Growing my little flock

[fuzzi]

Congratulations on your Friend award!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Mine were not afraid of my construction noises.

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"Watcha doing there, Mom?"

Your chicks are putting my other two bachelor boys to shame with that. The Goob definitely likes his loud tools, but as Mr Squeak and Tengu would probably tell it, they were lucky to survive the very scary electric screw driver that passed through the enclosure yesterday lol.

Congratulations on your Friend award!

Thanks!! It was definitely a surprise in my notifications today!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Mr Squeak and Tengu: peaceful, just a bit nervous still getting used to their new setup.

Goober: peaceful, infinite giggle machine

The Beans: peaceful and bouncy

Main flock: *narrator voice* it was a dark and foreboding time where chaos ruled...the reign of Meep was both unexpected and breif, coming to a sudden end when the terror that was post-broody-Scruffy invaded from the east.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I was originally going to put the cochin chicks in with main flock for a while to grow out and then introduce to the Beans when bigger, but since broody mom Scruffy un-broodied rather fast there didn't seem to be much advantage to that strategy. They spent the past week just with me in the house while Scruffy was outside. So I thought, well...let's see how they do with the Beans, since temperatures are good for it and that's where they'd be destined for anyway.

So...not what I expected right off the bat...Vanilla Bean went into turbo dad mode immediately.

a short whlie later and...uh...eh?

...and, um...

They did get kinda-sorta-barely bopped eventually, but it was for snotty behavior like pulling quite hard on Vanilla Bean's wattles and saddle feathers like he was an enrichment item for them lol. Almost wondering if I should just shove them in the coop tonight! I probably won't just because I'm paranoid, but...maybe tomorrow. At any rate, they can clearly just be out with the Beans during the day no problems, no supervision.

 

[2ndTink]

I was originally going to put the cochin chicks in with main flock for a while to grow out and then introduce to the Beans when bigger, but since broody mom Scruffy un-broodied rather fast there didn't seem to be much advantage to that strategy. They spent the past week just with me in the house while Scruffy was outside. So I thought, well...let's see how they do with the Beans, since temperatures are good for it and that's where they'd be destined for anyway.

So...not what I expected right off the bat...Vanilla Bean went into turbo dad mode immediately.
View attachment 3885724

a short whlie later and...uh...eh?
View attachment 3885723

...and, um...
View attachment 3885722

They did get kinda-sorta-barely bopped eventually, but it was for snotty behavior like pulling quite hard on Vanilla Bean's wattles and saddle feathers like he was an enrichment item for them lol. Almost wondering if I should just shove them in the coop tonight! I probably won't just because I'm paranoid, but...maybe tomorrow. At any rate, they can clearly just be out with the Beans during the day no problems, no supervision.

Awe! Daddy-Bean! Thats adorable

 

[fuzzi]

I was originally going to put the cochin chicks in with main flock for a while to grow out and then introduce to the Beans when bigger, but since broody mom Scruffy un-broodied rather fast there didn't seem to be much advantage to that strategy. They spent the past week just with me in the house while Scruffy was outside. So I thought, well...let's see how they do with the Beans, since temperatures are good for it and that's where they'd be destined for anyway.

So...not what I expected right off the bat...Vanilla Bean went into turbo dad mode immediately.
View attachment 3885724

a short whlie later and...uh...eh?
View attachment 3885723

...and, um...
View attachment 3885722

They did get kinda-sorta-barely bopped eventually, but it was for snotty behavior like pulling quite hard on Vanilla Bean's wattles and saddle feathers like he was an enrichment item for them lol. Almost wondering if I should just shove them in the coop tonight! I probably won't just because I'm paranoid, but...maybe tomorrow. At any rate, they can clearly just be out with the Beans during the day no problems, no supervision.

What a nice surprise!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Squeak and Tengu are back together 24/7 now. No more my-side-your-side, just a fully shared coop and run. So far so good! They seem really happy to be back in with each other. Now I just have some small things to finish up with their setup - mulching over the HWC skirt, building up the substrate a bit, getting their waterers off the ground, etc. Then later on maybe in October or so I can put the dividing mesh back up and see if having the Goob included is an option.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well, rooster boy harmony didn't last long. Pretty solidly my fault though I think. A huge thunderstorm at dusk caused them to run around in the dark instead of going to bed a couple days ago, and I made the mistake of bringing them inside in the middle of the night (they were soaked and cold) and then putting them in separate crates next to each other because I didn't think the crates were big enough for two. They wanted to go in the same one...I should've let them. I didn't, which was an instant bachelor boy pecking order reset the next day, and with the bonus that they're also both afraid of the enclosure and therefore chronically on edge. So...my-side-your-side again. More complicated mornings and evenings again. Insert explatives here.

At least the cochin babies are doing well. I chickened out on stuffing them in the coop at night with the Beans though - so I'm still hauling them inside at night. There's been a weird cold snap and I also figure one thing at a time since I've got so much background noise going on with the bachelor flock situation.

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

I’ve only been keeping chickens for about a year and a half; earlier this year I decided to get a rooster for my hens to have a more complete experience and to turn chicken keeping into a larger project by hatching my own chicks to maintain a larger group. These are current my adults minus my broody. I've hatched eggs from Dingus and Buddy so far.

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Roosters are supposed to be dinosaurs, but Ziggy is more like a moody version of Barney the purple dinosaur. He’s a group hug kind of guy that occasionally gets bent out of shape if I set the feeder in the wrong spot, but even then he just tugs my pants. He's a very sweet boy.

Buddy is my smartest chicken and is a hefty girl even though it's not obvious from the photo. She’s probably a little on the chunky side because she uses her smarts to eat more junk food than the others, but she also has a lot more muscle than my other hens. She lays medium sized pinkish to light brown eggs with white speckles. She is a lap chicken that likes to be pampered.

And Dingus, aka The Dingus Baby, aka Big Ol’ Baby Dingus...she wails and cries if she doesn’t get to shove her face in my armpit each morning. It started when she was a chick. None of my others do this. Dingus lays light brown to nearly white eggs that usually have brown speckles.

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Another odd thing about Dingus: I believe she is far-sighted in one eye and extremely far-sighted in the other. She has almost no up-close depth perception, which was obvious from when she was just a couple weeks old and couldn't figure out how to jump out of the brooder with the others. She's still rubbish at jumping and will snap at bugs that are 2ft too far away, but she can also spot a predator in tall grass clear across a good-sized field. If she sounds off, I know to just trust it and go in the direction she's looking, because there will be something out there even though I can't see it until I'm halfway there. So, her weird eyesight issue has turned out to be half disability and half superpower. I was on the fence about whether to hatch her eggs because of the vision issue but she gets along just fine and seems like a hardy bird otherwise. Doesn't seem like either of her offspring have inherited her far-sightedness.

I wanted to hatch some from Chungus too, but her eggs were all duds unfortunately, so for now I just have 4 chicks, 2 each from Buddy and Dingus.

And they were hatched by my little Dimple here. Please forgive the state of the room; I had everyone set up in my home office for the first couple weeks and the chicks got into pretty much everything.

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Dimple is my bantam size hen who grew weird little bricks for spurs tried to be the rooster more than once before I got a real one. She probably will never have fertile eggs of her own because she doesn’t squat. Instead, she does the Dimple Dance where she furiously drums her feet and scoots about with hunched up shoulders. Being broody is probably the most normal hen thing she’s ever done. As soon as they were able to leave the nest she started bringing them over to take naps on me, so now I have super-friendly chicks. They are all around 3 weeks old now.

As for the individual chicks, Dingus’s vision issue doesn't seem to have been passed along to her children but a certain something else apparently was. Two days out of the egg and it started. How on earth is there a shove-head-in-armpit gene?

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Buddy made what looks to be a barred chick and another that is white with some random black feathers coming in. I’m actually excited that it looks like I have a cockerel with the white one; I think it could be a very pretty bird. The white buddy baby is the only one so far making suspect it's a cockerel - comb coming faster and in red at the base instead of skin tone and wattles coming in early and on the redder side.

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And this is Dingus’s other chick. It took me a few days to realize what was up with it's face, but I think this poor little one actually broke its jaw during hatching. It got stuck after pipping and I wonder if that's why. It could also have been from being bopped around because it was last out with its beak protruding from the egg for some time. It had its foot right up by its beak through the hole, and I had to assist by tearing the membrane a bit so it could push the shell apart the rest of the way with its foot, which it did on its own. On its beak, it initially had had a big dent that swelled up at first, and it wanted to sleep in my hand a lot more than the others for the first few days. The injured area turned dark red first and then purple, but it now looks to have healed and the discoloration is gone. It’s a strong eater and catching back up in size to the others. I know this type of injury in a chick can lead to scissor beak but I’m not seeing any sign of curvature so far. I hope it does ok even if it has a bit of a snarly face.

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Now I'm in the process of trying to figure out names for these little fluffs. It will be fun to see how their colors turn out as they grow.

You should name them Moe, Larry, Curly, and Charlie.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Another sad update...I lost Dimple. It was nothing to do with the bumble from before; that had been all healed up for some time. This week she just had a stroke or something similar; I'm not exactly sure what it was even though I was actually out with them when it happened - whatever it was, it rapidly led to siezures and a heart attack. Given Squishy died of a stroke and they are vaguely related (Dimple is from the same hatchery batch as Squishy's mom, Dingus) I'm inclined to think it must have been the same thing. That's three of my original six buffs and one of their offspring now I've lost now to freak health things.

Meanwhile, of my other original buffs, Chungus seems to have damaged a tendon in her knee so she needs an accessibility ramp to get on/off the roosts. At least I know it's an injury; took me a while to figure out what exactly was injured and I was freaking out about possible degenerative neurological stuff the whole time - I'm grateful it doesn't seem to be anything like that and probably will be able to heal some over time, although I think her days of randomly kangaroo-kicking the barred girls are over.

Buddy, mother of my main rooster brothers, is currently having a horrendous early molt and hasn't fully stopped laying eggs either, so she's living in the house to make sure she eats properly and to avoid getting picked at. I would say Dingus is the only one without any issues but I'm somewhat worried since Squishy was her daughter.

I really hope the olive eggers, oops-barred-rocks, and Cackle cochins do better in terms of health. So far the oops-barred-rocks are actually looking the best of that bunch for reproductive health: small eggs and not daily layers. For the cochins I guess I won't know for quite a while - I've heard they can take ages to start laying.