Utah!

[paintedsavvy]

Hi there fellow Utahns. Just wanted to share my exciting news- My broody Silkie hatched four chicks over the last two days! Here's my thread that I have been keeping updated so that you can see pics if you'd like.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=236331

Hope everyone has a great day!

 

[muddypuddles]

Oh! that's great! they're sooo cute too!

Congrats!!

 

[kimbobim]

Paintedsavvy - congratulations! Those pictures are so cute - and I love that you counted their toes, just like any new Mom. We've not tried hatching anything yet - none of my girls have shown any signs of broodiness, and with winter coming, I'd be afraid to try. Maybe next spring.

Poppy - thanks! It's reassuring to hear that they can survive without all their feathers. I'm in Highland, and we get some hard winds whipping down from Suncrest right into our back yard. Our coop and run are up against a 6 foot fence so they are a little sheltered, but still... I worry. Our coop doesn't have electricity, either, but I'm trying to decide if it's worth it so we can have lights out there - I'm afraid of the fire hazard. It seems like a big coop to me and I worry they'll get cold - we're adding more insulation this weekend to the two walls that we hadn't finished yet. How big is your coop? We have 11 standard chickens - 3 RIRs, 3 Black Stars, 2 SLW, 2 Barred Rocks, and 1 Black Australorp. We made the 2 roosts each 6 feet long since I read that you need a foot of space per bird - last night when I went out to shut the pop door, there were 9 birds crammed together on the upper roost. So I'm guessing they'll keep each other warm at night.

(actually, I'm a kimberli, but my brother called me kimbobim just to bug me - but I loved it, which of course drove him crazy).

 

[RyanAndMeri]

Want to sell one?

We just incubated 24 eggs and only one hatched, we're worried the little thing will be lonely.

 

[paintedsavvy]

Quote:
That's a rough hatch, I'm sorry.

Where do you live? I don't think I could choose one of mine to part with. If you are really worried about your little guy, I would buy him from you if you are relatively close in location. He's a Banty Mille Fleur, right? If you can't part with him, I would imagine he'd be okay as long as he gets taken care of and gets lots of attention from you.

 

[Poppycock]

Kimbobim, our coop is 8X8 with an additional nest box area and a run that is about 20X25. Right now we have 2 BR, an EE, and Phoebe the BA who are all 15 months old. We started out last May with 10 chicks - one turned out to be a rooster, who we rehomed (since we aren't allowed birds who are considered nuisances and our neighbors would definitely think a rooster is a nuisance), and a feral cat got 3 and a fox got 2 just this spring (our run isn't covered and they both got them outside during the day in the run). In July we got 6 new pullets with varying ages - another EE, 1 Red Sexlink, 2 BlackStars, and 2 RIR and are planning to add them to the existing flock at the beginning of October. I'm really nervous about combining them, since we don't really have any way to acclimate them to each other without just putting them into the same coop with the others. We need to do it soon though, because the RSL will be 20 weeks old then and I've read that they can start laying early and I want her to get used to the nesting boxes before she starts laying. This is our first time with chickens, and though it's been fun, there has been alot to learn! I am over on the east side of Alpine so we are kind of protected by the mountains a bit more than you are it sounds like, but I bet your birds will be fine. I've read here on BYC that the heat is harder on chickens than the cold.

 

[RyanAndMeri]

That's a rough hatch, I'm sorry.

Where do you live? I don't think I could choose one of mine to part with. If you are really worried about your little guy, I would buy him from you if you are relatively close in location. He's a Banty Mille Fleur, right? If you can't part with him, I would imagine he'd be okay as long as he gets taken care of and gets lots of attention from you.

Thanks so much, you're very kind! We finally found somebody through KSL that has four Australorpes that they are willing to sell, and the best part is they're only a week old! We were pretty worried about our little chick, but we're very excited to have found him/her some new mates. She may already been imprinted on us (she looks at us with these super sweet eyes like we're the world to her) but if she's anything like our former hatches, she'll eventually fit in with the other hens.

The reason we ordered the eggs in the first place is because we had 2 mille fleur bantams that went broody at the same time, and were broody for over 3 months (it's rare for mille's to even go broody!) When they started to diminish in size and health and two sets of eggs they were sitting on failed to hatch so we decided to get them chicks. Well they stopped being broody only last week. Bad timing!! We put the baby chick under each of them but they both rejected her so that prompted us to find it some chicky companions. We found them now, and are very happy for our new additions.

At any rate, thanks for your kindness everyone. We're very happy with how things worked out, and with our new additions.

 

[kimbobim]

Poppycock, so are you keeping your two groups of chickens in separate coops & runs now? Can they see each other? I'm new to the whole chicken thing, too, but I'll tell you what worked for us. We had 1 5-year old, 3 8-month olds, and 2 4-month olds when we got 5 new birds the first of June that were only about 7 weeks old. We kept them quarrantined on the opposite end of our yard for 30 days, then kept them in a separate run & smaller coop until they were big enough to be in the big coop with the older gals. We had them in a chain link run, they could see each other & check each other out - we let the older birds free range most of the day, so they'd come over and check out the new girls. We let them all free range the yard together for a few days, but they all when to their respective roosts at night. Then we slipped the younger birds into the big coop at night when they were all sleeping. I'd read about integrating them at night and it really did work. There was a bit of pecking over the next few days, but not a lot. Now that they're all the same size, they roam the back yard together and the younger ones get right in there when we scatter treats. They all sleep together on the roosts. One other thing we did was make sure we had places where the new ones could hide to get away from the older ladies - in our case, under the coop (it's elevated about a foot), the shrubs/flowers in the yard, and a bunch of volunteer bushy wild sunflowers were growing in their run. We also had corn growing in one end of their run (long story, ask my husband

), so they love to sit in there under the leaves (bonus, we didn't have ANY earwigs in the corn this year

).

Could you divide off part of your run temporarily with some chicken wire or goat wire? Then you could have the new birds near your original birds, close enough to see each other. We have goat wire (only about 30 inches tall) around our garden space and our birds don't fly over it, although they DO fly up and roost on the 6-foot tall chain link panels that form their run if we're too late in letting them out to roam the yard each morning. It's the funniest thing - they won't fly down again, they just sit there and cluck loudly until one of us goes and opens the gate.

Highland doesn't have any ordinance against roosters, and a few of our neighbors have them - but they're about 1/3 a mile away, so we don't hear them much. We don't have roosters, just because I don't want to deal with the noise or have a bird that might be agressive towards our four kids.

 

[Poppycock]

Thanks for your suggestions kimbobim. We have them in separate parts of the yard, and they've been there for 2 months, so we're good on the quarantine. We have the younger ones in one of our fenced raised garden beds (we have deer problems here) near the house, and the established ones are in the coop/run on the other side of our acre plot. They can probably hear each other, but not see each other very well. We could partition a part of the run off, I suppose, and then lock them in their dog crate at night like we do now, though they are quickly outgrowing it. I wish I had thought ahead when we built our coop and made it bigger for things like this - integrating new chickens, or a place to put a chicken that needs to be removed from the group for illness or healing or broodiness. Ahhh, live and learn, I guess! I used to let the chickens out to free range, but they made such a mess of our bark chips/flower beds that we stopped. We also were afraid that they would wander too far from home and our neighbors wouldn't appreciate them visiting their yards. Our property backs up to a "wild" area and we have wild life too - fox, feral cats, racoons so that's made me a little nervous to free range. Every once in a while, we'll let them out but someone has to be on chicken duty when we do. They sure love it when they get the opportunity. Well, you've given me something to think about - how to make a temporary pen in the run...off to ponder the possibilities

 

[bootsuu]

Wow.. what a week! I got my first egg on Thursday, and my first ever hatched egg in my incubator. I'm all excited with my chickens now, and have been checking on my chickens a lot more than usual in anticipation.

First egg:

First hatched chick: