Growing my little flock

[RaeofSunshine]

I am enjoying this thread so much!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Coffee time with Dingus this morning. She wants to know why I keep putting those awful little screaming gremlins in her coop every day. Sorry Dingus, but two of them are yours!

Weather report was dire last night so of course I caved and let the chicks sleep in the house again. Naturally the weather report was completely wrong and absolutely nothing happened...so time to try having everyone sleep in the coop for real this time.

Still having a devil of a time getting pictures of Scruffy (one of the Dingus Baby babies), but her beak is looking really good! That scar/lump she had has shrunk and both halves are still nicely lined up.

Also realize I've kept referring to "my other broody." It's Chungus! I'm expecting to hear some peeping from the nest any time now.

The eggs are from someone else rather than from my own flock. All should fun crosses and I don't know which eggs are from what breed, so I'm really excited to see what the chicks look like.

 

[DonyaQuick]

The chicks survived their first night in the coop. Getting them in there was interesting. I waited until it was pretty dark but there was apparently just enough light left that Dingus could see what I was doing. She kept sneaking over and hiding just out of sight so she could lean her long neck in like and boop the chicks on their backs as soon as I'd set them down, thereby ensuring that they'd go "ahh something touched me in the dark!" and run out again.

Late morning when I opened everything up and sat in the run with everyone, the chicks started running around, some just being silly, others trying to run the hen gauntlet for whatever reason. That in turn made crazy aunt Brownie start jumping about with them. Chicken Parkour is not unusual for her; she can basically run sideways across the walls if she wants to. However, right now she is molting and missing a lot of the wing feathers she relies on for those stunts. I didn't see exactly what happened, just that one minute she was a ball of chaos and the next she was limping her way back over to me. No external sign of injury, nothing sore to the touch, and still has full range of motion, so I have to assume either a sprain or pulled muscle. So now my home office has both broody Chungus and Brownie in a carrier to try to get her to rest that leg.

 

[DonyaQuick]

...My chicks just put themselves to bed on their own in the coop with everyone else. How? How and why? It took me OVER A YEAR to get my original hens to put their butts in there at night and it wasn't even me that managed it, it was Ziggy. So it took a year and a rooster to make them do it! And this batch was seriously harassed on their first day. But day two is a new day I guess and they just march in there. I don't understand but I'm not going to question it lol.

Anyway, funny picture time. This post is brought to you by the word "wide"

And finally got a pic of little Scruffy showing how that hatching injury to her beak is smoothing out nicely.

And their broody mom, Dimple, has finally got her perky comb back after it had been all small and shriveled while she was broody. Took a long time to go back to normal!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Two new little ones.

Yeah, they are in a tub with a heat lamp...not with broody mamma Chungus like I wanted. She is near them, but in a different enclosure. Chungus loves eggs but seems to have some problems once it's a little creature running around. She still wants to be near the chicks, talks to them, tries to show them food, etc., but she freaked out when the first one wanted to go under her. I have never hatched with Chungus before this; I know not all broody hens know exactly what to do the first time around. I guess Dimple was pretty exceptional in that regard.

Chungus also didn't get to experience a natural hatch, which I'm sure didn't help. I have just had the worst luck with this batch of eggs. I have whined plenty about those events in a couple other threads. I ended up having to do two very stressful assisted hatches or I would have had no chicks at all. Still trying to figure out how I had such a good hatch a couple months ago while this one just felt like one disaster after another.

At least I have two friendly chicks to keep each other company and Chungus is around, just not directly in with them.

 

[DonyaQuick]

The new little ones are making good progress. The two eggs that hatched could have been from either barred rock hens or buff orpingtons. Looks like I perhaps got one from each type of hen. Same rooster in each case who is a red color.

The black chick I assume is from a barred rock hen based on chick color and egg color, which means it should be sex-linked if I understand my genetics right there. No white on the back of the head and the feet are very dark. So...pullet?

The lighter colored one isn't as white as it looks in the photo; it's more cream colored. I'm thinking buff orp mom based again on egg and chick color. It showed very pronounced alternating wing feather lengths in the first set of primaries coming in. I've not seen that on any other chicks I've had - it was quite striking and made a neat checkered pattern as the feather tips started to fluff out. Not knowing the exact genetics of the rooster I don't know if that's feather-sexable or not.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well, down another chicken...Brownie didn't make it through the weekend. The injury was much worse than I thought, a broken pelvis and a pretty bad type of break. I didn't realize that's what it was until right before she died. I can't find anything in my enclosure that could have caused that; no high places to jump off, nothing bad to land on when jumping off a roosting bar, etc. Her health problems may have been more extensive than I originally thought. I knew she had chronic egg laying issues but perhaps also bone density problems too. Always felt like I could never get enough calcium into her to fix the egg problems. I never hatched any of her eggs for that reason.

On a more positive note, I think Monster might be a boy. That would be no bad thing for me. I would actually feel more comfortable with "an heir and a spare" even if it means having to rush a bit on building things to partition everyone and/or to make a bachelor pad. It's not visible in the photo below, but there may be a couple saddle feathers coming in on Monster. Could yet be wrong as they're still partly in sheaths so just have to wait and see if they stay as pointy as they look now or if they somehow fuzz out into a rounded shape. I was never sure what to make of the comb/wattles because Monster is just to big compared to the others.

Meanwhile, Junior is making good progress towards the rooster look. His saddle feathers are on the way too. I think his snotty phase may be starting, but so far not with me; he's a ridiculous mammas boy lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Cute overload time. Took me a while to get this off of my phone so these two little ones they have a bit more feathers than this now, but they are still ridiculous and try to dust bathe on my pants every morning lol. They have an actual dust bath tray but I guess pants are better. I referred to my older batch as "little babes" but with these two I kept saying "little beans" for whatever reason, so it's official...they are The Beans: a vanilla bean and either a coco/coffee bean. The dark bean is a super hyper little thing so leaning towards it being more of an espresso bean lol.

Oh, and my two older white chicks Squishy and Scruffy are extremely hard to tell apart now. The good thing about this is that it means Scruffy is really turning out superbly given that gnarly beak injury she started with, but the downside is that they now both think their name is Squishy lol.

And Monster's "saddle" feathers I was convinced I saw have totally vanished. Not a single pointy thing in there now. Back to being a chicken of ambiguous gender. I should give up trying to guess.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Some big ol' Buddy bird attitude!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Two hyper beans! The vanilla bean has such a thick comb. It's no longer than the other's but it's super wide.