Pipd's Peeps!

[Crazy Maizie]

All seven babies are out of the incubator! Here are the other four at their leg banding, making it clear that they do not appreciate the man-handling

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And just a few pictures of the corn crib crew at their evening socializing today

Miss Johnnycakes

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Flint looking bewildered after she hopped up on the edge of the brooder

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Quiet little Chicha looking sweetly up at me

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This one is actually from yesterday, but apparently I missed it in my post earlier! Tash on an, at that point in time, much cleaner towel!

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So much cutie fluffiness in one post!

 

[Crazy Maizie]

A quick check in with the peeps, first the corn crib crew

Tash and Flint in the feeder. No signs of shame on either face Chicha handily demonstrates how the feeder is supposed to be used at the bottom of the picture

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Polenta in my hand, which is worth 2 Polentas in the bush, you know

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Flinty the troublemaker pooping up the top of the EcoGlow!!

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This one's a bit out of focus, but here's Pudding and Chowder after thoroughly making sure the mole on my hand was not edible.

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Pudding and Flint peeking out of the brooder at me

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Pudding and Chicha by the waterer that they painstakingly filled with dirty shavings

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And the little tinies in the small brooder next door. Look at all those footsie pajamas!!

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I was trying to get a picture to show how eensy-weensy these guys are compared to the goons next door, but even this picture makes this little one look bigger than she actually is! They're so small

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Too funny that the chicks are already being naughty! Flinty seems to have a lot of personality. I forget is she a green egger?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Too funny that the chicks are already being naughty! Flinty seems to have a lot of personality. I forget is she a green egger?

She's one of the Easter-eggers, so hopefully a green or blue egg layer, but we'll have to wait and see

And yes, she's a stinker! She's usually the ringleader to their shenanigans in the big brooder. Yesterday, I went to sit with the Cochin babies to get them socialized as well, and Flint flew up on top of the feeder bin because she just couldn't wait her turn!

Notice the other chicks are getting up on the EcoGlow now, too, in the background At least now I can put the waterer up there so they aren't filling it with shavings all the time.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Four more beautiful Blue babies hatched out overnight

Oh, and in other somewhat exciting news, Johnnycakes figured out the perch in the big brooder! It's so infrequent that any of my kiddos figure that out in there, though maybe that's because usually my kiddos are all Cochin bantams

Editing to add (because guaranteed I will forget I did this today and then not remember how many days are left in the round), with the relatively wet weather we've been having, I noticed Opal's babies were looking a bit droopy and there was one questionable dropping in the nest, so I went ahead and started them on Corid for a possible bout of coccidiosis. Since it's not worth waiting for symptoms to show up in the other peeps, I also put Kya's babies and the older brooder babies that have moved outside on a round of Corid just to be safe. They all seem fine, so hopefully there won't be any complications along the way and they'll recover well.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Had my first case of fly strike in a very long time. Thankfully, I still had the supplies on hand from last time.

It was Bucky, who I have noticed has been a bit unsteady lately. When I found him, he was lying on the ground covered in flies. Thankfully, I caught it quite early and he has a pretty minimal wound from it, but he doesn't seem to have the strength to get his feet underneath him now. He is bright-eyed, eating and drinking normally. Not sure what I'm going to do with him once he's healed up, though, if he can't get to his feet.

I also think I'm going to lose Pete pretty soon. The mosquitoes have been terrible and, probably as a result, a few birds have gotten dry fowl pox. Poor Pete seems to have gotten the wet version, though, and is not doing well. I'm doing everything I can for him.

On the positive side, the chicks are doing great on their round of Corid and are back to running around like maniacs as usual. And the kiddos upstairs in the brooders are growing and running around like crazies as well.

Here's a few shots of the lunatics from the past day or two.

Johnnycakes and Flint looking perfectly innocent as they plot out their shenanigans...

Tash is growing in such pretty feathering

Chicha is getting some unusual, stringy feathering in. Kind of like silkied feathering, but not quite right and only in her secondary flights.

On the birds outside, here is one of the pullets sitting up on their perch! That's pretty impressive for a Cochin bantam

And Lydda and Kita, just a couple of Dorks sitting under the roost in the dropping tray instead of perching

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Hi, y'all! Not a whole lot going on in chicken land over here, but I thought I'd check in since it's been a bit!

Buck is healing up pretty well and is starting to regain strength in his legs finally! I was very worried I would have to put him down if he didn't recover from that. Hopefully he continues on the upward trend! I simply will not have the time to tend to a downed rooster through the school year.

Pete's hanging in there, but I think I will have to call it on him pretty soon if he doesn't pass on his own. He's not in good shape.

I've also noticed that Mallow has been a bit droopy and dusky, and I suspect his heart is failing on him based on his symptoms. Nothing respiratory, no external issues or parasites. His father and some of his brothers went much the same way. Sad, but there's nothing I can do except keep him comfortable.

I do think, despite how excited I am about Sterling's babies, that I'm going to have to call it quits on hatching for the year. At this point, it would just be too close to semester start when chicks hatch if I were to set now, and I just have so much going on. I also have a lot of little combs popping up in the chicks I've hatched, so it feels like it's going to be a cockerel-heavy year, and I don't know what I'm going to do with all of them until they're old enough to go to freezer camp as is. Definitely planning to hatch a lot more from Sterling and his girls next year!

With regards to hatching, since the season is up, I have to say that I tried y'all. I really, really tried. I set every single egg I had found from Gwenyth, and not a single one developed. I think I'm just doomed never to get any offspring from that bird. I've been debating whether it would be worth it next year to get a batch of naked neck chicks from the hatchery she came from or not, especially since they would be straight run... and a minimum of 25 to ship

Aside from that, there isn't really anything happening with the birds. Just summer free-range and normal chickening these days. So, let's move on to pictures.

Roland peeking meekly out the door of the coop

Vega and Sumi, who were definitely not up to any shenanigans over in the old dirty nest boxes by the water spigot

Guess who is stillllll broody Ganymede!

Duckling looking at me through the corner coop window one evening

Some pictures of the corn crib crew. I took these a few days ago and they already look so outdated because these guys are growing like crazy!

Chicha the Sumatra, the sweet and quiet one

Tash the crazy Easter-egger, designated air-head of the brood

Johnnycakes the Green Queen (in front) and Pudding the Delaware. Pud' is starting to get her neck speckles now!!

Flint the Easter-egger, ringleader of brooder shenanigans

Chowder the Easter-egger (left) and Polenta the Green Queen (right). Polly is so food fixated, if I so much as tap my finger against anything a single time she races over to see what I'm 'pecking' at and tries to eat it

And one shot of the Cochin babies in the little brooder peeking out at me I traumatized them by taking their towel out and replacing it with shavings this week, long overdue based on the mess that towel was!!

 

[2ndTink]

I'm sorry you have a few boys struggling, that's good that Buck is recovering.

Those corn crib cuties are

Goodness, no Gwenyth chicks!?! 25 NN all at once seems like a lot though

 

[Crazy Maizie]

Fly strike is a real fear of mine. I'm not sure I can stomach it. I've been checking every booty weekly. LMBO. I never in a million years thought this would be something I'd be doing It just seems that with caring for poultry that you come across one issue or another eventually. I'm paranoid over fly strike.
This year I've had a weird egg laying issue with both of my black Australorps - which I figure is age related. But, they were both having issues one after the other. One also has a weird poop going on, but she acts normal so maybe she has something internal as well? Then, more recently I realized that I had at least one other chicken in my 2nd coop laying a soft shelled egg. It's taken me some time, but I finally narrowed it down to a barred rock. I just started giving her a calcium citrate pill hoping that helps her. But, I kind of wonder if it's some sort of viral thing going through. I don't know though these are my first barred rocks. So, I don't know if they are known have egg laying issues plus they came from rural king (so Hoover hatchery or Townline chicks as that's where my rural king orders from). She is about 3 years old (I think). Time flies and I have to look back on pics to figure out ages. They get an all flock feed and oyster shell on the side. I will also throw some down on the ground just in case they need more options to find the calcium.
I've fed this way for ever and this is the first year with egg laying issues. They've been dewormed and I keep things as clean as possible. I just don't know what's causing it or if it's just coincidence. Anyway, it adds to the fear of fly strike. Even with the egg laying issue and weird poop - they all act normal.
Oh and the other barred rock decided to roost with the oegbs in the rafters for a few days. I'm not sure what she was thinking or how she decided to get up there, but I left her alone figuring that's what she wanted to do. She chose to roost right beside Rebel. Lol

I'm glad Buck is recouping well. What is your protocol just incase I find one of them with fly strike?
Guess who is on round 4 of broodiness? Yep, Ivy. If I ever decide to hatch some eggs, I've got a solid source.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Goodness, no Gwenyth chicks!?! 25 NN all at once seems like a lot though

Not a single one! I did give some thought to getting maybe 10 or so NN babies (they'd be straight run, so hopefully with that number I'd end up with at least a few pullets) and filling the rest of the order with other breeds I could just sell off to recover a bit of the overall cost, though...

Fly strike is a real fear of mine. I'm not sure I can stomach it. I've been checking every booty weekly. LMBO. I never in a million years thought this would be something I'd be doing It just seems that with caring for poultry that you come across one issue or another eventually. I'm paranoid over fly strike.

One of the worst conditions to deal with in chickens, honestly. I can't blame you at all for being paranoid about it I've only had to deal with it a few times now, but it's a few times too many!

This year I've had a weird egg laying issue with both of my black Australorps - which I figure is age related. But, they were both having issues one after the other. One also has a weird poop going on, but she acts normal so maybe she has something internal as well? Then, more recently I realized that I had at least one other chicken in my 2nd coop laying a soft shelled egg. It's taken me some time, but I finally narrowed it down to a barred rock. I just started giving her a calcium citrate pill hoping that helps her. But, I kind of wonder if it's some sort of viral thing going through. I don't know though these are my first barred rocks. So, I don't know if they are known have egg laying issues plus they came from rural king (so Hoover hatchery or Townline chicks as that's where my rural king orders from). She is about 3 years old (I think). Time flies and I have to look back on pics to figure out ages. They get an all flock feed and oyster shell on the side. I will also throw some down on the ground just in case they need more options to find the calcium.
I've fed this way for ever and this is the first year with egg laying issues. They've been dewormed and I keep things as clean as possible. I just don't know what's causing it or if it's just coincidence. Anyway, it adds to the fear of fly strike. Even with the egg laying issue and weird poop - they all act normal.

It's likely coincidental, or maybe if they've been free-ranging they may all have found something to eat that's upset their bowels and consequently their egg laying, like maybe a fruit that was rotting in the sun too long or something to that effect. Old age will bring on issues like this sometimes, too, though. If they're acting normally, then I'd just keep doing what you're doing and hopefully it'll help.

Oh and the other barred rock decided to roost with the oegbs in the rafters for a few days. I'm not sure what she was thinking or how she decided to get up there, but I left her alone figuring that's what she wanted to do. She chose to roost right beside Rebel. Lol

Sounds like Kita, one of my big ol' Dorkings. She hefts her big butt all the way up into the rafters to sleep every night except when she's molting.

I'm glad Buck is recouping well. What is your protocol just incase I find one of them with fly strike?

The best thing I ever found for fly strike was SWAT ointment. When I find fly strike on one of my birds, I glove up, give the bird a quick bath to wash the area and get rid of as many of the buggers as I can, dry them off as much as possible, and then put a glob of SWAT around the wound and right over top of the maggots. They flee from the bird like they're running out of a burning building. You do want to avoid getting it in the actual wound and only put it on the maggot mass as it is quite painful for the bird otherwise, but it's the quickest way to eliminate the base problem and it both prevents more eggs from being laid and kills the eggs that are already there. Then all you're left with is treating the wound left behind. I also suggest you keep betadine on hand to flush the wound after the SWAT treatment, both to disinfect and just in case there are any maggots deeper in that the SWAT doesn't reach. Reapply SWAT around the wound as necessary after each flush.

Guess who is on round 4 of broodiness? Yep, Ivy. If I ever decide to hatch some eggs, I've got a solid source.

Ivy, girl. Some hens just don't take a hint, do they?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I don't know how it is, but it feels like this summer is both flying by and dragging its feet. Most days I feel like I've only been awake for a few hours and it's time for bed already. Yet I look back and it feels like classes ended forever ago! Now that we're approaching the one-month mark until classes start up again, I feel like I have so much to get done and not enough time left to do it.

We did lose both Pete and Mallow over the past week, as I feared in my last post. Honestly, Pete I should have acted on sooner. He lingered way too long, poor old man. Mallow was very sudden, one day he was just kind of droopy and by the next morning he was gone. So, my mixed flock is down to just one able-bodied rooster, Birch, as well as the stumbly-tumbly Roland. Since my last post, I've moved Bucky outside into a cage inside the mixed flock run where he's been getting stronger in his legs every day. Maybe Birch will let him integrate in if I keep him here long enough

I also had another rather tragic loss this past weekend of the pullet hatched by Delphine last year. She and Holly moved into the mixed flock a while back so that I wouldn't end up collecting their eggs to hatch from out of the green banders' coop. With the losses of Pete and Mallow changing the numbers on me, I screwed up my head count over the weekend and ended up locking the pullet out without realizing. Around 11 or so that night, I heard her get taken, presumably by a raccoon. There were no signs of it by the time I had gotten dressed and run out there to see what that noise was that night, but I found clumps of her feathers in the chicken yard the next morning and quickly realized what I had done.

To say that the amount of guilt I feel over that incident is immense would be an understatement. She was not a bird I planned to keep and didn't have a name, but she still didn't deserve to die that way. Despite that I held my composure for the losses of Pete and Mallow, two birds that I was far more attached to and had had for much longer, I absolutely broke down when I realized my mistake. Yet another moment this year where I'd completely failed one of my birds.

However, I've come to a realization about all of these recent mistakes I have made. I have been under more pressure than I think I have ever felt before for the past year or so. Pressure to be accepted into the college I wanted to go to. Pressure to get high grades for my prerequisites so that I could compete with my classmates for placement in the program. Pressure to put together a respectable program application. Pressure to keep my performance going in the upcoming semesters. Pressure to get every single thing right without fail for my chickens on top of all of the aforementioned pressures. Pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure... It's obvious that the cracks are beginning to show.

I have stubbornly avoided the use of technology to help me remember things out of a sense of not wanting to give my brain that little bit of slack to become lazy, but it is becoming quite clear that I just can't do it all by myself right now. So, the first thing I did was get a checklist app for my phone that alerts me every evening if it's not checked off by a certain time. On top of listing all of my evening routine in there to check off so that I can be sure I won't forget to latch a door or bring someone in to safety, I also added tallies for each of my coops so that I can have some confidence that I won't mess up my head counts anymore. Obviously, the only thing left there will be remembering to adjust those counts as birds are moved around or pass on.

The second thing I did was make the dreaded call to the processors and schedule a bunch of the roosters to go in on the soonest date they had available, August 13. I just have too many birds to juggle at the moment and I need the space more than I need the mouths to feed. Their sacrifice will not go to waste.

The third thing that I will have to do is actually post sale ads for all of the extra hens I have. Unlike roosters, hens are easy to place, I just grow attached and hesitate to let them go... but I have way more than I should at this moment in time, and tons without names because I really, really shouldn't keep them, and I've just got to let them go. And with the roosters headed to the processors, I have no reason to hesitate on selling the hens because I won't have any roosters to struggle to place along with them. ...However, this one's still a work in progress.

Anyway, one much-longer-post-than-I-had-anticipated-it-being later... That's what's up in my neck of the woods. The next couple weeks are going to be very busy for me because this week is orientation and next week I have mandatory basic life support training, and both weeks are sprinkled with appointments and birthday plans and so much stuff I want to get done before the semester begins... I'm seriously going to need a break from my summer break!

Let's move on to the important part of the post, though: the pictures!

This has been spotted in the chicken yard these days, which means... Ganymede snapped out of broodying! The curse has finally been lifted!!

A Cochin hen waiting in line for the current favorite nesting spot, the hutch (where the Splash girl is sitting in the upper right corner of this first pic)

A couple of Opal's babies figuring out how to use the perches

The corn crib crew has started going outside to play during the day when it's not forecast to rain. They were less than impressed with the accommodations at first (Tash is in there, too, she's just kind of buried in the middle there)

Flint discovering the perch in this little pen

Poly and Chowder

As it turns out, a-little-over-2-month-old Cochin bantams are about the same size as month-old large fowl pullets

Back inside, here's Poly and Cakes thinking about perching for the night... They always chicken out when the lights go out, though, and hop down to cuddle-puddle with the rest of the group.

Chicha, meanwhile, expects me to sit by the brooder all night so that she can cuddle in my lap while she sleeps

Back outside again, here's my Ivy looking angelic after I caught her eating the Cochin kiddos' crumble instead of free-ranging like she should have been Why put food down in reach if it's not for her to eat, says she

And, lastly, as an early birthday gift, my mom got me a set of polyhedral dice with little chickens in them Aren't they adorable?