Smith Homestead Chickens

[mandi427]

Here's what I have right now:
15 layers - silver laced wyandottes and light brahmas
1 roo - blue (splash?) cochin
28 (I think, they move around so much!) 3 week old chicks in the brooder:
- 5 salmon faverolles (hopefully 1 roo and 4 hens, but we lost 2 in the first week so who knows)
- 2 each Whiting's true blue and true green
- 2 black australorp
- 3 blue laced red wyandottes
- 3 partridge rocks
- 2 speckled sussex
- 2 ameraucanas
- 4 cuckoo marans
- some random chicks thrown in by the hatchery
12 barnyard mix eggs in the incubator, hatch date May 9

Yesterday my husband replaced the door on the coop with a better, more secure door to keep out a predator that has killed multiple of our layers this year.

And, because apparently the coronavirus shutdown means we buy chicks, we have the following on order with a June delivery date:
4 partridge rocks (all female this time instead of unsexed)
6 cream legbars
4 buff orpingtons
2 buttercups

 

[mandi427]

Current layers and roo:

 

[N F C]

Your boy is a handsome guy...thanks for sharing your flock with us!

 

[mandi427]

This is my favorite bird in our brooder. She is a 3 week old cuckoo maran that I'm calling George (after Curious George). Every time we go to the garage to check on the chicks, she stretches her neck to look right at us instead of running away like the other chicks do.

 

[mandi427]

3 week old blue laced red wyandotte. Ime, wyandottes are such great foragers and hunters! My husband brought home live mealworms for the chicken treat today (the bait store was out of crickets) and the 3 wyandottes in the brooder figured out that they were food before any of the others. Smart little birds.

 

[mandi427]

That small hand belongs to my 4 year old. If we take a chick out of the brooder to handle, he always wants to pet their heads and touch their feet. Whenever we go out to look at the babies and they run to the opposite side of the opposite side of the brooder from where we are (because 4 year olds are loud and bouncy and scare chicks), he tells me, "they think we are monsters" and then tells them, "babies, we are not monsters!"

 

[mandi427]

My husband began work on a Joel Salatin style chicken tractor this afternoon using some pallets he got from work. We've never built one before, so it's a bit of learning by doing. I was not particularly helpful (I handed him screws until I stepped on a nail coming out of a board removed from one of the pallets, then I sat in a chair and kept him company).

Our ladies were not overly fond of the sounds of the drill and saw, but they had to keep an eye on us just in case we had also brought out treats.

 

[drumstick diva]

Stepped on a nail - ouch!! I hope you are current on your tetanus shots.

 

[drumstick diva]

Did the wound bleed at all? It's good if it did.

 

[mandi427]

Did the wound bleed at all? It's good if it did.

Yes, quite a bit. It was pretty gross. I am up to date on the tetnus shot, too, and my sandal kept it from going too deeply into my foot. I'm treating the wound with Neosporin and keeping it covered, and it looks good.