The New World Order

Or… the New Coop Order…

Yes, the fight for dominance is over. My little ‘Leapy Man’ aka Philip has won the bid for Main Rooster. (Don’t ask why I call him Leapy, I just do. Actually, it’s Philip, but sometimes we called him Filipe and from Filipe, we evolved into Leapy.)

Philip, aka Leapy, a two-year-old Barnyard Mix with a unique heritage and a strong personality.

Philip is the bio-son of Pavelle and his egg was fertilized by Pip, who is, of course, Dots’ and Abby’s boy.

The new Second in Command, or 2IC, is Sylvester, the Buff Brahma that my Tweety Girl raised last year. He is a year-and-a-half old and although he is BIG, he is gentle.

Sylvester, a sweet Buff Brahma rooster, who spent most of his life being called ‘Little Rooster’ even though he isn’t.

They have been Dots’ 2nd and 3rd for a while now, so it makes sense that with him deposed, they would each move up a rank. The position of 3rd is not yet filled. It won’t really matter because once winter is over, and we cull the Summer Boys, most likely they will all go.

Would you like to meet them? My Summer Boys?

Manly, son of Dots, is part EE

LRJ, son of Sylvester (It means Little Rooster Jr). He is sweet and gentle, like his papa.

Rory (in the back), a flighty EE – cross with a LOT of rough edges

Branson the Bantam,. He’s a shithead. No one likes him. Not even his mother.

Of them, the only one I really like is LRJ. He is sweet and nice and quite handsome to look at.

Manly is shy and hard to pick up, not unlike Pip was at that age. And for being part EE, he is not a spaz like Luke and Padme were. He’s just… Skittish.

Rory is like Luke incarnate. Big, rough with the ladies, but he’s also incredibly skittish. More than Manly. He’s just a wild brute.

Branson is full of ‘small dog syndrome’ or … Little Rooster Syndrome. He’s small enough that I can hold him in one hand, but he acts like he is bigger than Sylvester. He’s the youngest and wants to mate all the girls. They don’t like him. Even his mother, Pavelle, does not like him now that he’s hit puberty.

This ^^^ would be why my coop has so much chaos. Because of these Summer Boys. I suspect LRJ might make a good 3rd of I decide to keep him. It’s a tough call.

So how’s Dots, you ask?

He’s doing well.   His eye has healed and it seems as though the new head roosters have decided that he isn’t a threat to their positions.   He hangs out mostly in the coop, for now, which is probably good for him because he doesn’t like the winter cold anyway.

He doesn’t crow in the mornings anymore.  He used to lead the chorus of ‘good morning! good morning!’ and now, I never hear his crow in the morning.  My Girl did say that he was in the coop crowing for the ladies with him this afternoon when she went down,  I’m encouraged to know that he is. at least, no longer afraid of the hens.   He’s also not afraid of the younger Summer Boys.

Our beloved Double Dots

No longer the main rooster

but still a ladies’ man. ❤

Now, if you’d like, I’ll show up pics of some of the other new, summer additions to the flock. I didn’t update all summer and we have quite a few new faces.

These are ducks… Hewey, Dewey and Lewey. dewey and Lewey are females, and Hewey is the handsome boy out front.

Jolie, a friendly EE we adopted from a neighbor.

Isn’t she precious?

Jolie’s friend, Chloe, an Australorp.

Rosie, a sexlink hen who came with Jolie and Chloe.

Georgina, a cochin. She’s little but pretty.

Our little Princess of Fluff

Sylvia, a Buff Brahma cross. Her papa is Sylvester. No clue who her momma is.

Samantha. got her from Tractor Supply. She was in a bin labelled ‘salmon favorelle’ but she is NOT a favorelle. I suspect white Rock, but don’t know.

Leia, one of our EE crosses. She looks like a female version of Rory, so I suspect they are genetically Luke’s

She is pretty.but skittish.

Pinto, a little Barnyard mix who is most likely Dots’ offspring. I suspect my Columbian Wynadotte, Winnie, is her momma.

This is a bad picture, but this is Merida. I’ll look for a better later. Merida is the daughter of Bella, the ‘Mad Scientist’ chick I got from My Pet Chicken when Little Dude did his hatching project.

Here’s a few more from around the barnyard…

And lastly, DH adopted three beef calves… please meet, Sampson, Delilah and Sheila.

From left to right, Delilah, Sampson (in the back) and Sheila.  

The First to Come

I went down to the coop this morning and found this little chick peeking out from under Briar.

Isn’t cutie?

She had two mkre as well…

There are two more eggs to hatch and I hope they do. Today is actual Hatch Day so there is still plenty of time for them to join us in the big wide world.

Babies!!!

Day 19 and Briar Rose is anxiously awaiting for the hatch of her first little ones. One egg was pipped this morning before I left for work. I returned at Noon to two pips and the sounds of cheeps.

And also to Ashley sitting on them because she is still trying to borrow Briar’s nest.

So we removed Ashley and gave Briar back her babies… and then put four eggs under Ashley. I’ll talk about that later.

By 4:15 pm … still oy two pips, but they are bigger holes now and this one is almost free. There will be at least one baby by bedtime, I’m sure.

Good luck, Briar Rose and Babies!

See How We’ve Grown!

On Thursday, Pavelle’s two little chicks will be three weeks old. Last week, she moved them out of the cat carrier nursery where they hatched and into the nests. I know, I know, we’re not supposed to encourage our chickens to sleep in the nests, but YOU explain that to a broody momma with babies to protect. Especially my little attack pineapple. Seriously, it’s much better to just let Pavelle handle her babies in her own way and clean up after them than it is to try and impose my will on her.

Other things to note… I was quite wrong about them not having feathered legs. The bigger of the two, who came from an olive EE-cross egg does, in fact, have feathered legs. Given the overall size of the chick and yellow coloring, I am guessing Sylvester the Buff Brahma to be the father.

They go outside almost every day now. Almost because we’ve had very up and down weather, and on the cooler, rainier days, Pavelle does not stray too far from the coop.

Here are some pictures of them from around the 1 1/2 – 2 week mark. If you look closely at the bigger, non-black chick’s legs, you can see the feathers on the sides.

 

And now here are some pics from over this past weekend.

I am cute, aren’t I?

 

 

Rhode Island Eggers

I wanted to share with you all what the “Rhode Island Eggers” in my flock look like.

Again, these pullets had Rhode Island Red mommas and an Easter Egger father.

This is Nutmeg. Her mother was an RiR hen. Her father was an EE rooster.

She has the look of an RiR, doesn’t she? Body-wise, I mean.

See? From the back, you could hardly distinguish her or her sister Cocoa from the older RiRs.

But those cheeks tell a different story!

And that’s Nutmeg. 😀

She and Cocoa are curious little birds with gentle personalities. A little skittish of humans sometimes but not in the freak-out way my full EE hen Padme is. They approach me for treats held in my hand and listen when I talk to them, but dislike being held.

Broody Hens & Baby Chicks

So this is my little Pavlovskya-mix hen, Pavelle. You’ll all seen pictures of her before, because she is a very unique little bird.

Back in March, Pavelle went broody, but I refused to let her have eggs then because it was still too cold and snowy for little wee things.  She went broody again last month, and after a few days of watching her, we decided to let her have a couple of eggs.

Which hatched into the cutest little babies…

This one was the first one to hatch, a brown and yellowish chick that came from one of our olive egg layers.

The olive egg layers are all the children of last year’s Easter Eggers, Padme (the hen) and Luke (the ill-fated rooster.  Yes, he did father three little hens and one rooster before we sent him to freezer camp).  Best guess as to which hen supplied the egg?  The size of the egg suggested Iggy (the EE cross Pavelle raised last year) or Cocoa and Nutmeg.  Cocoa and Nutmeg I call my “Rhode Island Eggers” because they are the color of my RiRs and have EE cheeks.  I suspect their bio-moms were RiR with Luke as the father.

It will be interesting to see how this little one feathers out, won’t it?

And this little precious came from a small brown eggs.  I have a lot of smaller brown eggs right now, because all of the chicks from Little Dude’s Hatching Egg project are laying now.   This one, as you can see, is all-black and tiny.

I have only one all-black hen, little Bella, the ‘Mad Scientist’ chick that My Pet Chicken slipped into our order.

Bella, the Mad Scientist. Which is just another word for some kind of cross. My Pet Chicken couldn’t even tell me what breeds went into making her.

Bella must be the bio/egg mom to the little wee black baby.

As to who sired them?  I have three roosters, and haven’t been around much to see who has been hanging out with whom.  I know what Philip (my little Leapy Boy) and Sylvester both have small followings and they are mostly the younger girls.  But it’s hard to tell right now.  Neither of them have feathered legs, which is possible with both of those two roosters.

And lastly… I will leave you with this…

A post shared by Debc@Thereachick (@thereachick) on May 18, 2018 at 4:41am PDT

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The Australorp in this video is Briar Rose. She seems to think she is going broody right now.

I guess it really is spring here on the farm… finally!

One of These Eggs…

One of these eggs is not like the others

One of these eggs just doesn’t belong.

Can you tell us which egg is not like the others

By the time we finish this song?

So… thanks to Luke and Padme, I had four Easter Egger cross chicks hatched this past spring/summer. I was told they would told olive colored eggs and have been waiting to see it happen.

Looks like I got one!!!

The Autumn Chicken Report

Or is it the Late Autumn Chicken Report?  Because winter is almost here people.   As reported in my last post, the chickens are in various stages of molt.  They look pathetic, although some of the earlier molters are almost feathered back.

Hopefully, the others will hurry up and NOT still be half naked by the time the snow starts sticking.

October (or rather the end of October) meant the return of Halloween, jack o’lanterns and pumpkin seeds.  I’ve always been jealous of pictures and videos of peoples’chickens pecking holes in pumpkins left out for them.  Mine do not do that. They ignore whole pumpkins like the plague and even broken up ones, they would just eat the seeds and not the pulp.

Pumpkin guts make a good chicken treat.

What’s this? Dunno, but it smells good. (aka Phillip and Heather discovering pumpkin for the first time.)

This year, however, they were more than interested in our post-Halloween offerings and devoured not only the pumpkin seeds and guts shown above, but six medium sized jack o’lanterns over the course of the first week of November.

I am glad they enjoyed it,  because in the next couple of weeks, I was tasked with the painful process of deciding which of them Summer Boys stayed and which ones were sent off to Freezer Camp.  If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I have a general weakness for roosters.   Between their beautiful plumage and strong, unique personalities, how could I not fall in love with the little buggers?  But every year, we hatch an average of 5-8 roosters and I’m only allowed to keep a minimum of three, depending on the size of my hen-to-rooster ratio.

This year, including Dots and Luke (saved from last year), we had a grand total of eights roosters.  DH said I could keep three this year, if one of them was Phillip, the smaller rooster hatched out of one of Pavelle’s little white eggs.   He is about half of Dot’s size and not likely to get much bigger.

So while the chickens were blissfully enjoying the pumpkin treats, I was looking at my roosters, talking to them, interacting with them, and trying to decide who should stay and help Dots keep his flock safe.

This is NEVER an easy decision for me, and the last time I had to do it, a mistake was made.   

I will probably never forgive myself for allowing DH to take Pip that day instead of Luke.  I miss him.  Everyday, I miss that little guy.   He was our first chick ever and worked well his father and mother in taking care of the flock.

Phillip (or Leapy as I call him sometimes), is Pip’s son from Pavelle and reminds me a lot of him, personality wise.

So, before I go into who got tickets to Freezer Camp, let me introduce to the Summer Babies.

Grumpy Gus

Cutie

Rachel

Heather

Bella (with Sylvester in the background)

The chicks of Baby Land (from left to right, starting in the front, Not Cocoa, Darcy, Apache (rooster) and Cocoa)

Iggy

Roxie

Winnie

Sylvester

Chipmunk (with Bella and Sylvester)

Phillip (aka Filipe, aka Leapy)

A.J. (with his mother, Pavelle)

Darcy

Cocoa

Not Cocoa

Of these, the roosters were Philip, Gus, Cutie, Sylvester, Apache and A.J.

I have also thought at times that Darcy could really be a Mr. Darcy, but that one is either a late bloomer or a big hen.   So we aired on the side of ‘big hen’ and kept Darcy, for now.  She will winter over that will us time to see if she is really a he.  Or not.

This year, I decided to rectify the mistake of keeping Luke,making him first on the list for Freezer Camp.

We would be keeping Dots (as usual because it’s dumb to get rid of a good rooster, and I learned that the hard way with Pip) and Philip… so I had a spot for one more keeper.

The candidates I was deciding from were Cutie ( a light barred rock from Little Dude’s incubator project) and Sylvester, the only hatched buff brahma.  Of the Summer Boys those two were my favorites.   Cutie because he was so incredibly beautiful and Sylvester because he was raised by my Tweety girl and has always been friendly.

Like last time, I simply couldn’t decide right up til the end.  What it came down to was which one could I pick up without too much hassle.  Cutie always fights me until I got him in my arms.  But then he would settle in.   But he would still fight me.  So on Freezer Camp day, I made the decision in favor of keeping Sylvaster and letting Cutie go.

I hope that it doesn’t turn out like the Luke vs Pip decision.   I really don’t.   I couldn’t take that again.

Incidentally, it really wasn’t “freezer camp” this year.  We decided to can them instead and got 9 jars, 8 pints and 1 quart of meat out of them.   They will be used to make soups and stews and maybe to grind up for chicken salad.   

 

The last thing we needed to do was give little Not Cocoa a better name.   She is part Easter Egger (because Luke is her papa) and part Rhode Island Red.   We called her Not Cocoa because we named Cocoa first and she is… not Cocoa.

How hard is it to come up with a good name for me?  I’m adorable!

 

So we’ve been debating it a while, and finally, on Thanksgiving, we came up with a suitable name… Nutmeg.

Lastly, I’ll leave you all with a picture of Double Dots and his ladies enjoying their Thanksgiving morning breakfast of oatmeal mixed with scratch grain, BOSS, meal worms and cranberries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Co-parenting, Sort Of

This is just a brief update on the fate of Claire and the chicks of Baby Land.

The last time, I mentioned that Eugenie had gone back to Hen Things when the babies were 5 weeks old.

They are now 7 1/2 weeks old and Claire has yet to go back to Hen Things. She does wander away from them or them from her… occasionally. But for the most part, they are together. Just without Eugenie.

Not that you would notice a difference, because more recently, Pavelle and her baby AJ have been hanging out with them.

The older chicks treat AJ very well, and Claire seems to tolerate Pavelle so long as her babies don’t get pecked.

And then there was one…

Several weeks ago, I told you all about Claire and Eugenie, a mother-daughter duo who had decided to go broody and hatch eggs at the same time and how, after hatching, they endeavored to co-parent their four chicks. It was awkward at first, but as the weeks have progressed, we (the humans and the other chickens) have gotten used to the little collective of Six. Little Dude even nicknamed them Baby Land.

The chicks of Baby Land are five weeks old this week. They’ve had lots of teaching, lots of supervision, lots of protection.

Over the last couple of days, however, o e of their Mommas has started making the transition from Momma to Hen.

Eugenie, the daughter of the mother-daughter duo, has decided that three weeks of broody and five weeks of mothering is enough, and that, since her own mother is still willing to watch all four of the children, she can go back to doing Hen Things.

I first noticed her dirt bathing away from her chicks the other day. And other last couple days, she has not been hanging out with the collective in the pasture. Not did she sleep with them on the roosts last night.

She laid an egg this morning, too.

Claire is still going strong, though, for now, and will probably stick with the Littles for another week, at least.

She did, however, give me a very harried look last night, when instead of splitting the chicks with her daughter, she had four confused little ones trying to tuck up underneath her wings. I think she wound up sitting on one of them!

Time is running short for these Littles, though. Pretty soon, they will be all on their own.