[The Shire] Our growing flock!

[newchickychick]

Last night, we culled our meat bird crosses. Yesterday, they had started to relentlessly chase (as much as they could, being so big and clumsy) other birds to eat their feathers. I had heard pioneer broilers were prone to this, but we really hadn’t seen it before so we were hopeful. Granted, we had never intended to get anything meat bird - they were sent to TSC as just “turkens” from the hatchery. I loved them still, despite knowing they wouldn’t be long term pets, and they were honestly super sweet to us. But the peace and well-being of the flock comes first and foremost! All plucked areas have been sprayed with vetricyn (spelling?) and this morning, the other chickens already seemed so much more at peace. It absolutely told me we made the right decision. Everyone was much more calm about getting to their food. I feel guilty as we never noticed any bullying before, but I’m now sure it was going on when we weren’t present. I hope we can be more attentive in the future, as I know it will happen with non-meat birds, and that not everything chicken keeping is cupcakes and rainbows. We want to give our chickens happy, enriched lives getting to be spoiled pets. But that will take lots of blood, sweat and tears from us. So we’re going to make it happen one day at a time.

We’re also 6 days from lockdown on our next set of eggs. Hubby tempted me into some deathlayer eggs (AS IF I needed encouragement. I “casually” talked about how cool they are and that they do come as hatching eggs) so those will get here today.

Our 75’x20’ run is nearly done! I’m really hoping our chickens will like it. We’re going to be building lots of clutter and roosting “tree” perches and hidey holes for them. I really can’t wait to start that part!

We also didn’t do the nesting boxes yet as we were rushing to finish the big coop and time got away from us, so I got a ton of wood friendly paints (non-toxic!). I’m going to paint them all different colors for a rainbow of nesting boxes. It will be interesting to see what colors are most popular. We’re going to make them stackable so we can move them around or on top of each other in different formations to “switch things up” time to time.

Chicken loft will be a fall project too. Extra excited about that one!

 

[newchickychick]

Uh oh. Poor Loki has crossbeak. Now it's definitely not like BAD bad. But we can see where the bottom beak is growing a little off to the side. I'm going to spend the next few days buried DEEP in research on how to make sure little Loki has a full life, how to properly file it, and make sure he's getting all the nutrients he needs.

 

[newchickychick]

Phewh! Boy am I ecstatic we have runs. A hawk was actually going after our oldest chickens today. Got himself all hung up on the run fencing and could not get even close to the chickens who, for whatever reason, were just watching it with the most expression I think a chicken could give. They weren’t even alerting us! Just watching! We go out very frequently in this heat to check on everyone and make sure they’re fine and heard the sound of something hitting the run when we turned around the corner of our house. Scared the sucker away! But man, was not expecting that! thank goodness we’ve got them in their runs. I’m wondering if they knew they were safe or have the survival instincts of a rock.

 

[newchickychick]

We wanted to try our hand with some more Orpingtons, as they're a family favorite (Salsa is our collective little angel). We ordered 10, got 12, and 9 are developing very clearly! I wasn't sure if we'd see anything yet since I was moving them to put them in the turners and candled while I was at it. It's only day 4, but we can definitely see the eye/embryos. Too cool! We've got 2 Chocolate Silver Laceds, 1 Chocolate, 3 Lavender, 2 Jubilee, and 1 Blue Mottled egg in the developers. So much fun!

2/4 of the Ayam Cemanis we got to go along with them are developing too. We were worried with so few ordered that none would make it to hatch for hubby, so I'm thrilled to see 2 of these still going too. We're going to pause after August on hatching more until September, when we're going to set eggs to hatch ON our son's birthday. I'm scouring everywhere for Sumatra (his favorite chicken breed!) breeders so we can have some to hatch on his birthday. Here's hoping!

 

[newchickychick]

Me: Oh my yes! Blue Wheaten purebred Ameraucanas would be lovely. I’ll try to get those eggs.
The listing: Purebred Blue Wheaten Ameraucana BANTAMS.
At least we’ve already got Bantams. Oops! Here I was thinking standard sized, but Bantams would be cute too.

 

[newchickychick]

Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not…

So recently got a batch of Silver Deathlayers, Golden Deathlayers, and Buff Polish - all from different breeders.
I put HALF in the turners on day 2, and just put the rest in today (day 3) from resting in the egg cartons in the incubators.
Every single one that was on a turner as of yesterday showed clear development today, and NONE that had been resting did (some showed minor signs of this is likely developing but it was not nearly as obvious as the ones in the turner). They were spread across 3 different incubators as well.
Again, it’s possibly just luck I picked ones that would develop to put in the turners early, but thought it was interesting that they were so clearly showing progress vs the ones that rested an extra 24 hours. And it was a mix of the batches too, so it was unlikely a case of “these specific ones were under a broody an extra day”. Statistically speaking.

So may start putting them on the turners on day 2 instead of 3 to see if that tends to speed up the development at all, and in a beneficial way. I’m going to keep track so if quicker start makes it more common for them to quit, I won’t do it in the future certainly. Or on the flip side, if they tend to make it through better, I’ll stick to that method.

This may already be a known thing, one way or another, but I thought it would be fun to see!