Bye, Bye Mr. Frizzle

We got new chicks again this year.   My plan was to retire 4 of our older hens and get 4 new chicks and then to that every year so we have a constant stream of eggs.  I waffled back and forth on it for a while.  We love our chickens.

They are our pets. 

But I really do have them for eggs, the fact that they are fun is just bonus.

But in the end getting new chicks won out, when I realized, I was running out of time to get them this year and would face the winter without enough eggs.

One day I hopped in my car and drove to DeYoungs to get chicks.  We got 4.

An Americana we named Blackberry.

A Rhode Island Red (in the back) we named Rosie,

Another Americana we named Tawny (front right)

And a White Cochran Frizzle, she started as Buttercup, but we renamed her Ms. Frizzle after she started to feather out (in honor of the magic school bus).

I have always wanted a fizzle.

They look so cool!

Look at those awesome feathered feet.

As they started getting older, I knew that we were going to have to get rid of the hens so we would have enough room for the new girls.  But I put it off as long as possible.

 Daphne teaching Blackberry to perch on her shoulder. 

Zelda holding Blackberry.

Ocean with Tawny.

And here is Rosie in front.

Ms. Frizzle is really getting fluffy.

Tawny.

  

It wasn't too long before I noticed lots of scuffles in the brooder.  And then one night I heard the dreaded sound.  Some one crowed!  I was pretty sure it was Ms. Frizzle.  Another time Trip heard one crow.  He was pretty sure it was Tawny.  I would see the two of them scuffling for dominance, but Tawny won and he would perch on the side of the brooder and crow.  So, he was definitely the rooster.

We took them outside once after knowing Tawny was a rooster and it was interesting to watch him interacting with his "hens".   He kept an eye out for danger, alerting them if necessary.   When 2 of his girls started to fight, he placed himself between them.   It made me wish we could have a rooster, so we could have that whole dynamic.

It came time for the little girls to go out to the coop.

We were so sad we had to get rid of him.  Luckily, we hadn't gotten rid of 4 hens yet, so when the time came, I advertised 3 retiring hens and one young rooster.

Sunflower and Black Rose had been 2 of our first chickens.  It was hard to see them go.

Lacy, it wasn't so hard with her,  she was a bit of a punk when it came time to lock up the chickens, and she would run away.  And she had never been a good layer.

That day someone came and picked them up the same day. 

However, it didn't take long before we started hearing crowing again.  Ms Frizzle is really Mr Frizzle.  I really wanted to find him a home because he is so cool to look at.  I put an ad for him on craigslist, but no one called.  After a few days, I got an email, and a wonderful woman came and picked him up.  And I can day that I think she is going to keep him.  He will make a wonderful. addition  to her flock!

Bye Bye, Mr Frizzle.

Wait, That is Not a Chicken.

Zelda decided the chickens needed a little company today.

Yuck!

She was so happy in there and not at all happy to get out.

She must be related to this boy, her cousin, who also likes to visit the chickens.

Chicks and Eggs

The other morning, Daphne came down to find that the chicks can perch.  I don't know if they spent the whole night there or not, but there was a pile of chicken dropping below them, outside the bin.

Summer and Ruby.

I guess it is time to put the wire cover on the brooder.

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You may remember that Fancy Pants has been molting and therefore not laying.

She looks back to normal now and the other day confirmed that she is done.

I found 5 eggs in the nest boxes.  Her's is the smallest since she hasn't laid for a while, but the next one was normal sized.  Welcome back Fancy's eggs.

Spring = Chicks

It is that time of year, Spring!  Yea!  Time for new chicks!

Here, where we live, we can have a total of 8 hens.  We have 6 now, but only 4 of them are laying.  Of the two that aren't laying, Fancy Pants is obviously molting, 

so she has an excuse. 

(Here is what she normally looks like.)

But Lacey looks perfect.  She hasn't been laying since November.  I thought it might be that it was winter, even though we had supplemental light in the coop to counteract the short days, but she hadn't started laying yet, so I was ready to get rid of her and get 3 new chicks to add to our flock.

But she is so pretty, that we decided to keep her.  (Fancy Pants did have a 9 month laying hiatus last year, then started laying again in November.)

Our chickens are definitely more in the "pet" than "livestock" category.  Though I am not ready to put chicken diapers on them and let them run around the house.

We ended up getting two new chicks.  We got a Welsummer and named her Summer after our Welsummer chick that died last year.

And a Rhode Island Red, we named Ruby.

 You have to hold onto them, they are quick!

They are very cute and fun.  I have decided that 2 chicks make much less of a mess than 4 chicks.

We let them run around in the sunshine.

Mystery Egg

Last Friday morning, I looked in the nest box and there were no eggs.  That night, I looked in the nest box and there were these 5 eggs.  This is significant because out of our 6 chickens, only 4 of them are currently laying.  

So, who's egg is the light colored one?  

It looks an awful lot like the light colored one in this picture.  

Do you remember who's it is?

Yes, Fancy Pants has started laying again!  

She hasn't laid anything for over 9 months!  But the egg is very definitely hers (that is the beauty of having all different breeds of chickens, they each have unique eggs.)

When she stopped laying, her eggs got farther and farther between and then she laid a smaller misshapen egg and then nothing.  She seemed perfectly healthy in every other way.  I looked up online to see if I could find a reason, but nothing anyone described fit.  She didn't seem egg bound (and if she was she would have died).  Some breeds do stop laying in the winter, but she only started laying the beginning of December 2010 and stopped the end of January 2011.  Now starting again in November 2011.

Maybe she only lays in the winter.

Bunny Started Laying Again.

A little over a month ago, Bunny went broody.  That is what you call a chicken that wants to sit on eggs and hatch them.  I think it was triggered from us not collecting the eggs for 2 days and with 5 chickens laying, there were a lot of eggs in there.  What ever it was that caused it (she was not yet 6 months old and has only been laying for a month and a half, which I thought was very early to go broody) she only wanted to sit in the nest box, all the time.  I would take her out.  When she tried to sleep in there, I blocked it off for the night.  After a few days of this, she stopped trying to sit in the nest box all the time, but she had stopped laying.

5 weeks have gone by, but a couple of days ago, I found a gigantic pale green egg in the nest box.  We ate it today, it was a double yolkier.  

Welcome back Bunny to the egg laying world, we missed you!

Chicken Adventurers!

The kids let the chickens out of their coop yesterday before they went to school.  A little later, I needed to put them back in, since some men were coming to work on our house.  I usually don't let them out if I know that they will need to go back in soon, since it is hard to get them all back into the coop durning the day.  At night, they go in on their own and I just have to shut the door behind them.  

But that was not how it worked today.  

I got the left overs from breakfast to try and entice them into the coop.  I called to them and they usually all come running.  This time there were only 4.   I was pretty sure Ginger was in the nest box, so where was Bunny?  

I could hear the little noises that she makes and started looking around.  She was on the other side of our 6 foot fence. 

(These pictures of Bunny aren't actually outside the fence or taken today.  They are just some I had of Bunny.)

I went out and sure enough, there she was walking around under the brush.  It took us a good 15 minutes to get her back inside the fence.  I would climb around under the brush and blackberries to  herd her to the gate and then she would dart the other way.  AAAAAAA!  Back again, under the bushes.  I finally got Harvey to hold the gate open and standing back far enough not to block her way in and Julius to stand, blocking her avenue of escape, so the easy path was the one I wanted her to take, and she went through the gate.  

Then she proceeded to jump up on the compost bin, to the fence and into the tree above my head.  What is she doing up there?  When she jumped back down to the fence, I took a long stick and prodded her down the rest of the way.  We finally got all the chickens in their coop.  

I check the nest box, just to make sure Ginger was there, and she wasn't.  Where was she?  I look all through the coop, no Ginger.  I called for her and looked all over the yard.  No Ginger.  I started to look in the neighbors yard.  No Ginger.  Then for some reason I looked up.  There she was high in the tree (the same one Bunny had jumped in).  

What is she doing up there?!  I couldn't reach her, not even with a long stick.  I called to her, trying to get her down, she just looked around her and hopped to a higher branch, and then another one!  That chicken thinks she is a tree bird!  She'd mosey down the branch, looking all around.  Stop and sit there for a few minutes.  Walk back to the trunk.  Look around hop to a branch above her, walk down that one.  

After a while she looked like she wasn't sure how she was going to get down.  Then she hopped to a lower branch, oh good.  A crow perched on a branch near her and watched her for a while.  

Finally, she hopped down another branch, then walked to the end one.  She sat there swaying with the weight of her on the thin branch.  Looking around.  I could tell she was thinking of jumping.  And she did.  She came down about 25-30 feet,  flapping her wings for a soft landing.

Then I chased her around until I caught her and could put her in the coop.

Here are my adventurous chickens, back in their coop.  

I think that some girls are going to get their wings clipped.