Pipd's Peeps!

[pattyhen]

Prayers going up for Poggy. Bless her heart I sure hope she gets better.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I do, too. :/ She has been eating a bit today, not enough, but a bit. I made a slurry of pellets and water with some Poly-Vi-Sol mixed in it. Of the ~2/3 cup it mixed up into, I think she ate about 1/3 cup of food through the day. Not much, but something. Her droppings have improved, I think because she was enticed into eating more than she has by the wetted feed, but she has a long way to go if she's going to pull out of this. I'm not looking forward to forcing her to eat, but she's got to eat to survive.



Anyway, baby pictures, as promised! They are 8 weeks old, if that is even possible. Where did the time go?!

Here is Callette:

Cazzie:

Donnie boy--look how handsome he's posing!

Endymion:

Flury; this picture kind of shows the pinkish tinge I've been seeing in her wattles, but it's washed out by the camera flash:

Izzy:

Lydda:

Rooska, who would not pose for anything so I had to catch her at the water:

And the giant one, Umru:

A little something interesting, Umru's feathers have grown in fuzzy. I think it's all down and none of the feathers that would normally be covering it. This is such a bizarre bird!

Here's a handsome portrait of Donnie. Seems like just days ago, he looked like a baby, but now he looks like a handsome, manly rooster.

Endymion posed for a portrait as well:

Here's Umru and Endymion being goofy. They were looking at something.

Flury thinks that Lydda makes an excellent pillow. Lydda doesn't seem to mind, either.

Meanwhile, there's Donnie... Look at this lazy, teenage rooster!

Dorkings in the doorway! Aren't they precious? I believe Lydda was on the left and Callette on the right, but I don't remember for sure.

Cochins have a lot of fluff, and Flury is no exception.

Donnie playing innocent. "Berries? What berries?" (Okay, it isn't as obvious as it was in person, but his beak is stained with berry juice from the wild raspberries in their pen. )

I thought this was nice, Callette and Donnie posed together in the doorway for a male and female Dorking comparison.

Donnie also posed with Rooska on their log for a cute picture.

Flury just deflated on the log instead. Maybe she melted in the heat.

But she didn't melt as much as Cazzie did on their rock.

Yep, it was pretty hot out there. So hot that Rooska had to air out her underwings.

Callette even seemed to say it was too hot for cuddles! Say it isn't so!!

And this last one is more for the story that goes with it than the picture. I was zeroing in on Rooska and waiting for her to pose nicely for her picture, when Cazzie came up and pecked my finger just hard enough that it pushed the camera's button and took the picture! So, without further ado, here is Cazzie's first attempt at photography, with a picture of Rooska preening.

 

[pattyhen]

Poggy is in my prayers. At least she is eatting that is a good thing. She hasn't given up yet. I wish there was some miracle pill to give them to make them better.

The pictures are so amazing. The little hams looked like models in their photo shoots. Their all gorgeous except for poor Umru. It looks like she is getting baby feathers again on her back. One of these days she is going to turn into a beautiful swan. I hope.

The rock pic and the doorway couple and the naptime pic their all great. I see what you mean about the pink on Flury's waddles. If it makes you feel better just take a little dab of flour and put on her waddles that should cover up the pink.

Just kidding but still she is what she is. I'm still not commiting to he just yet.

Have a great day and thanks so much for sharing their pics I really enjoy looking at them.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Some positive news--Poggy is eating more than I thought! I had thought yesterday that she was not eating because she didn't touch her wetted feed, but as it turns out, she's been scratching through the shavings where the chick feeder was and eating the feed that they spilled all over. So she does still have an appetite, just not enough to sustain herself. Today, I'm going to see if I can get her crop good and full. Some of them will cooperate for feeding, some won't, so here's hoping Poggy is a cooperative one.


In other news, I let the chicks out this morning, and immediately they gathered at the fence along their pen and were making the scaredy cluck-peeping noises and looking at something. I went around the outside of the fence to see what was going on and almost missed a pretty large garter snake coiled up in the grass. Garters won't hurt the chickens (in fact, the older chickens have killed a few trying to eat them), but the babies have never seen one before and it apparently was quite scary! After showing it off a bit to my family, I relocated it to the other side of the driveway, where it vanished into the woods.




EDITING TO ADD: Since other poultry are now allowed in 'chicken pages', I went ahead and made a page for my Guinea fowl. Next up is a ducky page, and I also need to finish the page for the babies.

Anyway, here is the page for the Guinea fowl: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/pipds-peeps-the-guinea-fowl-boys It pretty much says the same stuff that's on my flock page, but I put in more pictures and stuff about their coop.

 

[pattyhen]

I'm glad Poggy is eatting more and I hope she continues to do better.

I loved the page on the guineas. They definately are a different kind of bird. I still have Spiderman and Mary Jane. They are characters.

Have a nice day we are getting rain today oh boy more mud.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I'm speechless right now. I went out to close the coops for the night and found Georgette lying on her back underneath the nest boxes, dead. No sign of a struggle, no indication that she was hurt, just like she rolled over right there and died. I... I don't even know how to react right now. I have been keeping a very close eye on everyone since bringing Poggy in, and there was nothing even to indicate that anything was wrong with Georgette. She even laid an egg just two days ago, and it's normal for her not to lay every day. I don't know. I can't even cry, I'm just shocked. I sat out in the chicken yard with Elly for a while (because she knew I needed her, bless her), and ran through my head everything from the past few days, over and over. What did I miss? What could have happened here? What went wrong? I just... don't know.

 

[pattyhen]

I'm so sorry you lost Georgette. I've heard they hide their symptoms so you probably didn't see anything wrong. She had a wonderful life with you and she knew what it was like to be a chicken and to be loved. Bless your heart.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Thank you, I just was so shocked last night. It took me a while before I could even cry about it--and cry I definitely did. The more I think about it, the more I think it was the heat. It wasn't as hot yesterday as it had been the previous day, but it was a bit humid and Georgie was a heavy girl with black feathers. I worry so much more about heat than cold with my girls--heat is the real killer. Wish I had taken the time to cool their water off with the hose more yesterday... But who knows if that would have even helped. You're right, though, Georgie had a good life here, even if it was short. I blew out one of her beautiful chocolate-colored eggs and put it away in my room with the feathers I had saved from her sister, Louise, as a keepsake. I guess my two prim and proper French ladies are together again. And I don't have any more Marans in my flock. :/

 

[pattyhen]

My pekin duck named Clyde died two days ago. I think it was the heat too. When one of them dies I feel so guilty. I start thinking about what if I would have done this or that maybe he wouldn't have died. He was our gentle giant a very sweet duck.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Sorry for your loss, too, Pattyhen. I think we all do that sometimes with losses. I know I do almost every time. Really, though, heat is tough on everything. In this past semester, during my Vertebrate Bio class, I remember my professor putting up a chart that showed survivability of animals at hot, warm, moderate, cold, and frigid temps, and that survivability rate just plummets when you go from warm to hot. It doesn't help that feathers are such advanced insulators that birds have a hard time losing heat from them, poor darlings. I just did a quick search on BYC, though, and came up with a good list of ways to beat the heat:

-Run fans in the coop to keep air circulating
-Freeze gallon jugs and 2-liter bottles of water and sit them in shady spots for birds to lay against (or put them in front of the fan for a makeshift air conditioner)
-Freeze smaller water bottles and put them in waterers to keep their drinking water cool
-Put out shallow pans of cool water for the chickens to stand in or drink from (I've also heard of people putting out small kiddie pools with just a couple inches of water and putting paver bricks in it for the chickens to stand on)
-Spray water on the coop (especially on the roof) to help draw away heat with evaporation
-Wet the ground in shady spots for them to stand on and cool off (my flock also ranges around the side of our house and there's a small section of brick wall that's shaded under the lilac bush, so I wet that down, too, and it feels much cooler there)
-Run a mister in shady spots -- My girls absolutely HATE misters and won't go near them, but some people swear by it, so I thought it was worth adding.
-Freeze fruits and veggies and put them out for the birds to peck at (especially watermelon!)