Well crap.
We lost the smallest chick today despite all of our best efforts. I've had her in isolation back in the brooder with her own food and water all weekend and she gave up the ghost this afternoon. She has been small from the beginning, and I suspect that a more careful candling might have culled her from the clutch at the start; she was a late hatch in a smaller egg to boot. She was five weeks old per my best information, and at death weighed only 5.5 ounces. Her peers are three times that size and thriving. No real symptoms other than ragged breathing noises were apparent, but recently, stunted growth has been an issue. He feathers seemed to be coming in, but she did not have the muscle structure or the energy of the others I think she was just one of those chicks that was imperfect from the start and never would have thrived no matter what we did.
So. Now we are four chooks with a limit of five, and I am firming up an opinion of one that may well be a roo. That means I have three potential layers and one cryrogenic preservation candidate...the Missus still calls him "Tetrazini"...
The Missus and I have talked it over, and I am going to get a pair of chicks tomorrow at the feed store. I am leaning heavily toward a pair of Red sex-link pullets, (Rhode Island Red crossed with Rhode Island White), just because they will look a bit different, (more gold vs reddish brown) and they should have no problem keeping up with the others. I know it is risky trying to introduce new chicks, but I want to make sure we have five layers, and the chicks I am looking at are reasonably close in age to the ones we have. I can brood two a while longer until they are well feathered and ready to tackle the peck order, and about the time they hit the coop, the roo will be hitting the freezer. For a very brief time we will be over the legal limit of the numbers we can have, but in the end we will never have more than five in the coop.
On the bright side, I sat out by the coop this afternoon in the sun and the afternoon quiet with my dog Gus, and enjoyed the sun with the four chooks. All of them were in the end of the run under the coop, and were discovering the joys of dustbaths. One of them scared the hell out of me the other day when she looked like she was in convulsions from the window. I threw on my sweatshirt and shoes and dashed out there, and sure enough one of them was on it's side thrashing about in the sand, in the sun; and shortly stood up and shook off all the sand and strutted away. Today all of them were out there in the same spot kicking dust over one another and preening each other to boot.
I have spent worse afternoons...
I did take the opportunity to completely clean the coop out today and replace all of the bedding, and clean everything inside. With a chook death, why take chances? I also replaced the 75 watt brooder bulb with a 60 watt bulb. The next step will be a 40 watt and then no bulb at all. I have to work out a timer system to control the light before next fall to make sure we have an adequately long day; i don't want everyone to go into a molt as soon as the days shorten up, and I will look for an select a timer over the summer. I may end up putting the permanent light in the coop on a timer as opposed to using a brooder light, but we shall see. Lots of time for those decisions.
The DE in the run is working incredibly well with the sand at dessicating and breaking down the chicken poop, and believe me there has been plenty deposited this week. I've added whole oats to their starter rations, and they go after the oats like a starving dog after a steaming sausage. Of course to through-put has increased as well, but their constant scratching in the sand breaks all the chunks down to pieces that I cannot scoop up. I was out today with a decent catbox scoop and a bucket looking for chunks that belonged in the compost pile, but there just weren't any, or the pieces were so small that they fell through the scoop. I'm amazed at how well the run dessicates the droppings, and even though all of the birds are out there eating exclusively this week, it smells like chickens out there, and not chicken sewage...an enormous difference and I am well pleased.
The design parameters I got here at BYC for both the run and the coop have been dead on. Ten feet per chook in the run and four feet per chook in the coop. Lots of room for everyone, and I think 2 nestboxes will prove to be a good call.
Since I took the food out of the coop this week, I put a tasty mix of snacks for everyone on both the small roost I built, and the larger permanent roost as well. When they are standing on the coop floor, they can see the treats on the intermediate roost, and if they stand on that, they will be able to see the treats on the big roost as well. The four of them are almost six weeks old and growing quite rapidly; the oats will only accelerate that process. It will be a while before they really need or want to roost, but there is no problem getting the used to the idea already.
A bit of a long piece tonight, but I haven't posted much in the past week do do other commitments, incredibly good weather, and a busy alternate schedule. We feel regret that we lost a chook today, but her fate has really been in question for some time, and I think today was probably inevitable. Tomorrow I'll be picking up a couple of replacement troops, and we will press on. Everything else continues well, and I am starting to get a good feel about how to actually operate the coop and run, and make sure I meet the needs of the chooks.
Vancouver/Ridgefield. I did not plan on chicks but a broody hen that went "stealth" on me brought 3 peeps out of the hay stack Friday afternoon. What are you using the DE for? My flock free ranges on a few acres daily and I have not added any grit yet to their yard but think we will work on the PVC feeders this next weekend for such stuff. The new peeps led to a new chicken area being setup to give the mother hen some security and not loose the babies. They are now in a 6x6 ft dog run that we lined with smaller mesh. This morning when I went out to feed and let the chickens out she was out of her box and the peeps sampled starter while she ate her corn and then on their own they drank from the waterer.
