In my last post we wondered whose egg that was. We found out that it was Cacciatore's egg! However, on Friday, Snowy started laying eggs as well and she has large cream eggs.
These 3 eggs on the left were Friday's pickings. The blue one is of course Bubbles, then Snowy's egg, then Mary's. You can see in the egg tray on the right there is a white egg, which is Cacciatore's egg. Snowy's egg is a lot bigger!
I weighed today's egg and it was a whopping 54g!
So it looks like we'll get 2-3 eggs a day. I am so happy, now we are fully self sustaining when it comes to eggs! No more buying eggs for us!
I have wondered - how will I tell the difference between Mary's eggs and Spotty's eggs when she starts laying?
When we went outside this afternoon, there was an egg in the nesting box, and it wasn't pinkish, it wasn't blue, it was white!
It was a slightly elongated shape compared to our other eggs. We suspect it's Snowy who laid it, but we aren't sure!
It's a small egg, though it looks large in my daughter's hand below. Wyandottes can lay a cream to light brown egg, and I am hoping that it's Snowy who laid it. Only 2 more chickens left who aren't laying! Cacciatore sure isn't earning her keep.
I shall keep an eye out tomorrow and see who the egg laying culprits are and give them some extra treats!
We also weighed them today, though it was the end of the day, so they're probably a bit heavier than they should be. Here are this week's weigh-ins:
Mary - 2273g
Spotty - 2171g
Snowy - 1855g
Bubbles - 1780g
Cacciatore - 1371g
It looks like my two "mutt" chickens have put on some weight!
My mum is visiting and she really enjoys the chickens. She feeds them, and watches them, and on Thursday she was excitedly telling me that there were 3 chickens hanging around the nesting box. Later in the day she told me there were TWO eggs!
And, this other egg was laid by Bubbles and it was BLUE!
It looks a little green, but it actuallly is blue! I was so excited! It weighed a little over 40g, so heavier than Mary's first egg.
I have been spoiling the girls lately - I bought mealworms on Monday and they devoured them, and mum has also been feeding them leftover bread to try to encourage Cacciatore to stay inside the pen instead of flying out all the time.
Mary has been laying very well, laying 5-6 eggs per week. She eats the crushed shells I've put out for her (and interestingly Bubbles had been eating them as well!)
There have been no more lice on the chickens whenever I inspect them, which is good. Spotty is quite large now, but her comb and wattles are still pale, so no eggs for her for a while. Mum told me that Snowy has been inspecting the nesting box too, so hopefully in the next week or so we shall have more eggs again!
I haven't writtten in a while, but on the 27 May we disposed of Spot. Poor Spotty had many of her feathers pulled out of the back of her neck from when Spot had managed to corner her for mating (and she is still only a baby so she's not fertile nor ready for fertilization). He tore her comb and now it has an ugly scab on it.
The kids were informed that Spot would no longer be there on the Friday when they got home from school, and so they said goodbye in the morning. Later that morning I had to hold my pet down whilst my mum did the deed and she did all the plucking and cleaning for me. Now I know how to do it if I had to do it again.
We ate him that night and his meat was tough! I was told later that you need to leave the meat for 3 days before you eat it, or it will be tough.
Spotty has grown a lot, and is now the second heaviest chicken! Last Monday I weighed them.
Bubbles is the number 2 chicken of the flock, and I think she's stopped growing. She was 1287g last week and this week is 1282g. The previous week she was 1280g.
I think Cacciatore has stopped growing. She has been this weight for a few weeks now, give or take 10g. She is the smallest of the chickens yet she is the alpha hen!
Mary finally cracked the 2kg mark! Last week she was 1902g, and the week before she was 1855g. With Spot gone, Mary has become the number 3 hen of the flock.
I'm not sure if this is accurate. Last week Snowy weighed 1530g. I will have to do weekly weighs to make sure she's ok. Snowy is at the bottom of the pecking order.
Look at all the feathers missing off poor Spotty's neck! They are growing back, but she still looks like the most juvenile hen here, despite being a good weight. Last week she was 1675g, and the week before she was 1450g. She may also be going through a teenage moult, but she is eating well.
Today I went outside to clean the coop and I found an egg!
I was very excited and made everyone else come out and look. You can see the nesting boxes in the background there (amongst all the poop) and I had blocked them off because the youngest pullets were in there sleeping and pooping. Now I've taken the boxes and soup pot out and put a dummy egg in one in the hope they will lay inside the nesting boxes.
It's a tiny egg!
We made pancakes out of the tiny egg, and the yolk was very pale. The shell wasn't too thin, it seemed ok. I'm wondering who laid the egg - I suspect it was Cacciatore, but it could have been Bubbles! Both of them seem to have matured and reached maximum weight (so they must be bantams!). Now I have to go find some shell grit to give them so my eggs will have nice strong shells and nobody gets osteoporosis!
I blame myself. I didn't check the chickens properly when I brought them home and I introduced them to the others on Friday and all day Saturday!
We had some practice social experiments, where we put the Wyandotte with the others and she was immediately bullied by Cacciatore, but when we put Cacciatore in the small cage, Cacciatore was bullied by Spotty, our Speckled Sussex!
So on Saturday I added them all together and watched them like hawks, separating Cacciatore when she was too vicious to Snowy (which is what my daughter named the Wyandotte). As the day went on I was happy to see them eating well, drinking well and walking around the enclosure. Bubbles was quite placid with them and Mary avoided them, hiding up in the coop.
I had dismantled the puppy pen to make an extension of the enclosure, and whilst I was inside I heard chicken squawks of distress. I run outside to see poor Snowy with Spot mounting her back, his beak holding onto her neck (like roosters do when mating) and she was entangled in the fence. I ran outside to disentangle her and as I parted her feathers I noticed tiny creatures on her skin scurrying away as I parted her feathers. I nearly dropped her in horror. Were these mites or lice?
After I separated Snowy, I grabbed Spotty and examined her - she had lice too! I put her with Snowy and examined Spot, who had no lice, and Cacciatore who also had no lice. I needed to find something to treat them straight away! Off I went to Petbarn to get some Pestene which I applied to the two chickens, though I don't know if I did it correctly.
I had never done it before so I went to youtube to see if I could find somewhere to show me how to do it, and this video was quite helpful.
We went out for dinner and I returned home and did the rest of the chickens, and it was quite easy to catch them as they were all in the coop already. They didn't like it but it needed to be done (and in fact I did it in the sandpit)
Now, I need to go and clean out the rest of the cage, and pick up all the loose feathers I had left lying around on the ground. I will redust the chickens in a few days but hopefully that will treat them. I don't think the infestation was bad - I didn't see clumps of nits on any of the feathers, but I will have another look at them tomorrow.
Edit: I take that back, there were nits - I felt them last night but didn't realise they were nits!
I wondered if you could use those flea things on them, like they do on cats and dogs with the drop on the back of the neck. I saw that someone had asked the same question on Backyard Poultry Forum, and they had used them. I went to the pet shop and got some Advantage, where the active ingredient is Imidacloprid (a very effective pesticide).
I got the formulation for kittens, which is a 0.4mL dose of a 100g/L imidacloprid solution. I figured that there are about 8 drops in 0.4mL, which means each drop contains 5mg.
Imidacloprimide is moderately toxic if ingested and low in toxicity via dermal exposure. Toxicity can be seen in 50mg/kg doses ingested (in rats) and this is way below that so it shouldn't be an issue in the chicken meat. However, the thought is rather sobering.
It lasts for a long time in the ground (and apparently is used in tree pesticides and is taken up by trees rendering them toxic to a number of insect pests, such as locusts). However it is also very toxic to bees, and in some places it is not allowed to be used due to the affect on the local bee population.
So from what I can find on the internet, it seems to persist for a while, lasting up to 4 weeks (which is good in that when the nits hatch they will die) but that's a long time for it to hang around!
Well, none of my chickens are laying, so that's not so bad. HOWEVER, we were planning on eating Spot this week, so perhaps I shouldn't have dosed him!
I had my first aggressive interaction from Spot on Monday.
I had cleaned the coop in the morning, but I had come out again to do some general gardening and play with the chickens, and I was also talking on the phone to my mother. Mary was hiding up in the coop again, so I went to go check on her and I noticed a huge chicken poop so I went to go get something to clean it up.
Something bumped into my leg. It was Spot. I thought he was walking backwards again. But no! He had his hackles raised, and he leapt at my leg, with his claws outstretched, kicking me and squawking! He did it not once, but four times! And it was uncomfortable, not painful but rather uncomfortable that I admonished him for it. He stopped and then went back to his normal self, but that was surprising.
I was upset that he was so aggressive which only strengthened my resolve to dispose of him, but when I read up on the internet, I started to feel a bit guilty.
Roosters can be teenagers too, with raging hormones. They can have periods of aggression intermittently as they try to get used to their hormone urges, and as they mature, these urges settle and they may or may not become more docile. Also, with these raging hormones, they are trying to mate with all the females as well - some of whom are not quite mature enough yet to be impregnated so they go running. Sounds a lot like what Mary's doing doesn't it! Sussex chickens are slow to mature, and Mary is younger than Spot, so has been clearly trying to avoid Spot's amorous attentions. I have seen him strutting around the other two and demonstrating himself, so he's definitely playing up to the ladies.
And now I'm slaughtering him for it?
I don't know if I want fertilised eggs. Eating fertilised eggs seems wrong! And when he attacked me, surely he would do that to other attackers too, like cats and birds of prey? But, he is noisy, and it's only a matter of time before the neighbours kick up a fuss.
Bubbles only put on 27g this week (compared with 66g last week). At 1213g, maybe she is slowing down in terms of weight gain, meaning she might be a bantam!
Cacciatore put on 26g this week (compared with 28g last week) and is now 1039g. Still putting on a little bit of weight! Definitely a bantam!
Look at Mary, now weighing 1635g. She put on 76g this week (compared to 114g last week)
Spot is hard to keep still. Here he is running away! But the stable weight was 1805g, which means he put on 78g this week, which is about half of what he put on last week (141g last week)
So on Tuesday I went to Misty Gums Poultry to go get another chook, as a replacement for my rooster who will soon be soup. Paul said he had some Speckled Sussexes that might be the right age, as well as some White Wyandottes.
I was pretty keen for a Speckled Sussex, so Paul gave me one of his girls, who still looked quite young, but a decent size. As I turned to take my treasured pullet away, he asked me if I couldn't be tempted to take a second one? I shook my head with a smile, and he sweetened it with the offer of a discount, a large discount. I hesitated. What was wrong with her that he was selling her so cheap? He took me to show me - it turned out this little White Wyandotte had deformed feet, but was otherwise perfectly healthy. Reluctantly, I shook my head, but when he knocked the price down to $15... I decided I'd take her. So I ended up with TWO chickens!
I have them separated so they won't be killed as they establish a pecking order. I read that you should keep them separated but be able to see each other and then gradually introduce them. Also, I should keep them separated in case of parasites or diseases. I hope to integrate them on the weekend!
We have come to the conclusion this week that Spot needs to go. He has been terrorising Mary, who won't come out of the coop unless he's not around, and we ended up having to give her free range time OUTSIDE the fence so that she could forage in peace without being hounded back into the coop by Spot. Spot with his collar loosened has put on weight again, so I will not tighten the collar again as we are now in the process of fattening him up for slaughter.
Spot weighing in at 1727g this week (1586 last week) - at least he put on 141g this week compared to not putting on any weight in the previous week! If you ask me though, he looks a bit thinner, but that could be just how his feathers are sitting. I still think he's a handsome chook. I am thinking that 2kg is the ideal weight for eating...
Bubbles is looking very sleek lately! I used to think her feathers were a bit all over the place (like messy hair) but now she looks smooth and tidy. She weighs 1185g this week (1119 last week) has put on a nice 66g since last week.
Finally Cacciatore is over 1kg weighing 1013g (985g last week) ! She put on 28g this week. I am wondering if she is a bantam she seems to put on very little weight compared to the others.
My big girl Mary has cracked 1.5kg (1549g) when last week she was 1435g. She has put on 114g this week. Which is good since she only put on 28g the previous week.
We are onto our 2nd big bag of chook feed - we're still eating pullet grower. They are still loving their oat grains and I am still a big failure when it comes to getting them used to the treadle feeder - I am starting to think that was a waste of money.
There are a ton of earthworms underneath the coop! I don't know how they survive there without the chickens eating them! I was moving the bricks around (they are stepping stools for the chooks to get to the feeder) and when I lifted up the brick a whole bunch of earthworms wriggled back into the ground. The rest of the coop is still littered with feathers and some droppings as well as a fair dose of hemp (I have been sweeping old hemp litter into the coop to put on top of the dirt). I was wondering if it was bad if I didn't clean out the inside of the coop because of all the worms eating things in there but I realised that not many people put their chicken coops straight onto dirt because of the risk of burrowing predators and rodents. So far we have been very lucky
