Grilly Girl and Lil' Grill

Here are two of the chicks from Mama Pickens' brood - Grilly Girl and Lil' Grill, both named after my Youtube friend, Grillmaster33.

Will they hatch?

On Halloween night and the next day, Sophie, our Double Penciled Silver Rock hen went broody. She has been setting on 9 eggs over the past 3 weeks and tomorrow (Nov. 21) the eggs should hatch. Here is a video where you can see the embryo in one of the eggs moving around... Amazing.



Now the bad news - the eggs may have gotten too cold. Here's the scoop. On Tuesday evening I went down to check on the chickens and Sophie got off the nest to see if I had any corn. I gave everyone their treats and left the barn while Sophie was still off the nest. I thought she would have no trouble getting back on the nest in the dark. Well, it got down to about 20 degrees that night and when I went down the next morning, Sophie was setting on the wrong nest box!!!! Her eggs may have gone all night without any heat! I felt them and they were very cool to the touch. I tried putting her back on the nest, but she flew out of it immediately. I wrote the whole brood off as casualties of my ignorance (she could not see in the dark and I should have known that...) but the next time I went down to the barn she was back on the correct nest and hasn't left it since. So... I have no idea if the eggs are still viable, or if she is brooding little frozen babies, but I have decided to let nature takes its own course. If the eggs hatch and the chicks live it will be great, but if they froze that night then it wasn't meant to be...

Once we know if there are any survivors I will post here, hopefully with pictures.

As for Mama Pickens' brood of 6 babies, they are doing great!!!!

Still kickin' with the chickens!

I know it has been forever since I last posted, but here is a quick run down of events...

• We got 3 ducklings, reared them and then gave them back to Phil (our friend and handyman who originally gave them to us.) Suffice it to say that duck poop is GROSS and they take more water than I can provide! We almost ran the well dry trying to keep the baby pool clean and full so they could swim.

• Cleopatra the Egyptian Fayoumi died of an infection - I should get the necropsy report later this week. RIP Cleo. She gave us our first egg.


• The turkeys are huge! We have Turkey Girl (original name, eh?) and Lulu Belle and they give us wonderful eggs. But I would not recommend having Broad Breasted Turkeys unless you plan to eat them because they are genetically designed to have unnaturally large breasts (hence the name) and walking is difficult for them sometimes. I feel a little guilty I won't eat them and I dread having to make a decision that might be humane (killing them to put them out of their misery) but so far that is not the case. I don't expect them to grow old, though.


• Owl Face got to be way too aggressive so we let the neighbors have him. I think they had fried chicken... I asked for some of his beautiful feathers, though, and I try not to think about it too often...


• Our Silkies and Polish are setting now and their eggs are tiny! I love both breeds, but you have to be careful who you put them in with. Certain other breeds will pick on them.


• The 2 Black Australorps went to Phil with the ducks. They are a beautiful breed but they picked on the Polish way too much. Plus Phil wanted a couple good layers and those pullets really fit the bill!


• One our our Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, Mrs. Pickens, now known as Mama Pickens, went broody and out of 9 eggs she was brooding 6 of them hatched. They will be 2 weeks old tomorrow, November 3, 2008. That was amazing!


• Sophie, the Double Penciled Silver Rock has gone broody. I put 5 eggs under her on Halloween night and Nov. 1 morning, so in 3 weeks we might have a few more babies. I will try to stay up-to-date on the posts. I don't know how many eggs she is brooding because I have not seen her off the nest yet.

Keep checking back for updates... And here is a picture of Mama Pickens and her babies. I plan to name them this week.

New website for a client

http://www.turtlehavendairygoats.com/turtle-haven.html

This is the current website I am working on, and my first "all Flash" site. Please let me know what you think.

I know these are not chickens, but...

These are the kids we helped deliver. Who couldn't love these little ones??? I am sure that at some point we will have some goats on our own farm! These live at the Turtle Haven Dairy Goat farm in Brown County, IN.

Bad hair and disco boots! (AKA Polish and Silkies!)

It isn't easy being this beautiful! These gals (they are all supposed to be pullets - we'll see...) were born on April 13, 2008.

Some of the chickens (born Feb 10, 2008)

They are getting sooooo big!

Polish and silkies!

On April 16 we welcomed 5 Silkies and 5 Polish chicks to the fold.



They were really tired when we got them home...



But unfortunately the little white crested black Polish chick (the black one with the yellow poof head in the video above) died the next morning. We have no idea why. RIP little one... We buried her behind the barn next to gimpy. So out of 37 chicks and 2 poults we have lost 2 chicks. We are going to make a trade with our handy man (who converted the barn into a chicken coop) for a couple baby ducks in the near future.

Turkeys (a little late on the posting, though...)

Well, with the end of the semester I have not had a chance to post anything here for a long time.

Many things have changed around here. We have added 2 Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys to the mix. They are amazing creatures! They love to follow us everywhere and will even try to dart out the door if you are not careful! At this point they are about 6 weeks old.



They were such sweet babies (and they are sweet now, too!)

See? I am not the only chicken freak out there!

I came across this great blog and thought I would like to share it. I am not the only one who babies their chickens!

http://poultryheaven.com/poultryblog/

Plus, here is a great chance to watch me get pooped on by Pedro, the Arucana rooster. Enjoy!

The evolution of the coop, part 1

This is how the barn looked on the day we first saw the property.

And here it was the first winter we lived here...

And then we decided to cut down a tree next to the barn so it wouldn't blow over (the base was almost rotted through) and while we were at it we knocked down the old corral and made a pile where wildlife could live.

And then we decided to get chickens... So we cleaned up the scrap pile and planned an outdoor barnyard. We even cut a door in the barn for the chickens to come in and out...

It seemed like a big area for the chickens (at the time...)

We even left the stump outside the door for them to play on...

Here you can see the chicken door from inside the coop...

Here is the rest of the barn, when standing inside the coop.

And here is looking toward the coop area from the front of the barn.

This is an old box we had left in the barn from a previous owner. It made great next boxes and saved us a fortune! We had no idea how expensive commercially made next boxes are!

Here is Phil Brown, of Brown's Diversified Services, standing in front of the nest boxes. Phil is our friend and handyman and without him we would not have a chicken coop or barnyard! Thanks Phil!

The completed nest boxes, minus the ledges and perches.

Here is the original roosts we built. We have had to redesign the roosts because this corner of the barn floods when it rains. There will be pictures of the new roosts and coop configuration later...

Here is the other side of the coop. You can see the board over the chicken door on the right side.

And here are the chicks in the coop on the first day. They were almost 4 weeks old when they moved to the barn.

Meet some of the family

To see some more videos, go to my channel in YouTube. I post videos of the chicks there on a regular basis, as well as tutorial and art videos for my students...

Click on any of the images in this blog to see larger versions...

Well, the chicks are starting to name themselves. Their personalities are really showing through, as well as some individual physical characteristics.
This is Lemon Head. The photo to the right is Not Lemon Head. Lemon Head and Not Lemon Head are the 2 Salmon Faverolles. We think they are both female because of the salmon colored wing feathers. Lemon Head is the one with the more pronounced sprinkles on his back. You can see their sprinkles in the picture below...

Here you can see Clarice to the left. She is the tamest one so far. We do not know what kind she is (I am hoping for a Golden Laced Wyandotte, but I just don't know.) But her personality is great! A real "people chicken" and fairly sweet with the other birds. We don't know if she is a hen or a rooster but her disposition makes us think she is a little girl...

We call the one above Lazarus because when we first got the chicks this one got quite a chill and we did not expect him (or her) to make it through the night. But here it is 2 weeks later and Lazarus is still with us. I think it might be a White Laced Red Cornish Game, but not sure...

The one to the right here is called King Tut. We believe he is an Egyptian Fayoumi. We have 3 of them, and right now I cannot tell them apart so for all intents and purposes I guess they are all called King Tut! I think he is a rooster because he is very aggressive with the rest of the chickens, but I think this is part of the temperament of this breed. They are gorgeous chicks with this lovely red coat. But they are very skittish and don't really like to be messed with. If they are all 3 roosters we will have a problem...

Quasimodo is the one above. He (or she - who knows?) is the one who had a mysterious lump before. I am pretty sure he is a Dominique. We have about 5-6 Dominiques, I think... He started developing adult plumage before any of the others, yet he is still one of the smallest. He is semi-tame and will tolerate a little petting, but not much. He looks really awkward with his feathers and down. The rest are starting to catch up with him in terms of plumage.

The one to the left is Pedro, the Araucana (I think) and the one to the right is Owl Face, also an Araucana (maybe.) Either that or one is an Araucana and one is a Phoenix. I really hope I have a male Phoenix, but I don't think I was that lucky this time. I think Pedro is a rooster because he is very aggressive toward the other birds, but if he starts laying eggs in a few weeks I will know I had that one wrong!

But now, let's talk about an aggressive bird! I have saved the best (!) for last - Godzilla! It is almost impossible to get a decent picture of him since he likes t run the other way when I get near... He knows he is in trouble, I am sure of it! He, and I am sure it is a HE, is a bully. And he is still bigger than the others, although several are reaching his size now. He earned the name Godzilla because he will terrorize the others. I have watched him randomly walk past a group of chicks minding their own business, and suddenly he will run up and peck one in the face and stare it down. He seems to say, "Go ahead, Punk, make my day!" One of his best tricks (and I am sure no real thought goes into it on his part, but I am not truly convinced it isn't calculated...) is to step on a group of sleeping chicks! And since his dinosaur roots are so obvious in his giant scaly feet, the only name for his was Godzilla! He is a Dominique rooster, I believe. But if he keeps it up his name will be Dinner!