Finally Getting Along

Well I think the worst is over with the hen pecking.  I still have one of the Wyandottes being a little mean but I think all will survive.  They all seem to be getting along better.  Some Still hang out with just their own kind.

Others will mingle with the old hens.  The reds seem to be generally pretty mellow about the invasion of the new hens.  They do get a bit territorial and possessive if I throw a tomato into the run for them.  I hav to make sure I toss in several so they all can share.

They are starting to develop their personalities as as they do I have started to name them.  This is Sally.  She is a Wyandotte that has a wonky toe.  It does not seem to bother her and she can move it so I am not worried about it being bent sideways.  Sally likes to talk and talk and talk.  Quite the gossip she is.

Fuzzy of course is one of my oldest hens.  She is one of my first Easter Eggers.  She got pecked some so I sprayed her butt with the purple spray then she just had to preen herself so now she also has a purple face.  Goofy chicken.

Honey is a sweet Easter Egger that is inquisitive.

I keep checking inside the coop every few hours for eggs.  A few of the new layers have caught on and are laying in the nest boxes while one insists on laying in the corner of the coop under the nest boxes.   So far I have 3 Easter Eggers laying.  I suspect it will be any day now for the rest of them to start.  They Wyandottes and Australorps are as big as the old Reds.  Any day now....

The grass is coming back nicely in the brooder run.  We plan on putting in permanent poles and extending the existing run out to include what was the brooder run to give them more room.

I try to spend time with the hens every day.  I spend time inside the run and coop with them so they get used to me and will come up to me.  Taming them will make thing easier if I have to doctor them in any way.  It also makes for a more fun flock.  I have two chickens now that will submit to me.  Fuzzy and now one of the Wyandottes submit to me by squatting in front of me and spreading their wings out inviting me to climb on as a rooster would do.  I generally just pat their back and pat them in the butt when they do this to me.  They seem satisfied with it - or disgusted with me that I have no clue how to hit home with this open invitation!  I am going to go with satisfied...yeah thats it.....  They shake and fluff out and go about their merry way.

Silly silly chickens.

Crazy Mushrooms

I got home from work the other day and noticed this HUGE mushroom growing wildly by the blackberries.  I thought to myself where did this thing come from??  I went on inside the house changed my clothes, plopped my hair up into a pony tail, grabbed a glove and headed back outside.

After now having any rain for so long I almost forgot about the insane mushrooms we sometimes have pop up in the summer.  We finally have started getting some rain again and like magic these things start springing up from nowhere.  I generally catch then when they are relatively small, but they grow quickly.

I pick them, placing them in a bucket then dump the bucket over the hill where hopefully the spores will not find their way back into my yard.  I used to pick mushrooms for a living.  Interesting job I will say.  It was underground in old limestone mines that were converted into the mushrooms mines.  These mushrooms are nothing like the ones I used to pick for a living!

I wandered all around the yard and picked these crazy things and a few other run of the mill toadstools and mushrooms.  Then I seen it again......the huge looming crazy mushroom.  I snuck up on it so as not to scare it away.  I plunked down the 5 gallon bucket next to it and had to take a picture  - this thing is big.

Then I picked it and took another picture of it in my hand.  All this thing needs is eyes and a mouth and it could be a new species of rodent.

I have no idea what kind of wild mushrooms these are, but I know if left alone the tops turn black and open up for the spores to escape.  If you hit one with the tractor or lawn mower you can't breath for 15 minutes from the black cloud of spores that explodes from them.  That is why I try to keep them picked before they break open or can get hit from the mower or tractor.  These things are downright crazy and something out of Alice and Wonderland.

Alls calm on in the chicken coop....now

Well it has been a rough few days.  I merged the flocks together and expected some pecking and ordering to be going on.  I did not however expect to see what all had happened as was posted in my last post.  This has never happened to me before.  I watched the flock and seen first hand what was going on.

The Comets were taking pecking order to a whole new level.  I was never too fond of the Comets and this behavior just sealed the deal for me.  As much as I do not like killing my chickens I could not stand by and let them kill the new hens.  They pecked apart 4 of them and 1 of those actually died as a result of the pecking.  They pecked her complete lower back/butt clear through to her bones.  At that point I had enough and started rounding up the 4 Comets.  One of them seemed ok so I let her live.  I took each one out of the coop and killed her using the broomstick method.

I do not have any pictures of this process, as it is a two hand process and I was alone doing it.  It is part of chicken ownership so I will describe it here.

Once the chicken perp is sentenced to death and caught, lay the perp down on the ground on their belly. Place the broomstick or other thin board (I use a furring strip of lumber) across their neck.  Stand on the stick on either side of the perp's head and pull up on their legs.  This stretches their neck under the pressure of the stick and kills them.  You will feel and sometimes hear 3 pops.  You can stop after the 3 pops.  If you do not stop you will rip their head clear off and that causes a bloody mess.  I quickly grab the perp's wings and hold them close to the body until the flapping and jerking stops.  Some folks will just lop their heads off and let them flap or run around.  To me that is a terrible thing to do....so inhumane.  I try my best to treat the bird with dignity by not decapitating them, and also holding their wings tight until it is all over.

I seriously do not like killing my birds.  I have finally gotten to the point that I no longer cry over it, but I do sulk and brood over it for a while while I dispose of the body and move on.  I killed 3 Comets and the rooster that day.  I really hoped that taking these bullies out would calm things down.

I went out the next morning and watched the last Comet, Phyllis, go around to several of the new and a few of the old ones and just peck them all hard in the butt.  My patients were shot!  I was so infuriated with Phyllis, I stormed into the coop grabbed her and broomsticked  her so fast the youngins did not even know what happened!

I sprayed the hurt one's areas with the purple spray again and checked on the ones I sprayed previously.  Again my hand is stained purple.  That is ok - at least I know I am taking care of my birds.  I am now down to 1 old easter egger, Fuzzy, 3 old Rhode Island Reds, Red, Lucky, and Curious,  and 23 new birds - a mix of ester eggers, astrolopes, and lace wyndots.  I am sure I did not spell those correctly.

To end this post on a good note - things do seem calmer in the coop now.  Everyone seems to be getting along and the stress is leaving the girls.  I am only getting 2 eggs a day now from the 4 old hens that are left.  Two of the new girls have started laying now.  I am getting a tiny green egg and now a tiny blue egg from the easter eggers. They all kinda look green in this picture but the are different colors.  They are  so small they knock around in the carton.

It is just a matter of time before they all start laying.  All we can do is take care of them and wait.

Hen Pecked

WARNING!!  Pictures that follow in this post may be disturbing to some.  View at your own discretion.  

With the hens getting moved over into the big coop, there is a certain amount of discourse to be expected in the flock.  They all battle for the pecking order and who will be top bird.  That is a fact of chicken ownership.  And just like dealing with pasty butt when they were peeps, one has to deal with the aftermath of the pecking.  I had noticed that one new hen was pretty beat up yesterday, but I did not have anything to put on her wounds.  I send my Hubby and Son to the store today to get some spray for them.  The boys brought home this stuff:

It sprays on purple and is an antiseptic so it should help with healing the birds while camouflaging the wounds.  Chickens are crazy about anything that resembles raw meat and will go nuts pecking and pecking and pecking at it.  I suspect the rooster for inflicting most of the damage.

This spray is handy to have on hand.  I should have had some way before this time but pecking was really not that big of a problem with my previous 2 flocks.  I set out to the coop in my snazzy insulated purple boots.

I took some before pictures of the beat up hens.  THESE ARE GRAPHIC.  Fair warning.

I took my time and caught each hen one by one and calmed her down.  I held her down with one hand and sprayed the raw area with the spray then released her...moving on to the next one.  One poor hen had a hole pecked clear through her skin into her back muscle.  I sprayed her extra good but it would not surprise me if she did not make it.  Hopefully she will.

I sprayed 3 or four hens total and they were pretty cooperative about it all.  Now I have a purple hand.  I did not realize this would stain my hand just as it did the hens.  I thought it would wash off with soap and water......nope.  Not even using hand cleaner with pumice.....

Some have a green thumb... I have a purple thumb.  Lesson learned....wear gloves when spraying this stuff!!

Moving Day

I went about my normal routine that I do every weekend.   I am always up by 630am if not earlier, the product of having to get up at 4am every day during the week.  I do my thing and head out to the chickens.  I give both the old hens and the babies scratch grains and we all chat about what is new and the latest gossip.

I got around to the babies nursery building and I peeked in and what do you know....way in the back of the  nursery I spied this:

Well this sparked  a whole laundry list of things to do!  I had to call the U-Haul company, call the phone, water, and TV companies to have service stopped.  So much to do!  I had to scramble eggs!  So much to do so little time.  Not to mention it is hotter than all get out.

I finished chatting with the chickens and hand feeding them some grass and then headed inside to start things rolling.

I  cooked up a little more than a dozen eggs.  Why you may ask?  There is a good reason.  I gave the older hens the scrambled eggs to fill their bellies (ok ok their gizzards) with protein.  This will discourage pecking when we integrate the babies into the big coop with them.  The eggs and protein also  seem to make the hens a little more docile and easier going.  This will help the introduction go smoother.

I woke up my hubby, and son and had a good breakfast, while we talked about how to move the babies with as little trauma  as possible.  We devised and plan and out the door we went.  First we had to get all the babies into their nursery.  Then we had to keep them there while we closed off their pop door.  To do this we just stapled some chicken wire over the pop door opening.  Then I picked up all the bricks holding down the big blue tarp and took out all the stuff from inside their nursery.

Together the three of us slowly picked up the nursery and we walked it to a new location out of the mud and chicken poo.  The babies were not too cooperative so we decided not to try to walk them around to the big coop door as we had planed.  Instead we took off the top of the nursery and I started grabbing birds.  I would quickly grab a chicken and hand her off to my Son who would carry her over to the coop where Hubby was manning the door.  We did this over and over, one by one, chicken by chicken for all 25.  It took some time and I only got pooped on once, and bit once.  Not too bad considering I was really scaring them.  No chickens (or people) were harmed during this process.  Although, I was wing slapped in the face a few times.  Thankfully I did not loose my glasses!

Once we had them all in the main run, I filled their waters while the boys mixed their feed.  Just like changing a dog's food you want to mix the old with the new  - we had to mix the chick feed with the layer feed.  I then slowly corralled all the birds from the run into the coop, and we shut the pop door for about an hour.  Since our babies were used to using a pop door they knew how it worked and knew that beyond the pop door was either shelter or a yard depending which way they were going.

They were hot and they duked it out a little bit but all in all the hour they were locked in together with the old hens seemed to go well.  While they were locked up, we quickly dismantled the nursery and set the pieces behind the coop to wash off in the rain - should we get any- and to get it out of the site of the babies.  Out of site out of mind.  They will forget they had a different home and will only know their new home as their only home.  We left the fencing up for now.  It was too hot by this time and I was melting into a gross puddle in my insulated boots.

We also found out that our one mystery chick in indeed a roo.  He has been crowing for a few weeks now.  He is aggressive when I had feed them grass but he has not tried to attack - yet.  He seemed pretty docile when I grabbed him to move him.  Maybe he will be a nice roo.....hey a girl can hope!

Now I have to find some of the golf balls we have laying around to put in the nest boxes.  Why golf balls you ask?  Well the golf balls with look like eggs to the chickens and it will teach the babies where to lay their eggs - in the nest boxes.  It works quite well.  This way using golf balls I can keep collecting the eggs several times a day so they don't get trampled but still leave a visual learning aid for the new hens.

 I only have one new hen laying so far but the rest will start soon.  This is kinda early for them.  We got these peeps April 4, 2011, and today July 31, 2011, 3.5 months later, they are starting to lay.  The new eggs will be pretty tiny bit totally whole.  Soon they will start laying huge eggs and double and triple yolks while their bodies figure things out and they settle into a laying routine.  Now a new issue starts for me - soon I will be getting up to 32 eggs A DAY!  I need to order some egg cartons....and make a sign for the road.....and buy a bigger fridge...make more cookies, cakes, and goodies.  oh my.

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Garden in Full Swing

We have been in a serious heat wave dry spell here in these parts.  We have been having to water the gardens every night to keep them going.  It takes about an hour to water every garden that we have.  That is a lot of water.  I am afraid to open my water bill when it comes!  But the up side to it all is that the gardens are doing well and we are getting 2 squash/zucchini a day....a all new problem!

The onions are shouldered up and out of the dirt and starting to die off.  Soon it will be time to pull them and let them dry before bagging them up in net bags.

The cabbages have seen better days.  I started manually inspecting them and picking the worms off of them.  That has seemed to help.  I have spray for them but I am not too keen on using it.  If the cabbage does not work out the chickens will get a wonderful treat.  The LOVE cabbage and a cabbage infested with bugs is even all the better for them.

Our green beans are not looking too hot.  They are supposed to be bush beans but they seem to be falling all over themselves.  I doubt we will get enough for a meal let alone can, but the bunny gets them as a treat.  Not much goes to waste even the low output veggies.

We have a total of 6 garden tanks, 2 veggie plots, and the berry patch.  The tanks are old fuel oil tanks that have been cut in half and put up on cinder blocks.  We use a mixture of mushroom mulch, compost, top soil, peat, and cow manure to fill the tanks.  Things generally do really well in them.  This year things are really dry so the tanks dry out quicker and it takes its toll on the plants.

In the ground plots we have yellow and green zucchinis, green peppers, butternut squash, corn, pumpkins, and a variety of tomatoes.  They are doing fairly well given the lack of water and sweltering temperatures.  I picked 2 grape tomatoes the other day and they were a yummy tease of what is to come!  I can't wait until they really get rolling.

The corn is kinda goofy.  We planted 2 different kinds of corn.  1 kind came up really well and the other stuff did a sporadic growth pattern.  We did not expect much out of this garden plot, as we are still trying to fortify the lack of dirt in our yard with litter from the chicken coop.

We have tied aluminum pie tins in the corners of the garden plots to keep the critters out.  It seems to be working pretty good so far.

Although this one was looking for a way into the garden!

The chickens are not happy with us.  We have not let them out to free range in a while.  We have to get the tomatoes fenced in so they do not eat them all.  If we were to let them out now they would go straight to the garden and eat everything there!  I have read about painting rocks the colors of the veggies and placing them around the garden.  That way the chickens will peck at the rocks - get bored with the garden as soon as they figure out there is nothing but painted rocks in it.  I have not tried this - I may, we have a rock or 2 laying around.

The fruit trees are not fairing too well in the hot dry weather either.  We had all kinds of fruit in the spring but most of it has dried up.  We have some apples.

Some Peaches:

And some Pears yet on the trees.

We water them as well but it does not look like they will amount to anything.  Maybe next year.