Happy Easter from our Easter Eggers!

Our First Easter - 2014

The hens are doing great. Here you can see four of our Easter Eggers (Spider, Helen, Seraphina and Ayden) and one Buff Orpington.

We put up a board for them to perch on and hid tons of fun treats for them to try out. We also found that the Easter Bunny had left us some surprises! Not only did our Easter Egg hunt reach all the way to the barn but we also found some new friends!

BUNNIES!! 

We got two male Flemish Giants to room with our chickens. They are super sweet and Caleb has named them "Alhe" and "Rombi". They are very friendly and curious. They follow around our hens and sniff them while the hens run away! Then when the bunnies aren't looking the hens creep up to investigate. Too cute! Talk about a happy Easter.

Baby Wyandottes

The babies are doing great. We haven't noticed any poopy butt. They are getting some real feathers in now. We took one of the chicks out to explore and capture some adorable Easter photos.

Puppies

Baird and Nemo are my two Labradors. They have decided that they are part of the hen care routine. They follow us down to the barn and watch everything we do. Baird likes to hang back and keep guard. He is a little nervous about the chickens. Nemo is more hands in - or paws in I guess. He likes to help round up the hens and check that each hen is still in fact a hen. We will see how they get a long with the bunnies!

More Bunny Pictures

Because you can never have enough bunny pictures on Easter....

Happy Easter from all of us!

Update 4/13/14 - 7 Weeks Old!

Seven Weeks

Tomorrow they are seven weeks old. They've really accepted their new place as home. Now they explore the entire inside enclosure. They've got tons of space and obstacles to climb on. They gotten used to the freedom and aren't as eager to come to our hands. I spent a lot of time chasing them around!

Leg bands

Our plastic leg bands arrived. We have five colors - white, yellow, green, pink and purple. They are hard plastic and you slide one end into the other to lock them on. We put one of each color onto each Buff Orpington so we will be able to tell them apart better. Bromley is wearing the pink one. We put one of each color on the Leghorns and then put two bands on the 6th Leghorn. We soon found out that the smallest Leghorn with the green band is too small for the bands and it fell off. For now she will be bandless. For the Easter Eggers, since we can tell them apart so easily, we put white bands of them and I am planning to write their names on them. We figured they should have bands too.

Treats

This week I gave them a little spray millet from my hand each time we went down to check on them. I'm trying to reinforce the super friendly hand fed chick behavior they were showing previously that they kinda lost over the last week. Moving outside has given them a little more spunk and a little less dependency on us. They still go crazy for our hands when they know food is involved. They are able to swallow the balls of spray millet whole now. They have grown so much! I've noticed they peck a lot harder now too. We bought them a little planter of wheat grass and they devoured it. I wasn't sure how much they would like it but they ate it all up! We gave them a dandelion - the whole plant and roots and they really enjoyed that. I gave them a whole pot of vegetables and they spread them all over their enclosure and then eventually ate them all  up. We even caught some live worm and slugs from around the yard and watched them go crazy for those. I am having a lot of fun introducing them to new treats.

Petrie 

After banding our chicks I decided to check the Leghorns for the one with the enlarged tummy - Petrie. Being marked with her own color would help us check her stomach each time we checked on the chickens and monitor any changes. When I flipped them each over to check which one was Petrie I couldn't figure it out. We checked all six Leghorns and determined that it is most likely the purple banded one. She has the lowest and largest tummy but really doesn't seem abnormal anymore. It was a great feeling to see that the tummy has turned out normal!

Waterer

The feeder we made is working great. We have it hanging off the ground and the chicks climb up on it and enjoy the set up. The waterer however does not work as planned. It isn't weighted right so we have to keep it sitting on something and the drinking area will overflow if too much water is put in. For now it is working fine to hold water but we will need to remake it if we want the low maintenance of a gravity flow waterer that hold a lot of water. Being on the ground mean it gets really dirty really fast. When we make a new waterer we will use the current one for food too and the new waterer will be able to hang of the ground to keep poop and shaving out of it.

New Babies

Our two new babies are doing great. They are down in the barn with the 7 week olds. They are now over a week old. They are in a small enclosure up on a table with a heat lamp and a mesh cover so that the bigger chicks can't pick on them. We have let them down to meet the older girls and some of them are really interested in the babies and will peck at them. Until they get bigger we don't really trust them alone together. The chicks do just fine with being pecked at and just kind of move away but we don't know how far the older girls would go if we weren't there to shoo them away. The babies are soooo little! They are eating and drinking fine. We have decided to name them Winona and Andromeda. They have been so easy breezy compared to the big batch. So far we haven't noticed any poopy butt!

Progress Pages:

Spider
Meeko
Ayden
Seraphina
Helen

Buff Orpingtons
Brown Leghorns 

Silver Laced Wyandottes

 

Update (4/5/14) - 6 Weeks Old

Week 6 updates

It's been a busy couple weeks. We've moved the chickens out of the house, added 2 more chicks, and built a safe enclosure for them to live in in a garage. We are glad to let you know that all chicks are still healthy and growing rapidly. 

New place

We secured their new place inside of a barn with wood, fence, bird netting, and more than our fair share of zip ties. It's been a long couple weeks making sure everything is set up and safe for them. We brought down the heat lamp to ease the transition and made a suspended waterer and feeder to make maintenance easier on us. For now we are keeping them on the ground to get them used to it. 

New threats

Suddenly we realized that putting our chicks outside is scary! What about rats? We are looking at getting a rooster to protect the hens from a potential rat issue in the garage. We put down roofing over most surfaces and are looking at putting rat traps in but so far it hasn't been an issue. We are slightly less afraid of other predators for now until we open up the outside area.

New chicks

We picked up 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes from the local feed store and are getting 2 more Golden Laced Wyandottes to add to our flock. 

New treats

We have started buying the biggest (and most disgusting) mealworms/worms we can find and they are absolutely going crazy for them. We added a scratch block that hasn't been given much attention. We're sure they'll enjoy it once they figure out it's food though.

Progress Pages:

Spider
Meeko
Ayden
Seraphina
Helen

Buff Orpingtons
Brown Leghorns 

Silver Laced Wyandottes

 

New treats

Mealworms

We gave them their first treat! We were going to wait before giving them anything other than their regular feed but after a little research we were relieved of our fears that their baby bellies wouldn't be able to handle the treats. All we had to do was add a little grit back in their diet and monitor for "poopy butt" and we were free to introduce live treats! We decided to start with small meal worms so we could hold them in our hands and get the chicks comfortable with being handled. They went absolutely crazy. It was interesting to see their thought process as they first saw the worms. Some immediately grabbed them and ran off, others were slow to approach but quickly realized they were something worth fighting for and a few didn't even look at them when you put them right in front of their face. Each time a chick grabbed their first worm they would start chirping like crazy and running around panicked. They didn't want anyone to steal their prize or for the worm to escape if they put it down to eat it. They went through the hundred count meal worms like they were nothing and continued searching for more. The best part is that now they run to our hands in search for food.

Crickets

We gave them their second treat: crickets! We originally got excited about introduce live treats when we dropped a spider into the brooding box and one of the chicks chased it down and scooped it up. She acted so adorably that we decided to name her Spider and research whether or not they could have live treats. When we gave them meal worms it seemed everyone was excited about them - except Spider. So we decided she probably wanted something a little more active. It was hilarious watching the chicks run crazy trying to scoop up the crickets. They loved them! I was scared they wouldn't be able to eat the large crickets but they swallowed them no problem. After it seemed they had eaten them all, they continued to hunt. They were scratching up the shavings and searching the box. They are amazing hunters and tracked down cricket after crickets when I was sure their were none left. We will definitely get crickets for them again but I think I prefer the meal worms because it encourages the chicks to eat out of our hands.

Weekly Update (3/24/14) Week 4

It is hard to believe they are already a month old!
They have grown so much and are really taking on the shape of chickens now. They have pronounced chests and big tail feathers now. They aren't as cute as they once were. They've also changed a lot in color. The Brown Leghorns have lost their "chipmunk" stripe and are all brown on the back. Their colors have become much more unique and while they aren't cute and fluffy they have some beautiful markings.

They've started to get out and climb on all the furniture in the brooding room. We didn't actually see them out of the box at first but started noticing little droppings in places we couldn't imagine they could reach. Now it seems every time we walk in the room there are several chickens perched across the room. They always make it back into the box though, they definitely know where home is.

We've started to set up the outdoor habitat for them. They have a huge area. We put up hooks for custom hanging waterer, a feeder and for their heat light. We put in ramps and some large plastic pipes for them to climb and play on. We still need to build a roosting and nesting area. We've sectioned off enough of the barn and made it cat proof to prevent our pet cats from eating the chicks. We have the outside half of the run blocked off so they learn where "home" is and know to return there at night. For the outside we got bird netting to prevent predators from flying into the run. We are still working on getting that set up.

We are using the treats to bait them and get them used to being handled. We want them to willingly jump into our hands. It seems to be working as they will flock to our hands when we put them into the brooding area and we are usually able to grab them without a fuss. Some are becoming particularly fond of being picked up as they know it means easy access to more treats. Others are still cautious. 

We took away the heat lamp and heater to cool them down in preparation for going outside as it will be much colder out there. At first they were lethargic and cuddly but are now fine and roaming the room once again. When the move outside we will use the heater and heat lamp to make the barn and warm as possible to ease the transition.

The Brown leghorn, which we have named Petrie, still has the enlarged stomach and the skin is discolored. She seems fine otherwise. She is healthy, eating and very energetic and agile like the other Leghorns.

Bromley, the biggest Buff Orpington, is super friendly. She will always let us pick her up and lays relaxed in our hands. The live treats have really encouraged them to relax when being handled..

We are looking to add 2 more chicks to our chickens so we'll have to set up a new brooding area which shouldn't be too much trouble now that we have a 'brooding' set of equipment and the outdoor set up.


Progress Pages
We are tracking each chicks growth by week and so have made progress pages for you to follow along and see how the different chicks are doing. Click below to see each chicks weekly development!

Spider
Meeko
Ayden
Seraphina
Helen

Buff Orpingtons
Brown Leghorns

Weekly Update (3/20/14) Week Three

No more chicks...

We don't have chicks any more. At the rate our girls are growing I think it's fair to say these are chickens now. They eat so much food now. Before we could get away with not filling the food dishes for a day or two but no more. They are much messier, climbing out of the brooding area, hopping on top of the watering dish and food dishes. In just a couple short weeks we will start taking them outside and getting them used to the outside for a few hours at a time. 

Treats

We have given them more meal worms and more crickets which of course they always enjoy. We also gave them cat toys to play with which they don't have much interest in. I want to try with a laser pointer or moving toy because they seem to really react to movement.

Equipment

We still need to build their equipment for the outdoor coop. We turned off the heater and raised the heat lamp as high as possible to lower the temp. We may end up turning the heat lamp off and maintaining the correct temperature with the heater.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

May you have all the clovers your heart desires...

First Trip Outside!

We had our very first trip outside with a few of our Buff Orpingtons. We wrapped our chicken wire into a circle so they would have a good space to run around and even put out toys.They froze! They weren't interested in investigating at all. They puffed up their feathers and just stood there! I guess they aren't ready to be outdoor chicks yet.

It didn't take long before they wanted to climb up us for refuge. It was really sweet to see how they felt safe in our arms! We also noticed the big crows were getting interested and rustling the branches in the trees. We might have been a little paranoid but I felt like the audience was getting bigger by the minute. We brought them back inside before they became a St. Patricks day treat!