World expansion

The three chicks were growing quickly and starting to fight, so I decided to expand their world. I cut a door in the box that they had called home. This gave them the ability to roam out into the enclosure. At first they did not want to, but since I moved their food and water out of the box to make more room for them, they were forced to go out. Soon they were all over the place.

I also installed a stick for them to practice their roosting skills.
One of the lighter colored chicks can fly! I don’t mean jump, but actually fly around and around. It’s truly amazing.

Darla the dark chick is starting to look like a little crow. I’m sure she’ll soon turn into a good looking hen.

They are adverse to human interaction, but my neighbor and two of her friends came over, and after an amazing amount of persistence managed to get all 3 chicks to snuggle up against them. Thanks girls.

I also installed a wooden border around the bottom of the pen, in an effort to keep Mr. P from sticking a claw through and snagging one of the girls. In time, they will get big enough to keep him at wings length. The border was my spouse’s idea.

Pine shavings have replaced the paper shreddings that I used at first and that has helped the odd smell to disappear. I look forward to the first sunny warm day when I can take them out to see the big world. For now they will have to live with the sunlight that comes through the garage windows and of course the heat lamp.

The next generation

I have begun raising my next generation of chickens. My two adults are fine, but I know they have a limited lifespan.

I got a Buff Orpington, a Black Sexlink, and a Gold Sexlink. I made a cat-proof cage for them to live in. It is the garage. It has a brooding lamp which keeps the area under it about 85 °. They have enough room to move out of the warm zone. The have water and food, and lots of paper shreddings to root around in.

I’m hoping to introduce them to the adults in late April. Fingers crossed the introduction goes well. I’ve read that it doesn’t always go smoothly.

Winter eggs

We are getting eggs again! After a long eggless time they started showing up again. It must be the longer days.
Dolly’s feathers are back; she looked funny for a while with her skin showing through the new spindly feathers. Why she had to molt during a cold snap, I don’t know.
I put new bedding in the coop today, and the girls went wild; looking for grain in amongst the straw.
I’m in the planning stages for a pen to raise some chicks this spring. The hardest part will be making the pen Poco-proof. It will be a challenge. The pen will have wheels, so I can roll it outside on nice days and get the older hens used to the idea of interlopers in their midst.
Watching the girls patrol the backyard, I can’t imagine there is a single bug left.

Cooped up in Autumn

Lily and Dolly have stopped laying and have begun dropping their feathers everywhere they go. I believe this is called molting. Other than that, they are behaving normally.
They are tolerant of a little rain, but after a while they retreat under the deck, specifically under the deck under the eaves; they are no dummies.
I read that chickens will eat yogurt so I put out some that had gone past the expiration date; They devoured it.
They go to bed very early these days, even while the sun is still up.
Dolly still sleeps on the perch, while Lily prefers snuggling in the cedar chip bedding. I’m with Lily on this one.
Yesterday I opened the coop door well before sunup. The girls were both still in the sleeping quarters. Lily came flying down the ramp and outside the coop in under a second. I have no idea what she was thinking, but I would love to know.
Since I finished fencing the backyard, we let them run free all day. We know this means they will likely have a shorter life, but a better one too. I have to remind myself that they are not helpless and still have the self-protection desire that all living things are born with.
My spouse suggested I raise the coop off of the patio, in order to keep the straw drier. This may have been her best suggestion yet. I have done so, and I’m very pleased with the results.
Let’s see what a long NW winter brings to the coop.

early summer 2010

We almost always get two eggs per day now, and we got three one day! How is that even possible?
I am noticing some character traits of the hens; Lily is very adventurous. She comes up on the second story deck, she goes out the gate if it’s left open, and she always comes a runnin’ when a person comes into the backyard.
Dolly is more timid, she never goes on the deck, and stays closer to the coop.
I’ve been reading up on hens and hot weather, but now it looks like I needn’t have bothered. If summer does show up, the hens will be fine in hot weather as long as they have plenty of water and shade.
I’ve been training the girls to be petted by me. They are getting used to it, and someday maybe they will like it.
They have figured out that if they follow me while I’m mowing, the bugs will be easier to get at and will likely be stunned by the mower. They had a feast today.

More eggs

As promised, with the longer days come more eggs!
I put up a small fence to keep the hens from wandering the neighborhood. They had begun to go farther and farther on their journeys. They have a large backyard to themselves, and should be content. As a result of their new boundary, they can be let out for longer periods of time. This is good and bad; the good is obvious, the bad is that I know the chances of a predator getting them are increased, and when they do not get out, they make quite a racket.
Getting them back into the pen when they don’t want to go is quite an exercise, both literally and figuratively. Two people helps, and so does a long stick to help herd them. I hope no one ever gets it on video, I’m sure it’s not complimentary.
Dolly is more amenable to going into the pen, Lily is not. If she just happens to be in the pen anyway for a drink or a bite or to lay and she’s hears me, she darts out and makes a run for it.
One more feed store story. There was a woman who worked in the retail part of the feed store who I had a major crush on. She was tall and thin and blonde and sweet, and she drove a Toyota Land Cruiser! In those days a Land Cruiser was not a luxury SUV, it was a Jeep, for the youngsters reading this it was like a Jeep Wrangler, but with more power.
One day she came out to the warehouse and said that I was supposed to help her with a project. I was ecstatic and probably showed it. Our job was to get rid of many spray cans of some kind of hazardous substance. It was a weed killer or an insect killer. The manufacturer had instructed her to spray the contents into the dirt. We went to a vacant lot and started out just spraying them a can at a time into the dirt, but it was soon obvious that it would take all day. So I devised a setup where we could spray 10 cans at once. It worked well. I probably inhaled enough of that stuff to shorten my life, but spending hours with her alone was worth every minute.

Happy Easter

It’s kinda fun to go out on Easter morning and get a warm egg. Thanks Dolly or Lily. After two days of nasty weather, today it’s relatively pleasant. The hens are out rototilling the yard.
I have been asked to write another feed store story. Here is one.
One of the geniuses had gotten a forklift hopelessly stuck in the mud. How there was ever mud in Reno, I don’t know, but there was some. The brain trust got together to figure out a solution. I just watched, because I knew from past experience that something bad but funny would surely happen. They lead guy got the biggest truck we had and tied a very long rope to the top of the cage that covers the driver of the forklift and the other end to the truck. He then got into the truck and gunned the engine. At this point I ran for my life. I finally had to turn and see the result. As the rope went taught, the cage ripped off the forklift and flew through the air at Mach 1, and coming to rest on a pallet of chicken feed and sending feed to the corners of the earth. The forklift did not budge. If only we had cell phones with video cameras in those days.