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!

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!

Rooster Ruckus

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.

More on that in my next post!

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

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)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
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A big "Day" Out

The chicks had a big "day" out, today. I took them outside in the late afternoon sunshine to have some sun on their little bodies while I cleaned out waterers and other stuff. They loved it, but are very tired after their big adventure!

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!

Bombproof Broody!

so, today we went to the local council recycling center and picked up an old dog crate for $15! When we got it home, I cleaned it thoroughly with water and disinfectant (note: I have since found out it is not advisable to use disinfectant to clean equipment for backyard poultry. Warm soapy water will suffice) and let it dry in the sun for an hour or so.

The crate has "Pepsi + Diego" written on the top of it. It makes me wonder what animals used to use this before it came to us. We have set this up in the coop for our broody Sussex, Bertha. She seemed to tolerate the disturbance okay. We went up and did this just after sunset and I got her off the nest she had been using and put her near her water bucket. She was a bit stiff from sitting and kind of fell face first into the bucket. Note to self, put her further away from the bucket next time! She then proceeded to have a big drink of water. The other chooks in the pen next door were on the roost, but when they heard/saw her drinking, two of them came down and had a drink in their pen, too. It was rather cute!

We put fresh straw into the dog crate, and put her fake egg into it, then when she had eaten some food and had another drink, I tried putting her inside the crate. She fussed and clucked and then came out, acting frantic as though her egg was missing. I put her back in. Same deal.

Then my partner suggested we should get the straw from the old nest she had been using and put that into the crate. We did that, put her egg in there, put HER in there and waited.

There was some more clucking and fussing, and then a little noise that sounded like a cry of joy when she spotted her fake egg. She immediately settled on the egg, and that's how we left her.

She seems very determined to set, so I am going to organise some eggs for her early next week.

Oh, and while she was off the nest, she did a poop right at my feet, which was huge and omg!! The smell!!! I'd heard about these 'broody poos' but they seriously have to be smelled to be believed.

I suppose that was my just desserts for dropping her headfirst into her water bucket!

Tis the season...

to be broody, it seems! My light sussex hen, Bertha is all grim determination to have chicks even with being flogged off the nest three times by her coopmates who wanted to lay their eggs, today. She would just wait by the nest hopping from one foot to the other, making her little bok-buk-bok-buk noises until the hen laying was finished, then back in she would go.


I've been chatting online with some of my chicken breeding friends and they're encouraging me to try setting her with some eggs as Sussex are usually reliable brooders which, once they're settled don't break until the eggs hatch. One suggestion is to let her sit for a week or two on fake eggs and then go in at night and swap the 'eggs' out for day old chicks, which she should happily mother without too much fuss as she will think they are her own. This is tempting as I really would love to get some Australorp chicks to raise for next season and gradaully switch to breeding just Australorps and maybe having Wyandottes for color and variety in the coops.

  so tempted am I, indeed that I have emailed a breeder of Australorps already about getting some fertile eggs.