And so those the chook changes.  Sort of.  Mum, aka CC or Chatty Charmaine is sitting on eggs.  The hatch date is Saturday 10th December.  We are on day 3 now (on Tuesday)…

Hen eggs take around 21 days typically to hatch and the hatch rate will probably be very low.  Which will be a really good thing because you can only purchase fertile eggs in dozens and then because I didn’t want to have her reject expensive fertile, pure breed eggs (I chose Black Copper Marans, Welsummer, Lavender Arauncana and Buff or Brown Sussex), I tried with some of our (presumably) fertile eggs.  I don’t actually know if they are fertile, HP is untested so to speak!  Not really knowing which ones to choose from, I pulled 2 of her own out of the fridge initially and tried those on her (on Friday) – she took them with me just putting them under her whilst she sat on the wooden ones we had given her (Tuesday to Saturday last week she was on wooden ones) and fished the wooden ones out.  At least as many as I could find – there were only 4 but I didn’t get the m all.  I didn’t want to push my luck.

On Saturday morning I added a few more whilst she was still on the nest, to see what would happen… she took those as well.  And I was able to fish out the final wooden one.  Then in the evening,  when she was having one of her mad sessions where she comes off the nest for a short period of time to frantically feed, preen and drink and just generally run around in mad circles not really knowing what she wants to do next and trying hard to do it all at once, I put the pure heritage breed eggs into the nest.  She was sitting on 18 eggs.  She is large enough to do this without problem and tbh, if we get 2 female chicks from that number we will actually be quite lucky.  She finished her frantic session, went back to the next and got on the eggs as though they had always been there.  One small victory.  At least these should hatch something, which is what we need to break her cycle and get her out of being broody.

On Sunday she came off the eggs for another mad session and I counted the eggs… 19.  How.  Have I left a wooden one behind?  I double checked.  No, no wooden ones in there.  I can only assume that one of the girls snuck in whilst she was off the nest yesterday and laid.  It is one of the reasons (and the main one) she is now in her own enclosure.  Simply to protect her from the others who were trying to lay their eggs in the same nest box whilst she was sitting on the wooden ones last week.  Fights broke out, and you don’t want that when they are on any eggs.  Rotten eggs attract flies and don’t smell very nice either.  And today I have had to clean all the eggs very carefully, remove all the sawdust very carefully and replace it all whilst she was having one of her mad sessions.  One of the eggs had broken (I suspect JJ2’s who has a calcium problem) and it was smelling, attracting many flies which were annoying her and also coating the eggs in rotten egg is not good for them, it causes them to go rotten.  All done.  You have to not rotate the eggs, you have to keep the eggs where they were, you have to… well you get the idea.  She can’t know you have interfered with the nest – but CC is that laid back and easy going with me touching her and doing things in her area when she is on the nest (some 23 hours a day) that it would probably not be an issue… Anyhow, the eggs can’t be rotated or turned because of chook development and …

So an introduction to the chook house and the new setup.

• On the left is mum and her quarters – a cardboard box.
• On the right (and now somewhat different to the photo) are the quarters of the new inmates, sorry, chooks whilst they are integrated into the flock and have ticks, fleas, lice, worms and tape worm treatment done and I check them over for a general health check.
• On the far right are the nesting boxes for the current inmates chooks.

Carrying on around to the right, we have the indoor dust bath area which they never really use except to walk over.  But there we go.  And then the edge of the door wedge (the doors had no stop to them and kept going, and we needed them to be up against something to make the chook house snake proof at night.

On the other side of the door are the roosting perches.  They will do all of the flock and more once they are all integrated (plus any chicks once they can fly high enough).

Up above now has netting on it – one of the newbies is rather good at flying!  But that is the hay loft.

The inner enclosure which has a soil floor which the chooks can happily dig.  HP has a perch to crow from and see over the fence in the morning.  And the green thing by the door is the auto-feeder or treadle feeder as it is also know.  They stand on it and a certain weight triggers it to open in the lower half.  Sadly it does not stop them removing the grain they don’t like – no don’t like this, no don’t like this, I’ll eat this, I’ll spit this out… and so on…  We are still working on finding a grain mix where someone in the flock will eat all of it, or more accurately, the entire flock put together will eat all of it and not waste any.

And finally the outer enclosure and chook house.  All of this is fenced in, has 2 gates (one is behind me and the other on the left is open) and is rather large.  And then there is the garden which they simply love.

Once the 2 newbies are integrated into the flock, I will move mum over to the larger area.  Not because she needs it – in fact she does not, but simply so that I can see her from the house when the chook house doors are open (which they are normally).

At the moment, I can’t see when she gets off the nest for one of her ‘sessions’ and it is hit and miss as to if I know about them.  Stuart was able to let her out on Sunday when he caught her having one.  I thought I had caught it this morning at 8am but when I opened the doors and went to her, she went back onto the nest instead.  At 10am I happened to be down in the veg plot and she must have heard me because all of a sudden I heard her mad clucking that is associated with these sessions and well, knew that my veg plot stuff wasn’t happening for a while.  I had to let her out and get the eggs clean, saw dust replaced and generally a tidy up in her area to reduce the mice issues which reduces the changes of any issues with snakes because mum is on the floor not wanting to be in a proper nesting box due to her size and weight and also when the chicks are born, they have to be able to get in and out of the nest box easily.  We may have to work on things!

So last weekend, Vindictive Vicky had to have a new home. On Saturday morning she was taken to the rooster sanctuary we got HP from to be a sex slave, sorry, companion chook for another rooster.  She was struggling to adapt to the environment here and I had spend 6 weeks (of the 8 she was here) with her in solitary and her only being let out for a couple of hours each day.  I could not let her out at all until everyone who was laying that day, had lain.  And if I let her out for too long each day, her behaviour reverted to her old ‘attack every other chook’ mode which wasn’t around when she was only out for a couple of hours.  Whilst it was hard letting her go, it was good to see her adapt almost immediately to the new environment and hopefully come the weekend we will get an update on her progress and a few photos…

Sunday saw us collect to new hens.  These 2 came from a free range egg farm which was an eye opener.  We knew that the label free range often meant nothing more than daylight for something like 6 hours a day and access to scratch around in dirt (not necessarily a field) and larger farms are often worse than the smaller ones for this, but the birds (a friend had 5, we had 2) were in a poor state.  The field they were in was very crowded and there was a lot of infighting plus roosters were in the mix as well.  There were 3 caravans for them to lay in, and pine trees for shelter.  That was it really.

Arriving back here late in the afternoon, just before our evening meal, we didn’t really get chance to watch them settle into their new quarters or check them over.  But it was clear how dirty they were, the lack of feathers on one of them around the head and neck, the other has a claw missing from an old injury.  They are the standard ISA Brown which is what is generally used for mass egg production because they lay and lay and lay irrespective of their own health and to the detriment of their own health.  These 2 are no different.  They are 18 months old and were probably bred at the right time of year so as they didn’t moult last autumn (UK’s Spring).  This would mean that they would lay through Australia’s winter leaving them almost burnt out and unlikely to lay through the summer or for much longer.  It is also possible that these birds have problems within such a large flock…

Yesterday morning, I decided that there was only one way I could check out their health and look for injuries or other issues that needed attention (such as their backsides being filthy and covered in shit which is not good because it attracts flies which lay eggs and then maggot hatch and they burrow through the skin and eat the chicken alive from the inside out.  It’s called Fly Strike and it is a brutal way to die.  So it was bath time for the two newbies.

 

I went prepared.  Wearing dirty clothing and there was a load in the washing machine waiting to be washed and waiting for what I was wearing… I set myself up with a blue bucket, my shampoo (which being vegan is safe to use on them), a handy towel for me, a scrubber, a sponge just in case and a plastic ‘glass’ to use as a means to get pour water over them to get the shampoo out.  Their legs and feet were very dirty and may need the sponge or scrubber.

I caught the cleaner of the two of them figuring that it made sense to start with the easier and cleaner one.  I was using the same water.  She is the smaller of the two and the rather vocal one.  She is the skinnier and much lighter one.  And into the inner enclosure with the door closed we went.  After the initial WTF moment from her, she settled into the blue bowl and I knew instantly that the water wasn’t deep enough really.  I will know for next time.  She settled down and I poured water over her getting her as wet as possible.  I needed the crap on her backside and tail feathers to have a good soaking before it would come off.

 

It took a while, yet she stayed put throughout.  She seemed to be enjoying it.  Bathing her only got me slightly wet!  Holding her in a towel, I put her back with her ‘friend’ and waited for a while to make sure she was OK, before I started on the next one.

 

 

 

Next was to come the much dirty and larger of the two newbies.  She was easily caught and contained in the inner enclosure and again had the WTF moment when she was put into luke warm water.  She took a little more convincing that she was going to stay put and there was a moment or two when I got soaked… mind you so did she which is what I needed.  The crap on her backside and the feathers around there took much more work to get off and I wasn’t entirely successful getting it all off her legs.  I ended up taking her into the house, wrapped in a wet towel, to run another tub of warm water so we could have a second attempt at getting the crap off her.  Of particular concern was all of the crap around the base of her tail feathers which took repeated attempts to get off.  By this time she was just standing in the water of her own accord.  I didn’t actually need to hold onto her!  This was useful because two hands meant I could separate her tail feathers out and get to the base of them much more easily, but it was also risky with her being in the laundry sink!  She stayed put and seemed to be enjoying it.  I was almost done rinsing her with clean water when the phone went.  A quick towel grab, wrapping her in it and I was able to answer the phone.  It was Stuart.  Whilst I was talking to him on the phone, she sat wrapped in the towel on my knee, falling asleep in the warmth of the sunroom!  Of course the moment I got the camera out, I had moved and she woke up!

Then it was time to take her back down to the chook house and re-unite her with her ‘friend’.

 

 

Why Nameless? – we are still working out what to call her!