With a Chick Chick Here and a Chick Chick There...

Ee I ee I....OH!

We've had chickens for about three years now.  How we got into them is documented somewhere in this blog, as is the great chicken dusting saga. 

In all those years and all the additions, we've never gotten into purchasing baby chicks.  Instead, I would purchase chickens of laying age from a farm about 40 minutes away that raises and sells layer hens.

We've had some transition in our chickens.  Through general chicken population loss, or that clever fox that somehow managed to attack three in broad daylight, we basically have TWO of the many chickens we started out with.  Greta and O'Brien are our two laying hens that remain.  We lost our lovely Delaware rooster Screech, as the winter came to an end, to an illness.  Despite doctoring and mentor advice, he did not make it through.  Greta and O'Brien were lost without him and for days would not even come out of the inner coop area.  Screech had been with us a bit over two years, and he was extremely friendly and did a fine job as a rooster.

When I made the announcement on Facebook that we lost Screech, a friend wrote me that she had a rooster for me, and that's how we acquired Eugene.  He is a beautiful Rhode Island Red rooster that was only 7 months old when we took him in.  He has quickly found his place leading his harem of two and is the best hawk spotter I have ever seen.

Left to right:  Greta, O'Brien, and Eugene

We live among the red-tailed hawks who patrol our skies.  Some have buzzed us so low our dogs can leap into the air and just about grab one.  We also have raccoons, skunks, possum, and other chicken predators in our woods.  That probably explains why we built the Fort Knox of chicken dwellings last summer.  We like our chickens to free range, but now we only let them out when we are going to be working on the farm for great lengths of time and/or our horses are turned out.  The horses seem to keep predators away and chickens tend to stick to the horses fields and immediate barn/coop areas.

Every chicken loss was a great one here.  I was the one to find the fox attack.  After an extensive CSI crime scene investigation, internet research, and talking to other chicken owners, "FOX" was clearly the culprit.  We do also have coyotes, but they live off many rabbits and squirrels in our area, and rarely come close enough to our farm.  After a bit over two years with no attacks on our chickens, we felt that all was well in our poultry coop design and we were impervious.  Armies have probably fallen because of this kind of thinking.

The chickens even survived my mother staring at them longingly and telling me which ones would "make good soup."  (My mother's family raised chickens and ducks and during the depression the foul they raised were their primary food source.)  I keep telling her we don't eat anything we name.

The chicken "bunker."  If anything gets into this, they deserve to.
 

So in all this time we have not gotten into baby chicks.  We take the eggs from our brooder.  Even though Greta has a tendency to become broody at least twice a year, we manage to get her over that by either physically removing her from the nest or bribing her with treats.  It's amazing what a bag of roasted sunflower seeds will do when shaken vigorously.  Greta never misses that snack.

This year I was at our local feed store buying fly spray when I heard the peeping noises coming from the "chick" room.  Then, I did what I shouldn't have done.  I went in.  There were loads of chicks available, also ducklings.  And in that moment of cuteness and "how-hard-can-this-be-ness" I caved and bought six baby chicks.  Four Americanas and two Barred Rock Bantams.

When I got home I broke the news to my husband who is well versed in having animals thrown at him quite unexpectedly.  We totally cleaned the enclosed coop area and put the one week old chicks inside.  Unfortunately, this was during a period of time when we were going through unseasonable spring weather and our nights were dropping down to 42 degrees.  Even with our heat lamp, the internal coop temp was only coming up to 70 degrees.  Chicks need 80 degrees and above.  On that first night we decided to ready a large Rubbermaid trunk and bring them into our downstairs half bath, which is very warm as an interior room in our house.  It also made it easier on me for the vast amount of cleaning that needs to occur with baby chicks, since they insist on pooping in their feeder, in their waterer, and all over their bedding about 90x per chick per day.  This also gave me a chance to handle them at least once per day so they got used to me, and got used to the idea of my hand offering treats.


The chicks in their internal coop on the first day home.

I also got to observe baby chick behavior, which can be very humorous.

Within one week they were starting to grow and more feathers were coming in.  They began to learn about treats, which I gave them in limited quantities, especially meal worms, which they love.  It's so much fun to watch them grab a meal worm and run so that none of the other chicks will get it.

Within two weeks they were flying everywhere within their Rubbermaid trunk (and sometimes NOT within their Rubbermaid trunk), and often I would find one or two of them sitting on the edge of it.  We made them a perch within the trunk which they used instead of the edge.  Still, once in a while, I'd hear a volley of peeping like someone was being massacred, and go in to find one had flown completely out of the trunk and could not figure out how to fly back in.

This past week we moved them permanently to the inner coop with their heat lamp and reclaimed our bathroom.  It was starting to look like a frat house party site, so I'm glad to be able to have it back to normal.  The chicks have so many more feathers, are so much bigger and have so much more room to fly.  There is a great perch inside the coop, which we lowered for them until they are bigger, and their heat lamp keeps the temps at about 75 degrees at all times.  They seem quite happy, and have now begun to play chicken games with each other.  Queen of the perch seems to be a favorite.  I laughed the other day as the smallest of the bunch made herself as big as chickenly possible when you are "chicken little" and ran full throttle flapping her wings at her buddies to be sure they understood just how menacing she can be.

Our other three larger birds are living temporarily in the original coop we had within our barn (a converted hay room--we have two hay rooms, so it was easy to reconvert this one back to a chicken abode).  Once the chicks are large enough we will start segregating them from the larger birds so that they can see each other but not interact.  Eventually all things will work out.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that all birds stay with us for a long time.  I'll keep you posted, and hope to get updated photos soon.

Aaaarrrrrooooooo!




1984 and All That...

I'm sure that, unless you've been on a deserted island thanks to Gilligan, you probably have seen all the news reports about our government's access to our phone records.  For years I have had an aversion to phones, probably since watching movies like "When A Stranger Calls" and other B-rated cinema classics.  So, I'm going to admit right here and now that I'm not too worried about this.  Heck, I'm probably the most boringest (<--clearly made up word) person on the face of the planet when it comes to calling/being called/conversations/texting and all phone usage.  Too bad they aren't looking at my Angry Birds app usage.  If they ever find a connection between Angry Birds usage and the most-wanted, I will absolutely be pretty high on that ticket.

This did get me thinking, however, about the things that strangers know about us that we never seem to complain about.

My local Starbucks sees me just about every day.  I order the same thing.  In fact, I am so predictable, they often just start making my drink when I walk in the door.

It can throw them for a loop when I order, oh, let's say, a green tea lemonade sweetened, instead of my grande wholemilk hazelnut latte.  (To set the record straight here, my husband really screwed up my Starbucks "Cheers" thing I had going on, when he started being COMPLICATED in his order and getting his latte with "no foam, extra hot."  Now, for some reason, the barristas think I want mine that way too and I've become way too wordy ordering a grande wholemilk hazelnut no-I'm-not-the-one-who-likes-it-no-foam-extra-hot latte.)  So here, clearly, is a piece of information that many people know about me from this one organization.  (Pssssttttt.....this is what SHE orders!)

The other day I drove up to Pet Supplies plus to purchase some dog supplies.  Dog food (canned and dry), cat food, doggy treats, etc.  We just added six baby chicks to our household and they are living the high life in our downstairs 1/2 bath.  It's reminiscent of a tailgate event in there, short of the keg parties.  I decided to buy them some meal worms, since I read that I could start introducing them to certain treats soon.  I get up to the check out counter and the young lady is ringing me through.  I am one of those card-carrying members they see every week like clockwork.  Suddenly she picks up the jar of meal worms, crinkles her nose, looks at me and asks "so who are these for?  You don't usually buy these."  (Pssssssttttt......she bought MEAL WORMS!!!! What is she building in her basement?)  I explained the chick treat and all was right with the world.  No investigative reporters met me outside. (I found a great link about raising your own mealworms, which I may try so as not to raise suspicions any further about my mealworm activity.)

Every day on line I'm being traced and tracked and 117 cookies are deleted every night when my scanning system goes into overdrive on my computer.  Spybot warns me every third google search that some ungodly activity is going on behind the scenes. And Amazon?  Forgeddaboutit. 

They know when you've had kids, how many, what their ages are now and when to send them a birthday card.

My hairdresser used to record my color next to my name in a little book when I got my hair colored.

The supermarket keeps track of ALL my purchases and every time I return to the check out with a new order, an appropriate coupon appears with my receipt reminding me that I liked General Mills cereals the last time I shopped.

If we went back through all the things that are accumulated on just me every single day we'd have a profile to make NCIS records envious.  So maybe tomorrow, when I go to Starbucks I'll order a tall half-skinny half-1 percent extra hot split quad shot (two shots decaf, two shots regular) latte with whip.  That ought to throw them for a loop!

Aaaarrrrroooooo!!!!!