Not new, but back at it

[Blue Raptor]

Hello, again!
It’s been a while, not even sure how long. It’s been busy around here. Some good, some sad, both in re the chickens and personal.

The chickens! Carla-the-mouth is doing fine. She’s a welsummer, 3yo. We had a blessed few months of silence this winter, but as soon as the eggs started up again in late January, her mouth found its groove again. She still refuses to lay an egg outside like a normal chicken and paces and hollers at the door of the run or the back door to be put into her private chicken condo in the garage. I’ve tried waiting her out…and she’s discovered a new volume she can ratchet up too.

Not-Carla, the cream legbar, also a 3yo, is her same happy go lucky little fool self. She’s still CTM’s sidekick, and she’s also back to laying.

Lucy, the gold laced polish, is not laying yet, but she stopped laying about 30 days later than the other two. She has been arguing with NC over the nest box, so I’m sure she’ll probably start up soon.

Weather-wise here in SoCal, we’ve been much cooler than normal and WAAAAAY above normal rainfall. Everything is soggy, with storms every few days giving 1/2-1” each time. Normal for the year is 12”. We hit that in December, and are at about 20” currently. Here in the desert, that is a lot of water. We will have a super bloom here as soon as it warms up, there hasn’t been one since 1989. Flowers will explode on our hills very soon.

Ethel, the silver laced polish, died in December. She was foraging with the others, and when I went outside to check on them, I found her down. She was completely limp and died before I could even set up a transport kennel for her. I suspected a snake bite (we are in rattlesnake territory), but it wasn’t really warm enough that day. Called the lab to schedule a drop off in case it was avian flu.

It was not avian flu. It was a rattlesnake, a small one, got her in the thigh.

For those that may remember some previous posts, I mentioned she never laid or crowed. Well, she had no development of an ovary. She was a female. She lived a happy life, I hope. She was about 30 months old.

So we are down to 3. Getting 8-11 eggs a week from the two that are laying. I’m debating getting 2 chicks or a pullet this year to freshen them up. I’m thinking speckled Sussex, Araucana (still trying for blue eggs!) or maybe more cream legbars or whiting true blues…. there’s so many pretty chickens!

I set up 5 raised garden beds this year and can’t wait to see how they preform with all the gorgeous compost I’ve gotten out of their run and bin that’s now 1+ years old. Last year our neighborhood had a desert rat infestation, and they destroyed quite a few gardens. The city finally convinced the neighbors to stop leaving out pet food, and several of them removed their giant overgrown palms that had nests in them. I passed all the inspections for the chooks, mostly bc their run is completely enclosed in 1/2” hardware cloth, and food is not left out at night. I still set traps every night, but now only catch an occasional rat instead of many each night. For a while, it wasn’t uncommon to nab 4-6 every single night. They ate all my nasturtiums and destroyed all of my tomato plants.

That’s about it for an update.

Cheers!

Welcome back into BYC!!

 

[007Sean]

Howdy, and Welcome back!

 

[sourland]

Hello, and welcome back. Thanks for the update.

 

[Boppo]

I want to second CallenderGirl - I laughed, I cried, I sighed. I changed my little emoticon 3 times while I read your post. I am so sorry about Ethel. That is tough. And I am also sorry about the rats. That is also a terrible pest to battle! But your remaining hens are a hoot and a half. Best wishes as you move forward!

In case it helps, here is an article about improving predator protection in new and existing coops and pens. And here is another about electric fences, if you feel that ambitious. None of it is a snap solution, sadly, but it may help!

 

[chrissynemetz]

Welcome back! It's nice to meet you!

 

[rjohns39]

Hi and welcome back to BYC We're so happy you've decided to join us

 

[Alohacayo]

Welcome back. I love your creative names.

Lol, for that I need to bring my mom into the picture… She’s 75 this year and lives around the corner. She’s a city girl who raised a heathen. But my dad completely encouraged my obsessions by moving mom out to the “country” (it’s SoCal, 1/2 acre is “country”), all in order to buy me a pony. It only got worse…but as soon as I was on my own, mom, dad and my siblings skedaddled back to regular SoCal subdivisions.

Fast forward many decades. Dad’s been gone for 12 years now, and mom lives around the corner from me. It’s a very “urban” subdivision in a very rural area. The only time I haven’t had livestock (horses mostly) was from 2015-2019. In 2019 was when I sold the last of my land and moved to mom’s subdivision.

In 2019, on the winds of Santa Ana, a chicken showed up in my yard. Mind you, I live in a 200 acre subdivision with 1600 other houses. The nearest chickens are at least a half mile away. (My original intro I think is titled “the hen that fell from the sky”)

I also have 3 dogs. Two that are dachshund/jrt mix and a chihuahua type. But they’d been around livestock and parrots their entire lives, so they left the chicken alone. But why the chicken actually stayed, .

Dorothy was a game-type hen, and I could not catch her. She showed up in October, decided she liked it here, and lived in a tree in my yard. On Super Bowl Sunday 2020, she didn’t come out for breakfast. She’d vanished. I found a few larger feathers, but no bird or parts.

We all know what happened next… In March, Covid. I suddenly had two 80 year old relatives that were housebound at their house, I was working from home, so I moved them in with me so it was easier to help them. Everyone had enjoyed watching & hearing about the accidental chicken, so I had the brilliant idea to get more, with a proper home.

Submitted the plans to the hoa, got all the signatures from my neighbors and off to a local hatchery we went. I ordered four, the welsummer, the legbar, the gold polish, and the silver polish, but they didn’t have any polish yet.

The welsummer and legbar were the first two. They came home in April. Covid caused all sorts of supply chain issues, so those two spent until July in the chicken condo, a giant dog kennel, in my laundry room.

The welsummer started making noises, as chickens do. Only they are not chicken noises. She barks. She knocks. She moans. She groans. She yells. But she does not cluck. My mother finds this exceedingly funny. I do not.

I mentioned siblings. I have a sister a few years younger. She *never* shuts up. She is not above temper tantrums, even though she’s also now in her 5th decade.

My mother named the chicken who won’t shut up after my sister who won’t shut up.

The legbar is as quiet as a church mouse. So she became Not-Carla.

(Note: Carla-the-human is actually a great sport, and she thinks it’s hilarious that she has a chicken named after her. Her 7yo granddaughter is also amused that great grandma named the chicken after grandma and FaceTimes grandma Carla whenever she is here, so grandma can watch the namesake chicken get fed worms and grubs she digs out of the compost bin.)

I’ve tried everything to get her to shut up and that was how the egg laying in the condo became a daily ritual. Carla winds herself up to level 100 for about an hour before she lays. This drove me insane. It sounds like a human is being tortured. I was convinced my poor neighbors were going to rescind the permission to have them, so I’d go out and grab her so she could make as much noise as she wanted to from the center of the house. She quiets down, lays her egg, then goes back outside.

I’m now very well trained and Carla is a spoiled, noisy brat.

 

[TwoCrows]

Lol, for that I need to bring my mom into the picture… She’s 75 this year and lives around the corner. She’s a city girl who raised a heathen. But my dad completely encouraged my obsessions by moving mom out to the “country” (it’s SoCal, 1/2 acre is “country”), all in order to buy me a pony. It only got worse…but as soon as I was on my own, mom, dad and my siblings skedaddled back to regular SoCal subdivisions.

Fast forward many decades. Dad’s been gone for 12 years now, and mom lives around the corner from me. It’s a very “urban” subdivision in a very rural area. The only time I haven’t had livestock (horses mostly) was from 2015-2019. In 2019 was when I sold the last of my land and moved to mom’s subdivision.

In 2019, on the winds of Santa Ana, a chicken showed up in my yard. Mind you, I live in a 200 acre subdivision with 1600 other houses. The nearest chickens are at least a half mile away. (My original intro I think is titled “the hen that fell from the sky”)

I also have 3 dogs. Two that are dachshund/jrt mix and a chihuahua type. But they’d been around livestock and parrots their entire lives, so they left the chicken alone. But why the chicken actually stayed, .

Dorothy was a game-type hen, and I could not catch her. She showed up in October, decided she liked it here, and lived in a tree in my yard. On Super Bowl Sunday 2020, she didn’t come out for breakfast. She’d vanished. I found a few larger feathers, but no bird or parts.

We all know what happened next… In March, Covid. I suddenly had two 80 year old relatives that were housebound at their house, I was working from home, so I moved them in with me so it was easier to help them. Everyone had enjoyed watching & hearing about the accidental chicken, so I had the brilliant idea to get more, with a proper home.

Submitted the plans to the hoa, got all the signatures from my neighbors and off to a local hatchery we went. I ordered four, the welsummer, the legbar, the gold polish, and the silver polish, but they didn’t have any polish yet.

The welsummer and legbar were the first two. They came home in April. Covid caused all sorts of supply chain issues, so those two spent until July in the chicken condo, a giant dog kennel, in my laundry room.

The welsummer started making noises, as chickens do. Only they are not chicken noises. She barks. She knocks. She moans. She groans. She yells. But she does not cluck. My mother finds this exceedingly funny. I do not.

I mentioned siblings. I have a sister a few years younger. She *never* shuts up. She is not above temper tantrums, even though she’s also now in her 5th decade.

My mother named the chicken who won’t shut up after my sister who won’t shut up.

The legbar is as quiet as a church mouse. So she became Not-Carla.

(Note: Carla-the-human is actually a great sport, and she thinks it’s hilarious that she has a chicken named after her. Her 7yo granddaughter is also amused that great grandma named the chicken after grandma and FaceTimes grandma Carla whenever she is here, so grandma can watch the namesake chicken get fed worms and grubs she digs out of the compost bin.)

I’ve tried everything to get her to shut up and that was how the egg laying in the condo became a daily ritual. Carla winds herself up to level 100 for about an hour before she lays. This drove me insane. It sounds like a human is being tortured. I was convinced my poor neighbors were going to rescind the permission to have them, so I’d go out and grab her so she could make as much noise as she wanted to from the center of the house. She quiets down, lays her egg, then goes back outside.

I’m now very well trained and Carla is a spoiled, noisy brat.

View attachment 3432388

Lovely photo, thanks for sharing yourself here with us!

 

[Alohacayo]

I want to second CallenderGirl - I laughed, I cried, I sighed. I changed my little emoticon 3 times while I read your post. I am so sorry about Ethel. That is tough. And I am also sorry about the rats. That is also a terrible pest to battle! But your remaining hens are a hoot and a half. Best wishes as you move forward!

In case it helps, here is an article about improving predator protection in new and existing coops and pens. And here is another about electric fences, if you feel that ambitious. None of it is a snap solution, sadly, but it may help!

Thank you for the links. It’s always great to have them repeated so they’re easier to find.

I built a hoop coop. The hoop coop is completely enclosed with 1/2” hardware cloth. We are in rattlesnake territory. There’s a golf course that winds thru the subdivision, and we are surrounded by rocky outcroppings that rise 400-600 feet above us. We have all the predators (except bears), plus the snakes.

The rats exploded last year. We were very dry (under 5” of rain), so the subdivision got swarmed by everything looking for food and water. It didn’t help that we had a significant number of houses that were leaving food out for feral/stay cats and it’s a 55+ subdivision, so there’s a very high number of people who have bird feeders. It’s also SoCal, so our weather doesn’t slow anything down except the snakes for a few months. The rats were also attracting the snakes, and last year we had over 100 rattlesnakes that had to be captured/relocated. Normal was less than a dozen/year.

It got so bad that the city/county came in for inspections, and a lot of houses got cited for leaving the pet food out. The hoa then started with getting people to trim or remove the largest of the palms that were harboring a lot of the rat population. I allowed them access to my security cameras to prove that nothing was getting into my chicken coop/run or compost bin (also completely lined with hardware cloth).

Weirdly, the rats targeted everyone’s tomato plants. Not the tomatoes, the actual plants.

Because there’s a lot of small dogs and concerns for secondary poisoning, the hoa blanketed us with a trapping program.

It took almost all summer, but by last fall, the frequency of sightings went to basically zero. I catch one or 2 a week now, which is about what can be expected in zone 9b, considering I’m less than 300’ from a golf course and big rock mini mountains. The subdivision also had a coyote and bobcat problem for those months too. Everything came down from the hills because there was water in the golf course.

I had a family member that had the electric mats that you put around an rv to keep rodents out, so I put it around my garden, and finally got tomatoes by November.

The baby rattler that got Ethel was when they were loose in the yard. As bad as that was, at least it didn't get a human or someone’s dog. Rattler season is almost here, so everyone is hoping with the rat population decreased, we won’t have the snake problem (any more than normal).

I put in smooth sided raised beds 18” tall, and will put the electric mats out in summer when we are dry, cause they aren’t getting my tomatoes this year .

 

[triciayoung]

Lol, for that I need to bring my mom into the picture… She’s 75 this year and lives around the corner. She’s a city girl who raised a heathen. But my dad completely encouraged my obsessions by moving mom out to the “country” (it’s SoCal, 1/2 acre is “country”), all in order to buy me a pony. It only got worse…but as soon as I was on my own, mom, dad and my siblings skedaddled back to regular SoCal subdivisions.

Fast forward many decades. Dad’s been gone for 12 years now, and mom lives around the corner from me. It’s a very “urban” subdivision in a very rural area. The only time I haven’t had livestock (horses mostly) was from 2015-2019. In 2019 was when I sold the last of my land and moved to mom’s subdivision.

In 2019, on the winds of Santa Ana, a chicken showed up in my yard. Mind you, I live in a 200 acre subdivision with 1600 other houses. The nearest chickens are at least a half mile away. (My original intro I think is titled “the hen that fell from the sky”)

I also have 3 dogs. Two that are dachshund/jrt mix and a chihuahua type. But they’d been around livestock and parrots their entire lives, so they left the chicken alone. But why the chicken actually stayed, .

Dorothy was a game-type hen, and I could not catch her. She showed up in October, decided she liked it here, and lived in a tree in my yard. On Super Bowl Sunday 2020, she didn’t come out for breakfast. She’d vanished. I found a few larger feathers, but no bird or parts.

We all know what happened next… In March, Covid. I suddenly had two 80 year old relatives that were housebound at their house, I was working from home, so I moved them in with me so it was easier to help them. Everyone had enjoyed watching & hearing about the accidental chicken, so I had the brilliant idea to get more, with a proper home.

Submitted the plans to the hoa, got all the signatures from my neighbors and off to a local hatchery we went. I ordered four, the welsummer, the legbar, the gold polish, and the silver polish, but they didn’t have any polish yet.

The welsummer and legbar were the first two. They came home in April. Covid caused all sorts of supply chain issues, so those two spent until July in the chicken condo, a giant dog kennel, in my laundry room.

The welsummer started making noises, as chickens do. Only they are not chicken noises. She barks. She knocks. She moans. She groans. She yells. But she does not cluck. My mother finds this exceedingly funny. I do not.

I mentioned siblings. I have a sister a few years younger. She *never* shuts up. She is not above temper tantrums, even though she’s also now in her 5th decade.

My mother named the chicken who won’t shut up after my sister who won’t shut up.

The legbar is as quiet as a church mouse. So she became Not-Carla.

(Note: Carla-the-human is actually a great sport, and she thinks it’s hilarious that she has a chicken named after her. Her 7yo granddaughter is also amused that great grandma named the chicken after grandma and FaceTimes grandma Carla whenever she is here, so grandma can watch the namesake chicken get fed worms and grubs she digs out of the compost bin.)

I’ve tried everything to get her to shut up and that was how the egg laying in the condo became a daily ritual. Carla winds herself up to level 100 for about an hour before she lays. This drove me insane. It sounds like a human is being tortured. I was convinced my poor neighbors were going to rescind the permission to have them, so I’d go out and grab her so she could make as much noise as she wanted to from the center of the house. She quiets down, lays her egg, then goes back outside.

I’m now very well trained and Carla is a spoiled, noisy brat.

View attachment 3432388

Thank you for sharing...I was wondering how they got the names.