Oops, we did it again

Well, we did it again. We rolled the dice on a new batch of chicks and we ended up with three little hens... and a rooster. Oy. This one is a barred rock rooster named Lilly. Had he been a she it would have worked out well because then we would have Lucy and Lilly, two barred rock hens. As it stands, Lilly is definitely not a hen - which I began to suspect early on when he grew faster than the other three (Pearl - a black Australorp, and Sally and Savannah - speckled Sussex hens) and his legs were bigger as well. The tell tale pointed feathers and the doubt erasing crowing didn't show up until several weeks later. 

Savannah and Sally

Pearl, hanging out in the top of the Japanese maple tree

So now we have two roosters and two separate flocks: the "bigs" and the "littles." Gretchen rules the bigs, who reside in the bigger coop and spend half the day in their run, and Lilly is the leader of the littles, who sleep in the little coop and spend the whole day roaming freely simply because they are littler than the bigs and haven't integrated into the flock yet. I'm sure the neighbors are thrilled.* We will be making Lilly a crow collar soon, however, so hopefully the crowing will calm down a bit. Gretchen seems relatively resigned to his crow collar: he seems to crow less frequently than Lilly and when he does crow, the volume is somewhat reduced. I have often wondered if the diminished volume of his crow is a source of some embarrassment to him so he just decides to stay quiet most of the time. Lilly, currently without a crow collar, has no such inhibitions. He crows regularly and loudly throughout the morning. He seems to refrain from raising a ruckus as soon as the bigs are let out of their run to free range during the afternoon and evening. Lilly appears to recognize that Gretchen is indeed the supreme ruler of the backyard (even the dogs are scared of him) and is wise enough not to tangle with him or antagonize him in any way, including crowing, which would only serve to alert Gretchen to Lilly's location hidden away in the grape arbor any way. 

In thinking about it now, I realize that we seem to have bad luck with barred rocks. Aside from Lucy, every other barred rock chicken we have had here on the Unfarm has been a rooster. A few years ago, when we allowed Georgia to hatch a batch of eggs after she went broody, we ended up with several barred rock chicks (on account of the fact that Georgia was stealing the other hen's eggs and rolling them into her nest) and every one of them turned out to be roosters. And now Lilly. 

We can only hope that he will be a friendly rooster so that we are not forced to send him away. Dad tolerates Gretchen when Gretchen is confined in the run but will not venture into the backyard when Gretchen is roaming freely, as Dad is adamant that Gretchen will attack him if given the chance. I have always found him to be pretty nice to Mom and I but maybe he just doesn't like men. I don't know if our luck would hold out if we ended up with two "attack roosters."

* Note: Fear not, we actually talk to our neighbors fairly regularly and they don't really seem to mind the chickens. One neighbor actually suggested we get a rooster to accompany our hens, not realizing we already had one at the time.

Lilly, our barred rock rooster

Hero worship

The ducks, Fern and Aida - who turned out to both be boys despite my female names for them - adore Gretchen. And who wouldn't? Gretchen struts around the yard like he owns the place. He has a flock of hens to choose from and he always gets the best and tastiest treats simply because he is the largest. No, there are no pesky gentlemanly characteristics to get in the way - he will push anyone aside to get what he wants, whether they are wife, mistress, or daughter. It is no wonder, then, that the boys look up to him and seek to emulate him whenever possible. This emulation includes attempting to mate with the hens who flap and squawk and run away as fast as possible. (But not always fast enough - they have been caught several times even though you would think a chicken could easily outrun a duck... it probably has something to do with the fact that there are two ducks versus the one hen.) It really doesn't matter how many times you tell them that there are no such things as "duckins," they refuse to listen. Or maybe they simply figure that fair is fair - Gretchen tries to mate with Minna, after all. Apparently he believes in the "duckins are possible" theory as well. 

The ducks are let out first in the morning and Fern and Aida will often forego a large breakfast in favor of running up to the dog run fence to watch as Gretchen then eats his breakfast. The rest of the day the boys spend following Gretchen around the yard as best as possible. The boys are unable to fly up and over the dog run fence so if the chickens happen to be in the dog run (where their coop is located) the ducks are out of luck and have to settle for walking along the fence line staring at Gretchen all the while. If Gretchen does happen to leave the dog run and head out into the yard, the boys can usually be found within several feet of him. They dare not follow too closely as Gretchen tends to turn on them and chase them off but this has done nothing to dampen their hero worship of him. It seems that in their eyes, Gretchen can do no wrong, which is a refreshing change from listening to my dad and my brother complain about "Hooligan" (the name Dad has taken to calling Gretchen) and his dislike of men and certain neighbors which he expresses by attacking them. But as he would likely be butchered if we were to send him anywhere else, re-homing him would probably be a death warrant so for now at least "Hooligan" stays and the ducks will continue to have someone to look up to.

The boys, hanging around outside the dog run fence while Gretchen ignores them from within. Aida is on the left and Fern is the one with more white on his head, on the right.

Gretchen, in the yard, with the boys remaining at a respectful distance.

Hatching chicks on the Unfarm!

Last summer, my dad went on an epic bike ride from Washington state all the way to Maine before flying back home. My brother was temporarily in San Francisco and my sister lives in Colorado. This left my mom and I alone to tend to all the Unfarm chores. This was a huge mistake on my dad's part because that also meant that my mom and I were left alone on the Unfarm with no one to tell us "no" so when Georgia, our partridge Wyandotte hen decided to go broody we said "yes." We let her sit on her eggs - all 15 or so of them by the end - and attempt to hatch them. 

This was our first experience with hatching chicks and we didn't know quite how to go about it so we let Georgia do most of the work with keeping the eggs at the right temperature and humidity and turning them when needed. This worked well enough for the first two chicks. At that point, Georgia decided she was done and hopped off the nest for good. I only found the two chicks - who we named Luna and Sally, Luna because the solar eclipse was the next day and we wanted at least a semi appropriate name considering the occasion - because August 20th I was laying in bed with my window open and I heard rather frantic peeping that didn't sound like any of our local birds so I went out to investigate. I found Georgia in the run with one chick and the other chick was stuck in the coop, peeping her head off, trying (in vain) to call Georgia. Checking the nest box I found the rest of the 13 eggs beginning to cool off. Georgia had apparently decided that she was good with two chicks and the rest could fend for themselves. Having candled the eggs (probably way more often than we needed to or would be advised because we were so excited to see the little chicks developing inside) we knew that the eggs were all full of living chicks so in a panic I ran inside and set up the incubator, which I had purchased from the feed store upon seeing Georgia up and off the nest at one point, thinking that she had abandoned her eggs. (Hens will occasionally leave the nest to grab a bite to eat or go to the bathroom without any ill effects on the eggs. I discovered this after purchasing the incubator.) I carefully transferred all the eggs into the incubator and set it up on the kitchen table where we would be able to keep an eye on it and it would be relatively safe from dogs and cats. 

The incubator on our (rather messy) kitchen table.

The two chicks that had hatched got set up in the bunny room in a brooder pen that we fashioned out of a dog crate and brooder kit with a heat lamp on top. There was one unfortunate incident in all of this: one of the eggs in the nest had cracked open but the shell membrane had started drying out and was shrink wrapping the chick inside, who wasn't moving. Figuring it was a loss, but unsure what to do with it I just stuck it under the heat lamp next to Luna and Sally and waited until Mom came home from church to decide what to do about it. However, upon showing it to Mom we noticed it was starting to move so it was still alive in there but seemed unable to get out of the remainder of it's shell. So we took tweezers and very carefully peeled the membrane and shell off of the tiny chick. Not sure if the chick would make it or not, we named her Lucky in hopes that her name would give her good luck and help her survive. 

Lucky, half in and half out of her shell

Luna and Sally hanging out underneath the heat lamp, before the brooder crate was set up.

Once Lucky had dried out and was relatively mobile we brought Georgia into the house and set her up in the brooder pen with her chicks. She was, as it turns out, a really dedicated mother. She'd let the chicks snuggle up under her feathers to sleep or hop on her back for a ride and she always made a gentle clucking noise when food was provided to show the chicks what was food and made sure that they ate before she did. 

Georgia give a chick a ride in the brooder pen.

The rest of the chicks hatched over the next week or two in the incubator - the reason for the staggering in hatching times was that Georgia only laid a couple of the eggs herself, we believe. The rest of the eggs she rolled into her nest as soon as the other hens laid them, and then sat on them herself, so each chick was a day or two behind the previous chick in terms of development. Once they were all big enough to be outside we set up a small pen for them so Georgia could be with them outdoors but the other hens and Gretchen would not be able to get to the chicks and possibly hurt them.

A chick in the incubator, just after hatching.

Drying off in the incubator. You can see the other eggs still incubating.

One of our few blondies, we think these chicks are the offspring of Bridget, our Rhode Island Red hen.

Georgia, the proud momma, in her outdoor pen with several of her chicks.

By the way, Lucky survived and is doing fine and she is one of the four chicks that we kept. The others were given to a friend who has a farm and was in need of some more chickens. Sadly, all of our barred rock chicks turned out to be roosters. We were planning on keeping some of the barred rocks if they were hens as their mother, Lucy, is so very friendly. How we ended up with one hen that produced only males and all the other hens producing only females is a mystery to us.

Lucky, a beautiful black hen.

Chicken harness

Penny, currently our oldest hen, gets picked on. A lot. By pretty much everyone. She is definitely low hen down in the pecking order here on the Unfarm. I don't know if it is because she sports spurs (nothing like Gretchen, the rooster, of course but spurs nonetheless) or because she walks with a limp from an old injury she sustained when she was still young (let it not be said that we neglect the health care of our animals: the vet tried putting a cast of sorts on it but it still healed up crooked) or simply because she didn't grow up with the rest of the chickens and is thus outnumbered. But whatever the reason, she gets chased and pecked at and harassed on a daily basis. This has led her to spend most of her days hanging out in safety zones: the grape arbor, behind the old screens from the failed catio, or up on the deck. 

Feeling bad for her and inspired after a trip to Coastal Farm and Home Supply, I decided to sew our feathered friend a harness so that I could more safely take her out in the front yard to get a break from the constant harassment in the back yard. You can simply purchase ready made hen harnesses from Coastal but Mom vetoed that idea and I was too impatient to order one online and have it shipped so I broke out the sewing machine and cobbled together a harness using whatever we had on hand: mesh fabric, a D-ring, a buckle, and some nylon strapping. After a bit of trial and error, and several fittings which Penny (fairly) patiently sat through, we had a working harness. 

A neck loop goes over her neck and is attached to a back strap and then an apron like piece covers her belly and attaches to two side straps that connect through the back strap, holding the whole harness on her. A D-ring on the back strap allows me to attach a leash and take her for "walks" which don't look like walking so much as wandering around and pecking at the plants, but she seems to not mind it too much. Unless I drop her leash and let it trail behind her, then she runs squawking around the yard in circles until I pick her up again. The only reason for this behavior that I can think of is that she thinks the leash is somehow chasing her and it freaks her out. At any rate, Penny seems to enjoy her newfound freedom away from the rest of the flock and if the neighbors didn't think we were crazy before, they do now that they have seen us walking our chicken. 

Penny sporting her harness, hanging out on the front deck.

You can see the back strap of the harness a little better in this picture. The leash is not attached when she's just hanging out on the deck.

Beware of attack chicken

We have, residing here on the Unfarm, an attack chicken. This attack chicken's name is Gretchen and he (yes, you read that right - he) is our rooster. We named him as a chick when we were told that he was a she and the name just stuck. If you ask either my mom or I our opinion on said rooster you would be told that he is a fearsome defender of (almost) all of his lady hens but otherwise he is relatively harmless and even somewhat comical at times - performing his sidestepping shuffle dance for us in an attempt to either add us to his harem or show who is in charge, depending upon which theory you ascribe to. According to Dad, however, Gretchen is a "mean rooster" who attacks both frequently and without remorse. 

In looking at various threads on the backyardchickens.com website the main consensus seems to be that Gretchen's behavior is dominance based and that he should be culled from the flock. Well, that's just not how we roll around here - Gretchen is family and we just don't go around killing our family members. We just don't. And besides, it's not like Gretchen isn't good for anything. He does protect most of the ladies. Penny is the notable exception - we're not sure if it's because she is older than the rest of the chickens and so didn't grow up with Gretchen and his crew or if it is because she is sporting spurs on her legs - but whatever the reason, Penny is definitely lowest down in the pecking order and frequently gets picked on or chased by Gretchen and several of the other hens. 

Aside from his lack of protective instincts towards Penny, Gretchen is quite protective of all the other hens and no one is too big for Gretchen to go up against when it comes to someone bothering his ladies. Axel, the largest of the three dogs, grew up with chickens and cows on a farm somewhere before we rescued him from the shelter so he generally leaves the chickens alone. Scout and Molly, however, are another story. Scout thinks that the chickens are endlessly fascinating toys of some sort and they only want for the proper persuasion to get them to join in a rousing game of chase. Molly will chase almost anything that a) moves and b) is smaller than her. Being a chihuahua mix not many things fall under category b, although she will join Scout if he decides to chase the chickens. The chickens, for their part, squawk and flap their wings and tear around the yard in a highly disorganized manner that often leads them back into the path of the dogs. Hearing this commotion, Gretchen races to the rescue. He flies into the dog run and heads straight for whatever dog is closest and slams into their side, effectively drawing the attention away from the hens in order to give them time to make their escape from the dog run. The party is generally over at that point. The hens are gone and none of the dogs wants to tangle with Gretchen the attack chicken so for now the good outweighs the bad and Gretchen is staying where he is, "mean" or not.

Gretchen, our attack chicken

Gretchen - warrior rooster

The routine for letting the dogs - or rather Scout - out in the backyard has become more complicated now that he is full grown and no longer an eight pound puppy who can be bossed around by the chickens. Before we can let Scout out we have to do a head count of the chickens and establish that they are, indeed, all out of the dog run. This is best accomplished by tossing a scoop full of squirrel food off the deck over by the blueberry bushes. The chickens are, by this point, used to the sound of the squirrel food bin opening and know to come running from whatever part of the yard they are in if they want an easy meal. Which they always do. If all five chickens start pecking the ground for bits of sunflower seeds and corn we know that we are in the clear and Scout is free to go out. If one or two chickens have flown into the dog run we have to entice them out with additional scoopfuls of squirrel food before we can let Scout roam freely. 

It happens, though, that on occasion one of us (cough "dad") fails to do a proper head count and just opens the back door and hopes for the best. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, Scout's exit is quickly followed by a barrage of squawking and a great deal of flapping about as whichever chicken attempts to flee from a rather exuberant Scout intent on playing with them. We quickly intercede on behalf of our frazzled chicken and wrangle Scout, hopefully before any damage can be done. 

Axel and Molly do not require such maneuverings before being let out because Axel was raised on a farm with chickens and has learned to ignore them and Molly is about the same size as the chickens and is too fearful to try and take on any of them by herself. This does not mean that she will not join in with Scout if he is chasing a chicken: she will. Safety in numbers, I guess.

99% of the time when the dogs are in the dog run, the chickens know enough to stay out of it until the dogs return to the house. But there is that one percent. This happened a few days ago when Lucy decided to fly into the dog run while Scout and Molly were still in it. The chase was on. Molly and Scout started chasing, Lucy started running and squawking and then in came Gretchen. Bravely coming to the aid of his wife, he flew over the dog run fence and began chasing Molly. Molly, for her part, was completely taken aback by this startling turn of events and did what any sensible ten pound dog would do when being chased by a full sized rooster: she ran up onto the deck and hid between Axel's legs. While this was going on, Lucy seized the opportunity to fly back over the dog run fence and into the safety of the rest of the yard. Gretchen celebrated his victory by strutting back and forth a few times, crowing, and then flying back into the yard with Lucy. Who would have guessed that under all those fancy feathers lurked the heart of a warrior, ready to leap into action to defend his hens whenever the need should arise? I must admit that I have rather a little more respect for our little rooster-cum-warrior.

A wife and a mistress

Our most recent batch of chickens included, much to our dismay, a rooster. The last time we ended up with a rooster we had to re-home him when he started crowing. This time, instead of re-homing him as soon as we realized we had another rooster on our hands, we decided to wait. "Maybe he won't crow and we can keep him," we thought with unwarrented optimism. Several months into Gretchen's adolescence we began hearing the ragged beginnings of a "cockle-doodle-doo." We were able to fix that with a homemade no-crow collar which, while not silencing him completely, does take his crowing volume down several notches, enough to be tolerable for the neighbors. His affinity for the ladies is a problem not so easily fixed. 

While having a rooster around is supposed to be good for egg production, it does tend to annoy the ladies when he's feeling amorous. This is usually first thing in the morning, as soon as the chickens have been let out of the coop. Gretchen is always the first one out of the coop, followed in varying order by Bridget, Lucy, and Georgia. Penny is usually the last one out of the coop, choosing to slip out when she thinks the coast is clear. As soon as the ladies hop out, Gretchen starts looking for his victim, which is usually Bridget. After a short chase, Gretchen manages to pin Bridget down and a few seconds later Bridget runs off and Gretchen goes about his business of looking for something to eat.

For the rest of the day, however, Gretchen appears to faithfully spend his time with Lucy. If Lucy is foraging in the garden, Gretchen is usually found nearby looking for bugs with her and if Gretchen is on the back deck, raiding the squirrel food bin, Lucy is often sitting inside said bin, gorging herself on corn and sunflower seeds. 

Within our little flock, Bridget appears to be the mistress, the hen that Gretchen chooses most often to sleep with and Lucy appears to be the wife, the hen that Gretchen chooses most often to spend his time with. This arrangement seems to please Lucy just fine. Bridget seems decidedly less pleased with the situation. Unfortunately, there is no collar available to fix this problem. The ladies will just have to put up with it, or learn to run faster.

Departures on the Unfarm

I have sad news to report: another departure from the Unfarm. This time it's Beauty that we lost. Over the last few days we had noticed her being less active than usual, and it worried me but then she seemed to recover the next day and was out chasing squirrel treats with the other ladies. Today, though, she was back to sitting around hunched up on the deck or under the eaves by the duck pools which was where I found her this evening when I went out to close up the chicken coop. I brought her inside, wrapped her in a towel and curled up on the couch with her in the hopes that warming her might help as it had a few months earlier when she was under the weather. We sat together for a couple of hours with her softly breathing when she bowed her head and stopped. 

She was always a fairly skittish chicken - we adopted her when she was already four months old so we missed out on the early days and weeks of life when we spend lots of time with the chicks getting them accustomed to us - but she was a nice hen nonetheless and we will miss her. 

With this loss we are down to only two hens now, and going into the coldest months when the girls huddle together in the coop at night to keep warm. I worry about how Sakari and Penny will handle the winter without Beauty, who was probably the biggest, fluffiest of the three. I am afraid I might have to spend the next few weeks knitting chicken sweaters, comb covers, and wattle warmers just to keep the girls cozy. In thinking about it, with all the rain we get I should probably break out the sewing machine and whip up some ponchos and rain hats while I'm at it. Now, where does one look for patterns for the fashionably minded hen? 

Beauty, curled up on the couch with me this evening

Rest in peace, Beauty. We will miss you.

Daisy

We lost our sweet little Wyandotte, Daisy, today. She was slow to leave the coop this morning and spent the morning sitting on the deck. I became concerned and dug out our Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow and started searching for causes of lethargy and diarrhea (no one ever said the life on the Unfarm was glamorous). I also double checked the chicken first aid kit supplies recommended over on the Fresh Eggs Daily blog at http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/11/the-all-natural-chicken-first-aid-kit.html and decided that Kocci-Free sounded like it might be what we needed, or at least it couldn't hurt. I started calling around to our local feed stores but no one seemed to have Kocci-Free in stock. I had decided I needed to set out to the feed stores and see what else they did have but I wanted to check on Daisy again first. I went out the the back to see how she was doing and that is when I saw her. She was lying on her side in the pathway, between the honeysuckle and the china blue vines. She was already gone. 

Daisy will be greatly missed, as she was one of our friendlier hens, if not the friendliest, and she was quite sweet and gentle as well. So sweet and gentle that the other hens tended to pick on her and she was usually last to get any treats during a feeding frenzy. I will miss seeing her up on the railing, stealing squirrel food; or running behind the other hens with her funny little gait; or jumping for blueberries under the bushes in the summer. 

This brings our hen population down to only three, none of which are laying. Beauty has never laid a single egg, despite being an Australorp, a breed reputed to be good layers. Penny has historically been a good layer, but seems to have joined a union and gone on strike. Sakari, the last of our original three hens (and my personal hen) is just plain retired having reached the age of 10 years. How this little workhorse of a chicken has made it so long when everyone else has succumbed to one illness or another is beyond me, but I am glad for it - she is the matriarch of our flock.

I hope that we can add a new chicken or two to the flock again soon. I miss going out to the coop to collect eggs, and it seems lonely in the coop now with just the three girls.

Updates from the Unfarm

It has been a while since I've checked in so another session of Unfarm Updates is in order. I (barely) survived the school year, managing to pull off A's and B's in a soil science class and a computer class. The computer class was especially tedious with lots of little details to memorize and four proctored tests to take. (Really, proctored exams in a 100 level online class? Please.) Needless to say, I was more than happy to cross that class off my list and I will never have to take another computer class for as long as I live. Do you hear angels singing, too, or is it just me?

Speaking of angels, we've had another loss here on the Unfarm. Poor little Suki-mama passed away about a month ago. She had been suffering from kidney disease for a while and eventually lost about half her body weight. Despite the best vet care we could provide, the disease was too severe and she passed away here at home in the morning. I had checked on her as soon as I woke up and found her sitting in her litter box, not looking great but hanging in there. I returned less than half an hour later, after eating breakfast and preparing her medicine, to find that she had passed away. So far, Jojo – who was her mate – seems to be doing tolerably and is not moping much, so I have hopes that he will not decline as time goes on and I will not be forced to lose another of my children any time soon.

Such is the cycle of life, I suppose. No matter how much we may want to, we can't stop it from turning. The way I handle it, usually, is to bring a new animal to the Unfarm. And so we have found ourselves with a couple new additions: Buttercup, a Chantecler breed chick, and Belle, a Brahma. “We found ourselves with a couple new additions” may imply that they showed up on our doorstep one morning, with their small possessions wrapped up in a bandana, carried over their shoulders on tiny sticks. This is not what happened. What did occur was more along the lines of my mother lamenting the fact that our hens don't lay eggs nearly as often now that they are more mature, which I took to mean, “perhaps we should get more chickens.” She will, of course, deny this if you ask her, so I took it upon myself to go to the local store and pick up a couple rarey breed chicks. When adding chickens to an existing flock, it is best to add two or more at a time, so that they have a companion while they are young and a partner once they join the flock, to prevent the older hens from picking on them too much. So really, it would have been irresponsible of me to only get one. Once she got over her shock, Mom quickly warmed up to the chicks and now calls them “her girls” or “the littles” (as opposed to our established flock - "the ladies") and likes to say goodnight to them before going to sleep. So really, I did her a favor.

I feel that I should perhaps mention another disclaimer - despite what most of my family thinks, I am not an animal hoarder.  I do not acquire animals willy nilly, so to speak. I never have more animals than I can take care of, or more than we have room for, or more than we can afford to care for.  It is quite possible that, if asked, my parents would argue that last point - they frequently complain that we have surely funded an additional wing or two on our vet's office by now, but when it comes down to it, we have never euthanized an animal that was not ready to go because of costs.  We pay for laser treatments for arthritis, surgery for kidney stones, specialists in cardiology and hysterectomies on hens.  It has always been my opinion that money can eventually be replaced, but we will never have another Kita, or Emmy, Dandelion the hen, or Patches the guinea pig.