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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Rooster Boxes

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?

So far, so good.

Next time: "Uh-oh, I'm broody again!"

Of First Eggs and Soft Shells

 As you can see from the image, this shell is very thin and brittle. I was able to make an indent in it by gently pressing my thumb against it. If I'd pressed any harder, the shell would have ruptured.

It has been an interesting and exciting week at Hensington Palace. First the good news. Our little purebred Australorp pullet laid her first egg on Friday morning! I was so happy and proud to see it. I've raised this little girl from egg to egg layer and was so pleased to find her little gift under the roosting perch. She has laid each day since then, one smallish, perfectly formed brown shelled egg each day like clockwork.

In other, not so great news, our problem crossbred layer hen is having laying issues once again. She had been doing so well, and I was beginning to hope that all her troubles were behind her. For those who haven't been longtime followers of this blog, I will recap.
We got this hen as one of our two original laying hens back in 2011 as a gift for mother's day from my children. Neither of them was laying yet when they first arrived. They were little, cute POL hens and we eagerly awaited our first eggs from them.
It seemed to take forever for them to finally lay, because we got them in winter and they didn't start laying until the spring.

Anyway, eventually they did both start to lay, but before too long, "Bossie" as we had named the black hen, began to have trouble. It started off with a nasty prolapse. I was horrified the morning I went to the coop and found the poor girl with her bottom all red, and seemingly turned inside out. I put her in isolation and sent out an urgent message to a chook owning friend, asking what I ought to do. I was told that if the situation didn't revert by itself, the alternatives were vet treatment, or culling. My heart was heavy. I didn't want to have to destroy my lovely little hen so soon after getting her! Fortunately, with a little time alone to rest and be quiet, the prolapse reverted of its own accord. Bossie had one more prolapse after that, a few days later, but it was less severe and reverted as soon as I picked her up.

She seemed well after that, but a couple of months later, I started to find broken eggs in the nesting box each morning. At first, I thought the hens must have developed a habit of egg eating. (A big no no in laying coops!) but then I realised that these eggs had very thin, brittle shells. Again, it was Bossie that produced these flimsy shells.

The advice for this situation was to insure that the hens were getting enough shell grit (for calcium) and sunshine (vitamin D) both of which they were getting plenty of, being free range hens, and also having a dish of shell grit available free choice in the coop.

Another piece of advice was to try and get boss to stop laying, to give her system a break and reset everything. I tried everything I could, but Bossie is a commercial hybrid and is programmed to lay, lay, lay... She did not go off lay even for one day, despite my best efforts. She did, however start laying hard shelled eggs again and I finally thought her troubles were behind her.

Alas, this morning, I found another soft shelled egg under the roost. She usually always lays in the nest, so I think this egg may have 'slipped' out while she was sleeping last night.

That is the biggest problem with such eggs. The shell of an egg is subjected to a lot of pressure as it passes through a hen's body to emerge from the cloacca.

Should the shell break before the hen is able to pass the egg, this will lead to a painful and fatal infection called Egg-Yolk Peritonitis. It is dangerous for a hen to be afflicted by soft shell problems as she can get into dire straits!

My decision now, is whether I try to fix this, whilst running the very real risk that she will wind up with peritonitis, or do I write her off as high risk and cull her. It's not an easy decision to make, but I need to consider the hen's welfare as well as my own feelings about this. I already think I've made the decision.

It's just not going to be easy.

Meal Worm Rescue and a "Beakicure"

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!

Chicken Care: Staying cool in the sweltering heat

 

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.


Read more: via Chicken Care: Staying Cool in the Sweltering Heat.

Spring has truly sprung. bukcluck!

In the springtime, it seems a young hen's fancy turns lightly to raising chicks!

Much as I would adore some little hatchlings trotting around after their mumma hen, I am not set up as yet for raising chicks, or for brooding them myself should the hen go off the set. :( I wish I could let her have some chicks, but I simply don't know enough and it would probably be unfair to her, and the babies.


I have heard that it is possible for eggs to hatch if you put them down your shirt/bra, but I am not keen to find out if that's true! Besides which, I don't even have fertile eggs as I have no rooster. I guess, clucky as Bertha and I may be, it will be the sin bin for her tomorrow if she is still setting.

Chook Husbandry

It was time for me to conduct some husbandry on my chooks today. First order of business was worming. I bought liquid worm treatment yesterday from a very knowledgeable and helpful gentleman at the local produce and farm supplies store. The one I bought is called Piperazine and I liked the idea of this one as I don't need to discard the chickens' eggs for a period after treatment. It is also easy to administer by putting it directly into the drinking water. I took their water out of the coop after they had all gone to roost last night, and then put just as much water as was needed to mix up the worming dose back into the coop this morning. They were all thirsty and the water got swilled down pretty quickly.




I left the chickens locked in their coop for a little while, just to make sure most of the water was consumed, and then before letting them out to free range, I caught each hen one by one and dusted them with Pestene powder. I did this because I have noticed a couple of them losing feathers over the past few days, and when I examined them yesterday, I saw little bugs crawling in amongst their feathers. Chickens are susceptible to various types of lice and mites and I suspect that these were either chicken lice, or feather mites. Feather mites is my main suspect, due to hens dropping feathers when they shouldn't be in moult.

After these indignities had been visited upon them, the hens were released into the yard to free range where they are currently taking their revenge by tearing my compost heap to bits!