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.