The Happy Hart Chicken Flock: Meet the Flockers

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Chick Pics!

Margaret


Lucy


Queenie


Duchess


Shadowfax (Front) and Mordor (Back)


Gammy


Gustav


Ducky


Spike


We have some happy, pretty birds here in the Hart Flock! They are fast getting feathers at 3 weeks old and we hope we’ll have the new coop and run up before they are 6 weeks old and fully feathered! Gammy, Gustsv, and Duchess are our fliers, but the others love flapping their wings, even if they don’t get as much air time. It’s so fun seeing their personalities start to come out.

 

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It’s been a while since I’ve been sick recently. But I’m not the only one - our poor Lucy started showing signs of lethargy and stood around in a little puffed-up ball a few days ago. After a little digging around on the internet, we decided it was most likely Cocci as a result of both the medicated food we have them on and the fact that they love to use anything they eat or drink out of as personal litter boxes. So we bought some powdered Corid and I’ve taken to giving her a syringe of the treated water every so often because I’m worried she’s not drinking enough. Everyone else is doing great though! Last night during our nightly visit with Nancy, though, she was making different noises than usual. We’re not sure what it means, but perhaps it’s almost egg laying time? Guess we’ll find out!

 

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Miss Lucy is doing much better! Unfortunately, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire with them, and as Lucy has been recovering, one of our dogs slipped past us through the doors leading into the room we keep our chicks in and got ahold of Gammy for a split second. She acquired two puncture wounds on her chest, but luckily they were shallow and she was otherwise unharmed. We’re being a lot more careful about how far we open the door now, and Gammy is recovering. The scare has set her back in terms of fear, but she’s slowly coming back to being one of the first ones to fly out of the box when the wire comes off, so I don’t think the fear will be permanent!
We finally got a shed and are putting it together. All we need is the wood for nesting boxes and roosts and we’ll be golden! (Also the run we ordered a while ago, but that’s another story...)
We’re hoping to get it all finished up before the chicks fully feather themselves since that’s when they’ll go outside. Only a couple more weeks now!

 

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It’s been awhile! All is well here in the Happy Hart flock. Since the run won’t be here until early August, we moved the chicks into a very big box with a half sand, half woods chips deal. They’ve mamaged to knock their “roost” down about 50 times in the week they’ve been in there! But they’re very happy and love taking sand baths. All are getting big and strong, except for Lucy and Shadowfax, who are lagging a bit in the size department, but we’re certain they’ll catch up one day. They’ll be at 6 weeks on Tuesday, but since they aren’t fully feathered just quite yet and the two shrimps can still fit through the deer fence we have around the coop, we’ve decided to keep them in the box until we get our new stuff set up.
We built the shed! We have to wait to install the nesting boxes and roosts until the enclosure comes in and everything in place though, since the wood will make it too heavy to move, so the girls are hanging out in the prefabricated coop. Another rung off the chicken ladder, a roost, and a roof support piece have all fallen off since the last time we fixed it.
Nancy and Jo are pretty good - not laying quite yet but I think they’re close. Nancy is a nosy little brat who always gets what she wants and Jojo is her usual cautious self, even if she’s getting more comfortable around us! Today she started freaking out and turning in circles and we’re not sure why, but she’s been asking to come in the house all day so we think she might be scared of something. We also don’t know if her eye is totally gone or if she can see shadows but we figure she’ll open it if it’s there on her own. If we’re checking her out to see her new feathers coming in and checking for mites, Nancy flies up on any surface available because she is a little attention monkey. They’re very spoiled about coming into the screened in porch area now and will explore and poop at their fancy. When we try to put them back outside, they cluck at the door and will try to squeeze in between your legs to slip in before you shut the door, the little princesses.
Here’s a picture of the latest integration time:

 

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WE GOT OUR FIRST EGG TODAY!!!!

We’re not sure who layed it - Nancy’s comb is a brighter red but Jo did have that crazy behavior a few days ago, so who knows. We’re proud of them both anyways! It’s small and it’s brown and it’s perfect, here’s a picture!

 

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Yeah!

 

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It’s been a raining few days here in Southern Indiana, and the chicks had no clue what to do when encountering their first storm the other week. They’d only been out in the enclosure for about 3 days and still hadn’t grasped the concept of coop wire = no entrance. They would fly into the wire trying to get to the rest of their flock and just couldn’t figure out how to get there. Eventually I had to go out and conduct a chicken toss from their spot on the front of the coop to the doors on the side.

Jo and Nancy are kinda tolerating them. They don’t let the little ones forget who’s on top of the pecking order - and neither does Nancy when it comes to Jo.I worry sometimes because Nancy will still sometimes peck at Jo’s back and pluck out feathers in a mean way. It seems like those are the times Jo needs to get her confidence back by picking on the little chicks.

Hopefully we’ll get our enclosure in by this week and we can complete the move into the big shed because roosting space is a little sparse since none of them will roost on the lowest bar that isn’t protected by the roost. The little ones would rather just sleep in the nesting boxes so I hope we can get all that done soon.

Our eggs are coming in at a better pace now so we’re certain both Nancy and Jo are laying, which is a relief since we weren’t sure if the stress from Jo’s injury would affect her ability to lay eggs. They’re both brown, but one is a little bit lighter than the other except we don’t know which is which. Hopefully I can get since updated pictures of all the girls next year!