On Sunday, we had a nice little outing when we travelled up the Blackall range to the township of Maleny. There was a poultry show on up there, which I had entered my little black pullet into, but then I had to withdraw her when she prolapsed. We still stopped in to view the other birds in the show as well, and that was well worth the trip to see some beautiful poultry. I didn't think to take any photos of the poultry while I was there even though I had my iPhone with me and could easily have done so. It was quite crowded in the sheds and I didn't want to be in anyone's way. You can see pictures of some of the winners at thePoultry Matters Forum.
After looking around at the poultry show, we went into the township of Maleny to take a look at the Sunday Markets and to have some lunch. I got my camera out at the markets to snap photos of the beautiful cupcakes one of the stallholders had on offer.
Maleny township is a very pretty place and has some unique sculptures in the main street. The town is in the middle of a thriving dairy district, so these sculptures are quite appropriate.
I don't know what the sculpture is called, but I called it Metallicows.
We ended our trip with a delicious seafood lunch at Captain Merv's Seafood Cafe
I am not the first person in my family to take to the practice of keeping and raising my own chickens to provide eggs for the table and enjoyment in the garden. When I was small, my father kept a flock of white leghorn laying hens and would often either hatch chicks under a broody hen, or bring home day old chicks to slip under a hen so she could raise them.
The first time I recall Dad bringing home some day old chicks, he arrived home one afternoon and got out of his car carrying a small cardboard box, about the size of a shoe box. As he walked into the house, the box was cheeping and chirping.
Being a curious seven year old, I asked him. "What's that you've got, Dad?"
"A box of whistles," he replied.
Later, he showed me how to give the 'whistles' to the broody hen and she went on to raise them quite happily, into productive members of our flock.
On the Tuesday before easter, we hatched six tiny new chicks and thus became the owners of our very own 'box of whistles.'
We got six chicks from 7 eggs which is a very good hatch! For now, their names are Prima, Seconda, Tierza,Quatra, Quinta and Sesta.
They are hybrids. Two of them are Australorp X Light Sussex (They are the larger, bluish coloured chicks) and the rest are Australorp over Commercial Australorp. They are good, strong, healthy chicks and I look forward to adding them to our laying flock, or selling them on to others for laying hens.
Good Friday, however came with its own set of challenges, which I will post more about later!
Everyone who meets my beautiful Australorp Rooster, Chop-Chop comments on how big he is. Some people tend to find his size intimidating, but he is such a tame, gentle baby despite his size.
I introduced him to my daughter, Hannah yesterday. The last time she saw him, Choppy and his hatch mates were only about 8 weeks old and quite a lot smaller than they are now.
Choppy, always being interested in something nice to eat, came running down to greet us when he heard our voices in the yard.
Tearing up to us at full pelt, I guess he was a bit of a formidable sight! Hannah squeaked in alarm and stepped backwards, holding out her hands to ward him off, and Chop Chop stopped in his tracks clucking his confusion at this strange reaction.
I encouraged Hannah (who is 23) not to be afraid and that Choppy is just a big sook.
After a few nervous moments observing him and being reassured that he would not attack her, Hannah fed him some wild corn, which he picked, delicately from the palm of her hand, amazing her with his gentleness.
He is a sweet natured boy and has never shown the slightest hint of aggression towards anyone.
Despite his formidable size, he truly is just a big old baby and I adore my gentle giant.
"The Sun rises and the moon sets and each in their season turns and returns, world without end." ~Unknown
I don't know where I first heard the above quote. I believe it was in a movie I watched quite some time ago, and I can't recall anything about the movie apart from that quote made by a narrator at the beginning of the film. It is a quote that comes to mind any time I get to thinking about the seasons and the rhythms of life.
Since I started keeping chickens and especially since I started
to incubate and hatch my own chicks, I have become much more aware of
those rythms. Last night, I candled the eggs again, and was delighted to
notice definite signs of life in two out of the eight. I think that
they are equivalent to day four eggs, even though they'd been in the
incubator for 5 days by then.
I had a feeling that the incubator was not
keeping its temperature even so I wrapped a blanket around it to help
insulate it from fluctuations of temperature in the room and hey presto,
life sparked and began to develop!
My days have settled into a rythm too now. Each morning I gently
handle the eggs, moving them from one rack to the other, turning them
180 degrees as I move them. Then I check the water in the humidity
chamber, cover them up, replace the blanket and go on about my day. I
return after dinner and repeat the whole process going back the other
way.
Thus, gently rocked from one end to the other, warmed and coddled in their humid environment, the eggs quietly rest and develop.
Around me, the rythms of nature are slowing down. Leaves are
turning, birds are finishing the task of raising the past season's
young. The hens scratch and browse across the lawn, showers come and go,
clouds scud across the sky. The sun peeks through in brief glimpses and
then is gone again.
Eastern Yellow Robin (Photo credit Wikipedia)
An Eastern Yellow Robin hunts for spiders in the garden and picks them off our window frames which sorely need de-cobwebbing. I'm reluctant to do it, though because that would mean Mr Robin would have a more difficult search for sustenance.
The season is
changing and the wild grasses are in seed. A boon for the chickens and
other seed eaters but a bane for me with my oversensitive nose.
*sniffle*
I watch Gaia's rhythms, and slow my pace, listening to the hum of bees in the branches of the golden rain tree and smile.
As the seasons turn, I am more and more comfortable with my own steps within the dance.
Well, it has been more than a week since I posted about the rooster
box that we set up for my beautiful big Australorp Cockerel, ChopChop.
He's getting used to the routine of being put into his box each evening,
and let out again in the morning. As far as crowing goes, I only hear
him if I happen to be awake, so that means I have not heard him crowing
before 8am since we put him into his box. He does crow while he is in
there, but the sound is somewhat muffled. I have not heard from the
neighbours about whether he is still waking them at 2am, so if I don't
hear from them in the next few days, I will pay a visit and ask if all
is well now. I'm hoping we've solved the problem.
Last Wednesday, I
went broody and set 8 eggs to incubate in the el cheapo incubator I
bought last year. I candled them at day 3 but the results were pretty
inconclusive. I'm hoping that perhaps Boomer managed to fertilise some
of the eggs before we sold him, and decided to set some to see if that's
the case. It costs next to nothing to run the incubator and the eggs
are a lot less precious and expensive than the previous batch I hatched.
I'll keep the blog up to date. I think I might have just a couple that
are viable. I will candle them again at day 7 and see how it looks.
Yesterday,
I realised with horror that I have not wormed my flock since August
last year! This could explain the unthriftiness in a couple of the birds
and since the youngsters are now 6 months old, I decided I needed to
get onto that asap. I gave the most unthrifty of the hens a dose of
Moxidectin immediately, and this morning I put Piperazine into the
drinking water for the rest of the flock, and wormed ChopChop with a
couple of wormout pills. I am usually very careful to adhere to a three
monthly worming system, but for some reason, time has slipped by while I
was not paying attention. I will need to redo the whole flock in a
fortnight to make sure that I have killed off all the possible worm
burden from the birds.
We are once more up to our ankles in mud
and water in the back yard, with three solid days of rain that has
barely let up. I've given up trying to keep the chickens in out of the
wet and have been letting them out to forage in the rain. They seem to
have enough sense to get under cover if it really pelts down, and they
spend a lot of time under the denser foliage of the mulberry trees when
it's only light rain. They're getting a bit wet, but I have been locking
them up early and feeding them oats to help them warm up so they are
dry by the time they go up on the roost for the night.
There's not
a lot going on other than these things. Life at Hensington Palace ticks
by and everyone is relaxed and happy. After the 'interesting times' we
had for the past few weeks, this is quite a refreshing break!
I've been thinking about putting my Australorp pullet, "Chica" up on the show bench to get some feedback from a qualified judge about her type and form. It's a little daunting to think of this, but she is a very nice looking pullet and I feel she is quite close to the standard for Australorp hens.
Here is a photograph of "Chica" that I took yesterday. It is a little bit grainy as it was snapped through the livingroom window, which just goes to show how long it has been since I cleaned the windows! *blush* Please ignore my housekeeping and look at the fowl. :)
Of course, given that I hatched and raised this little girl by hand, I am possibly biased about her looks, although I am trying to look with clear eyes and put the rose coloured glasses aside.
The only real way to be sure, is to show her and find out.
Chica is 22 weeks old, not quite fully grown as yet, and still needs to feather out a bit more, but she has the shape of an Australorp to her and the lovely compact tail of her breed.
I've been doing some reading this morning on what it takes to prepare and train a young bird for show and I think I might begin prepping her at least. Getting her used to handling, and being penned in a small show box would be one way to start. I can also begin to condition her legs and comb and groom her feathers with a silk cloth. All of that will at least start to tame her down and get her used to being examined and judged.
The local "Agricultural Show" (similar to a county fair) is in June and I think I could have Chica tamed and trained in plenty of time for it.
I mentioned at the end of my previous post that my nextdoor neighbour had come over to my place on Saturday with an idea for a possible rooster box to put ChopChop our remaining rooster into at night time in an attempt to keep him quiet in the mornings. Not that Choppy crows all that much anyway, but I am interested in the idea of using a rooster box, both for now and for future roosters who may turn out to be just as dominant and noisy as ChopChop's brother, Boomer was.
The idea of a rooster night box, is to keep the bird in the dark until well past dawn and thus hopefully prevent him from crowing until a more reasonable time than say, 3am!
My neighbour came to ask me, initially, how to build the kind of box that I thought would work, but in the course of our discussion he had a brainwave. He hurried off back home to collect an item he had lying around in his garden shed to see if I thought it would be suitable.
The above picture is what he brought back. It is a collapsible canvas dog kennel for a small to medium dog, complete with a nice, soft cushion for the dog to sleep on. It is lying on its side in this image because it has a mesh bottom and we thought that would be good for airflow. The rooster could sleep inside this, with the cushion and some wood shavings underneath him for comfort and hygiene, and the mesh bottom could be faced toward the wall to allow air through without letting in too much light. I thought this was worth a try and R went back home to find something to use as a door for it.
The door is fashioned out of an old cargo pallet R had 'in the shed' as well.
R attached an aluminium bracket to the top of the wooden door.
The bracket neatly hooks over the metal framework and the bottom of the door
Pushes in flush against the front of the kennel.
The Rooster Box installed in the chicken coop ready for its occupant.
ChopChop checking out the new digs.
We have used this for three nights, so far, and it seems to work well, except for the second night when I had not quite blocked all light from getting into the box. Last night, I made a couple of tweaks to the coop area where the box is, and as far as I know, Choppy didn't crow at all. In fact, he has not crowed all day today. I wonder if he thinks being quiet means he won't need to go back into the box again?
Those who follow this blog regularly will know that I hatched three chicks
back in October of 2011 and that I then spent the past 5 months or so raising
them to maturity.
My hope in hatching them had been that I would get replacement hens for my
laying flock, and also some breeding stock towards my dream of breeding
Australorps for fun and possibly for show. Well, I got one pullet from the
hatch, and two roosters. Out of a dozen eggs, three chickens. Not a huge return
on my investment, but the enrichment that these youngsters brought to our lives
was worth more than money. In my opinion, anyway!
We had three darling little walking pompoms which we dubbed "Chick 1, Chick
2, and Chick 3" initially. Not the most creative of names, I know, but when you
don't know what gender is hiding under all that soft, downy fluff, what can you
do.
Being complete novices at the hatching business, we
still had no clue, even at four weeks of age, what gender birds we had, but
expert opinion from more experienced poultry fanciers put odds on that Chick 1
was a girl whilst Chick 2 and Chick 3 were both boys. The reasoning behind this
is because chick number 1 (left of photogaraph) has a smaller comb and no
wattles, and her feathers are more developed over the wing and back. the other
two chicks, have larger, redder combs and the beginnings of wattles under their
chins. Indeed, that's exactly how it did pan out in the end.
We had one blue cockerel, one black cockerel and a
black pullet. Yes, I knew, even back then, that Cockerels grow up to become
roosters and that roosters like to crow first thing in the morning, and second
thing, and third and...so on.
What I didn't know, was that Roosters would crow
loudly at all those things of the day. Still, I had at least 6 months
before the crowwing would start, didn't I? So I could just ignore the problem
until I couldn't ignore it anymore, right?
As it happened, our two cockerels, whom we named
Boom and ChopChop hadn't read the Handbook for Young Cockerels in the
Field, and they thought that it was entirely appropriate for a young
rooster to start testing his vocal chords somewhere around 8 weeks of age! At
first, it was cute... sweet, soft little, wobbly arrrrreeeeeaaaarooo!
noises greeted the dawn, and they soon ran out of breath and didn't try again
for hours. Not so bad, I thought. We can live with that!
Practice makes perfect, though and pretty soon,
Boomer (renamed because of his voice!) was starting up at 4am with an
increasingly loud and strident AAARRRRRRR-OOOOO-AH-OOOOOH! He discovered he
could crow and he decided he liked to crow! There was one day in
particular when his new, brassy trumpet of a voice split the air at least five
times every two minutes! I was going nuts, my neighbour was going nuts, and I
think, even the hens, and ChopChop were going nuts, listening to him!
I really loved Boomer, but I knew that his luck
would have to run out sooner or later with the neighbours. Tolerant as they are,
even I could tell that the noise would eventually get on their very last
nerve.
I made up my mind to give him away, then I made up
my mind to keep him, and then I made it up to give him away and that time I got
as far as posting an advertisement online about him. I was still hesitant, but
that evening I had an email from a lady who was very interested in having Boomer
for her breeding program. I decided to sleep on it. The following morning, after
inspecting the hens, and having a last little chat with Boomer, cuddled on my
lap, I made up my mind that he should be given the opportunity to go and live in
the country, before someone decided to demand his carcass on a platter!
I felt at peace after talking on the phone with the
person who had inquired about him, and I made one last video of my beautiful
Boomer-ang and then boxed him up and put him into the car for the drive to a
town halfway between our home and Boomer's new address.
When I met Boomer’s new owner, and she met Boomer, I knew it was a
perfect match! She fell in love with our boy at first sight, and he
seemed pretty happy with her as well. We chatted for a while about our
shared love of all things chook and then I told Boomeroo to be a good
boy in his new home and we waved him off on his way to the big farm in
the country where he has a harem of ladies all his own just waiting
until he is out of quarantine.
We still have Boomer’s brother, Chop Chop here, and he is a sweet,
gentle little boy who is quite a bit quieter, so far, than his
bigmouthed brother was.
And today, my neighbour came over with a suggestion for a rooster box for Choppie to go into at nighttime.
I have to say that my life has taken on some unusal practices since
getting chickens. With the current wet weather, I have been adding new
and unusual activities to my repertoire more often.
Last week, I
set up a meal worm breeding box to have a ready source of good quality
protein available for the chooks as a treat, and also for when I have a
sick chicken whose appetite needs tempting. The worms have been happily
breeding away in their box since I put them in there, and I've been
giving them a diet of raw carrot, stale bread and the occasional piece
of sweet potato. I'm surprised how easy it is to breed them. I just
tossed them into a box of bran and left them to it, really. They're
doing the rest!
Anyway, upon going to check on the worms this
morning, I found that the nest was under serious attack from invading
forces. ANTS!!
The little blighters were swarming through the box,
running off with bits of bran, shed meal worm skins and a team of them
was even carrying off one of the worms! This, I could not have. Sandra
and I spent about 45 minutes sifting the bran meal and picking out the
worms to transfer them into an ant-free container while the curious, and
ever hopeful chickens cooed and clucked around us, looking for a
handout. We got all of the ants out of the bran and replaced the worms
in their box sans ants and then I turned my attention to one of the hens
that was hanging about.
Worms in our rescued meal worm farm
We
bought two new Bond Brown POL hens a few weeks ago, and when we got
them home, noticed that the poor little things had had their beaks
trimmed rather messily. Beak trimming and debeaking is a practice I
don't hold with, but it is done with chicks which are likely to be sold
into battery farming systems so these girls had probably been done by
the farm that bred them prior to being sold to our local feed barn.
Anyway both of them have uneven beaks as a result of this, and the
bottom beaks tend to grow out past the top beak, which looks odd and
probably makes eating a bit of a challenge. I filed back the beak on one
of the girls a few days ago, so I had no qualms in grabbing this one
(after a merry chase!) and applying my emery board to her beak too.
This hen has had her beak trimmed
The
hen in the picture above is not mine, but is an example of a hen
with the top beak trimmed back as my hens' have been. Again, this is
not something I would have chosen to have done to my chickens, but it is
done for battery hens to prevent them from pecking each other to death
in the laying pens. It only took a few minutes with the emery board to
file her beak back so it matched the length of the top one. The entire
operation was watched carefully by a nervously pacing rooster who
demanded to know what I was doing to his favourite hen!
Her 'beakicure' all done, I released Rhonda who scampered off up the yard to join her flockmates, none the worse for wear.
Next
adventure--Nail trimming! *ulp* That one really makes me nervous. I've
never done it before so it will be an entirely new experience for me and
the chooks!
One of our young Australorp cockerels has been sick for the past couple of weeks. I first noticed that he was making a strange noise on inhalation every so often, about two weeks ago. It didn't seem to be distressing him, so I just decided that as long as his color was good, he was eating and active as usual, I'd just keep an eye on him and see how things progressed.
He was much the same for about a week, and I was glad to think the condition wasn't getting any worse. I posted on a couple of forums and facebook groups about him, and was advised that what I was doing (or not doing) was okay as long as the bird seemed well otherwise.
At the beginning of the second week, I noticed that his wheeze was more pronounced and more frequent, so I was a little bit more concerned at that point. I took a video of him making the noise and posted it on my usual poultry haunts.
As you can hear in this video, the sound was now happening on both inspiral (breathing in) and expiral (breathing out). The bird still seemed well otherwise. No nasal discharge, no bad smell, no watery or bubbly eyes and his appetite was still good. Apart from this wheeze there was nothing amiss with him.
A couple of people suggested dosing him with vitamins in the water (which I had already commenced the week before) and trying some garlic oil or getting him an antibiotic or trying to nebulise him with a product called F10 SC.
Not having a nebuliser, that option was impractical, and I couldn't find any local feed barn that carried the antibiotics I'd need.
By now, I had tried vitamins in his water, and had given him some naturopathic tissue salts (Combination 12) to help him fight off the infection on his own.
Finally, lacking any ideas for what else I could do, I mixed up a wet mash of vegetables with oatmeal, molasses, garlic and oregano and fed that to him. He wolfed it down with great gusto and his wheezing stopped almost immediately! Apart from a small raspy wheeze if he gets stressed now, he hardly wheezes at all anymore.
I am putting it down to one of three possibilities.
1. The illness had run its course and he was going to get well anyway
2. He had something lodged in his trachea and the wet mash helped to dislodge it
3. My naturopathic and organic methods gave him the support he needed to fight off the infection
I think it could possibly be a combination of all the above. I'm just glad that he seems better now.
Yesterday while I was drinking my morning coffee, I could hear a faint sound which I couldn't quite decipher coming from the direction of my chicken coops. I couldn't decide, sitting in my study, if it was a hen announcing the arrival of an egg, or some other strange commotion. I decided to get up and go to the back patio to listen more closely.
I didn't actually make it out to the patio, but froze, listening just inside the back door with a big, sloppy stupid grin on my face. Yes one of our young cockerels has come of age, and was letting the world...well, the backyard at least know about it with a soft, rusty sounding "Err-uh-errrrrrr!"
I don't know which one of the boys it was. When I went up to the grower pen to ask who was crowing, I was met with sealed beaks and innocent looks while the young pullet softly suggested a solution to the 'problem.'
"Chop-chop!" she clucked under her breath. "Chop-chop-chop!" She is always suggesting that her brothers should get the chop! She's such a meanie.
All of the other hens, both my own, and the guest hens we are chook-sitting were in a state of high excitement, calling out to let the 'man' know where they are.
So, our 'babies' are all grown up. 12 weeks old, today and I am already starting to plan for next season's hatch. I love the rhythm that these lovely birds have brought to my life. Yes, they're hard work, but they repay my efforts in eggs, and more than repay it with the enrichment they bring me.
A few photos I snapped around our yard, today. Some of them are a bit fuzzy, (namely the ones of the chicks) because of fast moving subjects!
Our blue Australorp chick, "Boomer." I think that this one is a cockerel. He has the facial markings, the stance, and the body conformation of a rooster, to my untrained eyes.
This is a closer view, same bird. He is developing wattles and has red earlobes.
This is the only pullet of the three, I think. You can see her body shape is much softer and rounder and she has a smaller comb and barely any wattles at all. Her earlobe is darker coloured. This chick feathered up faster than the other two, which I have been told is one way of telling pullets from cocks.
I think this is the girl...I find it hard to tell because of the glare from the flash on her face.
The two boys together black boy named NotChick in the front. Again, he has the more pronounced facial colouring, larger comb and wattles and the body shape of a cockerel.
A clearer shot. This is soooo a boy! Would be happy to hear opinions from anyone about them.
And finally, this is one of a pair of Jabiru who have been hanging out in our yard the past few days. They tend to avoid me when they see me, so I had to be patient to get this pic.
I've got two commercial laying hens in my flock. Rosie who is an ISA Brown and Boss, who is a black Ausrtralorp Utility. They were my original two hens, and when I got them, they were bought simply for the purpose of laying eggs and not really for any other reason. Commercial laying hens are excellent for anyone who is just wanting a few hens to provide eggs for the kitchen since they are bred to lay every day, and to never, or very rarely go broody, they are very good in those types of scenarios.
That being said, however, commercial chickens do have their own set of issues that comes along with their steady egg production. When commercial hens were first developed, they were intended for intensive farming in battery housing where they would live in temperature controlled environments with artificial lighting in order to encourage them to lay and lay and lay some more. Under those conditions, they're expected to last about 18 months and their breeding can tend to predispose them to reproductive issues.
That is what I am confronted with right now with my black utility Australorp.
About a week ago, our weather patterns took a sharp turn into hot, dry weather and on that first day, all of my chickens got quite stressed with the heat. Boss, my Australorp was also struck with a mild case of sour crop that day, which I managed to alleviate successfully, but she has not been completely 'right' since then. She's been off her food a bit, and also quite sluggish and just not herself.
For a few days, she didn't lay at all, and then she produced an egg which had a very thin shell.
Very thin shelled egg
That egg got broken by my lovely big Sussex Hen when it was her turn on the nest, and she enjoyed a little snack on the contents while she laid that day. Not her fault. There is no hen on earth who won't devour an egg that gets broken in the nest or coop, especially if it lands right in her lap, so to speak.
So for a few days after that, Boss didn't lay at all, and then she laid a normal egg. I crossed my fingers, hoping that her problems had been due to heat stress and she might have gotten over it.
Not so. Unfortunately she has been sporadic with laying since then, and then three days ago, I discovered what resembled a puddle of eggwhite in the nest with the other hens' eggs. That has been the case every day since and today, I also found the following.
Soft Shelled Egg
This is what is commonly referred to as a soft shelled egg. It's not really even a shell, seems more like just the membrane without the protective hard calcified shell around the outside to keep the egg intact. It is a very dangerous situation for a hen to be laying soft eggs like this. It is quite possible that she will wind up rupturing an egg inside her body which can cause a condition known as Egg Yolk Peritonitis. Pretty much a death sentence for her if that should happen.
Other than this egg laying problem, the hen seems fit and healthy and I am reluctant to give up on her at this stage. I have isolated her from the flock in a small pen in our garage. This is so that she will be kept in darkness 24 hours a day and hopefully will go off the lay.
By also changing her feeding routine and switching her to a different ration, I am hoping to put her into a forced moult which will mean she stops laying for some time. This should rest her system, and hopefully lead to recovery, but it is all a bit of a gamble really. Given her breeding, she might just be at the end of her productive days and I will need to make the decision whether to put her down or not.
Personally, I will not have anymore commercial layers after my current two are gone. I plan to breed Australorps anyway, and pure breeds have fewer problems with their reproductive systems due to the fact that they don't lay as many eggs.
I am hoping this poor little girl will come good, but it is a forlorn hope.
This information was posted on the Poultry Matters forums today and I felt it was so good that I should share it on my blog.
by Michelle Hernandez
I had been concerned about my flock and had already tried some serious measures. If I could have A/C, I thought, I wanted them to, as well. I started bringing my flock in and putting them in large dog crates in our sun room. Between the chickens, dogs, and cat, not to mention the turkey poults from babysitting, the room looked – and honestly, smelled – a bit like an indoor barnyard. Further, cleaning the crates regularly was a bit impractical for my schedule. I quickly realized this wasn’t going to be a practical longer-term solution, so I started thinking about what else I could do to keep my chickens cool.
Have you ever had one of those days when from the moment you got up in the morning, until the sun went down in the afternoon you just felt like you did nothing but run around doing a whole bunch of things but not accomplishing a whole lot?
That was Friday at Hensington Palace! We've been having some quite warm weather here the past couple of days and this has meant that the chickens were all becoming a little bit heat stressed. Thursday, the mercury climbed to 32c and today, it was about 31c I think. We were caught very much unprepared as the average mean temperature in our area, even in the hight of Summer is around 30c which is still warm, but not the kind of baking heat we had the last two days! The chickens were quite stressed on Thursday and there was not much that I was able to do for them as I was at home alone, and I have disabilities which make it difficult for me to climb or lift things. All I could do was let the chickens out on free range and make sure they found some shade.
For the chicks, I had to make sure they had plenty of water and that they didn't get frightened or upset during the hottest part of the day. Thankfully, they all survived, but I knew that something would need to be done on Friday to keep them a bit cooler.
I posted in the forum asking for some advice on what to do to avoid heat stress and got some wonderful suggestions. Some, I couldn't implement, but others, such as providing the chickens with ice so they would have cool water, I could do, as well as placing shade cloth over their coops to keep the sun off the metal roofing.
Sandra and I got some lengths of shadecloth out of the storage sheds and draped these over the coops and the chick's growing pen. We weighted them with bricks for now, but will need to find a more permanent way to affix them before we get any major summer storms.
I had frozen some water in plastic tubs over night, and we also filled a couple of buckets with water and placed them around near the chooks' favourite shady spots in the yard. The chooks liked the idea of the water buckets, but having never seen ice before, were a little nonplussed about what to do with it! That problem was quickly solved though, when Sandra sprinkled a handful of their feed into the container with the ice. They soon got the idea that pecking the ice would either reward them with food, or with something cold and refreshing and they decided to camp next to the ice bucket for the afternoon!
Chooks introduced to ice for the first time
The next order of business was to deal with the chicks who were feeling the heat again in their aviary. We dug around in the handy dandy storage shed and came up with an old cage that used to house my pet fancy rats in the yea long ago! I had been intending to toss it out when the council had a hard rubbish collection a while back, but fortunately, there it was in the dim, dark recesses of the shed, cobwebbed and forgotten, awaiting just such an emergency as this!
The cage was promptly hauled out into the light of day, dusted off and recieved a couple of small modifications in order to become a shady, if somewhat small enclosure for the chicks who decided that cramped or not, it was wonderfully cool and being on bare ground, was the perfect place to settle in for a luxurious dust bath in the cool, damp earth under the tree!
Dustbathing Chicks
(I needed to refresh their water bowl four times that day due to them kicking dirt into it!)
Well, by this time, with all the mad activity to try and prevent our chooks from getting heat stroke, Sandra and I almost had heat stroke ourselves! It was time to retire indoors for a cool drink, and some study before having our lunch.
The big chooks hung out most of the afternoon under a shady tree, camped next to their ice block and bucket of water, whilst the chicks dust bathed, scratched in the grass and squabbled over bugs in their makeshift enclosure.
While the chooks were all kept busy with their outdoor pursuits, I decided it was time to tackle the tomatoes I had picked on Thursday.
I got to work and transformed this...
Into this...
It's just a basic Italian sauce but very tasty! We had some of it with Fetuccine and mushrooms for dinner and it worked a treat. We have enough leftover for three more dinners so that is in the freezer now and all those beautiful tomatoes will bless us with their wonderful flavour for a few weeks to come!
It was a long, and busy day, and I am exhausted and having seen it all written out, I can see that we did actually accomplish quite a bit, since laundry got done and I also completed a quiz for Uni and scored 90% on it somewhere in amongst all that!
If you managed to read this far, you deserve a reward, so here is some chickie cuteness to send you on your way!
After I posted the Chicken Preschool video that I made of our chicks playing in the aviary, I received a note from a friend telling me she thought it was so cute that she had shared it on her webforum. Of course, I had to go and check that out and I am so glad I did!
I've found a wonderful new 'chook' community full of friendly people and interesting discussions of all things to do with backyard chickens, purebreed chickens and even gardening!
It is called Poultry Matters and I am really enjoying chatting there. I've even found out why my kiwi fruit vine might not be setting fruit! I never knew you needed both a male and a female kiwi vine in order to get fruit. I will have to go and check our vine tomorrow and see if it has any flowers on it, so I can identify whether it is a male or female plant and act accordingly!
I have a feeling, from memory, that it might be female.
Female Kiwi (photo via Google search )
The flower pictured above is of a female flower and from memory, this is what our vine gets in springtime.
We need to get a male plant with flowers like this...
Male Kiwi Plant (photo via Google search)
Now if I can just find out what the problem is with the rest of our fruit trees...the hardly ever fruitng mangoes, plums, etc...
I get about one mango every other year and one plum each spring from the plum trees. We have more than one of each of these, so we are thinking we have male and female--if that even matters! I just want something other than the millions of citrus we get each year to eat!
Sure hoping I find flowers on the kiwi vine tomorrow!
In other news, we seem to be overrun with Roma tomatoes right now!
They are all ripening at the same time, so we will be cooking up some pasta sauce, I think, or maybe pickles/chutney!
It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in my study listening to soft little peeps coming from inside the eggs I had rescued from our broody hen, Bertha, and wondering how many of the seven rescued eggs would actually hatch. Can you believe that it is four weeks ago today since the three chicks chipped their way into the world from those eggs? It has just gone by so quickly and our little fluff balls now resemble something approaching small vultures! They're so adorably scruffy with feathers sprouting out all over, down falling off in clumps and little patches of bare, pink skin showing through underneath.
They think they are the big chicks on campus, too! They're swiftly outgrowing the brooder box, and we have had to set up an aviary in the back yard as a day run for them. This will also become their growing out pen once they've got enough feathers and can withstand the cooler, humid night air. Until then, they're playing in the aviary by day, and sleeping in the brooder by night.
Last night was their first full night without the brooder light turned on, and each time I went in to anxiously check on them, they would peer up at me, blinking drowsily and asking what was the problem. "Can't you see we're growed ups now? We don't need the light on at night anymore!"
They had no light on today either, and as I mentioned, spent a couple of hours out in the aviary enjoying the extra space and the warm sunshine on their little bodies.
Ah how soon they grow!
We shot some video of them romping and play fighting in the aviary as they tried out their wings and claws.
We
had a the rare privilege to be right at hand with a camera when the
last of our three viable eggs hatched today. We have named this last
chick, N00bIRL (prounounced "noo-burl") which is gamer speak for
"Newbie/N00bie In Real Life" and is applied to anyone who is new at
something not related to game play or the gaming world. for example, a
new baby could be considered a n00bIRL because it is new to everything.
Abbreviation
for "In Real Life." Often used in internet chat rooms to let people you
are talking about something in the real world and not in the internet
world. Also can be used to differentiate between an actor/actress and
the character they play.
These are the first two chicks out of their eggs. Tentatively named after my friends Lucy and Vicki. Their names are Lulu and Vickie. One more egg has pipped now as well!
This afternoon I had to step in and rescue the unhatched eggs from the broody box. When we checked on mother hen and her eggs the night before last, one of the eggs had either gotten trodden on by mum, or had pipped, I couldn't be sure, but left that egg in the nest anyway and left her to it until today when we went up to have another check of the eggs which are due to hatch from tomorrow onwards. The one that was broken/pipped the other night was gone, and there was no trace of a chick, or of the egg, apart from some blood on the shells of the other eggs. Another egg appeared to be cracked and was leaking yolk and white all over the nest (and it ponged!) another egg was pipping and chirping! My goodness! I had forgotten that eggs chirp when the chick inside is getting ready to hatch.
I took the decision (on advice from some more experienced friends) to remove the eggs from under my broody hen and bring them inside to continue hatching in our incubator (which arrived in the mail last week, thank heavens!) Since bringing them inside, another egg has pipped and is chirping! I candled the 7 remaining eggs and of the seven, I think definitely three and possibly four will hatch. I am happy with that, although it would have been nice if more of the 12 I initially bought had survived. Sadly, they had a rough ride getting here with two already broken when they arrived, two lost during the incubation to breakage and whatever carnage went on yesterday/last night.
Poor Bertha is now sitting on one fake egg and I am looking at what I will need to do to brood these chicks myself when/if they hatch! Talk about being tossed in at the deep end! I'm not really complaining though. I am excited to see what we get from the eggs and who knows, I might get a surprise and more will hatch than I think!
And on the subject of protecting chicks, here is an interesting video about a dog tending to a little chick!
"Free Like a Bird"
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