2009 Hatchlings

I have ended up this hatching season with three hens who successfully incubated their eggs. The first standard sized hen hatched out nine bantam chicks only smashing one of them. Her eight remaining D'Uccle chicks are now nearly adult size and five of those eight are roosters, four of the five roosters are turning Mille Fleur. I am currently trying to find them new homes.

The other two hens were both D'Uccles, one hatched six chicks and the other hatched three. These chicks are all D'Uccles as well, but are still little balls of fluff, so I don't know if they are pullets or cockerels.

Egg production has dropped drastically in the last few weeks. When we were getting plenty of eggs, no one wanted to buy them, now we have a waiting list. I guess fresh farm eggs are getting harder to find because of the season. This is hard on our dogs who are use to getting a few eggs everyday.

I am glad to report no chicken losses other than one smashed chick. Having Great Pyrenees can cut your chicken losses as long as it isn't your Great Pyrenees who are killing your chickens. My older dog does chase them a little bit when she is feeling frisky and my cat does too, but neither has ever hurt one of them.

I am really impressed with my cat, Garfield, he kills birds, mice, chipmunks and rabbits but the little tiny chicks can walk right over his front paws and he only twitches. I have been afraid that he will snap one day, but so far so good.

I'm Back

I have finally caught up on most all of my rope halter orders. I currently only have two small orders to fill. This spring has been horribly busy for us and I hope things will slow down enough for us to catch our breath.

My fingers are really sore from working on the halters and the pinky on my left hand and the middle, ring and pinky on my right hand are all starting to curl under with arthritis. Keyboarding is getting difficult for me. I can't imagine not being able to blog anymore. Getting old just stinks and I would advise you younger folks out there not to try it.

Out of 18 eggs my hen managed to hatch nine chicks. All of the hatchlings were banties, most of them have feathered feet. When we broke open the unhatched eggs, the three other banty eggs had dead chicks in them but the six standard eggs were still yolks. None of the standards had been fertilized as I had suspected. I am going to have to get a different rooster if I ever hope to raise some standard chickens.

One of the chicks got smashed by its oversized Mother. The other eight are doing well. Mom steps on their little feet sometimes and they cry and pull but can't get away until she takes another step then the poor things go tumbling. They are great fun to watch, my DH says that in her exuberance to scratch up a meal that she inadvertently buries a few of them but they always manage to dig their way out.

I was tempted to take them away from their Mother, put them in a safe place and raise them myself. But after all of the work that she did and with her knowing how to take better care of chicks than I could ever know, I decided to let her do it herself. Even with these chicks being half the size of what her biological children would be, I still think she knows best.

I am going to do my best to get back to work and blog every day. This is the best way that I have found to keep a daily journal that I can refer back to when I fail to write important dates on my calendar.

Hatchlings

I don't think that I have posted about my Rhode Island Red hen going broody. I know that I have complained about none of my hens feeling motherly this year, well one finally did. She is a big, old RIR and she decided to start a family around 21 days ago. Dingy me forgot to write down the date that she started setting. So I have been checking her nest everyday to see if there are any chicks. I thought that her time should be about up.

I set 6 large eggs and 12 banty eggs under her. I know that my banty eggs are fertilized but am not sure about the standard eggs. Rocky still isn't doing his job. Last night I checked and had one banty chick that was all hatched out, fluffy and cute. I haven't checked her today yet.

I am going to have to move her and the nest to a safer location because the nest is so high and the chicklets can fall out.

Elvis Has Left The Building

After having Elvis and the Mutt in cages for a few days right outside our bedroom, I decided it was time to get rid of them. Their crowing was about to drive us crazy. So I listed them on Hoosier Topics, Bedford Connect and Craigslist. Within an hour I had someone claim these two free roosters.

Now I am looking at the eggs that I am using and none of them are fertilized. So if I have a hen go broody, none of the eggs will be fertile except for my Bantams. Rudy, my Mille Fleur D'uccle is busy fertilizing the banty eggs and trying to do the same with the big hens when Rocky isn't looking. Rudy is just a little rooster and scared to death of Rocky. It's a big job but someone has to do it.

I don't know why Rocky isn't doing his job but he isn't. Maybe he is too big or too old. I am in the market for a new rooster, a young, standard breed. I love Rocky because I can trust him with my Grandkids and this disappoints me. I really don't need baby chicks right now other than it is just fun but as my hens grow older I will need to replace them and would like to grow my own.

Wrinkled Egg

I found this egg Saturday, I would call it a wrinkled egg. I have found similar eggs before but not as bad as this one. This can be caused by Infectious Bronchitis in hens which is caused by the Coronavirus. There are other things that can cause wrinkled eggs too but I am thinking that this hen has had IB in her past and she has permanent damage to her oviduct.

Since I don't have any chickens with respiratory problems right now or runny eyes, I think that this was in her past. The good news is that once they have it, they have permanent immunity to it. This is probably just one hen because there is always one very long brown egg that is occasionally misshaped.

Our Chickens are currently giving us 12 to 17 eggs per day. All of my bantams are finally laying. So far no one has gone broody, if I weren't wanting baby chicks they would all be hiding nests and setting.

Hello Ike

The last two days have been miserable around here. We walked out the door and into a sauna. I won't say this too loudly but I much prefer cold weather to humid weather. Hot is fine as long as it isn't humid. Yesterday and Friday were just unbearable, you didn't have to do anything and you were soaking wet with sweat.

Hurricane Ike or what is left of him is suppose to arrive here today with heavy rain and a wind advisory, wind gusts up to 45 mph. That could make it dangerous here, we might get hit by flying chickens. Ike is suppose to bring cooler, less humid air this week and I am really looking forward to being able to milk without sweating.

We sat outside while we were finishing up feeding last night and looked around us and realized that we have a lot of chickens. They were everywhere we looked. I gave away one of my Banty hens with her seven chicks, so I think that I have 30 or 31 left.

My chickens are fairly strange, most everything else around here has the sense to stay out of the rain but not them. It was pouring rain on Friday and they just went about their daily routine like the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

We are so thankful for the rain, our pastures were drying up. Hopefully this rain will help out with the hay crop and they will get another cutting. There doesn't seem to be the demand for hay that there was last year though, the farmers are trying their best to keep the prices up but no one is buying because so many people dumped their livestock last year.

My chickens are working hard to provide us with eggs. I am getting at least seven eggs, that we can find, everyday. I found a nest of five eggs just lying out in the yard, that lets you know how badly our grass needs mowing. I am sure that some of our chickens are laying in other places that we don't know about. I just wish that I had some regular egg customers, that I could rely on. We do sell them but it is just here and there. No one that comes here to the house and picks them up on a regular basis.

My Polish rooster has finally found a name, everyone has been calling him Elvis and since I haven't come up with a better name, I guess that one will have to stick. I am very pleased with all of my roosters, none of them are aggressive and as long as they stay that way, they can stay. Rocky has us a little puzzled, we haven't quite figured him out yet. Elvis is popular with the young hens, doesn't that just figure? Bootstrap has always just partnered with one hen. The fox managed to get his first two wives and he actually grieved over them. He is exclusively keeping time with my last Mille Fleur D'Uccle hen now and that leaves poor Rudy, my D'Uccle rooster, all alone.

My Mistake

I have searched the chicken websites and have come up with some answers, but chicken breeds can be very confusing. I suppose that is because most chickens are mutts, variations of several different breeds mixed up together. But here is what I think that I have.

Seven of my new hens are Silver Laced Wyandottes, though a couple of them do not have rose combs, so I am assuming that they are not pure bred.

My four new barred hens are Barred Plymouth Rocks to go with my remaining two Barred Rock hens that the fox hasn't got yet. I also have two Barred Rock chicks that I think are hens but I am not certain yet, one of them is rumpless.

The three new red hens are probably Red Sexlinks, to add to my three other red hens who are Rhode Island Reds.

This leaves only one new chicken to be identified and that is Cruella, who is not a Cruella after all. I am pretty sure that she is a he, and he is a young White Crested Black Polish Rooster. I hope that I am wrong but I don't think that I am. How embarrassing!

So adding all of these up tonight, I have found that I have 8 Barred Rocks, 7 Wyandottes, 6 Red Hens, 14 Bantams and 3 Roosters, for a grand total of 38 Chickens. I think that we may have more chickens now than horses, but I would have to add all of the horses up to be sure and that would be too depressing.

Right On Time

My little brown banty hen hatched out 7 chicks this morning. She is done and has left the nest with the new babies. Only one egg didn't hatch, that is a pretty good percentage. They are tiny little things, smaller than mice, all different colors. They are already fighting amongst themselves and running around looking for food.

It is always amazing to me how they hatch out right on the 21st day. If all animals were this precise then I would get so much more sleep during foaling and kidding season.

Listening

We managed to get 302 bales of hay in our loft, that is a start. After the hay work was done and after the milking was done yesterday evening, I went out to the goat/chicken shed to look for eggs. I heard the loud chirping of a chick. Normally I would have thought that it was my one remaining barred rock chick under the shed but I had seen the barred rock chick out in the grass right before I came in the building.

The realization hit me and a ton of guilt fell on me. The other barred rock chick who had disappeared last Wednesday morning was in the hay barrel. We have a plastic barrel with a hole cut into it that we feed hay to the goats in during the winter months. Somehow that chick had gotten into the barrel and probably the goats had pushed the barrel opening against the wall.

I turned the barrel around and let light into it for the first time in 7 days. The chick was running around and was hard to catch. I could not believe that it was still alive after all of that time with no water, food or light. Now I will have to keep that chick even if it is a rooster! I carried it to it's sister out in the grass and set it down. It started pecking at the grass immediately, it wandered all around the lot searching for food.

The two young men who were here to help us put up hay, herded it toward water and it found Angel's dog food and gobbled some of it up. Then it found the milk that I had put out for Angel and drank for a long time. Finally it found the water and I thought it would never stop drinking. It continued to hunt and peck until after dark, all of the other chickens had gone to roost, we finally had to catch it with a fish net and put it up on the roost next to it's sister.

Now that I think back, I can remember hearing it's cries several times but I always assumed that it was the other chick under the shed because she stays under there most of the time when it is hot. I feel really bad about not checking there when I realized that it was missing. It was in there during some very hot and humid weather.

One Down

It has been a busy week for us, we have had several things going on, I haven't had much time to blog. Biscuit, our yearling leopard filly did go to live at her new home in Texas on Tuesday.

Sometime on Wednesday, one of my Barred Rock Chicks disappeared. I saw her early in the day but later in the afternoon she was gone. I think that several of my banty chicks are roosters and whoever is taking these chickens must just prefer hens. Here is a picture of some of my banty chicks challenging each other, they are probably roosters, I can't tell yet. But we knew that both of my Barred Rock chicks were hens.

Yesterday morning while I was outside, I noticed something was off. I couldn't put my finger on it at first but then it dawned on me that I could hear nothing but silence. All of my chickens were hiding and not making a sound. Usually they are a pretty noisy bunch, so I started looking around.

There were two small hawks flying around overhead. Normally I know when there are hawks about because the crows are constantly calling them names and trying to run them out of their air space. The crows were away from the post for some reason, leaving my chickens unprotected. I got my camera and took a picture of one of them. They finally gave up the hunt and flew away.

Later in the day, I noticed that the chickens were still quiet, so I looked around again and didn't see anything, but it gave me a strange feeling every time I went outside.

I had taken my glasses off to fix my hair, I went into the bedroom for something and passed by the window. I saw what I thought was one of my Rhode Island Reds on the far side of the goat lot. With my glasses off I couldn't tell what it was for sure but I have never seen my chickens in that area. I got my glasses and looked again, it was a fox, he was just relaxing, scratching and rolling in the new mowed grass.

I grabbed up my rifle and slipped out the door. It was a long shot for a rifle but I embarrassed myself again anyhow. He jumped away from the spot where the bullet hit the ground beyond him. The sound of the rifle didn't scare him because I have desensitized him to gunfire because I have shot at him so many times and missed. He walked away a few feet then stopped in the driveway and looked back at the place he had been, he was closer to me now and a much better shot. I missed again and he went into the high weeds.

I knew that he would circle around the barn/house and all I had to do was wait on him, so I went into the house and got a different rifle. Maybe it was the rifle and not me, right? I watched the goats who were watching him, so I knew right where he was. I stood inside the back door of the barn and waited for another perfect shot. But something went wrong, while I was waiting with a clear view of where he would have to come down the hill, he was already there. I was a bit confused but I had a good shot, so I took it. I missed again and again he jumped away from the spot I hit and came towards me. I had another perfect shot and of course I missed again.

Four missed shots in one day. How could I live with myself? The shame of it all. I went to Camp Meeting last night and when I returned home, he was sitting on top of a row of big round bales of hay that are sitting beside our driveway. He looked at me and laughed. I drove down the hill to get my gun and try again but he was gone when I got back.

I wouldn't have minded him so bad if he would have taken roosters instead of my hens. But this morning when I went to get Cooter out of his pen to stake him out. Angel started barking at something at the top of the hill. I looked up there and saw two foxes chasing each other and playing. I yelled for my DH and gave him a chance to deal with the problem. Though it is hard for me to admit, he got one of them with his first shot. I will never live this down.

I did find out why I was confused about the fox's location the day before, there were two of them. I am sure that we will have to deal with the other one at some point. They seem to love this place. Since we got Angel we hardly ever see or hear Coyotes but we always have skunks and foxes. They know now that she can't get out of the goat lot, so they are safe from her. They also know that I can't hit the broad side of a barn, so they are also safe from me.

There are two wild turkey hens with chicks staying here also. I don't know why the foxes prefer my chickens to the turkey chicks, maybe they are harder to catch or the turkey hens are meaner than my roosters.

No Loses

I didn't lose any chickens yesterday, this is an improvement. We are making progress. I did sell Copper yesterday evening, he went to a good home. He will be used as a buck. Angel didn't like it, she is still looking for him this morning. That is the sad part of selling my kids, it upsets Angel but his mother didn't seem to mind at all. I think she was ready to let him go.

We had storms all through the night and I have water in my living room this morning. I don't understand why sometimes the rain comes in and sometimes it doesn't. I wish some philanthropist would give me about $100,000, I could really put it to good use. I need a house.

Or better yet, it would be nice if a couple of people would retire from the Post Office and my Husband would get a regular postal route and become a full time employee instead of a substitute or RCA, no one wants to retire anymore. Another possibility is that we could sell all of our 30+ horses at reasonable prices. That would really help out, think of the money that we would save on feed alone.

We did sell a yearling filly, Biscuit is moving to Texas on Monday to become a broodmare. She will be raising spotted mule foals. We will really miss her, she has the sweetest disposition. You can sweet talk her into anything and once she learns something she retains it.

My orphan chicks are all doing well so far. The two barred rock chicks have taken up with another barred rock hen and they are roosting in the goat/chicken shed at night on the highest perch, next to the biggest rooster.

My three little banty chicks have tried to join the other banty chicks but the hen won't allow it. So they are on their own, they roost in the same nest that their mother always took them to at night, they have no protection at all. At least one of them is a rooster and he is trying to protect his little family but it is a big responsibility for such a young chick.

I was tempted to put them in a cage but the barred rock chicks were so unhappy in the cage that I hate to do it to the banties after they have been free all of their lives.

Well, that is the news for now, nothing very exciting, which is a good thing. If you are a philanthropist and have some money that you would like to put to good use contact me but please not from Nigeria.

Busy Again

Busy, busy, busy, I have so much to do that I am actually looking forward to winter. My Husband will be very upset by this comment. I don't have time to blog but I will use it as an organization tool.

I finally got most of my Spring surge of rope halter orders finished. I currently only have two outstanding orders that total 6 halters. Then this morning I got an order for 17 more halters.

I am in the process of building a large website for a Barrel Racer and Trainer. I have all of the information and pictures that I need to finish it, I just need to pull it all together.

I also have been asked to do a local website for our community that I would really like to do a nice job on, it will be complicated with a lot of information, I am donating the entire site and my time. At this point, I am trying to figure out how I want to do it. I will post a link to it here when it is finished.

We have sold a horse and possibly another one, this requires some major attention this week because someone will be here to pick one of them up on August 4th, she will have to have all of her paperwork and Vet exam done this week.

I really need to update our website but it always gets pushed to the bottom of my "to do" list. I don't even have the new foals on there yet.

Dishes and laundry are an unending problem for me. As is Cooter who has to be moved from location to location throughout the day. Plus goats and chickens to be fed and cared for.

I spent most of the morning this morning looking for one of my Mille Fleur D'Uccle hens, she has totally disappeared orphaning her three chicks, this is the same hen that was picked up by the hawk a week or so ago. I really hate that I am loosing my broody hens but especially my Millies. I haven't been able to find any feathers anywhere, so it must have been a hawk that got her.

I am thinking about renaming our place to The Fox and Hawk Food Farm or Predator's Ranch.

I Failed

I am usually pretty in tune with the sounds outside the house but two of my Granddaughters were here yesterday and I didn't hear the fox catch one of my Barred Rock hens.

I took the girls out to the sandbox during the late afternoon and noticed that she wasn't with her two chicks. They were searching for her and confused. But since the banty hens have been leaving their chicks at times, I thought she might just have wondered off somewhere.

Late in the evening after my DH got home from work, I took the oldest girl out with me to milk and still no hen. We started looking around and I found many of her feathers in one of our stud pens.

When I went back inside, I asked my Husband to go look for her while I stayed with the girls. When he returned, he said that it was a fox and that he followed the trail of feathers to the woods behind the neighbor's house and that he has a path under the fence.

As soon as our Son picked up the girls, we went out to try to catch the chicks. It would have made a good funniest video. There was a lot of running, tripping and getting in each others way in the chase that ensued. After many failed attempts my DH managed to pen them to the ground with the long handled swimming pool skimmer. Then I picked them up and put them in a cage. All in all, it was a great exercise routine.

I am pretty upset with this fox and myself. I have had several good shots at him that I have missed. He always shows up at noontime but he may go for weeks without coming at all. I guess he gets tired of having chicken all of the time. I can sympathize, I don't like chicken very often myself. I am however, longing for some raw fox meat.

Pecking Order

My chicks are getting so big and they are all different, very colorful. Only two have feathered feet and only one looks like it might be a pure bred Mille Fleur D'Uccle. It will probably turn out to be a rooster.

They are starting to get aggressive. When I turned them out this morning they where all running around my feet chasing each other and pecking each other. I guess they are trying to establish a pecking order.

These are some pictures that I took some time ago of the chicks, they are much bigger and have more feathers now.

Falcon?

I think that I discovered this morning what got away with my little red hen. I had just come in from feeding the chickens early this morning and sat down in front of the computer, when I heard a commotion outside the door in the drive through part of the barn. All of the chickens were squawking and scattering. I ran out the door but only saw all of the chickens running toward the goat/chicken house, except for the two Mille Fleur D'Uccles with their chicks.

I looked around and found that one of the D'Uccle hens was missing. Her three chicks were chirping loudly and looking for her. I wasn't sure what had happened but summoned my dear Husband from his slumber to assist. He went one way and I went another. I noticed that several crows were pitching a fit and were attacking something out in the pasture. It was too small for a hawk, unless it was a young one. It flew away and my little D'Uccle hen was staggering around in the pasture on her way back to the yard, disoriented. I picked her up and brought her back to her chicks. She was not injured that I could tell.

It could have been a falcon, we had one here once before that stayed around all day then moved on. It landed on my Husband's head, which kind of took him by surprise. It acted pretty tame, so we assumed it was someone's pet or had escaped from captivity. But we could never catch it, although we could get close to it. We didn't have chickens at the time.

Whatever this was this morning, it is a small bird of prey and flew right in the back door of the barn, grabbed the hen and flew out the front door. I told my DH that I wouldn't take a thousand dollars apiece for my Livestock Guardian Crows. I think he though might since we have so many.

Cooler Weather

After Saturday night's storms, things have greatly cooled down. I have barely been getting enough milk for my own two glasses per day, plus I drink goat's milk anytime I get heartburn, it cures it instantly. Goat milk production around here has been greatly reduced during the recent hot weather, I had suspected that this was to blame but wasn't sure until yesterday. Milk production was up by at least 50%.

Egg production has been down as well. Just when I finally had more egg buyers than eggs, my hens quit laying. We were lucky to get two eggs a day out of ten hens. The banties were actually laying better than the big hens were in this heat. But with the cooler temperatures yesterday we got four eggs. I have four hens who are raising chicks, so they have an excuse for their lack of production but the others have just been on strike because of working conditions. They are demanding an air conditioned chicken house with well ventilated nests.

I get to go to the Doctor today, oh what joy! I would rather go to the Dentist and get teeth pulled than face my Doctor. He just keeps harping about my weight and I always try to lose a few pounds before I see him, just so I won't have to hear his lecture. But I didn't manage to get that accomplished this time and have gained weight since last we met.

He believes that my spine wouldn't be complaining as much, if I would relieve some of it's burden. That is actually quite a motivation for me, if I thought that I could live a normal life again, I might just lose that weight. I just can't figure out how to do it.

Foxy

Well, my fox problems have returned. I was missing one of my new banty hens yesterday. I was hoping that she was sitting on a hidden nest somewhere but I think that I got an answer today at noon.

I just happened to be looking out the window and a fox came running down the hill in a blur of speed, right into the front door of the barn, that is where the two Mille Fleur D'Uccle hens stay with their broods. I heard startled chickens scattering and Angel started barking.

I grabbed my rifle and flew out the door, I must have clicked the safety off as I ran out. The rooster was chasing him out the front door with me right behind him. The fox made a beeline up the hill, then stopped and turned around. He didn't have anything in his mouth and he was a perfect target. I pulled up and took aim but the trigger wouldn't budge. I guess I must have clicked the safety on again as I pulled the gun up. By the time I clicked it off, he was gone.

This was not the same fox that we have been having trouble with. This fox was a beautiful little animal. He is dark red with a pretty coat, fluffy tail with a white tip on it. The other fox looked like he was a halfbreed, he was tall, long bodied, light colored with a rough coat and no white on his tail.

When we first got Angel I had wanted her to stay in the goat lot with no roaming around the farm or neighborhood. That didn't work out because her coat was so thick that she just went under the electric fence, like it wasn't there. I had gotten use to her coming to the barn/house with Cinder when I milked and liked the idea that she could be more of a protector if she wasn't confined to the goat lot. On several occasions she has run off foxes and dogs.

Then summer arrived and she lost her heavy coat and got some mats on her back that I had to cut off. She started getting shocked when she went under the fence, so she has stopped getting out. My DH is thrilled and says that I will have to keep the hair on her back shaved. But I am thinking today that I may have to fix a special place in the fence where she can get out without being shocked. Just don't tell my DH.

Stupid

I couldn't think of a title for this blog because I have so many different thoughts going through my head. I am hoping a title will emerge from the blog all on it's own.

All was peaceful and quiet yesterday evening, my DH had a rare day off and was busy mowing the top pasture. I thought that I would go ahead and get the evening feeding and milking done before it got dark. I was going to take my time and enjoy the process. I started out by trying to get all of the new chicks in cages with their mothers. I soon realized that herding baby chicks is not an easy task and that I was wasting my time.

I went to the goat lot with halter and lead rope in hand, caught Cinder and led her to the barn/house to be milked. She was not as cooperative as she usually is and that task turned out not to be pleasant in the least. She didn't want to get on the milk stand that is still standing in muddy water from the recent rain.

I finally got her in place and sat down to milk and dropped my clean cloth that I had to wash her udder with into the muddy water under the stand. So I had to go back into the house for a new one. On the way back to the milking stand was when I first noticed that the wind had picked up and the sky had grown dark and there was a not too distant sound of thunder. I had a lot to get done before it started to rain, so I picked up my pace.

Cinder had more milk than usual and so it took me longer to milk as the storm crept nearer. When I finally got the milking done and everything cleaned up and turned her loose, she lost all common sense and couldn't remember any of the routine things that she does twice per day everyday. She tried to go out the wrong door, she had to stop and taste everything along the way, whether it was eatable or not. I finally got her put back in the lot by the time it started to rain.

I was moving as quickly as possible because I needed to get into the house to turn off the computer before lightening struck again.

I went to collect Cooter who was tied to a concrete block in a nice patch of weeds. He had wrapped the rope around the block several times and while I tried to untangle him, he was giving me kisses and chewing on my hair. You can't slap him or push him away because then he thinks that you want to play and he plays too rough. I finally got him loose and by this time it had stopped raining but the storm was getting closer. I put Cooter in the horse trailer for the night instead of in his pen which is up the hill and farther away, so I had to get him a bucket of water.

Next I mixed the goat and chicken feed and managed to get them all fed without too many problems. Now it was back to chick herding, that is a skill that it takes years to perfect. You would think that they would go into the cage when their mommy went into the cage but not so. There is always one more thing that they need to do outside the cage before they call it a night.

Some of the chicks who were already safely nesting under their Mommy, would also think of something else that they needed to do and run out of the cage just as I got the last straggler in. I think that I used the word "stupid" a lot last night in dealing with both chickens and goats.

I finally got everything put up, watered and fed. I closed both big sliding doors and the side door, then went into the house to shut off the computer. The storm went east and never got to us. It did rain later in the night but all of my rushing around was wasted.

I think that I have a title now!

Chick Update

I lost count of how many chicks that my first little Mille Fleur D'Uccle hatched out, but with some drowning and some just dying for unknown reasons, she ended up with five chicks. Then two more died the other day, so now she has only three live chicks. The rest of her eggs we put under the other little Banty hen and she has hatched out five more and hasn't lost any so far.

My broody Rhode Island Red hen was sitting on seven eggs originally but one egg disappeared and we think that a skunk got it. The goat/chicken house smelled strongly of skunk on the day that it went missing. My LGD (livestock guardian dog) isn't much of a defense when it comes to skunks, I'm afraid.

The Rhodie's eggs started hatching today. I don't know how many have hatched but I did see a yellow head and a black head peeking out from under her wing at me this morning.

Results are in

My Mille Fleur D'Uccle hen has left the nest, she offically hatched out 11 chicks. 2 drown, 4 were killed by the big Rhode Island Red broody hen, who got confused because she heard the chicks and thought they were hers and run the little Millie off to set on her nest instead of her own. We took the nest to the barn/house to protect it from the Rhodie and the Millie stopped setting on the remaining eggs and at this point has 5 live chicks, probably all roosters with my luck.

Several of the Millie eggs that were left are at different stages of development because my other two banty hens continued to lay eggs in her nest after I set the original eggs under her, plus one big hen slipped an egg in there also. We took the remaining unhatched eggs and put them under the Rhodie and are watching them closely, if any of them hatch we will put them with the other chicks. When moving the remaining eggs my DH broke one of them and it had a live chick in it but it did not survive.

My Husband brought home four new banties that someone gave him, two roosters and two hens. One pair appear to be the same breed, they are very pretty. As soon as I get some time I will try to do some research and identify them.