Growing my little flock

[DonyaQuick]

Happier post...look at these big ol' babies! 2.5lbs and growing fast at just 11 weeks. I've been to a couple poultry shows this year and it's hillarious to me how these still-squeaking babies are already bigger than many of the adult bantams I've seen. I am having an extremely hard time telling them apart at a glance compared to all th eother batches of chicks I've done, but I have learned the patterns of their tiny little combs when I get a close-up look. Can't remember if I have shared their names on this thread before but they are Bigfoot, Littlefoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, and Cuddles III. Bigfoot and Littlefoot are the snuggle bugs of this bunch, Sasquatch and Yeti are still pretty shy, and I know when it's Cuddles III when one just comes charging in out of nowhere to chomp my hand lol.

Also I have Squeak and Tengu, my Dimple babies, set up with their own partitions in a stable arrangement now. They are both such lovely boys with me - like perfect pet roos, zero human aggression. I can do anything I want around them, grab them and shower them with hugs and kisses...I just wish they weren't so spicy with each other! Maybe it'll just take time. I had been keeping Mr Squeak at night in a large dog crate type thing inside the bachelor boy coop and he hated that. Even reversed with Tengu in the box-in-a-box, Squeak seemed to hate the arrangement and the extra bother it entailed every morning and evening. Anyway, Squeak has gotten a lot calmer with his own little coop on his side. It's small enough it can fit through the run doors (even the human house doors if needed!) and be moved around using the little bits that stick out the side. I'm not going to say it's a pleasant thing to move but it's doable with enough huffing and puffing.

So my original bachelor flock plans maye in shambles, but I've got a new plan. Vanilla Bean has his own flock now and the Mighty Goober is his next door neighbor in a mini coop. He and Vanilla Bean do kind of like each other...I think they might stay coop/run neighbors even if not in together. Goob is a mellow boy and has shown exceedingly little interest in hens for a young roo. As far as I know he's never actually mated with a hen, and not for lack of opportunity when he was younger. Every time I think he's coming dancing over for a hen I'm holding it rapidly becomes clear he's dancing for *me* and just wants to say hi to the hen and then go back to getting my attention. I'm wondering if he should lead something of a special needs flock. I have two such hens already I'm worried about going forward, and I'm sure if I add more birds over time there will be others that have mobility or vision issues, etc. Just have to wait and see if Goobie stays mellow enough to be joined by the two I have currently.

As for Mr Squeak and Tengu and trying that whole bachlor duo...the issue between them is Squeak - who I think just hasn't settled out properly. Tengu actually has the makings of an excellent flock leader as I'm watching him calm down. He would lead Squeak well if Squeak would just calm down too and stop bouncing off the walls. So...hear me out with this insanity. Suppose I hatch some bean babies next year. I will get more boys naturally. I think Tengu would be a good leader for a small cockerel bunch if I split them off early. That *might* solve my current 1v1 issue and make it possible to reintegrate Squeak once it's no longer 1v1. We'll see...it's a long plan to try to unfold. But for now my bachelor boys are at least in a stable, managable arrangement even if not a fully integrated one.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I don’t think these are chickens. They are some kind of Jim Henson creation that escaped and are pretending to be chickens. Or maybe something that crawled out of a Dr Seuss book. It’s hilarious to me that these pullets are 15 weeks old and are just 3.5lb big babies still. People aren’t kidding when they say this breed develops slowly!

 

[2ndTink]

I don’t think these are chickens. They are some kind of Jim Henson creation that escaped and are pretending to be chickens. Or maybe something that crawled out of a Dr Seuss book. It’s hilarious to me that these pullets are 15 weeks old and are just 3.5lb big babies still. People aren’t kidding when they say this breed develops slowly!
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She's beautiful though!

 

[DonyaQuick]

She's beautiful though!

She's such a sweet huggy girl too - so glad I got this bunch of chicks!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Ok, new rooster experience for me...Mr Squeak here eliminated a mouse and brought it to me, tidbitting it and everything. Why thank you Mr Squeak th-*URF*-that's very*BLERGH*-that's so very nice of you... Don't worry he got hugs and a treat for it, and he saw me take it but didn't see me yeet it into the forest in disgust LOL.

Squeak and Tengu are still each in their own half of the bachelor setup. Tengu has become such a calm and mellow boy, but Squeak is still juuuuust a bit spicy still, although he's doing a lot better with that now he's got his own mini-coop. There's a lot of change happening on the property right now so I'm just letting them stay as-is; so far they've become very peaceful and friendly to each other that way through the mesh, and there's certainly enough other stress going on when there are dead trees being brought down and heavy machinery digging holes in the ground.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Miss Chungus's leg is almost fully back to normal. The way I healed her leg was by binging her in the house every night so she could sleep lying down and not holding onto a roost bar. Something about holding onto or balancing on the bar was keeping her leg bad. It's been a very, very slow process - so slow that I did worry whether her limp and inability to jump might be permanent for a while. I still don't know for sure what she did to her leg but it was either a muscle tear, damaged tendon, or both. Her left quad felt strange to the touch for quite a while and her knee on that side seemed to have some play in it that the other one ddn't, but that has all gone back to normal now. She can jump onto and off of my lap normally once more, and she's running around a lot more during the day out with the flock. The problem is...minus the leg injury, this sleeping situation has been her dream since the first day I made my original buffs sleep outside: to be out digging around by day and sleeping in the house in the same room as the humans at night. And so here I sit with a chicken on my lap, peering at the stuff on my cluttered desk while I type this...even though I'm pretty sure she could go back outside to sleep at this point lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Accidentally made a post here that that was meant for my 3D printing thread (caught that in time so I deleted it and reposted in the right place). So...here's a big ol' Goober instead, which does belong in this thread. He is cleaning up half a bag of treats that he went and spilled because I made the mistake of looking the other way for no more than 10sec. Poor boy is very much in the middle of his molt and really clinging to that one remaining sickle feather LOL.

 

[DonyaQuick]

So it is apparently the case that I can just leave Coco and Vanilla Bean free-roaming in the lower floor of the house unsupervised for rather a long time with their gaggle of beanlings (so long as I don't mind a mess to clean up afterwards anyway!). Just throw some seed on the floor and they are very well behaved. I guess they can't jump and they know it, so they just stick to the floor...and boots. The babies really like tipping over boots and sitting on them. I had to move these guys pretty rapidly yesterday because there was some construction happening on my property, and the dudes sprayed something that offgassed a lot and thoes fumes started blowing towards some of my enclosures. They didn't give me any notice, so a more orderly flock shuffle between the various saf setups wasn't an option. Main flock was far enough away they were ok according to my VOC meter, and so were the bachelor boys in their newer further-away setup, but Goobs had to go in my home office and the Beans got the whole downstairs to themselves while things dissipated outside. VOC meter eventually said all was safe, so everyone is back outside now.

 

[fuzzi]

So it is apparently the case that I can just leave Coco and Vanilla Bean free-roaming in the lower floor of the house unsupervised for rather a long time with their gaggle of beanlings (so long as I don't mind a mess to clean up afterwards anyway!). Just throw some seed on the floor and they are very well behaved. I guess they can't jump and they know it, so they just stick to the floor...and boots. The babies really like tipping over boots and sitting on them. I had to move these guys pretty rapidly yesterday because there was some construction happening on my property, and the dudes sprayed something that offgassed a lot and thoes fumes started blowing towards some of my enclosures. They didn't give me any notice, so a more orderly flock shuffle between the various saf setups wasn't an option. Main flock was far enough away they were ok according to my VOC meter, and so were the bachelor boys in their newer further-away setup, but Goobs had to go in my home office and the Beans got the whole downstairs to themselves while things dissipated outside. VOC meter eventually said all was safe, so everyone is back outside now.

View attachment 3951531

1. What is VOC?
2. What did they spray?

The chicks on your boots have a gorgeous feather pattern!

 

[DonyaQuick]

1. What is VOC?
2. What did they spray?

VOC = volatile organic compound. My meter for that can only measure 2 kinds: total VOCs present and formaldehyde separately. I got low formaldehyde and higher total otehr VOCs. My meter was putting in the "moderate" range but that's super bad for birds to be exposed to. Also apparently not good for people exposure since I got some respirtory symptoms, but I got royally gassed with it multiple times over several hours while my chickens were scuttled off to the house almost as soon as I got a wiff of it blowing in.

I wish I knew the exact thing sprayed. I asked for the product name and they refused to give it to me. The only explanation I got was "a sealer" sprayed onto uncured concrete and that it was "NY state approved" (which is meaningless for many aspects of safety). Pretty mad I couldn't get a specific product to know the exact thing I was dealing with. Best I can tell from looking up example products for that kind of usage is that it probably had either acetone, toluene, and/or xylene. Probably other things too - ethylene glycol is a common additive that will trip formaldehyde sensors like my device has, and it is an extremely common anti-mold agent in caulks and similar things. A lot of products don't even have to list their exact toxic components as long as they say "contains VOCs" or something similar and advise a well-ventilated area, so maybe knowing the exact product wouldn't have gotten me much anyway. From the strong and distinctive odor it had, my main suspect right now for the high VOC outgassing is toluene, which is a nasty resperatory irritant that I've smelled a number of times before. I ended up with temporary athsma-like symptoms last night from stupidly going in close to measure the VOC gradient from source to coop without a respirator.