[The Shire] Our growing flock!

[newchickychick]

Separations during the day really helped. The Cochin has tried messing with one of the meat bird crosses and it did NOT work out well for the Cochin (nothing hurt but his pride) and that certainly calmed him down overall.

They’re really starting to slow down already and it makes me so sad. They’re 6 weeks old now. </3 I’m hoping getting them to the coop soon helps.

Cackle had some Turkens come available… since we’re potentially losing the 4 and still have plenty of space, well… I ordered 5 sexed females. Silkies for our Bantam broodies and Turkens for our standard broodies would be nice! Plus they’re cute. So cute!

I can most definitely tell which Silkies are from Cackle and which are from Ideal. The black one we’ve got from Cackle is a hoot. The gray one is so sweet. Still side-eyeing the definitely likely a cockerel Bantam we’ve got. I’m sure it’s some type of OEGB but maybe a Japanese? Either way, precious and super active.

Today is naming day until hubby is home to work on the coop with me. So many names to give, so little time! It looks like a short day at work for him which really will help us get a huge hunk done. Tomorrow he has off for the funeral and he plans to work once we’re home. I’m going to take the day to R&R so today will be my official “nesting bars and coop enrichment building” day. We want to have plenty of spots for perching and line of sight breaks to help chickens hopefully feel safer in case of scuffles/disagreements while in the coop for the night. And less bored!

 

[newchickychick]

Woah! We had three Bantam Cochins (we’d ordered 5 frizzles) start showing their frizzling pretty early on - two reds and a white or two whites and a red. I was amazed that with a 50% chance we got that lucky. Today I noticed a black (likely Cochin) is showing frizzling!

The only bummer is we don’t want to have to separate all the Bantams to avoid frazzle. Our plan was several small to medium coops in one large run. We may just avoid hatching or letting broodies with the Bantams hatch anything that has the potential to be from a frizzle pullet if we get pullets and cockerels.

Or we may just designate another area for Bantams as well and bite it so we can let broodies have plenty of egg access without having to worry about whose is whose, as we definitely would not let frizzle x frizzle hatch eggs. We will figure it out. It’s something we will have to keep in mind potentially for our standards pen, as we HOPEFULLY will have some frizzle Polish soon. Found a wonderful breeder here that’s rather local and I’m traveling end of the month to get a stunning cockerel and 5 other Polish chicks (manifesting at least one frizzle!) from her. we’ve decided to name the cockerel Appa! My son will be so ecstatic.

Definitely the good thing about plenty of land - we can add more coops as we need to.

Ridiculously exited to travel to get those babies and to get the Turkens and our other Top Hat/Rare special order. The Polish have had such fun personalities so far, all very different but sweet and fun. Though I think we’ve got two females and two males based on head poofs vs. mohawks so far, but there’s still plenty of time for things to change and develop. Though as far as backyard mix babies go in the future, I would never mind having a bunch of little toupee chickens running about ahaha.

Our windows for the coop got here late today too! So excited to get those in! Soon… I can’t wait to post pics of it finished and videos of everyone running around in it. Hubby helped me logistic the roosting bar ladder out REALLY well. I’ve never even sawed something before today (sad, I know!) but I got the hang of it quickly. It was a lot of fun!

 

[newchickychick]

Woah! Two white frizzles, 1 red frizzle (or vise versa) and... 2 black frizzle Cochins! Some of the Bantams just seem to be much slower growing than the others, but gosh what sweeties! The White Sultan Bantam is a hoot too. I can't wait to see what they all are! They're all so lovely.

We're sooo so close on the coop. Literally just the roof left. Agh! I'm so excited. I cannot WAIT to post pics of it all finished.

Putting them in the coop will give us time to wrap up the 70 x 15 run too. We'll have ALL hands on deck for it! It'll be hardware cloth all around with a hardware cloth roof for half, and an actual roof extending from the coop too to be sure we have good coverage from too much sun/heat as well as protection from snow/rain. So excited! I'm going to take lots of pics and videos from when we unleash the chickens into their coop.

One of our Americanas we got recently is a pale yellow with white wings and a large pale blue spot on its head. I really can't wait to see what it looks like grown!

 

[newchickychick]

Twice now, someone's forgotten to close the gate for the big chickies. Both times they stayed super close. Hubby forgot to close it totally when he went to work and they were all JUST outside the gate. Thankfully we have yet to have predator traffic during the day, so all chickies were accounted for and enjoying the extra space. They got escorted back inside their run.

Once big coop is up, we're putting our second oldest batch out in there. We'll have the big chickies' run go right up to the new run and let them see-no-touch for a bit before integrating. We do plan to process our extra cockerels before that point so it's the full group that'll be brought in with the new to lessen adjustments of any pecking order. We have I think 8 hens of our 19, maybe 7. So hopefully with 50 in our 'middle' crew, it'll be an easy enough adjustment (not including rehoming/processing any extra cockerels from that as there's still quite a lot we're not 100% on being cockerels or pullets). We'll see!

The 'big coop' for the Bantams has been measured out too. It'll be a 10' x 10' and we'll have a couple refurbished/immproved prefabs in there too so there's options for them to pick from.

THEN we'll get started on a good 'introduction coop' to put right next to the big run. It'll be a 10' x 10' as well and have a decent run so introductions are smooth. We plan to put a brooder space in there as well so it'll be possible to easily outside brood in warmer months for younger chicks and acclimate them to a better 'flock life' earlier in case they aren't able to be raised by broodies with the rest of the flock.

Many plans as always, we'll see how it goes. Man, some of our older Americanas are turning out gorgeous. One truly looks like a hawk. Just lovely! About to go out and start playing with everyone in the brooders to get more names nailed down. I really need to get some leg bands to start identifying certain cockerels vs certain pullets. I just want something super easy to remove that definitely won't cut off blood flow or be something they can just pull off or eat.