Pipd's Peeps!

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I know how horrible that feels! I have raccoon problems too, and you just feel helpless!

What was worse for me than the helplessness was that I had several instances through that day where I was thinking of bringing them in early, or thinking I should check on them, or on and on, and I just... didn't. I feel so guilty about it, especially it being miss Bee, who barely had a shot at life, and about poor Sumi who has twice now had to watch one of her sisters be killed in her short life. Bee also was kind of a bright spot for me in an otherwise fully crappy spring, and I'd grown quite attached to her because of her being the only chick to hatch in her group and me having to give her a lot of attention her first week of life until her brothers hatched, and now she's just gone. Such a vibrant, cheerful, happy little baby, gone in such a violent way.

I am very sorry!

It will be worth the work to have them more secure.

I hope it's not too difficult. I'm concerned I might mess it up and then either burn their coop down or just have them not actually be protected or something... For right now, they'll be bunking in the main coop because I know it's secure. Still waiting on lumber to come down in price before I can really do anything, unfortunately. It has come down a bit here, but definitely not enough to be affordable yet.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Wanted to really quickly post update pictures for all the babies. I took these pictures yesterday, but once again didn't get them cropped until just now, oops! But here they are! The silkied Cochin babies are 2 weeks old in these pictures, and the Orpingtons are 1 week old.

In hatch order as always:

Pretty confident that this little guy is a fella, so I went ahead and named him. I plan to keep all the Blues regardless of whether they're male or female (unless they ALL or mostly end up being male), mostly because I love blues. But also because the blues should have different parents than the blacks (and Dandelion), so they're important to keeping my silkied Cochin flock a bit more genetically diverse. Anyway, I gave him a tough guy name because obviously he's a tough guy, but also apparently there's a denim company called Diesel as well and I thought that was funny and fitting.

Our youngest, here, did NOT want to pose for a picture, so this was the best one I got of her.

However, I'm very excited about her anyway because I'm starting to see some chocolate in her lil wing feathers!!




My little Orpingtons spent some time in the big brooder with the Cochins yesterday as I continue to attempt to integrate them together. Unfortunately, the Crele is a bully and was picking on my Cochins when I wasn't there to keep an eye on things, so I haven't yet been able to leave them alone together.


One last set of pictures... I thought the Cochins were going through their food FAST, but didn't think anything of it... until I caught Harley dust bathing in the food dish. And it wasn't just her--the red band Chocolate Mottled Orp tried it, too, while they were all together!

Guess it's time to switch them to an actual feeder now!

 

[Crazy Maizie]

Wanted to really quickly post update pictures for all the babies. I took these pictures yesterday, but once again didn't get them cropped until just now, oops! But here they are! The silkied Cochin babies are 2 weeks old in these pictures, and the Orpingtons are 1 week old.

In hatch order as always:

View attachment 2713875View attachment 2713876

Pretty confident that this little guy is a fella, so I went ahead and named him. I plan to keep all the Blues regardless of whether they're male or female (unless they ALL or mostly end up being male), mostly because I love blues. But also because the blues should have different parents than the blacks (and Dandelion), so they're important to keeping my silkied Cochin flock a bit more genetically diverse. Anyway, I gave him a tough guy name because obviously he's a tough guy, but also apparently there's a denim company called Diesel as well and I thought that was funny and fitting.

View attachment 2713877View attachment 2713878View attachment 2713879View attachment 2713880View attachment 2713881View attachment 2713882View attachment 2713883

View attachment 2713890View attachment 2713887

Our youngest, here, did NOT want to pose for a picture, so this was the best one I got of her.

View attachment 2713889

However, I'm very excited about her anyway because I'm starting to see some chocolate in her lil wing feathers!!

View attachment 2713888


My little Orpingtons spent some time in the big brooder with the Cochins yesterday as I continue to attempt to integrate them together. Unfortunately, the Crele is a bully and was picking on my Cochins when I wasn't there to keep an eye on things, so I haven't yet been able to leave them alone together.


One last set of pictures... I thought the Cochins were going through their food FAST, but didn't think anything of it... until I caught Harley dust bathing in the food dish. And it wasn't just her--the red band Chocolate Mottled Orp tried it, too, while they were all together! View attachment 2713911 Guess it's time to switch them to an actual feeder now!

View attachment 2713884View attachment 2713885View attachment 2713886

That's the sweetest thing!

 

[ronott1]

Wanted to really quickly post update pictures for all the babies. I took these pictures yesterday, but once again didn't get them cropped until just now, oops! But here they are! The silkied Cochin babies are 2 weeks old in these pictures, and the Orpingtons are 1 week old.

In hatch order as always:

View attachment 2713875View attachment 2713876

Pretty confident that this little guy is a fella, so I went ahead and named him. I plan to keep all the Blues regardless of whether they're male or female (unless they ALL or mostly end up being male), mostly because I love blues. But also because the blues should have different parents than the blacks (and Dandelion), so they're important to keeping my silkied Cochin flock a bit more genetically diverse. Anyway, I gave him a tough guy name because obviously he's a tough guy, but also apparently there's a denim company called Diesel as well and I thought that was funny and fitting.

View attachment 2713877View attachment 2713878View attachment 2713879View attachment 2713880View attachment 2713881View attachment 2713882View attachment 2713883

View attachment 2713890View attachment 2713887

Our youngest, here, did NOT want to pose for a picture, so this was the best one I got of her.

View attachment 2713889

However, I'm very excited about her anyway because I'm starting to see some chocolate in her lil wing feathers!!

View attachment 2713888


My little Orpingtons spent some time in the big brooder with the Cochins yesterday as I continue to attempt to integrate them together. Unfortunately, the Crele is a bully and was picking on my Cochins when I wasn't there to keep an eye on things, so I haven't yet been able to leave them alone together.


One last set of pictures... I thought the Cochins were going through their food FAST, but didn't think anything of it... until I caught Harley dust bathing in the food dish. And it wasn't just her--the red band Chocolate Mottled Orp tried it, too, while they were all together! View attachment 2713911 Guess it's time to switch them to an actual feeder now!

View attachment 2713884View attachment 2713885View attachment 2713886

They are looking so cute!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Batch number 2 of soap! The first batch was my trial run, and now that I've got the basics down (and actually made soap--I used a bar of it a couple times to wash my hands and it sudsed up and cleaned the dirt off my hands!!) it was time to move on to phase two: egg soap! This is the same recipe, but with one egg added to it and the water amount adjusted to make up for the water in the egg. It seems to have worked just the same!! We'll see once it's cured and cut, I suppose!

This is also picture take 2 because a bug landed in it right as I took the first picture

 

[ronott1]

Batch number 2 of soap! The first batch was my trial run, and now that I've got the basics down (and actually made soap--I used a bar of it a couple times to wash my hands and it sudsed up and cleaned the dirt off my hands!!) it was time to move on to phase two: egg soap! This is the same recipe, but with one egg added to it and the water amount adjusted to make up for the water in the egg. It seems to have worked just the same!! We'll see once it's cured and cut, I suppose!

View attachment 2717137

This is also picture take 2 because a bug landed in it right as I took the first picture

How fun!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Baby update pictures from Thursday! Sorry, I was busy that day and didn't stop by here to post them. The silkied Cochins are 3 weeks old in these pictures, and the Orpingtons are 2 weeks old.

Right now, I am like 95% sure that Wash, Coconut, and Baby 4 are girls, and 99% sure that Diesel, Baby 5, and Baby 7 are boys (100% on Diesel, of course; the other two I am not fully sure of yet, but they're certainly looking convincingly like boys). Harley and Babies 2 and 6 are kind of ambiguous, and while I want to lean one way on them, then I see them again and think, no, they've got to be the other way. Regardless, it'll become apparent in a couple weeks, I'm sure. Just have to be patient... you know, like I always am with this.

I don't have any definitive guesses on the Orps, but I keep looking at them and thinking, ugh, they are all boys, aren't they? Again, we'll know for sure in a few weeks.

Not much else going on at the moment. I'm out of soaping olive oil, so no more soap this weekend. Hopefully I'll have some more in by next weekend to experiment more with the egg soaps. The current batch of egg soap took a bit longer than the regular soap to actually harden, but seems to be curing well now. I might test it out soon just to see how it is. It had a strong, unpleasant odor when I first uncovered it, but that dissipated after a bit. I'm just hoping it doesn't come back when it's wet to wash hands with!

The regular soap is actually really nice! I've used it a few times and it suds up with really pleasant lather and my hands definitely feel cleaner after using it! Exciting!!

 

[ronott1]

Baby update pictures from Thursday! Sorry, I was busy that day and didn't stop by here to post them. The silkied Cochins are 3 weeks old in these pictures, and the Orpingtons are 2 weeks old.

Right now, I am like 95% sure that Wash, Coconut, and Baby 4 are girls, and 99% sure that Diesel, Baby 5, and Baby 7 are boys (100% on Diesel, of course; the other two I am not fully sure of yet, but they're certainly looking convincingly like boys). Harley and Babies 2 and 6 are kind of ambiguous, and while I want to lean one way on them, then I see them again and think, no, they've got to be the other way. Regardless, it'll become apparent in a couple weeks, I'm sure. Just have to be patient... you know, like I always am with this.

View attachment 2725863View attachment 2725864View attachment 2725865View attachment 2725867View attachment 2725868View attachment 2725869View attachment 2725870View attachment 2725871View attachment 2725872


I don't have any definitive guesses on the Orps, but I keep looking at them and thinking, ugh, they are all boys, aren't they? Again, we'll know for sure in a few weeks.

View attachment 2725873View attachment 2725874View attachment 2725875


Not much else going on at the moment. I'm out of soaping olive oil, so no more soap this weekend. Hopefully I'll have some more in by next weekend to experiment more with the egg soaps. The current batch of egg soap took a bit longer than the regular soap to actually harden, but seems to be curing well now. I might test it out soon just to see how it is. It had a strong, unpleasant odor when I first uncovered it, but that dissipated after a bit. I'm just hoping it doesn't come back when it's wet to wash hands with!

The regular soap is actually really nice! I've used it a few times and it suds up with really pleasant lather and my hands definitely feel cleaner after using it! Exciting!!

The red band orp looks like a roo. The other two are not there yet.

Go by the wattle color and size.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Hello, folks! Sorry for disappearing there! Things got a bit hectic for me, so there's not much news from the flock, but I did manage to take pictures of the babies at close enough intervals for weekly shots, I think.

Now, as I feared with all the pictures already posted, when I uploaded all of the new pictures, my computer began misbehaving, so I think I'm going to have to bump to the next page in order to get them posted so that this page doesn't become a black hole for me. I apologize in advance for that.

Perhaps I'll talk about soap in the next post just to make it a little more meaningful.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

So about that soap

I ran out of olive oil on my last batch, so I haven't been able to make any more quite yet, but I have more soaping oils on the way. I did, however, try the ones I already made out and they're pretty nice! The lather is creamy and bubbly, and my hands feel sooo smooth after using the egg soap a few times! When my next batch of oils arrives, I think I'm going to try out another batch of egg soap with two bantam eggs instead of one large egg as I did with the first batch, just to see if that messes with anything. I also got some lemon fragrance oil, so if all goes well with the bantam egg soap, my next step will be scented egg soap! I'm so excited!!

And... well, yeah, my life is at the point where I'm excited about soap. It is what it is.