2018 Newbie Chat!

[Cbarr00]

I'm making 2 quiche today. Never have done that or ate that, but they say it freezes well. Then I am making egg salad and French toast.

I wonder if duck eggs would be better for quiche?

I've never had a quiche before. I just looked up a recipe and am tempted to make one. Also never had egg salad lol. I should probably try those things. I'm gonna need lots of egg recipes once our chicks start laying in about 4 months. We give a couple dozen to DH co workers every week too. I would love to try duck eggs! I hear they're really fluffy.

 

[emrya]

So we have two coops.. one holds 16 and one holds 6. They are attached to the same run.

We have 20 chickens using coops right now, since one is in the garage. Split prior to today was 15/5.

Today every single one is in the small coop. Every. Single. One.

 

[Anna Ranieri]

You’re thinking like a human lol.
The bird lowest in the pecking order is usually always the worst one.
Emily can be terrible.
It’s because they want the new bird(s) to be the lowest instead of them.
They don’t want the new bird to rise higher than them.

I’ve discovered who my lower ranking teenagers are because they relentlessly follow my dog, Charlie, and get in his face quite a bit.
Charlotte & Elsie are the worst.
Charlotte was even attacked because she pecked him but he didn’t hurt her.
I’ve noticed she doesn’t bother him anymore lol.
He is allowed to protect himself because I know they could take an eye out.

I have to keep Charlie in the house when I give treats to the birds that I know he would like.
Recently I gave them a bunch of lettuce which Charlie has never shown an interest in.
He was trying to sniff it and possibly eating the tiny bits of cabbage that was in it when I heard him snarling and saw Red going after him.
She doesn’t play.
She will fight the dog.
She has no problem with it.
He was retreating from her but I told him to go in the house because I didn’t want Angus getting involved in the dispute.
The problem is that body language is different between dogs and chickens.
When Charlie practices what in dog behavior terminology is called “avoidance” (turning away to protect his face) the chickens perceive it as him giving way to them as the dominant one.
This is a problem.

An interesting thing happened in the last couple of days.
Yesterday I put on my warm winter coat for the first time.
When I let the chickens out Oliver stopped in the doorway and just stared at me.
He kept looking at the coat.
I know chickens see color (it’s a pretty purple) so I figured he wasn’t sure if it was me.
He would look back and forth between the coat and my face.
I kept talking to him so he could hear my familiar voice and he finally came out.
This morning I put a hat on.
Angus was the only one that approached me.
He kept looking up at my head.
He began to pretend to peck the ground.
I figured that wasn’t a good direction for the encounter to go in so I bent down so he could see my face better and I kept talking to him like Oliver.
I watched his eyes go back and forth between my face and the hat on my head.
I kept talking to him.
After about a minute or two he decided it was me and walked away.
Chickens are so smart and interesting.

Love this story! Amazing how they pay attention to detail. I don't have any stories like this but I discovered one of my girls (Jellybean) likes wool, balls of wool I mean, weather permitting, I often do some knitting when siting out with the birds, she and Pedro always come over to inspect what I have. (I am very careful not to let them peck at it to ensure they don't ingest any) but on one occasion I needed the bathroom so put my knitting in my knitting bag, left it on my chair not thinking they'd be able to open my bag but Jellybean found a way to and when I went back out, I found my knitting strewn across the garden, and Jellybean had somehow managed to pull the knitting off the needles and was sitting on it! She does it any chance she can, not that I leave it unattended anymore, but she'll even try to get it out of my hands and given the chance she'll sit on the knitting and have a nap - I wouldn't mind so much but she always pulls the knitting off the needles and I end up having to re-knit loads
I know you're right about my humanising the situation just is hard to see sometimes, especially when all has been calm for so long and them wham! Seemingly out of the blue they start up again. There seems to be a bit of a pattern though, I've noticed they act up loads more when the weather is bad (wet and windy) and it seems the worse the weather gets the more they act up, especially at treat time. I've also noticed the ducks have started to get possessive with their favourite foraging sites, so I'm wondering if it has anything to do with there being so few bugs around now - that and them not having the brain capacity to realise there is food available 24/7 and that it isn't ever going to run out. If I'm right about this then maybe things will be better in the summer.

 

[Anna Ranieri]

So we have two coops.. one holds 16 and one holds 6. They are attached to the same run.

We have 20 chickens using coops right now, since one is in the garage. Split prior to today was 15/5.

Today every single one is in the small coop. Every. Single. One.

 

[Anna Ranieri]

I'm in the same boat. Gave away 2 dozen eggs this week and have 3 dz on my counter. I decided I'm making deviled eggs today.

Would it not be worth your while to sell them?

 

[Anna Ranieri]

My chicks were hatched late August. By the time they got outside in the coop, I was mainly wearing jeans whenever I went out. One day it got warm so I put shorts on. What I do a lot is bring this little sit-on rolling gardening seat in the coop and sit on it, stretching my legs out so they can climb up. I did that and they all stood back eyeing me. One slowly came up to my leg and gently pecked it. She jumped up on my leg and then the rest were ok with it.
Speaking of jeans, my chicks love to peck at them, they even will scratch the ground when they do. Sometimes I think I should just hang an old pair up in there and they'd be entertained for hours, lol.
Oh, they made it through that really cold windy night ok. Three of them were kind of huddled on the roost. It looked like Pearl was standing but then I saw Jade tuck her head farther underneath Pearl. And realized that Diamond was in there too, half way underneath Pearl. She wasn't standing, she was sitting on them, lol. We put some plastic up the next day, it was in the 20s but sunny and no wind so it was nice. We put it up on the west side of the run. Our winter winds come predominately from the northwest. We're going to add some on the north, that's a part of the run that's underneath the coop so shouldn't take much time. We had bought a new mattress last year and my husband saved the huge plastic bag that it was covered with. It's nice thick plastic so we cut it up and used that.

How strange and fascinating that yours and @ChooksNQuilts birds react this way, mine have seen us in all types of get up but they've never acted any different. Recently I've started wearing a black water proof rain coat and wearing it with the hood up, no one took any notice other than trying to eat the little toggles hanging from it. I went from wearing next to nothing in the summer to wearing a big pink fluffy over coat - again no reaction at all - same with my daughter and grandson, they don't react to their changes either. How curious

 

[CannedMonster]

My chicks were hatched late August. By the time they got outside in the coop, I was mainly wearing jeans whenever I went out. One day it got warm so I put shorts on. What I do a lot is bring this little sit-on rolling gardening seat in the coop and sit on it, stretching my legs out so they can climb up. I did that and they all stood back eyeing me. One slowly came up to my leg and gently pecked it. She jumped up on my leg and then the rest were ok with it.
Speaking of jeans, my chicks love to peck at them, they even will scratch the ground when they do. Sometimes I think I should just hang an old pair up in there and they'd be entertained for hours, lol.
Oh, they made it through that really cold windy night ok. Three of them were kind of huddled on the roost. It looked like Pearl was standing but then I saw Jade tuck her head farther underneath Pearl. And realized that Diamond was in there too, half way underneath Pearl. She wasn't standing, she was sitting on them, lol. We put some plastic up the next day, it was in the 20s but sunny and no wind so it was nice. We put it up on the west side of the run. Our winter winds come predominately from the northwest. We're going to add some on the north, that's a part of the run that's underneath the coop so shouldn't take much time. We had bought a new mattress last year and my husband saved the huge plastic bag that it was covered with. It's nice thick plastic so we cut it up and used that.

When I wore sandals in the summer they would peck my toes!

 

[CannedMonster]

So we have two coops.. one holds 16 and one holds 6. They are attached to the same run.

We have 20 chickens using coops right now, since one is in the garage. Split prior to today was 15/5.

Today every single one is in the small coop. Every. Single. One.

My bantams often try to roost in the big walk in coop.
I usually move them back to the prefab because I don’t want my large rooster thinking they’re his girls and breeding them because they’re so small.
But now that my little Cochin is brooding eggs I may move the others (except Cricket and Frodo) to the big coop anyway.
I don’t want them to harm the chicks.

 

[CannedMonster]

I candled today and from what I could see both eggs have veins!

This means we may have chicks in two weeks!
I hope Pippi is able to handle this!!
I had to take them into the bathroom in the house so it was dark enough to candle.
I hope I didn’t jostle them too much.
I got them back under her ASAP.

 

[llombardo]

I candled today and from what I could see both eggs have veins!

This means we may have chicks in two weeks!
I hope Pippi is able to handle this!!
I had to take them into the bathroom in the house so it was dark enough to candle.
I hope I didn’t jostle them too much.
I got them back under her ASAP.

My one brahma seems to be on the verge of going broody. She looks like a zombie when laying on the eggs. I was watching her yesterday. She left but went back. Then she came back out, she seems to be having thoughts--I on the other hand am having the opposite thoughts.