A Welcome Sight

Hi, sorry for the long lapse in posts again. I have some good news. Look below.

Last week, my mom heard a hen cackling, so a little while later I checked the nesting boxes, and there was an egg. They've finally started back laying, now I'm getting three eggs a day, which is pretty good from the five hens I have. My  baby (I can't really call them babies anymore, their 14 weeks old)  chickens are doing good, I should get some eggs from them by about January. My dad and I are building a coop for them, I'll show you some pictures of the coop soon. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

Homemade Electrolyte Solution

There for a while my chickens wouldn't drink regular water, so I filtered their water, and added this electrolyte solution that my mom found online.

1 cup of water

1/8 tsp. Salt

1/8 tsp. Baking Soda

2 tsp. Sugar

Generous Dash of Cayenne Powder

Mix up, and add 1 cup for every gallon of water, or give 1 cup to any chicken that is too dehydrated.

Here are the links where we found this recipe.

http://www.grit.com/animals/hot-weather-acidosis-a-homemade-electrolyte-recipe.aspx#axzz3Az0SD8WP

http://www.urbanchickenpodcast.com/ucp-episode-020/

I do not take any credit for the recipe. The only thing I altered was by adding the cayenne powder.

That's all for now. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

Long Lapse in Posts

I'm back, sorry for the lapse in posts. It's been busy, and I've had several problems with my chickens, the babies are growing good, but I've lost several of my older chickens, I'm still trying to find out what happened. I'll let you know in a later post. That's all for today, I'll try and post some pictures of the babies soon. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

Quick Update

Welcome back, this is just a quick update on the baby chickens. Their all doing good, they've started growing their wing, and tail feathers. They all seem happy, and their eating a lot, so they should be fine. I don't have any more pictures yet, I'll try and take some within the next couple of days. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

The Fluffballs

I have good news! On the 24th of July, the post office called, my 10 baby Dominiques had arrived. They are cute as can be.

Here they are, they've already discovered the feed.

It didn't take them long at all to discover the feed, and the funny thing is that they don't have to eat until two or three days after they hatch. Right before they hatch they absorb the yolk, which provides them with the nutrients to survive for three days without food or water (I don't take any chances with this, as soon as they arrive provide them with food, and fresh water).

Here's two more pictures of them.

Well that's all for now, keep visiting for updates on the new chickens.

Chickenman

Signs Your Hens May Start Laying

This post will tell you some signs, you can look for, to see if your hens are about to start laying, these signs aren't 100% accurate, but they can give you an idea.

Squatting: They'll be squatting, it looks pretty funny.

Red Combs, Red Wattles (Wattles, on their chin): As their getting ready to lay, their combs, and wattles get a brilliant red, this means their producing the right hormones to lay.

Nesting Boxes: If you have hay in their nesting boxes, they'll start arranging them into different nests, it's funny, you never know what nest it will be the next time you check.

The Roosters: This one might sound a little crazy, but when hens are getting ready to lay, you may just find a rooster in the nesting boxes. They'll inspect the boxes to find the safest possible box, even if the hen doesn't listen.

The Rooster 2: Another sign is that the roosters will be more active with the hens.

Well, these are just a few signs that your hens may be getting ready to lay, do you know any more signs that your hens are about to lay? If you do, or have a question, or just want to say something, then feel free to comment. Well that's all for now, Thanks for visiting.

Chickenman

I'm Back

I'm sorry for being gone for so long, but I'm back now. My chickens are recovering from the mites, we got rid of them for sure about a month and a half ago, it just takes a while for them to recover. Sadly, I lost a total of 3 chickens to the mites, my new rooster, and two of the new hens. I'm down to 11 chickens, Demonique, the three Dominiques, four Rhode Island Reds, and three of the Black Star. But this is soon to be remedied, I have placed an order for 10 Dominique Pullets. They should be here in the 5 days or so, I'll try and write a post, and show some pictures of the baby chickens. Well that's all for now. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

A Brief Respite

Finally, after dealing with squirrels, feathers growing back, a mini-molt, and weasels attacking, it looked like we might get some eggs. After about four weeks, of me being extremely cautious, I finally turned on a light for my chickens. I read that they needed 17 hours of light per day, to kick them back in laying. So after about four weeks of running the light, with the final two weeks running the light 17 hours a day, my hens started showing signs of laying again. We kept running the light, and within a few more days, we got an egg. It started with one egg, then we gradually got up to 6 eggs a day (on average), averaging 6 eggs, out of 7 hens a day is pretty good. Unfortunately I got greedy, I got 5 laying hens (Black Star), and 1 rooster (I believe it's either a Cuckoo Maran, or Barred Plymouth Rock). Can you guess what happened? They started fighting, and my egg laying, started slacking off again. What happened next? I'll tell you in the next post. Thanks for visiting.

Chickenman

Sorry for the delay, I've had some complications, I'll go into more detail in another post.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone, I hope you all have a good day, but most importantly I ask that you all remember what Easter is really about. The resurrection of our Lord, and Savior Jesus Christ. Again happy Easter, and thanks for visiting.

Chickenman

P.S. I hope to be doing some egg hunting in my nesting boxes tomorrow. : )


Edit 4/25/14: Sorry for the delay, I'll try and release the next post soon.

The Series of Unfortunate Events : Link to all the posts

This is a post, containing a link, to each of the posts, in my mini series 'A Series of Unfortunate Events', all grouped right here. The links are below. This way, if you ever want to go back to these posts, you can just redirect here.

http://gonechicken.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-series-of-unfortunate-eventspart-one.html

http://gonechicken.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-series-of-unfortunate-events-part-two.html

http://gonechicken.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-series-of-unfortunate-events-part-3.html

There we go, the three links. I hope you have enjoyed this blog so far. I plan to release the next post soon. Thanks for visiting.

Chickenman

A Series of Unfortunate Events Part 3: The Beast(s)

We had recovered from the squirrels, the feathers growing back, and the mini-molt. It looked like we would finally start getting some eggs, but that's when the worst of my trouble started. It started in mid November, we just didn't realize it at first. One day, I noticed one of my hens couldn't walk good. She had a hurt leg. I took her out of the pen, and checked her out. I thought she had just sprained it.  I set her up in a house we have in the coop with a couple of other hens for warmth (it was already getting chilly). She got better and I let her out, then the real trouble began. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, we found one hen at the bottom of the run. She was alive, but barely, she was very cold, wouldn't move, and wouldn't eat. We used a blow dryer on her to try and warm her up. My mom noticed a strange spot on her neck, but I didn't think it was anything, I was wrong. That hen didn't make it, she was too far gone. We didn't know it at the time, but a family of weasels had started raiding my flock. I lost a total of 11 chickens to the weasels before we finally got rid of them. I was able to nurse some chickens back to health, but some of them I couldn't.  Here's why, a lot of the time, weasels attack the head and neck. They'll either bite into the head, or latch onto their neck. To keep this tasteful I won't go into extreme detail, as this is fairly disturbing, and not to mention gross. To put it simply, they drain some of the blood. This made the hurt chickens extremely weak, but some of them I was able to nurse back to health. One of my Dominique hens, Dory, is apparently a very resilient hen. She was attacked 3 times, each time she managed to pull through. After the weasels were gone, I was down to 8 chickens, (Demonique, and 7 hens). So, this was the main story of why I didn't get any eggs for 6 months. It looked good for a while, but yet again, I am having egg troubles. I will explain more, in the next post. Thanks, and keep visiting.

Chickenman

A Series of Unfortunate Events Part Two

First of all, I would like to apologize for the long gap between posts. I haven't had time to work on a post in a while. Now, to Part Two in this series of posts; 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'. As you remember we had been fighting the squirrels. We had just found out about fodder, so I started experimenting with it. After a couple of weeks of feeding it to them, we noticed our already low egg production, declining even more. We went from about 8 eggs a day to 7 eggs, 6 eggs, etc. until it gradually dwindled down to none. We didn't know what was wrong for a while. But, one morning my mom figured it out. A chickens feathers are formed primarily from protein. The fodder was a near 10 percent increase in protein from their feed. The result? They began to grow back their feathers. With all the feathers they were growing back, they didn't have enough protein to lay eggs.
After a few months of this, all their feathers were grown back. Unfortunately, by the time they had all their feathers grown back, it was nearing Fall. The dwindling daylight in fall, triggers a chicken owner's nemesis, the molt. They started showing signs of laying again, and that's when they went through a mini-molt.  Unlike a full blown molt, a mini-molt makes a chicken only lose a few feathers at a time, which are quickly replaced. We went through another month to two months dealing with this. As the mini-molt began to slow I began hoping that I would get some eggs, I had a light running for them and everything. Unfortunately, the worst, was yet to come.

A Series of Unfortunate Events:Part One

This series of posts will tell how I went from an average of 15 eggs a day (from 18 hens), to no eggs for nearly 6 months. My problems really started in December, 2012. I just didn't know it at the time. My hens had just started laying, after a few weeks, I noticed that the majority of their back feathers were missing. Why did they have bare backs? Overeager roosters. Now, skip forward to around April 2013. I was averaging 15 eggs a day from my hens, often getting as many as 18 eggs in a day (one day I got 19 eggs after getting 18 eggs for 2 days before that). I started only getting between 12-14 eggs a day. I didn't know what was wrong at first, until one day, I went in the roosting room (I had the nesting boxes in there at the time) and heard a loud noise. I caught sight of something crawling out of the top of the room. It had a long, bushy, gray tail. So, my war with the squirrels began. Some days I only got 10 eggs. I had to do something. I tried a few distractions (seeds and corn away from the coop), deterring them, and many other things, but the squirrels kept coming. My Grandfather gave me his pellet gun to try on the squirrels. After a few attempts, I managed to kill the first one. Then my dad and I managed to take out the rest of the egg stealing squirrels.
Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of my egg laying woes. I will tell you what happened next, in the following blog post.

Chickenman

Edit 4/1/14: Sorry for the delay, I will try and have the next post published within the next day or two.

Weasel Update

Welcome back to Gone Chicken. This is just a quick update on the weasel problem. It has now been 4 weeks since the last attack. There has been no sign of the weasels trying to get in. The only time I've seen any of the weasels was a few weeks ago. I saw a large cat with one of the weasels in its mouth. I think that the weasel problem is over now. Once it warms up I will take a few pictures of the chicken pen to show you what I did to help deter the weasels. That's all for now, keep visiting.

Chickenman

Sour Crop

Now I'll talk about Sour Crop. Sour Crop starts out similar to impacted crop. However, when a chicken has sour crop the food can still digest some. The problem? The rotted food, when digested, begins to act like a poison. To treat it naturally feed it garlic or apple cider vinegar. For more desperate measures, pour salt water down its throat count to five seconds, and turn it upside down for eight seconds(no long than eight seconds or it will aspirate) then let it catch it's breath, keep doing this and it should throw up the contents of the crop. If it does then put it on a soft food diet for a few days to give it time to recover. I haven't dealt with this personally so feel free to do your own research. I try to raise my chickens as organically as possible, so I don't use antibiotics. If you feel like you need to use it to treat your chickens, then do it. I'm just giving you a run down on ways to help more naturally. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

Impacted Crop

Today, I want to talk about a problem I recently had with my rooster, Demonique.  I noticed that he was staring off into space, he wouldn't react to movement and he wouldn't eat. He would also crane his neck up weird. I picked him up and felt his crop, it was the size of a small orange, maybe a little bigger. Anyway, I took him out of the pen and set him under a heat lamp. I gave him some olive oil to drink, he drank it well so, I then gave him some water mixed with apple cider vinegar. Then I gave him some cooked oatmeal mixed with garlic, honey, and some more olive oil. I also gave him some warm water. After he ate and drank some I massaged his crop in a downward motion. After massaging him for a few minutes, he perked up. I had to put him back in the pen because of extreme cold temperatures, but he was doing a lot better. The next day I felt his crop and it was down by half. After two more days, it was back to normal and he was feeling a lot better. Now, lets talk about what an Impacted Crop is. A crop becomes impacted when a chicken either: eats too much and can't digest, eats a large chunk of something and can't get it down, or eats something that it shouldn't eat. It is best to treat it as early as possible, the earlier you treat it, the higher chance your chicken has of surviving. So, I suggest you learn the symptoms so you can act immediately. If your chicken does get an impacted crop then olive oil is one of the best things you can give it, the olive oil lubricates the crop and makes it possible for it to go down. The apple cider vinegar and garlic is to help prevent it going sour( more on that later). Oatmeal (cooked) is easier to digest, so its safe to feed to the chicken( If your chicken has impacted crop do not feed it feed, grain or anything hard), and the honey gives energy. One more thing you can give it is chopped pineapple, pineapple contains an enzyme that aids in digestion, and it can help break down the food in the crop. It is important after giving it olive oil to massage it's crop in a downward motion, massaging helps move the food down the crop. While not immediately life threatening, impacted crop will eventually kill the chicken if it goes untreated. They can only last about a week until lack of food and not being able to digest proves fatal. Typically, you can save the chicken well before that. Feel free to do your own research on any of this. A good site for all things chicken is www.backyardchickens.com . There are a lot of helpful people on there. Next, will be a post on sour crop. I hope this helps you if you ever have a chicken with impacted crop. Keep visiting.

Chickenman

Update

I would like to apologize for taking so long on doing this new post. It's been pretty crazy. Here is an update on the weasel situation, I ended up losing a total of 11 chickens to the weasels. I lost Uther and 10 hens. I haven't lost another chicken since the start of the new year, thankfully.

It turns out it wasn't 1 weasel, but a family of weasels; a mother and at least 3 juveniles. Thanks in part to a cat, the weasel population is now dwindling. In one of the upcoming posts I will show you what I did to try and weasel proof my pen. Well, that's all for now, Happy Late New Year.

Chickenman