Meet the Flock Roundup - May & June 2018

The latest bit of paraphernalia that I've added to the coop to keep the girls entertained is a small mirror. Here Moe the Faverolles takes a quick look to make sure her feathers are all attractively in place.

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!"

Eggshells in a Nutshell: White Eggs

What's Up With Eggshells?

• Eggshells have three layers:  That thing that some people call the "skin" on the inside of an eggshell?  It's real name is the mammillary layer and it's a thin protein membrane. 
• The brittle middle layer, the testa, makes up the bulk of the shell and is made up of columns of calcite crystals held together by a protein matrix (imagine tiny crayons or pencils stacked together with their tips pointing out around the egg) – the spaces between the columns form pores.  Moisture and gases can go through these pores—so an eggshell is porous like cloth, not airtight like plastic wrap.  This middle layer provides the form and structure to the eggshell.
• Calcite is a form of calcium carbonate – it’s the same stuff that’s in the shells of oysters and other marine animals.
• The outer layer, a very thin layer of fat and protein, is called the bloom or cuticle. Think of it as paint or varnish that seals the pores of the testa to keep the stuff in the egg from evaporating and to keep bacteria out.  When an egg is washed, the bloom is washed off, which is why a washed egg spoils faster than an unwashed egg.

• As an egg passes through a hen’s oviduct, the inner mammilary layer is applied first, then the testa, and finally the bloom is applied right before the egg is laid.  The bloom is still wet when the egg emerges from the hen.
• It typically takes a hen 25 hours to make an egg.  20 of those hours are used for making the shell.
• Calcite is white, thus eggs are white.  Eggs that are not white contain pigments that give them their characteristic color. 

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

White egg courtesy of Jennifer the Polish Hen

A few of the white egg laying Hipster Hens

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"Meet the Flock" Roundup – November & December, 2016

Meet Marissa the Cream Legbar. I captured this picture of Marissa in August—about the time she started laying eggs. Since then, Marissa has laid a pretty little blue-green pullet egg almost every day, and each egg is incrementally larger than the previous one. My older hens have scaled waaay back on egg production lately, since they’ve started their fall molt. So many days the four eggs I get from my four young Legbar hens outnumber the eggs I get from the rest of the flock!

Here's one more picture of Marissa. This is a picture of Marissa as a teenager - taken in late May.

Here's another picture of Marissa the Cream Legbar back in late April when she was a mere three weeks old and had just grown her first set of feathers.

Meet Mary, the diminutive, free-spirited, golden Campine hen. Mary is always the first chicken out of the coop in the morning when the doors swing open. She would much rather be free-ranging outdoors than cooped up in the coop. I think there’s more wild jungle fowl blood flowing through Mary’s veins than in my other chickens. She’s definitely not one of those chickens that tolerates being picked up and cuddled. So I give her as much freedom as I can give a domestic chicken and in return she gives me an ample supply of those nice little white eggs.

One more picture of Mary the Campine. This is her baby picture from the spring of 2013.

Here's an August picture of Nicky the pretty Cream Legbar pullet. Nicky's one of the four Legbar babies who hatched this past spring. All four Legbars are a little skittish and standoffish - maybe because they had a real hen for a mom and imprinted on her rather than being raised under heat lamps and imprinting on me. They are all slowly becoming tamer and less nervous around me and Nicky is the most social. She will actually stand on my lap and eat treats out of my hand now. Soon as the treats are gone, though, so is she!

Here's another pic of Nicky - shot at the same time as last week’s picture. In this shot she's doing her "fierce predator" routine--silently working her way through the foliage & preying on unsuspecting bugs and worms.

One final picture of Nicky the Legbar Chicky! This was shot in May when Nicky was about five weeks old. A teenager!

Meet Bailey, the sweet sixteen-year-old Labrador retriever. Oh, wait! Bailey appears to be a non-chicken! Yup - she is not a chicken, but it's high time she got her picture posted considering her status as the Hipster Hen Chicken Ranch Official Dog. I've mentioned Bailey in a couple posts, and featured her fascinating back-story in “A Dog Story.”

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Sweater Girls

This post is about chicken sweaters.  No, really!  But first I need to tell you about Emile the rooster. Bear with me.  We'll get there.

Back a few years ago, when Emile was a mere teenage cockerel, he got a bad case of sour crop.  He reached a point where he was all hunched up in a corner, staring into space and literally near death.  Happily, I was able to bring him back to good health and full recovery.  He became an amazingly docile and friendly little rooster after he recovered, maybe because of all the handling that was necessary when he was sick.  But I like to think that maybe he was just grateful.  

Anyway, over the last year he’s undergone a huge change in attitude.  He makes it clear whenever I go into the coop that it’s his coop, not mine, and that he’s in charge not me.  There have been a few instances where he’s taken me on—actually lunged at me feet-first with those long pointed spurs.  This usually happens when he feels I’m harassing his hens in some way, but sometimes it’s just because I maybe look at him wrong, or possibly only because he’s in a foul (um, fowl) mood.  Being attacked by an enraged rooster could be disconcerting if it weren’t for the fact that Emile is a bantam Cochin roo and the biggest thing about him is his ego.

When he goes on the attack, I usually respond by putting on a pair of gloves to avoid contact with those spurs, then I pick him up, pet him, and tell him that he just needs to think calm thoughts and concentrate on his breathing.  This really does seem to calm him, although for all I know he may just be icily plotting his revenge.

"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!

Poultry Home Companions

Jane Goodall watches chimps and observes interesting interactions and behaviors.  I watch my chickens and observe the same and I would like to think that I am just as legitimate.  I honestly believe that chicken interaction is every bit as fascinating as that of any other social animal group. 

One thing I’ve noticed with my flock is that two chickens occasionally form a bonded pair.  They hang around together, act in each other’s interest in their interactions with other members of the flock, and roost together every night – it is the chicken version of BFF’s.

One of my chicken pairs is Maran and Carmen Maranda the Cuckoo Marans.  They were part of a small group of chicks I brought home from Murray McMurray Hatchery in the spring of 2014.  They were the only two Marans in the group and they bonded.  Somehow they seemed to be tuned into the fact that there was another chickens that looked just like they did.  In the late summer of that year they were introduced to the larger flock.  There was the usual kerfuffle as the pecking order became re-established and each hen defended her place in the order of things.  During that process Carmen and Maran had each other’s backs.  If, for example, Jennifer would come up and start pecking at Maran, Carmen would be in Jennifer’s face.  By joining forces they moved about half way up the pecking order and that’s where things are at today.  At night, most of the hens roost on the big roost.  But Carmen and Maran roost by themselves on a smaller roost off to the side.  BFF’s for sure!

Carmen Maranda and Maran the Cuckoo Marans

Baby Chicks and Other Birds

2014-07-27 Baby Chicks and Other Birds

Angitou

Carmen & Angitou in a staredown

Emily & Carmen

Carmen and Angitou give each other a little peck on the beak while Maran feigns disinterest.

Maran hunting and pecking

The baby chicks have been hogging all my poultry posts, so it's time to post a pic of the adult hens. Here are Mary and Mary the Campines, who do everything together, sharing a nest.

Here's an early morning shot of my flock on the roost. This is everybody except for Snowball & the babies. This is also proof that I'm up before the chickens.

Mary Tries to Break Out of the Big House!

So now the chickens have this cool new coop and also a great chicken run so they can be outdoors.  I have not yet put any sort of roof on the outdoor run yet and that needs to happen so I can be sure I’m keeping predators out.  Another reason for fencing the top of the run was that I discovered Mary the Campine roosting on top of the six foot high fence on a couple different occasions. Unlike the chickens in the movie "Chicken Run" she fortunately didn't realize that once she was on top of the fence she could escape into the wild blue yonder.  Mary really can fly REALLY HIGH!

Last night I discovered the two foot gap between the eight foot high (8 FEET!) walls of the coop and the ten foot ceiling are also going to be a problem, again thanks to Mary.  When I built the walls I figured no chicken could fly eight feet in the air, right? Wrongo! As the chickens were starting to roost for the night, Mary decided it would be nice to roost on top of the walls of the coop. There she was, sitting eight feet in the air and pleased as punch.

To scare Mary back in the coop, I picked up a shovel and frantically waved it in front of her. That mostly confused her. Next plan: I prodded her with the shovel. That prompted her to hop ONTO the shovel. So then I was standing there holding a shovel in the air with a chicken perched on the top. I tried waving and turning the shovel to get her back on top of the wall, but amazingly she bravely hung on. Too bad there was no video of this because I'm sure it looked very much like a trained chicken act. Finally, I lowered the shovel and made a grab for her. That's when she flew off into the shadows of the greater part of the pole barn.  Keep in mind there are still piles of coop construction material, tools, & other rubble - so catching a chicken in that mess was definitely an athletic endeavor. Long story short, I finally nabbed her, and as she and all the other chickens swore loudly at me, I chucked her back into the coop. Next project: Fencing in the two foot gap between the coop walls and the ceiling.

Mary the Campine with her friend Mary the Campine (Yup - They're Both Mary!)

Chick Pix!

Here are a few pictures of the babies.  Some, but not all of them have acquired names.  I knew from the get-go that the three little fluffy-foot chicks would be named after those co-workers who were so insistent that I get Silkies.  A few more have been named after other co-workers who seemed to badly want in on the chicken name thing.  Others have been named for a random variety of reasons.  One of the little Easter Eggers has a "V" on her head, so she needed a name starting with that letter - she's now Veronica.  Another Easter Egger who looks a lot like Veronica except without the "V" obviously had to be Betty.  And I am sad to report that I named one of my Buff Orpingtons "Buffy."  Yeah, I know.  I'll bet nobody's ever done that before.  The other Buff Orpington then became Willow by default.  None of the Barred Rocks or Rhode Island Reds have names yet - it is hard to tell them apart - and maybe I need to get a handle on their personalities before I come up with names!

Veronica the Easter Egger

Courtney the Silkie Chick

Paulette - a fluffy footed chick of unknown heritage, not a Silkie

Mary the Campine - The daughter of a co-worker was in love with one of my two little Campines and asked me to name it for her.  I told her, "But there are two and they're identical!  How can I tell Mary from the other one?" She responded, "Name them both Mary!"  So that's what I've done.  The Campines are Mary and Mary.

Angie the Polish

Two Rhode Island Red chicks that thus far have no names - Look at how fast their little wings are feathering out!