Early snow

Nothing like a little snow, to bring one out of a blog slump.



Every channel forecast snow, but I didn't pay much attention to their percentage predictions. My belief that it would actually snow, in Alabama, in early December, was exactly 0%.



But it did snow, a little.



Jasmine romped. She adores cold weather.



The chickens were wary. It might have been some evil plot, after all.



I don't remember the trees ever looking so nice, after such a light snow.



I hope the rosemary didn't get too frizzen.

Chickens love watermelon

Chickens love watermelon, with a passion. These were just our leftover rinds, with only a bit of red. Last year we bought an over-mushy melon by mistake, and they ate the whole thing: chicken heaven.

I had figured that the black and white chickens were Dominiques, but now I'm not so sure. Dominiques (or Domineckers, as they are called here) have a rose comb, and these don't appear to be headed in that direction. The female on the right as a lot of whitish feathers on her front, but the others don't. The feathers on the back of their necks seem to be changing from black-and-white to brown-and-white.

My husband says they're probably all just mutt chickens. The three remaining excess cockerels haven't made it to the stew pot yet. They're not fighting, or even crowing, so far, but it's just a matter of time. For now though, they are helping decrease the insect population in the yard. This little flock roams further afield than others we've had.

I hate the fact that after the cockerels are culled, we'll have one tiny flock of two chickens and another tiny flock of three. "Can't we all just get along" is not a sentiment that's shared by chickens, apparently. The older birds just won't have anything to do with the younger ones. They treat them as if they were another species entirely. I wonder, if one of the older ones dies... will the remaining one prefer to spend her time alone, or will she try to join the younger flock? I'm guessing the latter.

The one on the right is lowest in the pecking order. The other chickens chase her from the food at times. But I've taken a tip from some people and started offering bugs that I find in the garden to the chickens. This gal is the one who comes running the fastest, for her caterpillar treat. Now she runs to me, expecting bugs, every time she sees me. I'm tempted to buy mealworms to keep in my pocket, so I won't be such a continual disappointment to her.

New chickens

The newer chickens never seem in the mood for portraiture.



We came up on the losing end of the chicken lottery this time. Out of eight mystery chick picks, five were cockerels (males), and only three were pullets (females).

What kind of homesteading woman am I, if I couldn't watch what had to happen?



The squeamish kind, I guess.

Hubby is just as content to do it all himself, I think, to avoid having me standing over his shoulder. "Offering suggestions," as I see it... "Bossing me around," according to him. "And stressing me out."

We made the rookie mistake (according the the Backyard Chicken Forum) of cooking them without letting them rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours, so they were a little tough.

Chick flick

After a week, we moved the chicks to a much larger container. Wow, were they happy about that. They started a sort of fighting almost right away. I believe they are establishing pecking order.

You can see them doing it in this short video. It brings to mind that chest-bumping thing that boys do, doesn't it?!



I don't remember our previous chicks doing this when they were so young, but it's been a while, so I may be wrong.

I hope it's not just the males doing this. That would mean we have 6 or 7 males out of 8 chickens. Eep.

-----

P.S.
Please excuse the ratty-looking board the waterer is sitting on. We're recycling!

-----

P.P.S.
The reason we had to give so much information when buying chicks, was, I suspect, the whole NAIS thing. It's basically so the government can track livestock.

In the case of chickens, it's so that they can come kill all your chickens if the Avian flu ever hits here.

Chicks!

I piddled around and waited too long to order chicks. Sold out!

I should have realized, after hearing stories about seeds flying off the shelves in this poor economy, that the same would apply to small livestock.

But we found mystery chicks from the Cullman Tractor Supply store.



I think we have Leghorns, a Rhode Island Red, and Dominiques. Maybe.



They are cute, at any rate, although I suspect that a high percentage may be cockerels.



Fuzzy.



Wuzzy.

We put them in a pen outside one sunny day, to soak in sun and eat bugs and scratch around, but mostly they acted like it was just another ploy to try to kill them.



The female Muscovy was verrrry interested. Poor thing wants to be a mama so bad, but is too dumb to figure out how to sit on eggs correctly. Maybe we should have brought her some ducklings.

This is how much they grew in just a week:



That one on the far left and one other black chick have tails already, which says "male" to me, but I pray I'm wrong.



Look Ma, real feathers!

To buy the chicks, we had to sign a paper: name, address, phone, driver's license number! I considered yelling "No NAIS!" and running out the door, but I didn't. I hadn't felt Big Brother peering over my shoulder like that since we tried to drive up to view the local dam, and had our plates and license numbers recorded.

Lord knows what sort of watch list I'll be put on for buying chicks, visiting a dam, and buying Sudafed.



"I'll be watching you."

The size of things

When we had 20+ chickens, it was often impossible to tell who was laying what. I never was sure which individual was laying the pinkies in the egg picture above (in the the new header)¹.

When you only have two chickens, it's easy to tell the difference in the eggs.



On the left is an egg from the Marans hen. They're supposed to be very dark eggs, but sometimes they turn out speckled. You don't find chickens advertised as laying spotted eggs, but most of our hatchery Marans did, from time to time.

On the right is an egg from the Easter Egger. They are usually green or blue. This one is such a pale green that it didn't come through well in the photo.

Common wisdom has it that chickens lay fewer, but larger, eggs as they age. I've found that to be true for all the types we've had except the Marans. Hers continue to be smallish, but she's laying more often now than ever. All our chickens' eggs have gotten lighter in color each successive season.

-----

¹That seems to be the picture that people remember most from the blog. (Every time I look at it, it bothers me that I didn't get them lined up a little straighter.) It was from my first month of blogging, so I suppose you could say it's been all downhill from there. Click here for the larger, right-side-up original version.

Why don't we do it in the woods?

Aha!



No wonder we weren't getting any eggs.

We had an idea that this was happening. We kept hearing that chicken-laying clucking noise far from the coop. That cliché you always hear about hen talk? Buck-buck-buck-buckAH! That's how it really sounds. I keep thinking that it's the poultry equivalent of "Ow! Ow! Ow! This really hurts!" But I'm probably just imagining things.

I'd tried to investigate earlier, but that thicket has a poison-ivy carpet and is packed with those mid-level leafy shrubs that ticks love. I had on shorts and no hat, and I'm a little wimpy about that kind of thing, so I didn't get far. Hubby found it later, underneath a brush pile, a lot closer to the edge of the field than I'd thought.

Hubby removed these eggs, and put fresh straw in the coop's laying areas. Success! The Easter Egger found it suitable and laid an egg there yesterday. Since she was the instigator of this little revolt, I'm hoping the Marans will follow suit.

Dumpling

"You need to get more chickens," my sister told me. "I miss the Chicken Chronicles!"

Somehow we still haven't managed to get any more chicks this spring, though we had intended to. We have only two hens, an Easter Egger and a Marans.

The Marans (named "Dumpling", shown here), bucking common chicken wisdom, is laying more often now that she's older. She lays an egg almost every day. The Easter Egger (Americauna) is a slacker. Her eggs are larger, but we're lucky if she graces us with two a week. And they've lost their pretty green and blue hues, fading to practically white. Maybe she's just tired.

The number of eggs from two chickens is really more than enough for just the two if us. But a whole flock is fun to watch, plus they keep the yard free of ticks (if you can keep them out of the woods long enough). Stay tuned... we may yet get a few more this spring.

Stop thief!

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Chicken food thief!

Actually I don't begrudge the blackbirds or grackles a little chicken feed. But I have started to wonder about the possibility of melamine in the layer ration.

Last Leg

We lost our last White Leghorn yesterday. At just over three years old, she was our longest-lived chicken, and the last hen from the original flock. She never came back to roost at night, and was presumably a meal for a predator with babies to feed.

I looked up every synonym for sad, but couldn't find a word to explain the feeling I had when I opened an egg carton and saw her white eggs still in there.


Catbox stuffing, in better days.

Spring chickens

It doesn't really take much to have a chicken fan club.


Before you know it they'll be eating out of your hand.


Chicken dance lines involve a bit more training.

-----


Why do you think they call it henbit?


A mouse does not make a good pen.


Once more, from the top


"Sure, they're both European invaders, but the flowers taste really good to chickens. And the square stems are pretty cool too."

-----

Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Springtime

Local weather seems fixed on skipping straight to early summer. I'm in t-shirts and shorts and still sweating -- it's been in the mid-80s (30°C) already. News reports said we'd had the driest December - January - February period on record for over 100 years. It doesn't seem to have affected the wildflowers, though. And finding springs has never been easier: just walk into the woods and listen for frogs.

Hubby tilled up the garden. He mowed the grass for the first time, or part of it anyway -- he also experienced the traditional first bending of the lawn mower blade.

Tiny ants keep popping up in the kitchen, and outdoors the larger ones are unrelenting. Diatomaceous earth poured onto an ant superhighway only served to split them into two trails on either side; seemingly twice as many ants.

I happened upon my first migrant (Swainson's Thrush) when I was without binoculars, and had to practice a considerable amount of stealthy sneaking to confirm the ID. We've seen or heard several others since then: Louisiana Waterthrush, Northern Parula, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Black and White Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Rough-winged Swallows, Broad-winged Hawk.

The chickens' and ducks' fancy has turned to love, or to mating at any rate. The female muscovy is trying to sit on eggs yet again, but that duck doesn't have a lick of sense so I'm not holding my breath. The chickens are laying very well, but the color of the eggs is lighter than last year. Sometimes the green/blue eggs are almost as pale as the white ones. Hens are supposed to lay fewer eggs every year, but larger ones. I don't think our Leghorn or Marans read that book though, because their eggs are smaller than last year.

-----

Edited to correct horrendous spelling error. I read once that the smarter you get, the worse your spelling becomes. It's probably not true, but I repeat it a lot anyway.

Easter Egger

I interrupt the series of garden tour photos for this picture of a chicken.

In comments, Ki suggested that we try Araucana chickens. I've looked into it, but they're expensive and difficult to find in the US. And even if you do, they'll most likely be Americanas instead, or Easter Eggers. Those we do have, and of all the chickens we've owned, they're my favorites.

We free-range our chickens, but even with a livestock guardian dog there's somewhat of a predator problem,



and the heavier chickens we've had (Dominiques, Buff Orpingtons, Marans) always seem the first to go. The lightest chickens (Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, and Lakenvelders) have also tended to be the flightiest, which is no fun when you're attempting to remove eggs from under them. (They freak out.) Easter Eggers are somewhere in the friendly but wary middle ground.

True Araucana chickens lay blue eggs, but they are difficult to breed. So hatcheries sell Easter Eggers (even if they call them something else), which usually lay green eggs, but sometimes blue or pink.

Two of our girls started out laying bluish eggs, but this year they're more greenish. (A particular chicken's egg color usually changes over time.)



It's OK though.



I like them all.

By request: chicken coop

Someone asked about the details of our chicken coop. I'm sure you can probably build one more cheaply than hubby did, but here you go. Click on any of the pictures for a larger version.


Open yard in front, woods in the back. The chickens used to roam picturesquely around the yard, but nowdays they're in the woods most of the time. If we fenced around the coop we'd have fewer predator losses I'm sure.


The ground is rocky and slopes a little here.


One of the Easter Eggers wonders what I'm up to. That cinderblock in front is really for me, but the chickens use it too. Hubby originally designed the back wall to have a door with a ramp for small chicks, but it turns out that they can hop up on the block too, so we never open the other side.


The door is person-sized rather than chicken-sized.


Fancy door lock #1 (closed door position). There's one at the top and another at the bottom.


Fancy door lock #2 (open door position).


Fancy footing. Jasmine crawls under the coop at this end sometimes. Not that a little thunder would frighten her or anything... she just likes it under there.


Hubby poured concrete for the corner footings. He says that he wishes he'd made a row of footings down the middle (underneath) too but it's a little late for that now.


Left (front) side wall. We made two roosts on this side, one low and one high. They only ever use the high one though. Hubby went back and added some of these wall beams later because the side was bowing out a little. Whoever is the top-dog rooster usually roosts directly by the door on this side. No idea why! If you enlarge the picture, you can see that some of the chickens like to roost on that little support piece that's between the roost and the wall.


He's having the same problem with the back wall bowing, and says he needs to add beams here too. The roost is shorter on this side. When we had a lot more chickens, they'd divide up between sides. Nowdays they all roost on the same side, but usually divide up on either end!


The roof slopes and has space for ventilation on both sides. I thought we might have trouble with critters getting in, but we've only had a problem once with a rat snake that ate several eggs and killed a pullet. The ventilation really helps in the summer and doesn't seem to hurt in the winter. (We are in zone 7 so this might not work in colder areas.)


Here is the chickens' favorite nesting box. Yep it's a cat litter box. You can see a little piece of the never-used lower roost. I really need to remove it, since it's only good for banging up my shins.


White leghorn tries to give me the evil eye. She is the oldest chicken we have left now -- in the spring she will be three years old. She still lays very consistently, although her eggs are smaller than they once were.

All the chickens have begun laying again. I wanted to get more chicks in the spring, but hubby is trying to talk me out of it. We have been eating fewer eggs, but I really like having chickens just for pets. And I'm afraid that if we begin the spring with only 6 hens, we'll have none left by fall. There's still time to think about it.