Blackie is gorgeous! Big Boy looks like my Light Brahmas minus the leg feathering . . .
It's been quite a day and it's still early!!! I got up at 5 this morning since I didn't have to work (backwards, I know!!!) to watch the ducks to see if they are laying anywhere. As 'busy' as they all have been for some time now, I should think they should be laying. The Rouens are about 5 months old now, the Pekin is 6 months, and the Indian Runners are not quite 4 months (too young for them to be laying, I know). They wandered all over the yard several times but showed no signs of laying anywhere.
I had lost (I thought) an older Isa Brown hen about a month ago. She was in the coop today when I went out to feed everyone (she may have been there yesterday, too, but I didn't notice an extra). I did a head count about 5 times just to make sure I wasn't wrong. I've lost 2 other Isa Browns this year - one was hit by a car (normally they never go near the road) and the other was killed by one of my foster dogs when she got into the dog area. I'm guessing this Isa was sitting on eggs somewhere on the neighboring property and finally came back when she quit sitting or the nest was destroyed or didn't hatch. I have 5 broody girls right now, not including one of my Muscovy ducks!!!! They are fighting over each others nest boxes and now none of the other girls will lay in the boxes. It's like Battle of the Broodies out there. I added a couple more temporary boxes but they are trying to take them over, too. I'm going to have to set up a broody coop or something. I had let an Isa Brown who has been broody for 2 months now sit on eggs but she killed the chicks as they hatched. I took all of her eggs away and gave them to a broody cuckoo marans but they ended up not being fertile. I just removed them this morning. I do still have at least one egg breaker in the coop. I haven't figured out which one(s), but they've started going after the duck eggs now, too. My Muscovy mama had 3 Pekin eggs and 1 Muscovy egg under her - 3 have been broken and eaten in the past 2 weeks. It may have happened when one of the broody chickens was trying to steal her nest but now they seem to have a taste for it. At 9 this morning she still had 2 eggs left. I went out to check on the turkey and the small flock in quarantine behind the horse barn and when I came back, she only had one egg under her. I was wondering at one point if it was a snake or a skunk (and I did have a skunk around last night) but now I'm thinking it's a hen. I'm not sure if I should add cat food for higher protein to their diet for a little while or if it won't do any good. I know egg breaking is difficult to stop. The last time I had this problem I had a much smaller flock and was able to curb it by putting ceramic eggs in the nests. That's not working now (because the broody girls want to sit on the ceramic eggs).
Part of the young flock in quarantine behind my barn was loose this morning and distressed because they couldn't get back into their run. Something tried pretty hard to get in there last night - whether it was after the chickens or their food, I don't know. I thought they would be mostly safe from larger predators because of the mule (the chickens have a dog house and a run set up inside the pasture but behind the barn where the other chickens can't get to them). I could have been the skunk - I don't know if my mule would try to run one off or not. It broke some of the stakes that kept the run tight to the ground and bent some of the run. 2 pullets and a cockerel were still inside the run and the other 4 pullets were outside of it. I rounded them up and fixed everything. I'm hoping it wasn't the mule trying to get to their food. I looked his legs and feet over and didn't see any scratches or anything indicating it was him, though.
I'm ready to go back to bed!!!! But it's so nice out I need to get more outside stuff done while it's not scorching hot . . .
Either way , she / he is a beauty
