October Coop News

Angitou and Emily opted out of the nest boxes today & made a nice little nest on the floor - some hens just think outside the box.

Chicken picture of the day: The humongo hen Carmen Maranda the Marans and her friend Maran the Marans hens hanging out in front of the nest boxes.

Emily the Silkie hen out for a walk. So hard to photograph this sweet little hen - she's black & her eyes are covered by fluffy feathers!

Courtney spent too much time in the rain & now she has dreads.

A New Hen Named Courtney!

The little white Silkie hen pictured here has lived the entire two years of her life in a children's book store, where she was loved by all who encountered her. Unfortunately, she pecked a toddler last week and for liability reasons, the store can no longer keep her. So now she will become a Hipster Hen. So, everyone, I'd like you to meet Courtney the Silkie hen. As many of you know I tried naming Snowball "Courtney" at first.  He was fine with that name until the day he decided he was a rooster—and from then on he complained bitterly until we finally came up with a more manly name for him.  Then we got another Silkie named Courtney this past spring – and when he turned into a rooster we returned him to the breeder, because we just had too many roosters!  It would be very, very unusual if it this two-year-old egg-laying hen were to become a dude.  So, I think we're finally good with the name. So happy to have this little girl join the flock!

Spring in the Coop

March 14:  This afternoon's project: I built this nifty set of nest boxes for the new coop out of scrap lumber & repurposed kitty litter containers.

March 18: Spring is around the corner. The snow is all gone except for this Snowball.

March 23:  Chicken Picture of the Day: Angitou the Golden Polish!  What a sweetheart!

The New Coop Progress and Other Stuff

Here are Betty the Easter Egger and Linda Leghorn relaxing on the roost.

Angitou the Golden Polish pullet thinks a John Deere tractor wheel is a great place to roost.

Jan 3 - The new coop is framed up. Hopefully with the holidays out of the way I can start to make some real progress on it.

Jan 17 - Snowball and Emily inspect progress on their new coop. It's going slowly - ran wire for lights today.

Jan 31 - Lights and heat are done. Walls are up. Still need door and insulation.

New Eggs! New Coop!

November 6:  It's a milestone day here at the chicken ranch - I found the first egg from my new hens this morning. It was on the floor of the coop - poor baby (don't know if it was Maran or Carmen) doesn't understand about nest boxes yet. I took the picture of the pullet egg alongside a light brown Barred Rock egg (courtesy of Arlene) to show how deep chocolaty brown the Marans eggs are.

November 17:  This is the corner of the pole barn opposite the coop and the site of what will soon be Coop # 2. With the cold weather everybody's inside and cabin fever has already set in. I've got a bunch of crabby chickens and the big ones are picking on the little ones - so it's time to spread out. Construction starts next week.

November 24:  My little Golden Polish hen, Angitou, laid her first egg! She is so proud!

November 27: Applause in the coop today! Emily the Silkie laid her first egg - my first Silkie egg ever!!

New Chickens Meet Old Chickens: Getting Acquainted is HARD!

October 2: For the last three weeks the four little hens (Angitou, Emily, Maran, and Carmen Maranda) have been living in a corner of the big coop that I fenced off so the flock could see them and get used to them to minimize fighting once they all got mixed together. Today was a double milestone day: I opened the gate to let the chickens out into the big new half-acre run and also made a small hole in the fence separating the young hens from the big coop, so they could climb through and go into the big coop whenever they were ready. Things started out pretty well. The entire flock went into the big new run and had the time of their lives nibbling on ferns and scratching through the leaf litter on the ground for bugs and worms. So, the coop was empty and the four young hens went through the hole in the fence and cautiously explored. The only chicken left in the coop was Snowball and while he was very interested in the new chickens he stood to one side and did not interact. Then it started to rain - the whole flock came inside to discover four interlopers in their coop. There was a lot of pecking, some of it aggressive. Even though Maran and Carmen, the two "baby" Marans, are as big as, or larger, than the old hens they did not fight back, sadly - so the old hens kept after them. Angitou, the little Polish hen, seemed to get the brunt of the hostility, with a lot of hens ganging up on her and pulling out her crest feathers. She kept trying to crawl under the Marans to hide. Emily, the little Silkie hen, hunched up in a corner, and for the most part was ignored. As of a few minutes ago all four young hens have crawled back through the hole and into their own territory and the old hens have gone back to eating, scratching, and nesting. There's nothing to prevent the old hens from going through the hole and invading the young hens' space, but I'm not going to close the hole since everybody has to get together and get along sooner or later. Once the new pecking order is firmly established, things will calm down again.

October 5:  I just had a prison break. The new run is surrounded by four feet of wire fencing which is topped by four more feet of netting. But there are spots where I don't have the netting up yet—a fact the chickens discovered sometime while I was in the house eating dinner. There were ten chickens on the loose including the two roosters. Kathy and I opened the gate & chased them around thru the woods until they finally went in and then I did a count and everybody's there. Fortunately, everybody sort of stayed together and they didn't want to get too far away from their home, but herding chickens is a lot like herding cats - the whole concept behind herding is that the animal you are herding is afraid of you and will run away. When I yell & wave my arms at the chickens they just cock their heads quizzically and cluck at me.

September Update

The Silkies had their three-month-old birthday at the beginning of September. It is sooo hard to sex Silkies and these babies are truly enigmatic, but as the month progressed it became obvious what was going on.   I was and continue to be almost positive Emily's a girl - she's got a rounded, feminine crest on her head and carries herself like a hen.  Courtney, with an upright, rooster-like stance, was the largest of the Silkies. Courtney's head-feathers were sort of swept back and her neck feathers were rough. I was guessing Courtney was a rooster. Then Courtney crowed.  That solved that mystery.  Petite Paulette was somewhat hen-like in posture, but had rough head and neck feathers. I thought that this little bird could go either way. Then Paulette crowed.  That mystery was also solved. 

Since the breeder I got the Silkies from will take them back if you for some reason are not satisfied (with no money refund), and since I do NOT need any more roosters, I took them back on September 12th.  That left Emily as the only Silkie.  Even though she had the two Marans and Angitou the Polish for company, I think this poor little hen felt a little sad, lonely, and abandoned.

Emily is sad

Other news that is a bit more upbeat: Early in September I started to build a half-acre chicken run to give my birds more space to move around in. First I put up this 10 foot wide, 8 foot high gate - wide enough to drive the tractor thru and hopefully high enough to contain the chickens.

Then I started in on the fence.  Here's a line of fence posts going up the hill.  Some of the posts came from the farm I grew up on and are perhaps older than I am. A good steel fence post will last a long time!

Here's how it's looking right now: Four feet of wire fence topped by four feet of netting. Not only will this contain the chickens, it will also keep the deer out and will probably keep the zombie hordes at bay after the apocalypse!