs would eventually get used to the chickens, but it seems to have only gotten worse.

So, you see, we have some issues with our chickens right now.  As much as I like them roaming the yard, this summer has given us reason to contain them.  I want to give them as much room as they want, but I want to keep them safe, and I want us to be able to use the yard however we want.  The conclusion I came to was to build a fence - but exactly where?  I want it to be easy to put up, and placed somewhere that will give them, as well as us, the proper space.  The area that I'm thinking of will give them plenty of space to roam, and I'll be able to better protect them from predators - and I can plant my garden again!  I may let them roam in the evening, but I'll have to keep an eye on them around the veggies.

Chicken Drama

Some of our chickens can be a little high-strung.  One of our Rhode Island Reds is very vocal about wanting out of the coop in the morning and also about wanting a treat.  Some of the bantams will squawk at the smallest thing.  And they all get a little upset when we let the dogs out.  But there has been cause for alarm recently.

We had the covered area on the side of our house still set up as a "chicken nursery" when it was time to hatch our second set of chicks.  It had its flaws, but, for the most part, it was nearly the same as it was when we hatched the first chicks.  The only thing different was part of the fencing was two feet tall instead of four feet.  During the first couple of weeks after the seven chicks hatched, something must have attacked them during the night.  I found the mother out of the nursery and sitting on her chicks near the hen house.  When it got light enough, I discovered there were only five.  Within a few days she and her chicks were living in the hen house and getting along with all the other chickens.

I've always assumed that there were always hawks around our house.  I felt like we really didn't know the extent of it, since we're not in the yard from sunrise to sunset.  But we have been seeing a lot more recently.  Earlier this week, between trips into the back yard, a hawk must have gotten one of our chicks.  We could not find it anywhere.  The next evening, Ella saw a hawk on top of our mother hen, and scared it off.  Then another evening a hawk must have gotten another chick, because, when I let the chicks out in the morning, I only counted three.  So we're down to three chicks.  Ella is a little upset about all of this, but there's not much more that we can do.  We just have to hope they grow up fast.

One of the hens we kept from our first set of chicks is suspected of being a rooster.  Back in August I heard a second crow coming from the hen house.  If you love your chickens as much as we do, it's a devastating sound - it means that you are going to have to get rid of one.  I wasn't sure which one it was, but I planned to find out.  I've given up on that for now, because we're pretty sure which one it is.  He has become more of an outcast from the flock and I think he's been bullied as well.  He's very skittish, even jumping when you throw food in his direction.  We were thinking about him the other day and I found him in the hen house - I grabbed him and Robin and I were able to get a good look at him.  He has what looks like a sore spot on his upper back, and he wasn't opening one of his eyes.  The eye thing was probably a fluke, because I saw both of them open today, but I am concerned.  I don't think there's much we can do for him.  Maybe he needs to become our personal pet chicken.

Strange Eggs

One of our chickens must have broken her broody streak and started laying again.  Why do I say this?  Because I have started finding strange eggs almost every day this week.  I've heard the eggs can be a little weird when hens start laying, but I had never experienced it before.

The first few days we got a couple of tiny eggs, almost like that of a wild bird - Robin, Blue Jay, etc.  The third egg was a lot bigger and very elongated.  And finally the fourth egg had a weird shell - actually all of them seem to have weird shells - like they are really thick.  Maybe it's due to excess calcium that is being used up with these egg shells.  I'll be interested to break one open this weekend and see what we get.

The picture at the top represents a couple of the variations.  The middle egg is a normal size bantam egg.  The one to the left is one of the smaller ones that we got this week.  The one on the right is the elongated egg.  Now that I see this photo, it looks a little deformed as well.  The photo below is the weird shell.  There is as spiral pattern on the end of the egg, like something went wrong during the beginning or the end of egg formation.  I wonder if we'll get any more strange eggs?

Broody Hen Saga - Part Four

This has been the longest week - waiting for the rest of the chicks to hatch, wondering if they will hatch.  After the original five hatched, there were five eggs left - one from the original six, three bantams and one RIR.  I have my doubts about the one from the original six - it's four or five days past 21 days, and six days later than the rest of them.  Like I said before, I don't think the RIR egg is fertile, but I hate giving up on any of them, because you never know.  We had sort of a still birth on Tuesday morning - a chick hatched, but it was dead.  Accounting for everything I just wrote, there seem to be only two more possibly viable eggs left.  I feel like I can give these eggs until the weekend, but that is as long as I think they might be viable.

We had another still birth Thursday, so we're giving up on the eggs.  All in all, we have five chicks and two mothers.  Now that one mother isn't having to sit on eggs, I wonder if there's going to be a problem?  I have other questions too - like, when is it safe to let them mix with the other chickens?  I'll have to reread some of those chicken books I got from the library - especially since I skipped the part about raising chicks at the time.

Broody Hen Saga - Part Three

What can I say - the chicks hatched early.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I put 8 eggs under a broody hen on Saturday night, April 21st.  The first week they kicked two out, which left six, plus a few extra that were laid in the box by other hens - at a certain point, it became too hard to get eggs from under the broody hens.

Friday morning I saw two, then three chicks, and by the afternoon there were five.  We weren't sure of anything else at that point - if anymore would be hatching soon, how many total eggs there were.  Finally, Saturday morning both hens got out of the box and I was able to see what was left - five more eggs - one from the original six, three more bantams and a Rhode Island Red.  I don't know a lot about this kind of stuff, so I'm going to speculate for a minute.  I'm not sure the RIR egg is fertile.  I have seen Silkie try to mount a RIR hen, but without success.  The sixth marked egg I'm having my doubts about.  Saturday night is 21 days, but all the others have hatched already.  That leaves the three extra bantam eggs - those will probably hatch, except maybe for the fact that no hen was sitting on them for two or three hours this afternoon.  Like I said, I don't know a lot about this area.

I was going to wait until all the eggs hatched before posting this, but we're still waiting.  I'll have to add a part four, or more, to this series of posts.  Stay tuned.

Broody Hen Saga - Part Two

The first week the hens sat on the eggs, every day more hens would get in the box.  Even the other hens would lay their eggs in there, which means I had no idea how many eggs were in there.  They kicked out two of the original eight eggs, but after three or four days of not retrieving eggs, that meant there could be as many as a dozen more in there.  (That sounds a little high - I'm writing this more than a week later - I think my calculations were lower before.)  So, I decided they needed their own home, sake for the baby chicks, and safe from the other chickens who wanted in the same box.  I have a covered area by the house that is sort of a garden shed - I keep gardening stuff in there and its junky appearance is hidden from the neighbors.  It was in desperate need of reorganization, but it was also a good, safe, dry place to house the chicken nursery/maternity ward.

Since this is fairly temporary, I did the best I could to make this area safe for the mothers and their chicks, but also easy to dismantle when the time came.  I bought starter feed and a feeder - I already had a waterer from when we had the younger chickens.  I got the food and water ready and waited until it was good and dark.  Somewhere between nine and ten on a Sunday night, we moved the hens to their new home.  Robin thought they might be freaked out, but I felt confident that it would be easy.  I think there were five (maybe four) in the nesting box when we moved them.  I threw a towel over the box to keep them calm and I picked it up and walked to over to their new home and put them down.  It was that easy - they didn't fuss or anything.

I kept a watchful eye on them during their first week in their new home.  I didn't know if they would like there.  I didn't know what the other chickens would do.  One of the first days while I was at work, one of them flew out...then another.  They started stuffing themselves in a nesting box back in the hen house.  I started second-guessing myself - whether I should have moved them, etc, but I had good reasons:  I didn't feel like there was enough room in the hen house.  They need special food, and the other chickens would eat it too.  If they wanted to leave the house, it was about three feet down to the ground.  I thought this was best, but I was a little concerned.  One by one they left their new area until there was only one left.  The last thing I wanted was to come home and find that all of them had abandoned the nest.  I took the initiative and grabbed one of the hens and put her in the new area, and she stayed there.  It's been relatively worry-free ever since.

We're approaching Day 21 this weekend - Mother's Day should be when they start hatching.  I know that's when the original six should hatch, but I don't know how many more there are after that.  We'll have to wait and see.

Broody Hen Saga - Part One

Back in March we had a broody hen - one of the four that we got from Gretchen and Haley, via Scott and Fred.  We were wanting another chicken or two, and there are a number of ways to get one.  If you have a broody hen and fertile eggs, the "problem" of not enough chickens usually solves itself.  I wasn't totally committed to the idea, but I halfheartedly decided to let our broody hen sit on a couple of eggs and see what happened.  I decided I wanted more Rhode Island Reds, and, since we had a dominant RIR rooster and a couple of RIR hens, you're pretty much guaranteed to get some RIR chicks.

I marked both eggs with an "X" and put them under the broody hen.  I realized afterward, if I hadn't before, was that most hens want to use the same nesting box.  They would kick the broody hen out, lay their eggs, and she would get back in and sit on the other eggs too.  I was fairly careful when I collected the eggs to leave the marked eggs...but I wasn't careful enough.  I took a bunch of eggs to my family when we visited for my mom's birthday, and during the next couple of days, I realized one of our marked eggs was missing.  I made a couple of urgent phone calls and emails warning against using that egg.  I never heard whether anyone found it, but a week or more later, my grandmother ran across one in her group of eggs.  I think at that point I couldn't find the other egg either!  Trying to hatch eggs was a little more complicated than I thought.

Eventually more of our little white hens became broody and they started crowding the nesting box - two, then three, then four, then five!  Despite the number of broody hens, I decided then was the time to put some eggs underneath them.  Since so many were broody, there weren't many eggs to be had.  I didn't want RIRs - I thought there was a chance they weren't fertile, and I wasn't sure what chicks from a blue silkie rooster and RIRs would look like!  I saved up eight eggs and marked them really well and put them under however many broody hens were in the box at the time.  The more hens there were in the nesting box, the harder it became to get to the fresh eggs.  Not only was it hard to fish out the recent ones, the hens with the red combs were very defensive of the eggs.  They would peck at me, even drawing blood twice.  The other hens would just make noises and puff their feathers up.  It got to the point that I felt like it was unsafe for them, me and the future chicks.  It was moving day...

Garden Update

I just thought I would mention a few things that I'm experimenting with right now.  I expect to write posts on them later, but after the final results are in.

I suggested to a friend, since she doesn't have much of a yard, that she should try growing potatoes in bags.  I wasn't sure how this worked until I read a little about it on the internet.  I did a little research and make some recommendations, but there's really nothing like trying it for yourself.  So, after watching a couple of videos, here and here, this is what I did:

I took a $2 bag of compost from Charleston County.
I emptied it to about 1/4 to 1/3 full, and rolled the sides down
Stabbed it several times - enough for drainage, but not enough to fall apart.
Planted one potato per bag, a couple inches below the surface.
Watered well.

As the plant grows, I'll roll the bag up, filling with more compost.  When it's ready to harvest, all I have to do is cut the bag open.  I'll let you know in late May/early June how it turned out.

I was at a neighbor's house last weekend.  He's really into permaculture - something I know very little about.  One of his garden projects is creating multiple mandala gardens - in this case, they are circular gardens with a "key" path to access the center of the circle.  It could look fairly formal when it's completed.  I've gone through so many ideas about the landscaping in our front yard, that I really couldn't decide on one thing.  After seeing his yard, I returned to a more formal design, but incorporating vegetables into the beds, as well as annuals and perennials.  I've been playing around in the yard with a couple of different designs and I hope to settle on one by the weekend and start planting.

I can't end this post without mentioning the chickens, right?  The past few weeks have seen a little rooster drama - our (unexpected) Rhode Island Red rooster, Maximus, figured out that he was 2-3 times the size of our little silkie rooster, who was the alpha male.  Once Maximus became alpha, there was no peace.  He would try to attack Silkie when he could.  I started letting Silkie out of the coop first thing in the morning, before he could get attacked.  Once all the birds were out in the yard, there was less drama - Maximus chased, but Silkie was able to run away.  We decided to get rid of Maximus, for the good of the flock.  It took a little effort on craigslist, but we had someone come get him the other day.

I''ve got a number of posts in the pipeline - I just have to finish writing them.  In the meantime, I hope these suffice.  Stay tuned.

Of Roosters and Eggs

Since getting chickens I've heard stories about roosters and hens.  Some people think hens are more productive egg layers if there is a rooster around - they also think they keep the hens "in line".  I read somewhere that a rooster's crow stimulates a hen's hormones and makes her more productive.  Recently I heard all of this again, when my uncle called me, on behalf of a friend who was looking for a rooster for his flock.  I've decided to compare out flock with our neighbor's roosterless flock to illustrate the different factors affecting egg production.  It's very unscientific, but worth a shot.

We now have eight hens of laying age and are getting 6+ eggs every day.  Ours are less than a year old, so they haven't yet reached their prime.  Before the last four began laying, we had two very good layers - an egg each every day - and two less than perfect layers - at least one egg per day combined.  Since the Rhode Island Reds are brown egg layers, it's easy to tell which ones are theirs.  There have been no more than five days that we have not gotten two eggs from the two hens since they started laying in early November.  Our other hens are bantams, and white so it's hard to tell the difference between their eggs, but they definitely don't lay a regular as the RIRs.

At one point our neighbors' flock of five hens were probably laying close to four eggs a day, but recently they are only getting two per day.  One factor could be age - some of their hens are two+ years old.  Apparently that's when egg production starts to decline.  When we were discussing the difference recently, their suggestion was that ours were getting more sunlight during some of the shortest days of the year.  Egg production is supposed to decrease during the winter because of the shorter days, but we didn't see that in our flock.  Our hen house has a green fiberglass roof which lets light in - that combined with the neighbor's flood light could mean they are getting more light.  After our neighbor's light was out for two weeks and they replaced the bulb, it seemed brighter than before.  Our chickens noticed a difference too - the roosters began crowing throughout the night.

Whether it's their age, or the extra light, or the roosters, we really won't know everything that factors in to egg production, but I thought it was a good thing to try to figure out.

Look what I won!

Recently I began following a couple of chicken blogs that Robin read about in Country Living magazine.  One of them, Tilly's Nest, had a giveaway for a colorful aluminum sign from Baimbridge Farm Goods - you received one entry for commenting on the post, another for liking them on Facebook, and so on.  You could get up to five entries for this drawing.  I did all of those things, because the signs are really neat - I thought we could decorate the chicken coop with them.  Unfortunately, I didn't win.

Another blog I follow, Hen Blog, had a drawing for a print by someone on Etsy - Automatte - I thought her work was nice and thought I would try winning this one.  The entry requirements was similar - you got multiple chances for commenting, liking them, etc.  I wasn't sure I felt like doing all of that for this contest.  It appeared I had to friend them on Facebook and some other things I didn't want to do - a little more that the other drawing.  I entered once by commenting on the post, and I told myself I might do the other things later.  I forgot to do it, and I remembered seeing a post about a winner, but it wasn't me.  It turned out to be the other chicken blog, so when I got an email today telling me I had won, I was really surprised.  So I should be getting a print in the mail next week!

Really? Another Rooster?

One of our supposed hens started crowing the other day.  It wasn't that much of a surprise - even though he was supposed to be a hen, it was clear for a long time that "she" might be a "he".  What does surprise me is that this rooster came from a batch of sexed day-old chicks.  They were supposed to be hens, but obviously sexing chickens is not an exact science.  Because of that, most chicken breeders have a return policy for roosters.

I say they have a return policy - I went and talked to the neighbor I got him from and found out he ordered them from a hatchery in Ohio - not exactly a returnable rooster.  So, once again, I have to figure out what to do with a rooster.  He's not a problem right now.  I hear him crow early in the morning, but he's pretty quiet - I haven't heard him during the day, but Robin has.

I'm not sure what we're going to do with him.  We'll probably end up putting him on Craigslist like the other roosters, but until then, we have a pretty large chicken running around our yard.

Housing (and Feeding) Two Flocks

After getting our second "flock" of chickens recently,  Gretchen suggested that we think about keeping them separated from the others, because they were being fed medicated starter feed.  I kept everyone together for the first few days - by necessity - until I could build another little coop for the new birds.  Once they were in their new home I felt good about everything - I could feed them their medicated food safely, they had a home of their own.  In theory it seemed perfect - until they were separated.

Once that happened, they wanted nothing more than to be with the rest of the chickens.  I would let everyone out for a while in the evening and the new chicks would end up in the hen house at dark.  I spent a few nights grabbing chicks from the roosts and putting them in their new home.  I couldn't do this anymore, so I put everyone together and started trying to figure out how to feed them so they get the proper nutrition.

Presumably - feeding starter to everyone wouldn't be bad, except the laying hens might need more calcium for their eggshells.  Feeding layer rations might be fine too, but the young birds might be stunted.  I did some research and had a hard time finding solutions to this problem.  What I found out about feeding chickens was informative.  This is in no way definitive, but it sounds good:

When to switch from starter/grower feed to layer feed:
Some people switch around 20 weeks of age.  They think it's good to get a head start on the extra calcium, so, when they do begin laying, they're ready for it.  Other people did thinks differently.  Some didn't think there was an exact time to switch.  I read a post where someone recommended that when they start laying, to finish off the bag of starter/grower before switching to layer feed.

People do have strong opinions about feeding layer feed to chicks that aren't laying yet.  Young chicks don't need the extra calcium that is found in layer feed.  Apparently it has some negative health consequences - affects bone development.  Makes sense.  The one recommendation that I saw the most was to feed everyone starter feed and put out crushed oyster shell for the layers who need the extra calcium.  That seems like the best idea to me.  So I'm off to the feed store to get starter/grower feed and some crushed oyster shells.

Our New Flock

Along with getting rid of a rooster last week, we had plans to get a couple more hens from our neighbors, Scott and Fred.  We also had other neighbors Gretchen and Haley, who had been raising some young chicks, offer us a few.  All of us were in contact with each other and the plan was for Gretchen and Haley to give Scott and Fred a couple, and they were planning to give us a couple that were closer to laying.  That's what we were expecting when Haley showed up at our door with a box of chicks.  What can you do when someone shows up on your doorstep like that?

I left them in the box, but put chicken wire over it, to give them some air, but to keep them from getting loose.  We've had trouble in the past introducing new chicks to our flock, so we waited until it was very dark to try it.  We did the same thing we have done in the past - we put the new chicks on the roost in the hen house and wait to see how the others react.  Our chickens were a little curious, but they adjusted well to the new additions.  I'm looking forward to watching them grow up.

Little White Rooster

I found out recently that our roosters were bothering our neighbor behind us.  I tried several times to talk to her, but she never answered the door.  I would see her mom cutting the grass, but she would be gone before I had a chance to talk to her.  I finally saw her mom at a recent plant swap, introduced myself and asked her about the chickens.  She told me that they wake her daughter up every morning - if this was really the case, I would hope she would say something.

To be fair, I did locate the chickens as far away from our house as possible, and hidden behind our garage - which puts it maybe a hundred feet from our neighbor's bedroom.  So, it was time to get rid of a rooster or two.  Unless it was a big problem, I wasn't going to get rid of our silkie - as I've mentioned before, we all like him and he amsues us when he runs.  So that leaves only the little white rooster.  I had some success giving away roosters on craigslist, but I had heard that some of the people who respond to these ads were planning to eat them.  I was concerned about this when I got rid of the first two roosters, but was happy when the guy showed up with his kids.

I had similar concerns this time, but my fears were allayed when I met the person.  It's a little quieter at our house - it was especially noticeable after the first two roosters.  I feel like we're down to our core flock now - one rooster and five hens, plus four new hens that we just got.  I don't expect any more, but you never know.

Postscript:  I had recorded him crowing before we got rid if him, and I just got around to editing it and posting it online.  Here it is:

Containing the Chickens

Earlier this week some of the chickens decided to hop the fence and go exploring in our neighbor's yard.  There have been a few times before when one has ended up there and we've had to go catch them (we thought they were spooked and flew over the fence and couldn't get back), but this time was different.  I watched a few of them perch on the fence, at its lowest point, look down into the neighbor's shrubs and hop down there.  I knew I shouldn't worry about them - they would be back - but the fact that they could escape that easily bothered me.  I also didn't know how the neighbors felt about it either.

They were back a little while later, which made me feel better, but I saw it happen again the next day.  Our black rooster has risen to the position of alpha male in the flock and this time it was he who lead the incursion, followed by the six hens, who have turned into his little harem.  I mentioned this on Facebook and my aunt recommended that I should clip their wings.  I read many times about doing that before we had chickens, but it hadn't occurred to me to do so.  At the time, my first thought was to put up a taller fence, which I had always thought I might have to do in the future.

Thinking it might be a huge undertaking to catch and clip the wings of every chicken, I opted to clip only the wings of the alpha rooster.  My theory was that if the hens followed him around, and he couldn't jump the fence, that would contain all the chickens.  My first attempt at catching the rooster was rough.  I was able to get my hands on him, but he fought so much that I couldn't hold onto him.  I was back to the idea of taller fencing, but in the meantime, I really didn't want to let them out of the pen, because I didn't know what they would do.

On a whim this afternoon, I was able to catch the rooster fairly easily, and got Robin to help me clip his wings.  I had never done this before, but I had read enough about it, that I thought we could do it.  We trimmed the flight feathers on both wings - even though they say you only have to do one.  I wanted a little extra assurance that he wouldn't leave the yard.  After doing this, I wished some one had taken photos.  When I mentioned that we should do the other rooster so we could get photos for this blog, Ella go upset that we would do that just for the photos - so all I have is the diagram.

Thinking we were safe from chickens leaving the yard, I let them out to forage.  Much to my surprise, the hens immediately jumped the fence, and the recently-clipped rooster wasn't too happy about it.  At that point there was nothing I could do until it was time for bed.  Hours later I come home to find only one chicken in the yard - the silkie.  The hens are in the neighbor's yard with the black rooster - I'm not sure how he got there, but he might have trouble getting back.  And the other rooster is in the other neighbor's yard.  He was frantically trying to get back into the yard by running back and forth along the fence.  We've dealt with this before - both Ella and I tried separately to get him back over with no luck.  He's going to have to try a little harder, or let us help him.

A taller fence is definitely going up back there soon.  I just have to figure out the logistics.  After talking to some neighbors, the best plan is going to be putting up a fence AND clipping their wings.  I don't know why ours have such wanderlust and others we know are so well-behaved?