Broody Chickens and Cool Weather

Well, my one Silkie hen sat on her five eggs for over 25 days and I took her off the eggs and put her back with the other chickens.  We had some pretty cold weather and I don’t think she could keep them warm enough so none hatched.

I have another hen that is Silkie/Americauna mix and she has been sitting for 12 days on five Barred Rock eggs.  Her maternity ward (lol) opens in a different direction so I am hoping the cool air won’t be cooling down the temp of the eggs.

Yesterday I noticed I have a white Silkie that is broody, too.  These 70 plus degree temperatures are certainly confusing my chickens and the plants.  Because my white Silkie rooster is in with my Silkies and my mixed Silkie/Americaunas, I don’t want to hatch any of their eggs right now.  I have a separate yard that I will put my Silkies in with a Silkie rooster if and when I want more of their breed.

Baby chicks are always fun and the last ones I hatched out was when my grand daughter, Maddy, came for a visit last July because I wanted babies for her to enjoy.  I still have 42 chickens and I have 6 dozen eggs in my refrigerator right now.  I have a friend I give eggs to and then my two sister-in-laws live behind our property and they appreciate the eggs.

I was thinking about buying 25 chicks from McMurray Hatcheries and raise them to about five months and then sell them.  So by July or August, even if I sold them for 10 dollars each, I could have 250 dollars.  Of course, you have to subtract the money you paid for the chickens (75 plus shipping) and their food for 5 months.  With 2 acres of land, they can find a lot to eat off the land, too.  The best part is you get to enjoy baby chicks even if you don’t make a fortune.

It is a good life.

 

 

Grand daughter enjoyed chickens

In July, my 11 year old grand daughter came for a visit without her mom and dad.  I thoroughly enjoyed her visit.  The chickens helped make the visit special for her, too.

Maddy lives in a big city so she so this is a new experience for her.  I made sure I had some baby chicks hatched out in time for her visit.  She enjoyed feeding the chickens and playing with “Bernie”.   On a previous visit, she named a Silkie hen “Pex” but I sold her.

We went to the beach and used the metal detector and went to a mine looking for pretty stones in NC as well as went to the movie, polished nails and stayed up late watching tv.   It was a great visit to me.

I just want to add, the baby chick “Bernie” certainly made the visit memorable for Maddy.  I told her I have some more eggs hatching out and I will send her a video of the baby chicks.  I think she really likes those chicks.

 

 

Hen sitting on eggs in winter

Isn’t it amazing how chickens go broody during the cold weather?  I would think they would just want to hatch out during the spring.  Well, I have a Silkie sitting right now and another trying to be broody….I say trying because I keep stealing her eggs.

Trinidad had six eggs under her to start with but now only has four.  The good news is they are my Barred Rock eggs which is what I really want to hatch.  Now that I have a beautiful rooster, I am eager to get some babies from him.  I bought a hen with him and she is a also gorgeous.

I wanted to again tell you how friendly I have found “chicken” people to be.  This lady (and her husband) whom we got the above rooster and hen from are so nice.  They GAVE us elk meat and deer meat.  Now, I did not cook the meat but my sister-in-law cooked it and feed it to my husband.  lol  He loved it.  Not me, I didn’t even try it.

Well, I will let you know if I get some baby chicks.  I may let the other hen start sitting, too.  I have heat lamps so I can keep my mommies and babies warm.  But, just a reminder, don’t let both mommas sit in the same area because they will fight over the babies and even kill the babies.  I don’t know if that is a normal thing to happen but it happened to me with two Silkie moms.  I let my broody hen sit for about a week or so before I move the mom and her eggs to a “maternity ward” away from the other hens.

 

 

 

 

Daily Routines Raising Chickens

I never really get tired of taking care of my chickens.  Do you?  There is always something to do in their yard.  I am relentless when it comes to changing fence lines and moving things around.  My husband is so patient with me.

Now that my flock is down to 44 chickens, life is easier for me.  I moved my 19 small chickens…Silkies and Silkie/Americaunas in one yard with netting over the top of most of it to keep the Chicken Hawks out.  Their yard was without grass so I moved them to another spot that is twice the size with plenty of grass and I can see them from my kitchen window.

My grand daughter came to visit this past summer and I let one of the hens hatch out a couple Silkies eggs so there would be baby chicks here when she came for her visit.  I kept the mom and babies in a separate yard for the first 6 weeks or so and I have very small gauge fencing added around the bottom two feet so the little ones can’t get out.  But I wanted to let mom back in with the other chickens in the new grassy yard and let her two babies go with her.  I had three and one went missing so now the two are in a  protective 4×8 cage where they will remain until they are big enough that they can’t fit thru the fence holes.  The mom can’t keep the babies safe when they are wandering on the other side of the fence and the new yard is too big to put two foot fencing around the bottom.  It would probably cost me a hundred dollars to do that.

I took down a lot of fencing in the back where my Barred Rock and Americauna chickens are now.   I am letting them run together on the fenced in one acre but they still have two separate houses that they can perch.  Oh yeah, I also have four purebred Silkie roosters and one Barred Rock rooster that are in the flock of 25.  Of the four Silkie roosters, one is pretty old and the other three don’t seem that active so I hope they don’t bother the hens too much.  I added the Barred Rock rooster recently and he is still young so he doesn’t show much interest in the girls.  Since I am not hatching eggs, I let them stay together.

I throw scraps to the chickens usually after dinner time and collect eggs (except for the summer, I collect eggs twice a day since it is so hot).  I try to get out in the mornings fairly early so I can give them scratch, oyster shells, egg pellets and  starter for the babies.  I don’t feed them a whole lot of pellets since I really don’t care how many eggs I get anymore.  A lot of the chickens are getting older.  I just enjoy the chickens but I must admit, fresh eggs are so much better.  I still probably get somewhere between 6 to 12 a week so that is plenty for the two of us.

I empty the water buckets for the chickens about every two or three days and scrub them and refill them.   Then I rake out the bottom of the chicken house every two weeks or so and add the manure to the compost bin or dilute some to use as fertilizer for my yard or plants.   Then the nests need cleaning out some since a chicken or two will perch on the edge occasionally.   I replace the hay every two or three months with fresh hay and put seven dust in the bottom before adding the new hay to keep the mites down.   I occasionally sprinkle some between nest changes, too.

I also found if I store the scratch in a plastic trash can out in the yard, it saves me time.  I keep the starter and pellets in my shed since moisture wouldn’t be good for them.  I feel like the Piped Piper of Hamlin when I go into the chicken yards because they sure do follow me around…..until I throw them scratch.  ha ha

It is good to just spend some time out there in the yard watching the chickens making sure they are healthy.   I look to see if any of them are walking funny or acting slow or tired.  Certainly if any chicken doesn’t act interested in eating the scratch, that is an indication there is a problem.

My chickens are my pets and they are dying due to old age, I hope.  I just lost my 13 year old dog, Cassie on Friday, October 12th.  She was such a sweet dog and so smart.  I will miss her but my dog, Olivia is alone now so I bet she will miss her even more.

 

 

 

 

Hatching Time and Keeping the Chicks Safe

I have neglected this blog for quite awhile but with my husband retiring and having him around 24/7, I have definitely made some adjustments to my life.  That is a good thing.  My husband calls it true freedom when you retire.  He also says he use to watch the clock to get up, go to bed, get to work, get off work but now he watches the calender to see when our checks roll in.

It is so hot here now and the hens are all wanting to sit on the eggs though some of them don’t even have a rooster with them so the eggs are not fertilized.  I was having a problem with so many of them being broody that the hens couldn’t get into the nests to lay the eggs. I was finding eggs on the ground.

I did what I read to do.  I took the broody hens out of the yard and put them into another yard where there were no nests to sit on.  There is shelter and food and water but no nesting boxes.  They pace the fence line but in a few days, they seem to cool off.  It is amazing how hot the hens body feels when she is broody.  I realize it has to be hot to get the temperature right for the chick to grow in the egg.  But, every time I pick up a broody hen, it still amazes me.

I did let a Barred Rock sit on some Silkie eggs since the Barred Rock eggs were not fertile.  Only one hatched out and I let her stay with the chick until she started laying eggs again, which was five weeks.  She was eager to get out of the smaller yard back into the grassy area.

I don’t think I will let the BR hens hatch out my Silkie eggs anymore because I ended up separating mom and baby.  If a Silkie would have hatched the chick out, being a Silkie chick, at least they would have remained in the same yard together.  I felt bad separating them but the momma definitely wanted out of the smaller yard.

I decided the chick was too small to put into the yard with the other Silkies…..fearing they might pick on her/him.  I have a Silkie hen sitting on eggs in another area so I put her in there.  Silkies are such good mommas and the baby chick ran right over and tried to get under the hen for protection from me.  The hen just looked at her and ignored her basically.  But, I have a feeling that she will accept her as her own…..it has happened before…and they will be fine.

One time, I had two Silkie moms and their babies in one yard  and in a 24 hour period, three of the babies died.  I think the mommas killed them perhaps while fighting over them.  I guess I will never know but I NEVER put two mommas and their babies together now.

Also, I had a hen in a 4×4 area with her babies and she dug and actually buried one of her babies.  So if I need to use the 4×4 yard, I put a board down with lots of hay on it so the hen cannot dig/scratch.  The baby was so small and I think she just kicked a lot of dirt on her and she couldn’t get up and move.  She was the youngest of the chicks and the others were 3 or 4 days older and they moved a lot faster.

And then you must always keep the correct type of waterer in the baby chicks yard, too.  Do not put any water in their yard that they can drown in either.  That has also happened to me.  I had the small waterer for the baby and a container for the mom.  It never dawned on me that the baby could even get into the water.

When the chicks are very young, they just want to stay close to momma but as they get a little older they will start wandering away.  I lost another chick when one went thru the fencing and the momma couldn’t get to her.  I don’t know if the chicken hawk got it or the annoying cats that frequent my yard.

Now, I add  a very small gauge fencing around the bottom two feet of the baby chicks yard.  So there is double fencing on the bottom two feet.  You need to bring it lower than the ground.  Let it lie on the ground an inch or two.  When the hen starts scratching and digging, she often moves some of the dirt and then you end up with a place the chick can slip out.

Also, don’t forget to mark your eggs with an X (the ones you want to hatch)  if you have your broody hens with your other hens so you know which eggs to remove from under the broody hen.

I let the hen sit in the regular nest with the other hens for a week or ten days before I move her into my “maternity yard”.    If you use an incubator, you know the last few days you don’t want to turn the eggs.  So, I want to move the momma and eggs before it gets to those last days when the eggs should not be disturbed.  Try not to make the momma too mad and upset her as you gently pick her up.  I usually have my husband with me and he either carries the momma or the eggs as we try to be just as careful with the momma as with the eggs.  When we put the momma into the prepared yard that has water and food, sometimes she doesn’t settle down on the eggs immediately.  But she will.  I think she likes to check out her new accommodations.

My grand daughter is coming to visit without her parents and I am hoping more of the eggs will hatch so Maddy can enjoy the babies.  After all, who doesn’t love babies?  Even if they are chickens.