Tough Chicken Times

When you first get chickens, life is all cute fuzzy chicks making equally cute peeping noises and yeah, there are some messes to clean up, but overall, it’s still cuteness overload.   And then get bigger… and the messes get bigger… and then they get older… and the cuteness wears off… well, unless you’re our Maicey girl, who is pretty sure she’s cute 24-7, even five years out.  She tells me so every day.   She’s that confident.

If you have chickens, I’m pretty sure you have a girl like Maicey, too.  So you understand.  There’s always that one who knows.

But this isn’t really a post about how cute Maicey thinks she is.

This is actually a follow-up to Frost’s injuries, the report of another injury, and some sadness.  It’s been a tough chicken week here in our coop.

Last post, I think I mentioned that DH was building Frost a tiny bachelor pad, big enough for 2-3 birds, to spend some time in while we waited for the weekend to come and bullies to be gone.

Here is the enclosed coop. They had some issues the first night. One of them refused to go inside to sleep, and as it was supposed to be cold overnight, I worried I would return in the morning to a chicken-sickle.

I am pleased to report that I did not. In fact, over the course of the last few days, they seem to fairly happy, if a little bored at times. It is a much smaller area than they are used to.

The hens I chose to go with him were three who have been over-mated by our younger, more exuberant roosters. The Winter Boys of whom the Bully Barry was one. My thought was that, they could stay there, getting some much needed rest from over mating, until the hen-to-rooster ratio was adjusted.

Today, this morning in fact, they were liberated. (More on that later.)

In the meantime, while I was fussing with Frost and wrestling with the weight of who should be the four roosters to leave the flock… two over bits of heartache occurred.

You may remember from the post about the new coop floors, I mentioned that my Columbian Wyandotte named Winnie, was broody. We had given her seven eggs. These eggs were ‘special’ because they are HUGE, like so big they don’t fit in a a jumbo egg carton and look rather cartoonish compared to the other normal-sized eggs. I wanted to see what came out of them, to try and decide who was laying those eggs.

Saturday should have been hatch-day. I say should have been, because it came and went and nothing hatched. I let it go until Wednesday, just in case. Still, no babies. We had candled them at the end of the first week, and there had been life. But still, no babies.

Wednesday, I removed them from under her, and returned her to the coop. I found that only one of the eggs had pipped and tried to hatch, but failed and became shrink-wrapped. The dead chick was fluffed out, a grayish color. I have one blue/gray cochin and four blue/gray Rocks… so the coloring kind of narrows it down. However, a couple days ago, I removed one of HUGE eggs from Frost’s outdoor coop. He had two of the Blue/Gray Rocks and a mixed hen with him. So that narrows things down. I’m thinking of the Rocks at this point.

Of the other six eggs, two were duds, and the others had dead chicks at various stages of development.

Winnie spent very little time off the nest, so I don’t know why they did not hatch. We did have a bit of a cold snap in between Week 2 and Week 3. A belated return of ‘winter’ and cold enough to freeze water in their dishes. But I had not considered that the eggs wouldn’t be safe under her. They seemed warm enough when I removed them.

I just don’t know.

For now, no one is in the broody place, but my little cochin has decided she thinks she is broody again. I am torn between trying eggs again or just getting her chicks from Tractor Supply. If I give her eggs, it has to be today, because today, or rather this morning, we still had all eight roosters to fertilize the heck out of them. (More on that later. Yes, I keep saying that.)

I also have an Australorp who is being broody, too.

I should put one of them into the broody breaker, aka the dog crate. But as it happens, the dog crate is currently being used in it’s other role… than of med-crate.

This would be why my dog crate cannot be used as a broody breaker.

Thursday morning, I went down to feed the chickens, clean the coop, you know, my usual routine. I had a bowl of apples and pears which had gone soft and mushy, and no one in the house was going to eat. I like to roll them out into the pasture so the chickens can chase after them. It’s fun to watch.

One of the apples rolled far enough that they lost interest, so I walked down to get it and roll it again, in a different direction. As I was walking back towards the barn, I looked out towards the side of the barn, and noticed a hen out there in the weeds. They’re not supposed to be over there, but occasionally one will fly over.

So seeing one out there made me take a second look and I realized that she was laying on the ground. Not walking around.

My heart sank, because there is a leg trap there in those brambles. It’s not my choice. Dad put it there because we’re having a problem with several types of pests who like our gardens and also like our chickens. They are the teeth-less traps, but can still do damage.

I open the gate and walk over and see, much to my horror, that yes, her leg is caught in the trap. And much to my… relief… that she is still alive. She had to have spent the ight out there, and being a gray chicken (one of the Blue/gray Rocks), I would have missed her at lock up in the shadows.

So I rushed back to the house to get Dad, because I really don’t know the first thing about opening those traps, and also woke up my Dude. They came down and we got her freed. She could barely walk, and as you can see from the above picture, her foot is swollen.

But the leg is NOT broken, which I feared because of how brittle bird bones can be.

I got her cleaned up and sprayed the wound with Vetericyn and then Scarlex oil. I also bought a pack of Save-a-Chick probiotics to add to her water. I am hoping that helps boost her immune system while she heals.

We’ve been checking on her, spraying her foot/ankle with both sprays and letting her walk around in the barn (a no-no during normal times ,but she’s forgiven for now) for the last three days. She is walking better, but the foot is still swollen. It’s not hot, so I don’t think infected, but I don’t know what to make of the fact that it’s still swollen.

However, she is putting pressure on it okay, walking mostly normally and doing little hops over things like a normal bird. We’re resolved to keep her separated over the weekend. I’d like to see that swelling go down, but if she is getting along okay, I’m not sure what else to do.

And lastly… the ‘more on that later’…

We sent four of our eight roosters to Freezer Camp today.

Barry the Bully was always going to go, but I had wrestled with the others.

We had, of course, Double Dots, Philip (aka Leapy), Rocky, John, Frost, and the last two Pavelle babies, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.

Other than Tweedle Dum… all of these roosters are ones I like. And some of them we’ve had for a very long time. But four needed to go, so we had some hard decisions to make. It’s not always as easy as getting rid of the mean ones, because sometimes, there’s only just one mean one. And I frequently have too many roosters.

In the end, we kept Double Dots, Rocky, John and Frost.

Which, by default, makes Dots head rooster again until of the other three realizes they might be tougher than him. No clue who it’s going to be, except it won’t be Frost. He’s too timid.

So it’s a quieter, calmer place in the coop this morning. When I finally do return the little injured Gray Girl (whom we’ve officially named Peggy), there won’t be as many boys trying to mate her.

I hate posts like this. I hate hate having bad chicken days, or bad chicken weeks. But when you have chickens, either as pets or livestock, or like mine a mixture of both, tough days/weeks happen. It comes with having animals.

Here is hoping for a better week coming up.

Chicken Anniversary, Bullies and Chicks

On April 11, 2015, I became a first time chicken momma to seventeen little yellow rooster chicks, and their three little brown&yellow sisters. It’s been five years since then, and a lot has happened. I’ve seen chickens come and go, added a lot of different breeds, and watched mother hens hatch out lots of babies.

We still have one of the original flock, our beloved Double Dots, who celebrated his first birthday without his sister this year. She would have enjoyed the day. It was warm, with sunshine and new green grass. Dots enjoyed but for her.

He is starting to show his age. His crow sounds like that of a little old man. The feathers around his face seem more white (gray hair, chicken style?) than they used to be. But he still walks around the coop/run/pasture with an air of purpose band and determination.

On May 5th, the handful of Rhode Island Reds we have left from our second round flock will also turn five.

Happy birthday (belated and early) to all my birds!

It’s been a stressful week.

I’ve suspected for a while that someone (or more than one some one) has been picking on my Silkie rooster, Frost.

Frost. If you can’t tell, it looks like someone has been pulling his feathers.

Frost is a timid little guy, smaller than my other roosters and a bit of a loner. Lately, he’s been hanging out a lot by himself. I’ve wondered at it, but with my new, full time job, I haven’t had a lot of time to sit and observe what’s going on. However, with Covid-19 shutting down basically every thing, I find myself on an every other day work schedule and time to watch them.

I still couldn’t pinpoint who was picking on him, but you know how it goes… Sometimes when one does to, more if them will, too.

Frost started hiding in the duck house and I’d have to put him in at night.

And then last night, I found him there, huddled in the corner and caked with mud … and blood. Looked like he’d been mud wrestling with a bear, and lost.

I brought him inside, tucked him away in a nest and began doing a head count. At the same time, slowly looking at all the possible culprits.

Our youngest rooster, Barry, a little one my RiR Maicey hatched and raised at the end of them summer… also looked like he’d been mud wrestling, but won. I am pretty sure he did it.

The pictures I am about to show are NOT pretty. And they are very heart-breaking.

I had to bathe him, which is hard because he has very brittle feathers where he’s been trying to grow them back.

So it was more like him standing in the kitchen sink while I sprayed warm water over him to get out the mud and blood.

His eyes are swollen and I’ve been treating them with Vetricyn spray. You can tell it stings him when I spray it, but it’s necessary.

He is currently residing in a dog crate on our porch. Until his eyes are a little better, I can’t risk returning him to the flock.

The bully Barry’s days are numbered. It’s time we decided who of the 8 rooster we were sending to Freezer Camp anyway, but it’s been decided that it will happen sooner rather than later. There will be four of them leaving.

Possibly five if Frost doesn’t get better. I’m worried about those eyes, but I have faith in my Vetricyn.

And DH is building a smaller, enclosed coop, that I can possibly put Frost and some of the hens who’ve been over mated by over-enthusiastic younger rooster and need time to regrow feathers. He’s doing this emergency build right now, in the snow.

I love my DH. He is awesome on so many levels.

On a happier and more exciting note, tomorrow is Day 21 for my broody Columbian Wyandotte, Winnie and her seven little eggs. I am nervously awaiting the first signs of new peeps. I will talk more about that as it happens.

New Floors

Five years ago this week, I was on the verge of becoming a new chicken Mom. I didn’t realize it at the time. Or I did. You see, we had ordered twenty-five Rhode Island Red chicks as a straight run from our local Tractor Supply. But chick-fever is a real thing and our baby RiRs would not be there until May. Every trip to Tractor Supply included hovering over the metal bins of peeping chicks and talking to them. Calling them ‘babies!’ and wishing I could bring some home.

Then, in the second week of April, after a day spent flying kites with our kids, somehow, we decided to just go to Tractor Supply and get chicks now.

We came back with twenty sex-linked chicks in a box. Seventeen little yellow roosters and three brown/yellow baby pullets. We didn’t know that at the time. My Dude, who is no longer little, picked them because they were cute. Who knew they’d be boys?

While they grew up quickly in our brooder box and I just as quickly researched chickens, breeds and other things, my wonderful DH built our coop out of raw materials my father had lying around the barn. Every year since, it has undergone minor changes. When the RiRs finally arrived, we kept them in the brooder until they fairly out grew it and then spent and agonizing week trying to integrate without a bloody massacre occurring.

And with Gold Boy and his rowdy crew, we certainly almost had a bloody massacre.

The following year we added 18 new pullets, and split the coop in two, and then removed the divide once they intergrated. I’ve since discovered easier ways of intergration… and letting hens raise babies inside the coop with the flock rather than buying chicks and risk fighting.

One year we added new perches and removed some unused nesting boxes.

And this year … After five years, we have given the coop new floors. It was time. They’re wooden and five years of water and deep bedding, the first winter with the ducks… the floors had been patched and patched again. It was just time.

Normally, I clean the deep bedding twice a year. In the Spring and in the Autumn. So we counted this as the Spring clean-out. My Dude and I took out eight wheelbarrow loads of bedding, which went on the garden beds. It will need tilled under and will set until next month when I’m ready to plant.

The ducks especially liked the burn pile. I’m not sure why, but I have long ago stopped trying to understand them.

The others hung out outside, and the roosters (we have eight right now, until I decide which four are going to Freezer Camp) sounded the alarm at any unusual noises coming from the coop.

And there it is – a brand new floor made out of recycled pallet boards and happy chickens.

An Unsure Future

This is just a brief, no pics update on the status of our coop.

Yesterday morning, I moved Dots’ med cage to sit next to the coop, so he could be seen but not touched. After observing him ‘talking’ to the girls, I decided to leave him there for the day. It would help if they could see him.

When I returned home from work, I gave him his daily supervised visit. There was some chasing, but not bad.

Last night, after spending an hour before lockup with the flock, Dots went up to the rooster to sit next to his sister, Abby, and Maicey. I was hesitant to give him because him sitting next to the hens rather than being afraid of them is preferable. So I kept watching.

As everyone found their way to the roost, Philip eventually joined them, choosing to sit in the same general area as Dots. In the jostling for positions, he wound up with one hen between them. I watched, nervous, to see what would happen. Philip reached over the hen twice to try and pull Dots’ hackle feathers (but never actually did) and finally settled in to sleep. Dots settled in, nestled between Abby and Maicey, and that was where I found him this morning.

I did some more observing this morning, and other than a mild altercation with Sylvester, I saw nothing to be concerned with. Philip did not see the need to attack.

On the issue of Dots’ eye, it is healing. It looks better. He’s been waking up with it shut due to watering, but the Vetericyn spray opens it up and it remains open all day.

His status is the coop is still up in the air. Sylvester is still trying to secure his bid for 2IC. Based on this morning’s bought of chasing, he still views Dots as a threat to that.

I don’t. Dots has been making submissive rooster noises, noises I associate with hens and younger boys. If Sylvester and Philip come that same conclusion, maybe life will go back to a new normal.

If they don’t, we need to keep Plan B on the table.

I hate Plan B.

However, if we go for it, the other summer roosters are ready for Freezer Camp. Or the Pressure Cooker. This bunch in particular is very rowdy and there is too much chaos in my coop. I suspect getting ride of them would help settle things for the boys left to protect the flock, because their hands would suddenly be full of hens in need of protection.

Could Dots be included in the boys going with Plan B? I don’t know. I want to see how he is received in the next couple of days. If the new head rooster and 2IC can accept then, maybe not?

I will admit ( and this is hard) that my orginal plan was to remove Dots this spring to make way for new blood. By “original” of course, I mean back when we first decided to keep him in the first place. So… About three years ago, before we knew he was going to be such a loveable rooster. I’ve flip flopped about it since then.

However, watching this dominance struggle reminded me that he won’t live forever and that, if the Boys don’t think he can still do his job, maybe they know more than I do. Them being actual roosters and all.

At this point, however, I don’t particularly want to cull him after spending a week trying to heal his injuries. It seems inhumane to have gone through those motions. If they can accept him as a ‘regular joe’ then maybe I could still hold off to spring?

I do have a short list of older hens I’d like to cull, to make room for new chicks. It has been four years. We do need fresh genetics.

It’s just always a hard call to make.

I welcome insights, if you have them.

An Update on Dots

Well, here’s a brief update on Double Dots.

His eye is, as you can see, doing much better. We are still treating his eye 3x daily with the Vetericyn spray and ointment. It’s helping. He can hold his eye open so much better. It also does not appear that the eyeball itself is damaged.

That all is the good news.

The bad news is that Dots appears to have PTSD now.

I’ve been giving him supervised visits with the coop and flock. I put in there with them and stay close. Watching.

Philip (aka Leapy) has chased him twice. Gone after him once. He’s run from him both times.

Sylvester, my usually friendly Brahma boy, went after him today in the coop and pulled a feather out.

And when Henrietta, who is usually Dots’ friend, came up to him to say “hi” he literally jumped on top of my shoulder to get away from her.

While sitting on the roost with me observing him, Lola (a sexlink hen) came up to sit next to him. He awkward and quiet.

He did not at all act like himself.

I’ve been visiting Google a lot. Looking up other sites to find out what can be done. I can accept that Philip (and perhaps Sylvester too) have wrestled control of the coop away from Dots. But I wish with all my heart that he can return to the flock when his eye heals without more clashes.

Google says that in most cases, the surrendered rooster will be okay so long as the new Main Rooster does not continue to harass him.

A little integration may help. I’m thinking that if his eye is looking any better by Friday, I may move the med came into the coop to ‘reintroduce’ him to the flock. If the boys can’t go back to something that looks like normal, we maybe have to go to Plan B.

However, after today, I worry about how timid he was with Lola and how afraid of Henrietta he was. It’s definitely PTSD.

And that concerns me, because if he cannot even talk to the girls, how can he live with them?

Also, Plan B… an unprecidented winter Freezer Camp. My DH hates culling in winter. We usually do fall or spring. There’s va good four months to go before we’d consider it again.

So if the Boys don’t find a new normal that includes Dots, we need Plan B.

But who do we send to Freezer Camp?

I like Sylvester. He is a big boy, but has a temperament not unlike Dots. He’s friendly and I can pick him up.

Philip is Pip’s only child. I like him too.

Dots is … Dots. But if he can’t reacclimate to hos ladies, should he be the one to go?

I hate making these decisions. They make my heart hurt.

The Most Heartbreaking Thing

I went down to our coop this morning to do usually morning thing. Feed the chickens, let them out, make sure the dropping boards are clean and the nests are free of poop.

I was surprised however, to see our main rooster, Double Dots, already outside, alone and walking funny. Hunched up. Covered in blood.

At first I think that maybe we forgot to close the coop last night and am suddenly terrified that bloody rooster = dead chickens.

But no, the coop is closed

Dots got locked out. All night, on a night where it was less than 19-degrees (farenheit), with a wicked wind blowing from the north.

There are so many things going on in my head.

1. Was Dots attacked in the night by predator?

2. Why was he outside?

You see? Dot is usually the first rooster in the coop, and he usually dictates who goes inside first.

However, we have a handful of young Roo-lings who were too young in September /October to send to Freezer Camp… and Dots is almost 4 years old. Could it be that he was outside when everyone was inside because there is a dominance war going on? Could someone else be stepping up to wrestle the role of Main Rooster from our Dots?

Dots was injured, his eye and comb pretty beat up. I have him in the dog crate that doubles as a hospital ward / broody breaker. I checked him over, there are no body injuries, just his eye and comb. Cleaned him up with warm water and sprayed his comb Scarlex oil and his eye with Vetericyn spray.

Called Tractor Supply to see if they had eye gel, and learned that green tea works for eye injuries too.

He will need to be separated from his flock until I can be sure his eye will get better. He will need care and patience and a lot of prayers.

I’m trying to practical. If his eye does not get better, he’s not much use to his flock. But this is our Double Dots we’re talking about. If I have to cull, I will be heart broken beyond words.

And .. that leads me to the other thought on my heart

3. Double Dots is one tough roosters. He survived all night, injured and alone. He deserves to pull through this.

Pictures below are heartbreaking.

Chickens In Sweaters

Every winter, this image or one similar to it shows up on my Facebook feed.  Inevitably, someone will tag me in it because they know I have chickens and that I love my chickens.

Now, I will tell you that because I love my chickens, I will never, never, never ever put a sweater on them.

They look cute, yes, but in reality, they are very bad for chickens.

First of all, chickens do not need sweaters to keep warm.  They have their own downy fluff and feathers to hep regulate their body temperature and keep them warm in the winter.

(Which by the way, is also why they don’t need a heated coop, either. )

Secondly, sweaters trap moisture and dirt inside, and provide an excellent home for parasites such as lice and mites.  Lice and mites are very bad for our chickens.

Third, sweaters can break pin feathers.  Pin feathers are the delicate, vein filled feathers on your chickens.   If broken, they will bleed.  If you don’t catch it and stop the bleeding, your chicken can actually die(worst case).

In the winter, when most well-meaning, but ill-informed people think chickens need sweaters, chickens are molting, and those pin feathers are very prominent with the growth of new sweaters.

Which leads to the Fourth… sweaters on chickens will actually impede the growth of new feathers.

Fifth… sweaters leaves chickens vulnerable to predator attacks (because a hawk or bigger bird can grab up a sweater and carry off your favorite bird) and accidental mating injuries (think talons caught in the knitting).  Not to mention getting caught on chicken wire and branches and stuff around your coop and foraging areas.

Lastly, sweaters prevent your chickens from dust bathing and preening, which is how they keep clean.

Please educate yourselves about this issue and say “No” to the custom of chicken sweaters. 

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.