Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[fisherlady]

Busy day in the coops here. Got home from work about 0730 did a bit of housework and headed out to move around some hens. We had 3 broodies hatched out last night. All were in elevated boxes so I needed to get floor boxes set up and shift them down. 3 hens with a total of 16 chicks. 2 eggs never pipped and one hatched but hadn't absorbed its yolk and it didn't make it.
Hens all brooded separately and I set them up separate floor boxes.

So on to the important stuff... the pics! LOL

 

[fisherlady]

And in other coop news.... the last hatch are now about ready to be cut loose from their broodies, in fact 2 vroodies adopted chicks given up at 4.5 weeks by 3 other hens ...all 5 were brooding together and 3 decided to bail early and the 2 older hens were like "no problem, we got this" and those 2 have shared the 17 chicks since. Today I caught them sunning themselves on an elevated platform, so snapped this shot.

another hen has a 6 pack from the same hatch, she was with another hen until 3 weeks ago when the other hen decided to go back to the roost, so now she is finishing them off herself. Caught one at the feeder today using the stepping block DH put there for them.

and another of Mindy doing her chick sitting... She was a very happy puppy today!

 

[LadyBehir]

Those pictures are amazing. The ones with the dog, especially.

 

[AnneInTheBurbs]

@fisherlady What awesome pictures! Mindy is absolutely amazing with the chicks. It fascinating too, how the one chicken just perches on her as well!

My terrible broody has left her chicks as of last week. The chicks are only 3 weeks old! Thankfully, they know how to get into the coop every night and they snuggle under a broody turkey for warmth. They do seem not very well, but I am keeping an eye on them.

 

[AnneInTheBurbs]

2nd chick popped out overnight.

 

[fisherlady]

Those pictures are amazing. The ones with the dog, especially.

@fisherlady What awesome pictures! Mindy is absolutely amazing with the chicks. It fascinating too, how the one chicken just perches on her as well!

My terrible broody has left her chicks as of last week. The chicks are only 3 weeks old! Thankfully, they know how to get into the coop every night and they snuggle under a broody turkey for warmth. They do seem not very well, but I am keeping an eye on them.

2nd chick popped out overnight.


View attachment 1362158

Thank you, it is hard to go wrong when taking pictures of chicks and an infactuated dog, lol.

Anne, glad to see your turkey chick now has a buddy!
Also sorry to hear your broody was too flighty to stick it out, we had that a couple of times, but thankfully were in a position to shift them to other hens. It is one of the primary reasons we strive to always have broodies in at least pairs...built in backups. We have been lucky with it, but not really possible in most flocks....

 

[fisherlady]

@fisherlady What awesome pictures! Mindy is absolutely amazing with the chicks. It fascinating too, how the one chicken just perches on her as well!

Mindy is a frequent perch for the birds, usually the teen chicks, but hens also when the mood hits... I will add a pic I snapped last week when a couple of the teens wanted to warm up their feet, lol...
Shoot, pic is on my phone, will edit to add it shortly.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

@dheltzel have you found the silkie feathered lavender ameraucanas to be more fragile than most other breeds? I've hatched about 4 of them and so far, lost 2. I'm not sure what to make of that.

In other hatching news, I have blrw hatching now! So far it looks like 2 blacks and a blue with at least 3 more pipped. I'm excited for them!

@fisherlady Mindy seems like such the perfect dog I'm not sure how you managed to get her trained to be so sweet with the flock but you did a great job!

 

[fisherlady]

In other hatching news, I have blrw hatching now! So far it looks like 2 blacks and a blue with at least 3 more pipped. I'm excited for them!

@fisherlady Mindy seems like such the perfect dog I'm not sure how you managed to get her trained to be so sweet with the flock but you did a great job!

Hoping the rest of the Wyandotte do well for hatching!

As for Mindy... it must just be her nature...though as a puppy we did teach her to 'lay quiet' and 'be easy' even before we got birds when she was 2. Dillon (also an English Shepherd) is also very tolerant of them but gets up and moves when the crawl on him, though he ignores them laying against him when he is sunning himself.
Mindy, though, goes out of her way to be with the birds, she will stay outside watching them for hours, she gets in the coops for patrol and baby watching and if there is a bird in the house for medical care she sleeps as close as she can with it as if the keep an eye on it or prevent loneliness. Any loud cheeping is immediate cause for human notification or racing to find the source...

English shepherds are known for this 'tending' mentality, but she has an unusually high dose of it. ES dogs are also known as critter dogs, and she and Dillon are both unforgiving to anything they view as threats to their birds or cats... coons, possums, rats and even stray cats but cats have always been run off, not caught... yet. They don't go off property to hunt, unless I have them out and tell them 'ok' to investigate something.
What is cool is how well they seem to figure things out for themselves, and how deliberate they are in their activities and how well they switch modes. They can run into a group of birds to attack a possum and not hurt a feather on a bird in the process. Or take out a rat one minute then flop down and watch chicks the next. We have seen this first hand a number of times...I don't know what I am going to do after Mindy is gone, don't even want to think about that. But I can tell you that we will probably always have an ES as long as we have poultry or other farm animals. I just dont know if we will have another one as 'chick crazy' as she is.

 

[BullChick]

Sometimes we come across a dog that we wish we could keep forever.