12 week old still wants to sleep under her mother

[sonandsal]

Mrs frizzle age unknown, perhaps 18 months, sat on 4 eggs. 3 of the babies at 10 weeks old now given away as they were roosters. We can keep roosters in the metro area. The last baby, i also think is a male, fingers crossed for a female, is about 12 or 13 weeks old and still tries to squeeze under mrs frizzle at night. Mrs frizzle pecks him but he cries and persists. He has quite a few bald patches on his head. Any suggestions please? this little chicken "churchill" is so cute and he just wants to snuggle. Do i seperate them at night or let her keep pecking him.

 

[Folly's place]

Welcome! I'd let it be; both are acting within normal limits of behavior. Separating the chick, if it's a female, will make reintroducing her much more difficult. If it's a male, move him on soon, with a friend if possible.
Some chicks want mama for a long time, and some mamas are fine with that. Others want to babies to be more independent sooner. Frizzle feathering isn't good at keeping the baby warm, another reason to want mama.
Mary

 

[sonandsal]

Thanks mary, we only have mrs frizzle and churchill. We were given them about 8 weeks ago so they only have each other. Churchill follows mrs frizzle everywhere and he is wary of her as she pecks him when the mood takes her but i guess as chickens are sociable creatures he wants to be around her. If he starts crowing i will have to rehome him. Tonight mrs frizzle went upstairs into the nesting box to sleep and i have put him downstairs inside an open ended cardboard box with straw in. He eventually stopped complaining and fell asleep on his own. Maybe thats what i need to do each night until he is older and stops trying to climb under her. He is so cute though.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Thanks mary, we only have mrs frizzle and churchill. We were given them about 8 weeks ago so they only have each other. Churchill follows mrs frizzle everywhere and he is wary of her as she pecks him when the mood takes her but i guess as chickens are sociable creatures he wants to be around her. If he starts crowing i will have to rehome him. Tonight mrs frizzle went upstairs into the nesting box to sleep and i have put him downstairs inside an open ended cardboard box with straw in. He eventually stopped complaining and fell asleep on his own. Maybe thats what i need to do each night until he is older and stops trying to climb under her. He is so cute though.

Post a pic of Churchill and lets see if it's male or female. Should be able to tell by now... no matter how many times people say silkies are hard to sex... usually VERY obvious by 12 weeks.

Why do you allow MRS frizzle to sleep in a nesting box? Roost is preferred.

I also would allow her to continue pecking the chick away until it gets the point. That is how it ALWAYS goes down at my house. Some take longer to mature then others. Being a single chick now may make it more difficult as it no longer has any sibling to try and mingle with. I personally would put them BOTH on roost every night until that is where they both went. No one is allowed to sleep in nest boxes at my house unless they are broody or still being broody raised. I don't like poo in my boxes and other girls wanna lay there. Maybe if it was only one chicken..

Let's see pics!

 

[aart]

OhMy...poor both birds.
Mama needs to wean the baby....
...but neither have other age appropriate flock members to commune with.
2-3-4 bird 'flocks'(not really a flock unless there's 5-haha!) can be harder to manage than larger flocks.

 

[chickens really]

All true. Momma is trying to wean the Chick but the Chick has no one else other than her.

 

[sonandsal]

Hi all. Yes I feel so sad for them.
We are not really supposed to have chickens here but I can probably get away with a couple of them if they stay quiet. When my last 2 girls died my neighbour knew of someone who needed to re-home hers so I got them. Mother and 4 babies. Well at about 10 weeks one by one they began to crow and my husband was worried that the neighbours would begin to hear them and complain so I re-homed them. But I was so attached to this little black one, (he comes up and snuggles with me every day) so I kept him longer. He did start a bit of crowing again yesterday, I just pretended i didn't hear it as it was not noisy at all.
I looked at a you tube clip just now and it appears my little one is a boy. Red wattles and comb and no long oval tail feathers but a group of shorter ones and a rounded humpy tail end. Here is a photo. I will have to re-home him when he starts to get noisy or am I better off just doing it sooner rather than later. I'm sure it will be in the next few weeks anyway. He is so tiny. I don't know what breed he is. The previous owner just bought 6 eggs to put under broody Mrs Frizzle. 4 hatched and there were 2 frizzles and one spotty one that looked like this chicken with smooth feathers but spotty chicken had some feathers growing from the feet like mrs frizzle does.

Well I will block of the nesting area tonight and they can both get on to the perch. I will see how that goes for a week or so. They are dust bathing at the moment. If anyone reading this knows someone in Perth West Australia that wants Churchill please drop me a line. Although he is super cuddly at the moment I've also read that they can change when the testosterone kicks in and they can become quite aggressive. Bugger! Oh dear what a dilemma. Why do I love chickens!

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Sorry to hear about your last two girls.

Do you know why they passed?

In my experience... it has ONLY been the really sweet, friendly cockerels that turn into monsters. But that would probably be towards you more than other people.

I would rehome him ASAP. And don't truly recommend harboring illegal chickens... though yes, I love them too. You have previous chicken experience, so you probably already know what you are dealing with as far as noise and such goes... though it can vary hugely by individual.

I also don't suggest it, but might as well share... there is a product called a no crow caller that stops the roosters from being able to fill their air sac all the way and so greatly diminishes the sound that comes out into more of a raspy talking type sound.

Your frizzle is awfully cute. Won't be too long before that boy is trying to mate her.

Hope blocking the nest off went well!

 

[sonandsal]

Thanks Eggsighted4life
My previous two girls were looked after for a week by an acquaintance who used to have about 12 chickens and still had one chicken and a lovely run and pen. We were going overseas for 7 weeks so it seemed like a good idea as they now had the room. I dropped them of a week early and after a few days I checked on them,something didn't seem right with them, they were really hungry and seemed very timid so I went back 2 days later and brought them back to our house the day before we left for the trip. My neighbours said they would look after them for me. They only had food once a day in this place whereas we had food available all day for them to graze on and I think their older son had kicked one of them because he said she was always making a noise and when I brought her home she had trouble eating properly.
I had found out that this acquaintance had accidentally poisoned her chickens because her dimwitted husband had hung solid rat bait in the fruit tree in the chicken pen. Of course the rats ate the bait and dropped pieces into the pen and the chickens ate them. The chickens all died within a couple of weeks. Now my chickens would have found any scraps of rat bait and no doubt eaten them. My neighbours promised to keep their eyes on my girls but as they survived for 2 weeks they thought they were going to be OK and then on a weekend they both died 2 days apart. I called from Budapest to Australia to see how my girls were doing and found out that they had both died the week before. Oh sad days! When I returned to Australia it was awful coming home to an empty coop.

Anyway that's when I adopted Mrs frizzle and family a couple of weeks later. I will put an ad in the paper next week and see if I can re-home him and also contact one of the petting farms, maybe they have space there for him. Do you think its best that I just keep Mrs frizzle by herself rather than try to introduce a couple of other girls.

By the way she still didn't sit on the wooden roosting bars she chose to sit on the floor of the pen instead. I'm going to check her feet later on today to make sure they are OK as when I got her she had massive problems with mites on her feet and they were badly swollen.
We can have a couple of chickens in our area but the by-laws require being so many metres from here and there etc and we may not fit into that now that the neighbours have just rebuilt their home closer to ours. So I'm just keeping quiet.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Oh gosh, that sounds terrible, I'm very sorry.

Yes, here in California they recently outlawed the use of the more effective poison that kills the rats within days. And so the one that is available takes two to three weeks to take effect and work by depleting vitamin K which is crucial for blood clotting. So it thins the blood to the point that the blood pressure is just too low, is my understanding. As much as I hate that that happened to you, I'm relieved to know that you do know why your others passed and not have to worry about some unknown illness affecting your future chooks. I am fighting the good fight against rats, and have NOT used poison even though I know my neighbors do. Rats are actually chicken predators and have been known to eat a hen alive and also eat chicks!

I also have feed available free choice all day plus good pasture. That was good thinking to get them set up while you could still check on them!

It's possible she never learned to roost or that her feet do bother her. You may end up just having to deal with it and clean out your nesting box. You could try putting her up on the roost after she settles down if the evening (this may take several times because you are teaching a new habit, usually about a week for me). Is she capable of getting onto the roost by herself? My Silkies have a ramp, but a couple haven't figured it out and so my daughter puts them up on roost every night. It's their routine so they wait for her. Kind of a pain though, always having to be home at roost time.. which also happens to be about sunset.

When I lived in the city, our law also allowed for 3 chickens a certain distance from the neighbors. I was worried about my neighbors because I was the first and only chicken keeper in the neighborhood. All of my neighbors ended up enjoying the hens egg song as it brought back some child hood nostalgia for them of the good old days before everything was paved into a concrete jungle. And of course ALL enjoyed the occasional FRESH fee range eggs. Stinks that they built closer. Seems like you should somehow be grandfathered in. But I may end up doing the same thing and just keeping quiet mostly if I were in your situation. One tip, get a routine that works for you and for your girls to follow. For example, if you don't let them out until 8 am they might not raise cane before that. But if you let them out at 6 and are late one day they might be raising cane until you show up. Then they learn they can make you come give treats or let them out or whatever they want you to do by raising a ruckus. Luckily, your neighbors new house likely has dual pane windows that will decrease the noise if they don't sleep with them open.

I actually would still consider getting her a friend or two. BUT I would NOT just bring in any random bird that could be hiding illness which hasn't yet presented. If you have the time for raising chicks, I would get some (2) sexed female chicks from the feed store (because they shouldn't be carrying any illness or parasites) and raise but introduce them together by about 8 weeks or so, using the look but don't touch method if needed.

Good luck finding your boy a home. Even though it may not be easy, I see people succeed all the time.