Our Little Champion!

On Sunday, we took one of our new Black Bantam Wyandotte hens for her first outing on the show bench. At least, I thought it was her first outing, but once we had her in her pen at the show, it became obvious she was an old hand at this whole deal. She stood up so beautifully in her pen, and was happy to 'show' herself, turning this way and that when anyone stood in front of her pen. I was very pleased with her. She has such good type and shape and I really felt confident that she would at least place in her category.

I tried not to hover while the judge was inspecting her, but I admit, I was not too far away. My hen knew exactly where I was, and she looked me when the judge brought her under a light to get a better look at her. I swear she gave me the stink eye for allowing her to be manhandled by a complete stranger. hehe!

I peeked around the corner when the judge put her back into her pen, and supressed the urge to dance on the spot when he chalked a "1" on her pen number.

Then, he hovered in front of the pens with other birds from her class in them. He seemed to be deciding between my hen, and one other in the class. He paced in front of the two pens, frowning in thought and then finally settled on my hen's pen lifting his hand to chalk "CH" next to the "1."

This time, I did dance on the spot; well out of his line of sight, mind you! Then I took off in search of a couple of my friends, and fellow club members to squeak the good news to them!

I was so pleased with this result, and it proves to me that I have a good eye for selecting which bird to put on the bench. I felt that this girl was the best of my four hens, and it would appear that the judge agreed with my assessment. I have eggs from this little girl, whose name is Dora (aka "dorable") and can't wait to see how the chicks turn out.

When we got her home, I set up a small pen for quarantine and put her into it. Then I hung her sash on the outside to snap this photo. She is not being very cooperative. She was tired, hungry and well and truly over all the fuss by then, but it gives some idea of her shape and type, anyway.

While we were at the show, I also met up with some friends from one of the facebook groups I belong to. One of them had some bantam Wyandotte eggs for me, and another one was delivering a custom built brooder that her hubby had spent the weekend building for me.

The brooder is made of MDF and has a perspex divider in the middle so that it can be separated off into two compartments. This will be handy when we have different breeds, such as bantams and standards. There is a light fitting in either end so two batches of chicks can be kept warm at the same time. It is very well made and I will be using it in a few days when my first batch of bantam wyandottes hatch.

I also picked up 1.5 dozen bantam Wyandotte eggs of mixed colours including Crele, Partridge, pencilled (silver and lemon) and splash. They are set in my incubator and will hatch in about 18 days. It has been a very busy, but exciting time to say the least!

New Chickens

I love how the keeping of poultry often comes hand in hand with opportunities to help other people. This has been the case this past week when I had the opportunity to buy some new chickens for my flock, whilst at the same time, helping out a couple of other poultry keepers. The first, was the person who owned the chickens I have bought. This man has been struggling with a serious illness for some time and has not been able to keep up with caring for his large flock of poultry. The time had come for him to downsize.

I bought five beautiful little bantam wyandottes from him.

The second opportunity to help someone came when I decided to sell my Australorp rooster and pullet to another poultry keeper who had recently lost most of his flock to thieves!

Selling the australorps helps me, because I now don't have to worry about trying to handle birds which are too big for me, and it helps the buyer to replace some of his stolen flock.

That's the way things seems to work in the 'poultry world' and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Our young chicks are continuing to grow at an incredible rate. They're eating everything in sight at present, and love their greens, unlike many other youngsters I have known.

A few weeks ago I went to the Reject Shop and picked up a couple of Bra Savers. Not that I have any lingerie that really needs any special care, but when I saw these on the shelf, I had an immediate idea for another way to use them!

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Growing babies

Sleeping on top of the thermometer.

Taking it all in!

Pips!

We have pips!

Now to wait and hope that healthy, well formed chicks zip their way out of the eggs over the next 24-48 hours.
It's all very exciting, and right on cue, Bertha, our Light Sussex hen has gone broody. It is as if she could sense that the possibility for chicks was there. I may slip some of these under her if all goes well with the hatch.

Rhythms of Life

"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.

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Updates

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!

Something to crow about

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.

"Chop-chop!"

Maggie

Hensington Palace Chicks 8 weeks

Time Flies

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.

Enjoy!

Music in the video:

Caspar Babypants
"Free Like a Bird" (mp3)
from "Here I Am!"
(Aurora Elephant Music)

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And Baby Makes 3!

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.

From Urban Dictionary:

1. n00bie   A n00b. A novice, one who plays, thinks or behaves like a novice, one whose self-acclaim is greatly superior to their actual expertise or accomplishments.

1.	IRL
	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.

First two!

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!