Growing my little flock

[DonyaQuick]

Got a new phone for the first time in about 8 years...which, even with my lack of photography skills, still lets me take pictures of Vanilla Bean's face in more wrinkly and stubbly detail than anyone needed to see LOL.

Also, first Meep egg today! If I counted right, she's just over 27 weeks old; I was starting to wonder if she was just going to wait until the spring. After spending a long time making a fuss in the nest boxes this morning, at some point she changed her mind and laid it in the middle of the run...so not the cleanest of very-first-eggs I've collected.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Beautiful but scary snow is here at the moment - it's making some trees lean at some very strange angles compared to what they usually do with ice/snow. The main flock in the new setup is safe. However, I brought the 4-bird bachelor flock inside last night out of an abundance of caution...and had to do it again again tonight because the snow is still there dragging big branches down at angles too close for comfort near the part of the smaller, original coop they sleep in. So once again I get to look forward to four silly voices crowing whenever I make any small noise starting at around 4:30AM. I just really hope the snow melts off of those trees tomorrow to remove the random branch-snappage risk. Then it's trimming time if I can get the right equipment.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Miss Chungus giving me the look of disapproval for having too many olive eggers on my lap, leaving her in the least desirable end-of-knee space. Don't worry, she got plenty of hugs afterwards lol.

Got two full sets of roosts in the shed coop finally. Took a while because the wood I wanted to use for the angled side parts split on me, and then I had a weirdly hard time finding decent quality 2x4s that weren't PT.

 

[fuzzi]

Miss Chungus giving me the look of disapproval for having too many olive eggers on my lap, leaving her in the least desirable end-of-knee space. Don't worry, she got plenty of hugs afterwards lol.
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Got two full sets of roosts in the shed coop finally. Took a while because the wood I wanted to use for the angled side parts split on me, and then I had a weirdly hard time finding decent quality 2x4s that weren't PT.
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What's wrong with using PT lumber?

 

[DonyaQuick]

Oh man...stress day. Had to deal with that tree that was damaged and looking bad during the last storm, the one that had me bringing the bachelor boys into the house at night since I was worried it could crush part of their coop if it came down badly. Almost got the tree down without incident but not quite. The tree spun a bit in an unexpected way, so the corner of the shed coop roof took a whack and will need repair. All of the chickens are fine which is the impotant thing; they were out of harms way the whole time. The damage is pretty minor considering the size of the tree.

What's wrong with using PT lumber?

I read in a few places it's not good to use for something chickens might sit on for a long time. Of course, that said, I've never actually seen anyone say their chickens got irritated feet or showed any other kind of problem from sitting on PT. Still, the PT I can get off the shelf locally though is greasy feeling at best and has actually left goop on my hands on occasion, which is just a big ol' nope for me. I know that goop will eventually dry out and leave the surface feeling like regular wood, but that's taken weeks with PT I've had in the past.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Blaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...and sadly I know what that water tastes like too, thanks to Chungus and Meep (the ones who are out in this photo) who thought this whole situation was AMAZING and went yippee yahoo splish sploosh around my face while I was bent over trying to move stuff out of the way and dig trenches.

I don't really know what I expected with the riddiculous quantity of rain my area got...I guess I expected some soggy patches, but not for the entire field above the run to develop channels in it funneling water to one corner of the run (which has never happened before), and then for that water to break through a little berm I had and go gushing in. The pic is after I built that berm back up, dug extra drainage trenches outside the run, and tried to push the bedding around to let it drain better within the run. Hopefully it'll be drained by tomorrow and won't be an ice rink in the morning when everything freezes.

Fortunately, the coop was completely dry despite the small roof dent, since my husband added a peel and stick tile to cover the break. So, I just took a small chair in there to continue the morning ritual and sit with everyone lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

When the derp squad is out, there will be shennanigans...derp derp derp derp WHOA BRUH WHAT U DOIN' ok cool derp derp derp...

 

[fuzzi]

When the derp squad is out, there will be shennanigans...derp derp derp derp WHOA BRUH WHAT U DOIN' ok cool derp derp derp...
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Love the freeze-frame on the middle shot!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Got my first little olive egg yesterday evening! I think it's a Raven egg. Got two more this afternoon but they were super sneaky about it so I don't know who did it.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well...not really the most wonderful start to the new year. Things seem to have turned out ok but yetserday was not looking good.

I think I'm done with the thing of feeding all flock and then relying on my hens supplementing calcium on on their own via limestone/oystershell/whatever else. With hardy hens laying smaller eggs less frequently, maybe that's totally fine. Or maybe it's fine if you don't mind losing a bird here or there to egg binding if they don't eat the oyster shell. I will of course try to select for the hardy case when breeding but I'm not ok losing a bird or having it be ill just because it won't eat things in exactly the right ratios. My original BOs were clearly bred for more laying in their early years even if not the level of egg-making as true production breeds. Of the four of those hens I still have, two of them chow down on the calcium supplements voluntarily, one of them eats the minimum so her shells have been getting noticably thinner as the eggs have been getting bigger although they're still technically ok...and Miss Chungus is the 4th and she has real issues eating any kind of calcium supplement that isn't disguised as a non-rock food item. I don't know what about it bothers her, but she has never been a fan of anything I've tried for free-choice calcium. She'll eat a very small amount of the supplements now and then, but she always did best on just layer feed. I never had any issues with her and calcium up until I had to switch to 100% all flock (originally due to supply chain issues), and since then I've had occasional soft shell or extremely thin shell issues with her since then which I've tried to mitigate through supplementation and sometimes just mixing layer feed into what the flock gets. If I'm sneaky and give her, say, a calcium powder supplemented mash with something tasty mixed in like a bit of tuna...she eats it readily and the shell thickness is good. But I have to do that daily. And eventually she gets tired of whatever the current trick is and I have to figure out something else.

Yesterday, Chungus just waited by the run door during morning hug time. Very unusual. I took her in as soon as I saw that since something was obviously off, although I may never know exactly what. I spent that afternoon and evening periodically giving her a calcium citrate suspension by pipette in case it was egg binding. Calcium citrate dissolves better than carbonate but still pretty poorly, but stirring it up before putting it into the pipette still gets a decent amount of it per drop. She would take fluids that way and did drink some water on her own, but she wouldn't eat and was having trouble pooping - which can either be a gut impaction or egg binding. Her crop was fine and emptying. The calcium seemed to help get things moving out within a few hours, and then she started eating again. I kept her in the house overnight; it's entirely possible she laid a soft shelled egg and ate it, thereby erasing any evidence, but also just as possible she had impacted vegetation based on what I saw coming out this morning. So, no way to know what it was for sure but the calcium definitely seemed necessary. Either way, she's much improved and is back to her bouncy self as of this afternoon and actually got so bouncy and chaotic that I had to take her back outside.

Anyway, I've got 14 hens in the main flock now...I'm just going to do layer feed for them. When I've accidentally given more layer feed in the mix, I have noticed better membranes even for birds that eat plenty of calcium on the side. For my birds at least, it just seems much harder to supplement calcium and whatever other trace nutrients layers need for some hens than it is to just give them what they need in an error-proof way and then supplement protein on the side. Easier to give some leftover fish periodically than what I've been doing so far. I'll keep the bachelor flock on all flock and will of course use that for chicks and broody hens in the future, but the big rooster brothers with the main flock will be getting more layer feed since I don't have a way to feed them separately. I know some people get weird about giving roosters layer feed, but I've literally seen my roos eat the calcium rocks too in non-trivial quantities on a regular basis, so I can't think layer feed is actually that bad for them if they'll boluntarily eat extra calcium anyway. So...time to transition to layer feed for the main flock.