Posts Tagged ‘chicks’
Meanwhile, Feathers
While we have been a little distracted with a sick dog, a buried tractor, and a colicky horse, our chicks have been busy making feathers.
It’s not like they have been ignored, though. There have been a few more visitors than usual stopping by to sneak a peek at the spectacle of John and Cyndie having chickens, and we have welcomed the opportunity to give the chicks as much exposure to being handled as possible.
The yellow Buff Orpingtons are proving to be the least interested in being held. The rest of the birds are beginning to take our upturned palms as an invitation for a magic carpet ride.
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This particular Barred Plymouth Rock seemed to take great pleasure in using the top of the water jar as her perch. I’m not sure it is all that great for the water quality down below, though.
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On Sunday, I re-attached a door handle to the front door of the coop and did some tightening of screws. We are going to add a temporary containment fence just outside their door in back for the first days they will be granted access outside.
It won’t be long before their big move from the brooder to the coop, where they will be confined to quarters for a week or more in the process of acclimatizing them to their new home.
I’m so ready to have them reach the point where they’ll be safe with free range access to the fly and tick smorgasbord that our property offers.
Some folks look at our chickens and think, egg-layers. I am much more interested in the chickens’ skills as insect controllers. I tend to envision them more as killers.
Hmm. That gives me a new idea for a theme of names…
I gotta do something to counter-balance all the sweet names Cyndie is plotting to give them. I don’t want these birds to become a bunch of softies, after all.
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Doesn’t Compute
I don’t get it. How is it that a dog will eat vomit, feces of other animals, entrails, dog food, and a mummified carcass of a cat that was buried in manure that had been spread on a neighbor’s farm, but she refuses to ingest her prescribed antibiotic meds because they taste bad?
It doesn’t compute for me.
Cyndie tried hiding it in chicken, hamburger, peanut butter, cheese, cat food, all of which Delilah rejected with emphasis. Ultimately, Cyndie succeeded by slipping it inside a pasta noodle that was then covered by some other enticement.
Wednesday night was another difficult one, and by the middle of the day yesterday, Cyndie needed to take Delilah to the vet. She was getting dehydrated. They verified that some bacteria appears to have knocked her digestive system completely out of whack.
Treatment included re-hydration and meds that taste bad. Really? Did somebody there actually taste them to find out? What the heck could taste bad to a dog? Apparently, antibiotic pills.
Meanwhile, the chickens appear to be perfectly healthy and Legacy is taking full advantage of the black mud in the paddock to practice looking like a cow.
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I was all prepared to discover that one or more of our new chicks weren’t able to survive the barely controlled environment of the brooder that we set up in the barn. Each passing day that first week was a grand success, with the chicks growing more robust and looking increasingly comfortable and confident.
It has me thinking that it feels as though the very likely —if not inevitable— scenario of losing a bird to some illness or predator grows more significant with each passing day as well. The longer time they spend with us, the harder it will be on us to lose them, I’m sure.
So, the stakes on taking good care of our chickens go up every day. The more success we have, the more important it becomes that we continue to succeed. At least until the first loss occurs. After we have to deal with that reality of raising chickens a few times, I expect we’ll figure out a way to cope. It seems like all the people we have heard from or read about who raise chickens have gotten to a place of acceptance with the harsh reality of such losses.
It’s a reality that I can comprehend, which contrasts directly with the incomprehensible thought that anything could taste bad to a dog, after the things I have seen them eat.
That just doesn’t compute.
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Brilliant Chickens
Our chicks are growing up almost as fast as the days of the week that fly by in a blink. Ever since that first day when Cyndie taught them how to find a drink of water in our brooder, they have piled on one new accomplishment after another. Sometimes it is a result of them copying each other, and sometimes it is through our gentle instruction.
In order to raise them to be comfortable with our presence and willing to have us handle them, we spent some extended time picking them up and whispering sweet nothings in their direction yesterday. Cyndie spent much of that visit searching for unique markings that will help identify individuals for naming purposes.
I think we should get to know their personalities better, so they can show us what names they deserve. My idea for using favorite chicken recipes was summarily denied, but I still may succeed in getting one of the yellow ones named Parmesan.
We think that the classical music we have on all night long for them is working well to feed their rapidly growing brains with intricacies and emotional depth. They have demonstrated such quick ability to grasp everything we introduce that we are confident we have the makings of brilliance in this flock.
It’s almost like they knew to perch on that stick I put in the brooder before I even finished setting it in place. Now I am working on finding just the right gnarly branches from our brush piles that I can use to carve little chess pieces. With 10 chicks, I’m debating with myself over the need for more than one board. They obviously learn well enough by observing each other, I think they can get the game down by watching a match played by their brood-mates.
Cyndie is busy creating flash cards with images of ticks, flies, and bugs, as well as piles of manure to be scratched apart in a “green means go” motif. The back sides will have a red theme and include threats like the hawks and eagles overhead, fox, raccoon, coyote, the neighbor’s dogs, and yes, even Delilah.
Our chickens are going to be brilliant.
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Tail Feathers
Our chicks were born a week ago yesterday, shipped a week ago today, and arrived to us a week ago tomorrow. In this past week we have gone from knowing nothing about chickens to understanding and nurturing these ten to a successful adjustment where they are thriving in the new home we have provided.
Considering that I was unsure they would all survive the first night with us, we have come a long way in a very short time. During a long visit with the brood last evening, I came to see how each day’s success will make it that much harder to accept that first unfortunate occasion when we lose one (or more) of them to a predator. The longer time we have to connect with them, the greater the loss a death will be.
While Sunday we caught a few first glimpses of what surely must be the beginnings of tail feathers, a day later the new feathers were hard to miss.
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We added a tempting perch in the form of a small branch across the big trough, to give them something to aim for in their rapid transformation into able-bodied chickens.
My new goal is to figure out how to convince Delilah that she must protect these birds from all threats, foreign and domestic, so any predators that find themselves attracted to our turf by the presence of chickens will be dissuaded by the large white teeth of our four-footed shepherd.
I hope she never figures out that these beautiful birds called chickens are the same as the stuff that comes out of the cans of dog food she gets served. We want our birds to keep their tail feathers.
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Mildly Hesitant
I found myself mildly hesitant yesterday about writing of our having ordered chicks. I had it in my mind when building the coop last fall that we might be able to get our hands on some adult chickens for our starter flock. Instead, we are starting with chicks. That involves a bit more nurturing than I’d been contemplating.
I should be thankful. We could have gone all the way and opted to hatch them from eggs. With no previous experience in this realm of chicken raising, there is always a chance disaster could happen and we might make some fatal error that takes innocent lives.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to blog such a possible outcome and expose the personal failure. Then it occurred to me, that is what I do.
In discussing this topic with Katie at work, I became aware of a change that has transpired in the four-plus years Cyndie and I have been here. When we first arrived from our lifetimes in the suburbs, we were entirely naive about almost every situation we faced.
Long time readers might recall that we didn’t realize we already had a hitch installed on the old pickup truck we bought. I had no experience with a chainsaw. We didn’t know anything about growing hay. We’ve come a long way. I would even say I’ve had a few moments of feeling cocky about our accomplishments.
So, it dawned on me that cockiness was bringing me to a place where I felt less inclined to write about the things with which we still have no experience, like raising chickens.
I guess I’ve quickly worked through that hesitation I was feeling. This John W. Hays’ take on things and experiences currently involves our ongoing transition from a suburban lifestyle to a rural ranch, one experimental step at a time.
Hopefully, next year I will be reporting about how few flies and ticks we are bothered by after the addition of chickens to our menagerie. Maybe also, how the transplanted tree in the labyrinth is thriving.
If those things don’t happen, I’ll likely have chronicled about that, instead. Chronicling the whole range of adventures we are living, both the successes and failures, is what I do. Even if sometimes, with a little hesitation.
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Relative Something 