Meet the Flock - September & October 2017

Marissa the Cream Legbar sez “Braaaaak! Don’t take that shot! If you hold the camera that close I’ll look RIDICULOUS!”

Here’s a nice shot of Paulette and Marissa the Cream Legbar hens from about a year ago – they were just starting to lay eggs!

Paulette could be the world’s most molty chicken in this shot! She only has two tail feathers left, but she’s really, really proud of them!

Meet the Flock Roundup – August 2017

Snowball the Silkie Rooster:  Feeling very modern and sophisticated in his fancy new hen pen.

Emile the Bantam Cochin Roo: "You conniving scoundrel! Here you are in my coop with that menacing camera contraption again! You've been warned! If you harm my hens in any way you will feel the wrath of my fierce spurs!"

Meet the Flock Roundup – July 2017

Suddenly, after celebrating her one-month birthday, Paula the Salmon Faverolles chick is starting to look like a teenage chicken. Look at the feathers sprouting all over her legs & her pretty salmon colored wing feathers!

Squawky the Speckled Sussex chick looks longingly out the window at the great wide world. A week after this shot, the chicks had their first opportunity to go outside!

The Hen Pen Project

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

C. Northcote Parkinson

In 2011, as I was reaching the end of my working years, I decided to go part time.  It was wonderful!  All of a sudden, I had extra days to work on my bazillion projects here at the ranch.  It was great for a while, but it was only a matter of time before those extra days also gave me the opportunity to think up even more projects.  Soon, my project list, instead of getting smaller, was actually expanding! 

Then in 2015, I retired.  That also was wonderful!  I once again had extra days every week to work on projects.  Guess what happened next.  Yup.  The project list got even longer!  And now I’m out of options for adding more days to the week unless I start making my own calendar with a ten-day week! 

Meet the Flock Roundup - March & April, 2017

Meet Sam! Sammy joined the flock with a bunch of other chicks of a variety of breeds in 2013. Sam was a mystery chick at first - she didn't fit the pattern for any of the breeds and I was totally kerflummoxed as far as what she might be. I should have followed the rule of thumb, that if you don't know what a hen is, she's probably an Easter Egger - since they're not a true breed (they're a cross of any number of breeds with Auracanas/Americanas). Sure enough, when Sam started growing her distinctive (and highly attractive, I might add) ear tufts, I knew for a fact that she was an Easter Egger girl. Later, when she started laying those green eggs, that confirmed it!

Here's another picture of Sam. This is a picture from 2013, right after her first adult molt. Chickens can sometimes show subtle variations in feather patterns from one molt to the next and after this molt Sam had a delicate "necklace" of light gray feather. She lost this attractive feature after her next molt and it's never shown up again!

Eggshells in a Nutshell: Brown Eggs

What's Up With Brown Eggs?

• Brown eggs are brown because of protoporphyrin-IX, a pigment that’s produced in cells lining a hen’s oviduct.
• Protoporphyrin-IX is made from an iron-containing chemical called heme that comes from broken-down red blood cells.
• Some brown-shelled eggs have pigments added to the hard testa layer of the egg shell, but most eggs have the bulk of their pigment added with the bloom—the “paint” layer that goes on right before a hen lays an egg.
• Because the bloom is still wet when the egg is laid, you can wipe much of the color off of a freshly laid egg.
• Because the pigment of most brown eggs is in the bloom, the insides of most brown eggshells are white.
• Different breeds add different amounts of pigment to their eggshells, for example, Black Copper Marans lay eggs that are a deep, dark chocolate, while Barred Plymouth Rocks lay very light brown eggs.
• There is no nutritional difference between brown eggs, white eggs, or eggs of any other color.  A factor that does influences the nutritional value of an egg is the diet of the hen that laid it.

Learn about white eggs here!
Learn about blue and green eggs here!

Brown egg courtesy of Maran the Cuckoo Marans Hen

A few of the brown-egg-laying Hipster Hens

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"Meet the Flock" Roundup - July & August, 2016

Meet Snowball the Silkie Rooster. This personable little roo has an amazingly long back story for one so young and fluffy. In 2013 I picked three baby chicks out of a batch of straight run fluffy-footed chicks at a local feed store. “Straight run” means that the chicks had not been sexed, so their gender was unknown. “Fluffy-footed” means just that –these chicks would turn into chickens that would have feathers all the way down their legs and on their feet. In my inexperience, I was hoping for three Silkie hens. I’m glad I was not playing the lottery that day, since all three chicks became roosters. Two of them were not even Silkies – early on I figured out that Emile and Paul were roosters (like when they started crowing!), and that they were both bantam Cochins. Snowball was the only Silkie. Sexing baby chicks is difficult – it requires the ability to see minor variations in the baby chicks’ cloacae. It’s so difficult to sex chicks that it is considered as much art as science, and is only done by professionals. Baby Silkies display such minor cloacal differences that it’s pretty much impossible to sex them at all. So you have to wait until they’re approaching maturity before you have any idea if they’re hens or roosters. And Snowball was a late bloomer. We were well into the fall when Snowball got up one day, looked around, and crowed. Unfortunately, since Paul and Emile had declared their roosterhood weeks before Snowball got around to it, crowing was exactly the wrong thing for him to do. Every day from that point on, Snowball’s life became an exercise in escaping the wrath of the other two roosters. Even the hens became hostile to him and soon everybody was picking on him. In due course, he was afraid to leave the roost – even to eat or drink. I started putting him by the water font so he would drink under my protection and I would hold him on my lap and feed him out of my hand. That kept him alive, but his was a pretty pathetic existence. Eventually I built a small 4x4 coop just for him, complete with a sign proclaiming, “SNOWBALL’S SWINGIN’ BACHELOR PAD”. He lived there by himself for about a year. Then, in 2014 I built a second coop which became Snowball’s new home and since then I’ve gradually introduced more chickens to that coop. Today, Coop 2 is home to two Silkie hens, a golden Polish hen, a buff Orpington, and the four teenage Cream Legbars. And Snowball is lord of the manor!

Meet Betty the Easter Egger! Easter Eggers are not a true breed. Rather, they are a cross of a variety of different breeds with Auracanas, a South American breed that lays blue eggs. Auracanas lay blue eggs by adding biliverdin, a hemoglobin byproduct, to their eggshells. Easter Eggers can lay eggs that range from blue to olive green. This sweet hen used to be a regular layer of pretty light-green eggs, but has not laid an egg since last fall. At age three, she’s only middle-aged, but I suspect that Betty may have opted for early retirement!

Meet Bonnie the Cream Legbar pullet! Bonnie is one of the baby chicks I got at the end of March and is unique because she doesn’t have a tail. Poultry people refer to this condition as “rumplessness” and in addition to no tail feathers, rumpless chickens are also lacking a tailbone. There are breeds of rumpless chickens, but Legbars are not one of those breeds, so I don’t know what’s going on with Bonnie. At first I was chalking it up to the Auracana (a rumpless South American breed) genetics in Cream Legbars, but after doing some more reading I now realize that when R.C. Punnett developed the Cream Legbar in the 1930's he didn't use Auracanas per se - the blue egg and the crest genes came from a "yellow-brown colored, crested Chilean hen"—no mention of the hen not having a tail. I’ve exchanged emails with the breeder that Bonnie came from and she is surprised – this has never occurred in her chickens before. I suppose that this must be a spontaneous mutation, which makes Bonnie very special. I expect once she’s a little older she’ll develop super powers.

Here's another picture of Bonnie enjoying a little leaf tidbit in the chicken run.

Meet Buffy the Buff Orpington hen. Buffy is in her fourth year, but maintains her girlish figure and turns out a continuous stream of those lovely brown eggs. She does stop laying eggs on occasion and goes broody. She actually is the only non-Silkie hen in my flock that has bouts of broodiness. I'm hatching a plan (no pun intended, of course!) to put her broodiness to good purpose by using her as the broody hen for next year’s batch of chicks.

Meet Carmen Maranda the cuckoo Marans and Mary the golden Campine. This is not a fabulous picture of either hen, but it’s a great juxtaposition of the largest and smallest hens in the big coop. Carmen, as mild mannered as she is large, lays beautiful chocolate brown eggs and Mary, high-energy and aloof, lays petite white eggs.

Meet Charlie Barred Rock. Charlie is in her fourth year, and just between us, is kind of bossy and verbose. She never stops talking! How can any hen have so much to say? Charlie is the largest of the Barred Rocks and she is without a doubt the alpha hen in the flock, so maybe all that talk is just her reminding the other hens how cool she is.

Meet Courtney the white Silkie hen. If you’ve followed this blog for any time you may feel Courtney needs no introduction, since you no doubt followed the story of Courtney raising the batch of Cream Legbar chicks as their surrogate mom. But Courtney actually has a secret past! Courtney started life in an amazing local bookstore that is not only filled with tons of children’s books, but also a variety of animals for the kids to interact with. Courtney was known as Iggy Peck back then—a perfect name for a chicken living in a bookstore! While Courtney is the smallest chicken in my flock, she makes up for her size with her assertiveness, and apparently that part of her personality manifested itself in her previous life as well. She not only made life miserable for the other chicken in the store, a poor hen-pecked little rooster named Neal, but one fateful day she also pecked a toddler. It was a soft peck and the toddler was not harmed, but Courtney lost her job selling books that day. So then she came to live here at the ranch. The bookstore folks report that since “Iggy Peck” left, Neal has blossomed into a happy, outgoing rooster that loves the attention that all of the kids bestow on him. And Courtney has become a Hipster Hen and a mom! So this is a story with happy ending for everybody!

"Meet The Flock" Roundup - May & June, 2016

Here's a recent picture of Angitou the Golden Polish hen. Angitou went through a rare spring molt (chickens typically lose their feathers and grow new ones in the fall). She looked like a porcupine for a while with all those pin feathers sticking out, but now she's got all that shiny new plumage & is quite attractive. Angitou lays an abundance of small white eggs, & has a sweet personality - she's happy to be picked up & carried around.

Meet Angitou the Polish hen as a child! The popularity of the Facebook post on Angitou was pleasantly surprising. That was the first of a planned series of pictures of the chickens in my flock. I chose Angitou for the first one not because she is the prettiest, or my favorite, but simply because I decided to do it alphabetically. But due to Angitou's new-found fame, here's another of her - a photo from her childhood! She's about six weeks old in this 2014 shot.

Meet Emile. Flock provider and protector or abusive polygamist? You be the judge. Emile is a bantam birchen Cochin and the alpha rooster in my flock. Cochin is the name for Emile’s breed - a fluffy footed chicken breed that originated in China. Birchen describes his handsome silver and black color pattern. Bantam refers to his diminutive size but in no way reflects on his attitude. As the alpha roo, Emile is a busy guy - always hurrying from one part of the run to another to end interpersonal kerfuffles between the hens and he is always vigilant and on the look-out for predators while the flock nonchalantly pecks and scratches its way through the run. He would fight to the death to defend his hens and has actually taken me on more than once when I’ve had to pick up or interact with a protesting hen. A less positive attribute is that Emile is a busy guy in other ways. His quest for “favors” from the hens is never-ending, and he regards the whole flock as his “hens with benefits”. He does perform a cute little courtship dance (stay tuned for a movie of the “Emile Shuffle”), but that’s all he’s got – no witty repartee, no flowers and no candy. It’s just dance then hop on. And he doesn’t understand the concept of “consent”. His idea of consent is when the hen doesn’t run away. No, actually, his idea of consent is when the hen doesn’t run away fast enough. A pretty primitive attitude, perhaps, but excusable in his case – he’s a chicken, don’t you know.

This sweet hen is Willow the buff Orpington, one of the senior members of my flock. Orpington is the name of Willow’s breed. Orpingtons were originally developed near Orpington in the county of Kent, England. “Buff” refers to her pretty yellow color. Willow is a large hen – so large that I’ve always worried about her injuring herself as she ungracefully flies/jumps/falls off the roost each morning. I’ve always tried to get to the coop before her attempt and have gently lifted her down. Unfortunately, my fears have been realized and Willow recently sustained some sort of injury. I noticed that she had developed a limp. There was nothing obvious when I looked her over and I’ve hoped that she would eventually recover, but instead she’s actually gotten worse. Willow now walks slowly and no longer roosts at night – she can’t jump onto the roost. The worse part of her situation is the abuse she gotten from Emile the rooster. Emile is looking for “favors” from his hens constantly and his idea of consent is when the hen doesn’t run away fast enough. Poor Willow can’t run. And Emile likes it rough – Willow is missing feathers on her back where Emile digs in with his spurs, and the back of her head is bald where Emile grabs on with his beak. Willow is now living in a shelter and has a restraining order against Emile. The restraining order was issued by me and the shelter is the center part of the pole barn where I normally keep tools and park the tractor. She’s living there by herself, but she can visit the chickens in both coops through the fence any time she wants. She’s eating well, is bright eyed and alert, and while she is still moving around slowly, she seems to be improving. Eventually, I may introduce her into the small coop with Snowball and the Silkie hens and see how that goes. It’s a little less rough and tumble there, and she may fit right in.

This is Arlene, a Barred Plymouth Rock hen. “Barred” refers to her black and white stripes and Plymouth Rock is the name of her breed – a breed developed in New England in the early 1800’s. Pretty much everybody shortens Barred Plymouth Rock to “Barred Rock.” Arlene was among the first batch of chicks I got in 2013 and has the distinction of being the first hen ever to lay and egg here at the ranch. When she was younger, Arlene would fly up to my shoulder so she could see the world from a higher perspective. She apparently feels that sort of behavior is not appropriate for an adult hen, since she’s stopped doing it. She still does persistently follow me around the coop and will occasionally peck me on the leg—not to be aggressive but just to remind me that she’s there.

Meet Barbara the Barred Rock. At the risk of being risqué, this is a picture of Barbara taking a bath. Chickens, counterintuitively, take a bath by wallowing in the dirt. They usually find a spot in the chicken run with exposed dirt and dig a hole to get the dirt loose, then they roll around in the dirt while flapping their wings and kicking their feet to make as big a mess as possible—all the while clucking contentedly. Then they get up and produce a huge dust cloud by shaking themselves off. I’m sure that if you asked them they couldn’t tell you why they do this, but the process does destroy mites and other critters that like to live in chicken’s feathers and suck their blood. Since my Minnesota hens can’t dust-bathe outside when the ground is covered with snow, I have this section of cement culvert on its side in the coop which I keep about half full of a mixture of sand, wood ashes, and diatomaceous earth. It is big enough for two or three chickens to take a communal bath while others perch on the edge and socialize. Stay tuned for a movie of Barbara dust bathing that I shot at the same time I took this photo!

4th of July at the Hipster Hen Ranch

It's a fine summer day here at the ranch.  Here's Snowball the Silkie rooster, up close, as he takes a little stroll through the chicken run.

Arlene the Barred Rock is not having a good week.  She's started going through an unusual summer molt, so is sloughing off feathers left and right and is covered in pin feathers.  As though that wasn't enough, she's somehow injured her leg.  There's no wound - it's more like a pulled muscle - and she's limping pretty badly.  I moved her to the broody coop to limit her activity for a while.  She seems to have calmly accepted her fate and is spending the holiday just sitting there in a Buddha-like pose, contemplating the universe.

Speaking of injured birds, in my June 6 Facebook post, I talked about how Willow the buff Orpington had sustained a permanent injury that had slowed her down and made her a huge target for Emile the rooster.  To keep her away from Emile, she's been living in the center part of the pole barn by herself.  Her newest domicile is the small coop with Snowball the rooster, the Silkie hens and the Legbar teenagers.  I am happy to report that she's getting along with everybody there and things are working out better than I imagined.  She has to negotiate a small tunnel (shown here) to get to the pop door and go outside.  She's a big, slow-moving hen, but she's figured it out!  After spending a few weeks by herself in the center of the pole barn, she's happy to be with other chickens again and thrilled to be able to go outside!

Willow peeks out the pop door and say, "Yay!  I can go outside again!"

Meanwhile, Courtney the Silkie hen has become an empty nester in a very real way.  The Legbar teenagers still live in the same coop with her, but they're doing their own thing and no longer need her care or protection.  Here she is, enjoying a solitary stroll through the run.

And here are the kids (from left to right, Paulette, Marissa, Nicky and Bonnie).  They no longer hang out with Mom, but still stick closely together with each other.  

Here's Marissa striking a pose.  The Cream Legbar Standard of Perfection would say that she has too much salmon color on her head and neck, but I say she's turning into a gorgeous hen.

Here's Marissa again - such a pretty girl!

Here's Marissa's sister, Paulette, also a very pretty hen, doing bug and worm recon at the base of an oak tree.  

Meanwhile, over in the big hen pen, Roxie the Rhode Island Red notices a feather out of place on Jennifer's elaborate crest.

"Hold still, dear!"  I'll fix it for you with my beak!"

"Oh, that looks so much better!  You probably even feel better!"

Happy 4th, from me and the hipster hens!

Randy

Spa Day in the Coop

Angitou gets ready for a haircut

It has been a busy spring, but a couple of the hens have been in need of some beauty touch-ups, so Kathy and I found some time to set up our chicken spa.  Angitou the golden Polish hen recently completed a spring molt and shed and regrew all of her feathers including the feathers in her beautiful and elaborate crest.  She has a fantastic "hairdo" but unfortunately her crest now completely covers her eyes.  And if we can't see her eyes, that means she can't see much of anything.  Time for a little tonsorial remediation.  Kathy held her in her lap, while I went to work with the scissors.  Angitou was very brave, even when the scary sharp scissors were snipping right around her eyes.  Feathers, like our hair, are dead tissue, so a feathercut is just like a haircut and causes the chicken no pain.  The only thing to avoid is cutting the shaft of the feather too close to the skin, and cutting pinfeathers during a molt.  Pinfeathers are very much living tissue with a blood supply and can bleed a lot if cut.

Coop Update

Here are Nicky and Paulette, half of the Legbar teen foursome, chillin' and hangin'. The teenage Legbars are seven weeks old this week, and like all teenagers they hang out.  Since they don't have a mall to hang out in, they've decided that the happening place to be is the nest boxes.  This is unfortunate, because, like all teenagers, they're not very tidy.  The adult hens know that nest boxes are for nesting and keep them clean.  Since the Legbar teens think they're for hanging out, they use them for their own personal toilet space - much to the consternation of the adult hens and me.  Maybe I need to post a "no loitering" sign.

In an earlier post, I talked about how I was planting oats in the chicken run.  Well, the oats are growing well and today the chickens are out in the run enjoying them.  It's a seventy-degree afternoon with a slight breeze and lots of sunshine dappled by the shade of the oak trees.  Think the chickens are happy?

Another shot of some of the chickens enjoying the oats in the chicken run.  That's Sam the Easter Egger in the front, then going around clockwise, we've got Rhoda and Roxie, two of the Rhode Island Reds, then Paul the frizzled bantam Cochin roo, Jennifer the Polish hen, and finally Buffy the Buff Orpington.  With all that green stuff in their diet, I expect lots of eggs with dark orange yolks, choc full of omega-3's. 

Coop Update

Happy birthday to the chicks on their one-month birthday!  Here are Mama Courtney, Bonnie (in back), Marissa, Nicky,  & Paulette (L to R).

Here's a picture of Nicky the Teenage Chicky.  See how she's starting to get the crazy Legbar hairdo already! She's also already getting the salmon colored breast feathers that will be her adult color.

Meanwhile, over in the big coop, every nest box in the coop is empty except for this one which both Veronica the Easter Egger & Buffy the Buff Orpington seem to feel is the only one that will work for them. Never said chickens were bright. On the other hand they're a lot like us.

Broody Hens

Buffy the Buff Orpington Demonstrates Broodiness

There is always an adjustment period when you add new hens to your flock.  Flocks maintain a strict pecking order and when new chickens are introduced the entire pecking order has to be reestablished.  This can be a brutal process.  You can expect pecking hard enough to draw blood – and the new hens usually take the brunt of it because they are young and inexperienced, they are smaller, and they are outnumbered.  There have been a couple of occasions where I have actually removed a chicken to prevent it from being injured or killed. 

I have always raised baby chicks under heat lamps and introduced them to the flock when they are old enough to defend themselves. With new babies showing up here at the end of the month I’ve been mulling over what I can do to make the process easier.  Right now I’m considering raising the babies with a broody hen.  Since the hen is already a member of the flock there is the potential that the flock will accept her chicks more readily than they would “strange” chickens.  And potentially the young ones will have a mom to protect them from the other chickens.  This is all great in theory.  First, though, I need a broody hen. 

A broody hen is simply a hen that sits on eggs until they hatch and then takes care of the babies.  Broody hens are as rare as hens’ teeth.  Broodiness has been bred out of most modern breeds of chickens because broodiness costs commercial egg producers money.  When a hen goes broody and decides that she wants to hatch a clutch of eggs, she stops laying more eggs and sits on her eggs almost around the clock with only very brief breaks to eat and poop.  If there is no rooster, she’s sitting on sterile eggs, but that doesn’t deter her.  If you take away all of her eggs, she will continue to sit in the empty nest, pining away.  If you are in the business of producing eggs, this hen is useless.  Not only is she not laying, but being broody is physically taxing since she’s not eating or exercising adequately.  So breeders have selected for hens that don't go broody and today most breeds simply never do.  They must be propagated entirely by artificial incubators.

There are some heritage breeds, though, that retain the propensity for broodiness – Marans are one such breed.  Orpingtons also frequently go broody.  And there are Silkies.  Silkies go broody at the drop of a hat.  The smallest trigger- changes in lighting, leaving eggs in the nest boxes too long, looking at them wrong – will make them go broody. It’s a problem.  While Silkies generally aren’t kept for egg production anyway, it is still unhealthy for a chicken to be broody all of the time.  So when my little fluffy girls go broody, I usually try to break their broodiness.  There are a several tried and true methods to break broodiness – more on that in a later post.

Right now both of my little Silkie hens are broody and rather than breaking them of it, I am encouraging them.  They are currently both sitting on a small pile of golf balls.  On the day I get my babies, I plan to sneak into the coop in the dead of night and surreptitiously remove the golf balls and replace them with baby chicks.  Hopefully, they will think that the eggs have hatched.  They will then raise their babies who will be destined to grow to be twice as big as they are.  When the time comes, Moms and semi-grown babies will be reintroduced to the flock. 

To be clear, I’ve never tried this before.  Will it work?  Stay tuned.

Emily and Courtney the Silkie Hens