Growing my little flock

[2ndTink]

Awe, I hope you can help her get braver

 

[DonyaQuick]

First outdoor time for the boys in quite a while! Most of this month has been knee-deep snow with little paths carved in it to let me get to the enclosures. That mess finally melted this past week and then we got a much nicer light dusting - perfect conditions for the derp squad to go explore a bit.

And I have coop cams now! This has been both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it has let me spot some important problems, like a downed panel heater. The curse: I get to see all the weird stuff I didn't need to know about. And the bachelor flock is definitely up to the most weird stuff.

Weird stuff example #1: I don't know how, but these guys figured out that the camera is "me" and that this is what they should crow at when the auto door isn't opening soon enough (heaven forbid that I not let them them go charging straight out into -10F at the crack of dawn...).

Weird stuff example #2: hmm, where are my boys? Why are they not outside? Oh, it's because they found a massive freeze-dried turd stuck to a big piece of bark, have made a nest for it, and are taking turns sitting on it like an egg...

 

[lightm]

I have really enjoyed reading your thread! You have beautiful chickens and your love shows.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I have 35 chickens in my house! And they have officially been in the house for over 24h straight now. Outside temps were ugly, windy, negative numbers Fahrenheit for over 18 hours, and then it only explored above zero for a bit today while it was still light out. Brief plunges into negative numbers are normal here, but below zero for that long are unusual and daytime highs staying so low after that are also unusual.

I went out this afternoon to see if it was reasonable to put anybody back out since, as you can imagine, being stuck in a small space makes things get kind of crazy over time. Everyone always says if they're dry and draft-free they're fine even in -40 right? And mine even have supplemental heat so it should be fine...right? Well I was in my big shed coop checking it out and thinking indeed, it's draft-free and dry...and then I accidentally exhaled kind of vaguely in the vacinity of the bare hand that I was using to check out the temperature of the surfaces and my hand got STUCK TO THE WALL for a bit. It was very briefly like I'd licked my finger and stuck it on a metal pole, except it was just my breath and a slab of wood. So yeah...nobody went outside today. One step in a fresh wet poop and they would get glued to whatever surface they stepped on next. Total recipe for foot frostbite and nothing I can do about it.

Hopefully I can get everyone back out tomorrow...although first I'll have to dig my way out to their coops. I expect to wake up to knee deep snow again tomorrow if not deeper.

Meanwhile, main flock has almost a mini coop-and-run type setup. It's my brooder cube with a dog pen fence tacked on and a fitted sheet over the top. Sometimes the Ameraucana pullets are in there, but sometimes I have to remove them to another little setup to keep things calm. The Bean flock has a similar, although smaller enclosure since the cochins seem pretty content to just sit in a clump most of the day.

Bachelor flock, aka the derp squad, has so far been the absolute easiest to manage indoors...if I ignore the 5AM sonic blast of synchronized crowing lol. They're just chilling in my dog's old crate in a room where they can't see any of the hens.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Had another night-day-night cycle of everybody in the house. The Ameraucanas actually seemed kind of into it this time. House time means they get rare varieties of snacks like crackers and the odd bit of cereal

Most were able to go out again this morning; I'm only keeping in a few today that have issues that make them less hardy overall, like a pullet who decided to have a growth spurt and corresponding mini-molt and Miss Chungus with her stiff knee that always seems stiffer in the cold.

My criteria for "can the hardy chickens go outside?" has become the following:

• I can do outside chores in the same level of clothing that I would use to do my morning coffee time with chickens routine, which is often just padded overalls and a hoodie and always involves leaving my face uncovered. If my face is good exposed to the air for quite some time, then I can assume combs will be good.
• I can at least briefly touch metal things like latches and fence bars with my bare hands without risking a bad event. If I don't stick to it, feet and wattles won't.
• I can get a bit of water on my hand or get a bit splashed on my clothes without risking a bad event, even if it's not the most pleasant experience. If I can get wet and wipe it off on my shirt without issue, then my birds can drink safely.

The weather yesterday failed all 3 of those conditions. Hopefully that day will be a one-off this year. I didn't even like letting my dog out briefly to do her business in that, but she's so well house trained there was no alternative.

 

[Iluveggers]

Had another night-day-night cycle of everybody in the house. The Ameraucanas actually seemed kind of into it this time. House time means they get rare varieties of snacks like crackers and the odd bit of cereal

View attachment 4291347

Most were able to go out again this morning; I'm only keeping in a few today that have issues that make them less hardy overall, like a pullet who decided to have a growth spurt and corresponding mini-molt and Miss Chungus with her stiff knee that always seems stiffer in the cold.

My criteria for "can the hardy chickens go outside?" has become the following:

• I can do outside chores in the same level of clothing that I would use to do my morning coffee time with chickens routine, which is often just padded overalls and a hoodie and always involves leaving my face uncovered. If my face is good exposed to the air for quite some time, then I can assume combs will be good.
• I can at least briefly touch metal things like latches and fence bars with my bare hands without risking a bad event. If I don't stick to it, feet and wattles won't.
• I can get a bit of water on my hand or get a bit splashed on my clothes without risking a bad event, even if it's not the most pleasant experience. If I can get wet and wipe it off on my shirt without issue, then my birds can drink safely.

The weather yesterday failed all 3 of those conditions. Hopefully that day will be a one-off this year. I didn't even like letting my dog out briefly to do her business in that, but she's so well house trained there was no alternative.

How old are they again? Mine are in a large shed/coop with a tarped run. No heat source. It’s been negative overnight. If it is 0 or higher I open the run door to let them into the non-tarped area (with straw down to step on).

My youngest pullets are about 20 weeks now!

 

[DonyaQuick]

How old are they again? Mine are in a large shed/coop with a tarped run. No heat source. It’s been negative overnight. If it is 0 or higher I open the run door to let them into the non-tarped area (with straw down to step on).

My youngest pullets are about 20 weeks now!

It's not an age issue; all birds are old enough to be outside if the winter was like the last few years.

It's a combination of the sheer duration of the negative temperatures each cycle and also partly my paranoia after realizing that I have a bunch of birds that clearly aren't nearly as cold hardy as I thought they were, primarily birds of feed store bin descent. In past years, a low of -5 or -10 was fairly brief and near dawn. I would often sit with them in that while it warmed up. This year it's plummeting right after dark and just sitting at the low the whole night and often up to 11AM or later when there's no sun. Snow insulation on the roofs of the larger strutures is working against me and frequently keeping it colder inside than out - but outside it's more humid and even with windbreaks it's windy. I've been seeing things like trickling weight loss happening despite what seems like excessive eating. When it's sub-zero until close to noon and then only reasonable temperatures for 2 hours, interior spaces stay riddiculously cold and with wind the outdoor spaces are a frostbite risk. I have gotten my hands and gloves stuck to stuff that the chickens would touch due to the combination of extended cold and often 90-100% humidity.

Last year there was a very brief bout of this kind of weather and my alpha main flock roo Cuddles Jr got hypothermia from staying outside for a coupe of hours in it after I let the flock out. He got most of his comb dubbed by the frostbite and has not been as cold hardy thereafter. There were and are plenty of windbreaks, and it was dry. This year Vanilla Bean got frostbite and extreme swelling in his wattles just from trying to drink on a bad morning that wasn't even as bad as this past week has been. He had to come inside for that since it stopped him being able to drink normally for a while. The Bean man is otherwise very temperature hardy, but he apparently can't drink safely. His cochin ladies though have been getting a ton of stuff stuck and frozen onto to their feet and foot feathers in these conditions; I've never had trouble with that with them in the past and that's a foot frostbite risk. Their feet get like that in the same conditions where I have to worry about my hand sticking to stuff if I'm not careful; if it's either less humid or warmer it's a non-issue.

This year, my two olive eggers Raven and Hobbit have had serious metabolic issues in response to the extreme temperatures (oddly warm for a bit then very cold) and Raven went from around 5.5lbs down to 3.5 in an extremely short period of time. Her backside was concave. If I'd left them out I'm sure they'd both be dead now. Those two are going to be house chickens until mid-spring probably. While I think there must be an underlying genetic issue for those two due to a history of other odd issues, I also started to see some weight loss and other signs of stress (like sleeping way too much and shivering when the other birds are fine) from my other striped "eggers" of the same cohort that I previously thought were quite hardy. This is the first winter I've seen anything like that from them.

Meanwhile, my singular Bean offspring from the past year, Butter Bean, is hard as nails and still growing and gaining weight through all this. A couple of my other pullets and cockerels from this year are also doing great, but I've just been taking them in anyway since I don't want small-bird-count issues leaving just a few outside. If I had just the few Ameraucana pullets tucked into an army of clones of Butter Bean, I think I could be running just fine and totally unheated except for water deicers. Were it not for the foot stickies issue, the cochins could be out 24/7 unheated too.