Our August Surprise. Actually, seven of them.

Every year, the Bantam chickens try creating secret stealth nests to hatch out chicks. We don't want any more Bantams, so each year I find most of the nests before they hatch out. But they ARE clever, and each year, at least one hen succeeds in hatching out a batch before I can find her nest. Here is this years batch:



Just a few days ago, I heard some peeping sounds from a cardboard box on our back porch. The box had been filled with scrap pieces of wood. Not enough room for a nesting hen, I would have thought, but I was wrong. A Bantam squeezed her way in among the wood pieces. When I removed the largest wood piece, I saw her, with her seven little chicks running around her.

I suppose a real farmer who didn't want them would drown them in a bucket of water or something. I guess they are lucky I'm not a real farmer.




Each chicklet is smaller than my thumb! They can run through chicken wire, just barely slowing down enough to squeeze through the holes.

I used to fuss over the Bantams when we first got them, making sure everything was just right, by the book, when the chicks were hatched. But that seems funny now. Why? Because they are like cockroaches; almost impossible to eradicate!

And for such small birds, they eat like horses. But on the plus side, they eat a lot of bad insects, so they aren't completely useless. We use their eggs (and the excess roosters) as dog food.




In this last photo, the mother and babies are next to a full-sized chicken, so you can see how small they all are.

This group of chicks we have nicknamed "The Pleiades", because there are seven of them. And because we hope they will all be females, instead of dog food.

     

Born Yesterday...

Actually, it was the day before yesterday. And "hatched" might be a more accurate description.


There were four chicks in this batch. In the next photo, you can see #4 peaking out from under mama's wing:


I put the eggs under the hen on Mother's Day. They hatched on Memorial Day. So I guess you could say they are Holiday Chicks.


Here they are basking in the setting sun. In a day or two, I will let them outside so mom can teach them to forage.


The hen is not their biological mother. She is a Bantam-Cochen mix. The chicks are hybrids of two larger breeds: Leghorn mother, Americana father. Leghorns make lousy mothers though, so I put the eggs under the best broody hen I had at the time.

They are going to grow much larger than this hen. She has quite a task ahead of her. Fortunately, she's quite tough. ;-)
     

How quickly they grow. And fly too!

I had published this photo previously, taken on Easter Day:



Here is how the little babies look today:



They have gotten so big, that they jump out of their container every time I open it now. And they don't just run around, they fly too. So today is the day they got moved outside, to the nursery in the chicken coop:



They have a heat lamp there, for any really cold nights we might still have, and a separate run outside. They can see all the other chickens, and vice-verse, so they get used to seeing each other before we introduce them into the general population, in about two weeks. Perhaps sooner, we'll see how it goes.


     

Farm Report: New Chicks and a Rooster Coup

Here is a photo I took of our new Leghorn chicks that we got from the local Feed Store. They were about two and a half weeks old when the photo was taken, which was Easter Sunday. They are growing fast.

In the last report, I mentioned that the Bantams where hatching chicks, five and one in process. Well the 6th one died not long after hatching (it's true: never count your chicks before they're hatched). Then, the 5th one died when it fell into the dogs water dish and drowned.




So there are four left, it looks like two little roosters and two hens. One of the hens is a runt, she lags behind, but manages to survive thus far.

There was a bloody coup in the coop last week. Literally. My poor little white Bantam rooster was covered in blood. The two larger feathery-foot hybrid roosters ganged up on him and bloodied him pretty badly. He survived, but is no longer the Alpha rooster; he's now a reluctant "Delta", though he still keeps the other two on their toes, giving them a hard time.

The Egg Report for March

Full size hens: 79 eggs. Bantam hens: 96 eggs.

Total for March: 175 Year to date total: 355


End of Farm Report!
     

Farm Report: "Chickenblogging" disappointment

When I bought my DV movie camera, I had high hopes of making short videos about life on the farm, and putting them on my blog. It hasn't worked out too well, for a variety of reasons.

My Brilliant Career as a Chickenblogger - NOT
Mostly, it's been too time consuming. I have to film the footage, transfer it to the computers hard drive, edit it, then save it in a format that can be uploaded to the blog or to Youtube.

It's the last step that has proven to be the most frustrating. I can save it to a format that looks good, but then I can't upload it because... I'm not sure why. All the formats I've been able to use to upload to blogger or to Youtube are of inferior quality. If I try to upload the better quality ones I get "error" messages. This one below is the best I've been able to manage for Youtube:




It's not absolutely awful, but I'm not satisfied with the quality. If it isn't excellent, then I can't be bothered with it, it seems like a lot of work for nothing.

The other problem is, the subject matter itself. This video was taken in October. While I was waiting to find the time to transfer and edit the video, the chicks continued to grow very fast. And "things" happened. Two of the female chicks drowned in the duckpond. One of the male chicks hurt his leg, and had to be... "harvested" (turned into dog food).

So six of the chicks have survived, and are almost grown up now. Two are hens, and four are roosters. Three of the four roosters are most likely destined to become dog food, because we can't keep a lot of roosters. Not the happiest ending to the story. And video wise, I haven't been able to keep up with the story, and I'm not sure I even want to.

It looks like my career as a chickenblogger has ended before it's begun.


The Egg Report

I didn't get to any reports for the past three months, so here they are now.

October: 25 pullet eggs, 78 Bantam eggs, for a total of 103

November: 14 pullet eggs, 14 Bantam eggs, for a total of 28

December: 19 pullet eggs, 16 Bantam eggs, for a total of 35

Totals for the year: 568 pullet eggs, 895 Bantam eggs.

Combined grand total of 1,463 eggs in 2009.


I'm using the term "pullet" loosely, because most of our full sized hens are no longer young. At the height of Winter, we usually don't get any eggs, but this year has been different. Our youngest full-sized chicken is an Orpington, which are known for laying eggs all year-round. And the Bantams that are laying eggs now are the Bantam-Cochin hybrid hens. I would like to cross breed them with the Orpington. The hybrid roosters fancy her, so we will see how that goes.

Here is a pic of the hybrid family while they were still living in the nursery:




The two baby hens are sitting under their mother. The photo was taken at the end of October; they are all much bigger now, nearly full grown. I was going to move them out the nursery at Christmas, by removing the perch so they would have to join the rest of the general population. But before I could do that, their mom did it. She just went and sat with the rest of the birds, and her children followed her. She's been using the babies to climb the social ladder in the coup, literally. She is trying to force her way to the top perch, but their has been resistance from the pecking order.

The two girls still stick close to their mother, but the boys have become much more independent. A bit like juvenile delinquents. Typical roosters.

In other coup news... you may remember the hen called Freezerburn, a brown hybrid hen from the first batch, with a white face that looked like a freezerburn? Well she had her first molt this year, and when she did all her face feathers grew in brown instead of white, and now she is a much sought after "babe":




In fact, she and the Alpha rooster in the coup have become an "item"; they often hang out together, and he looks after her as one of his favorites. At last, some happy news in the coup. They are hand-tamed, and two of my favorites. I'm hoping they make some babies in the spring.

End of Farm Report!

     

"Feathery Foot Club" adds nine new members

Seven of the new members can be seen here. The other two are being sat on by their mother. This will be the last bunch for the year, if all goes by plan.

Hopefully most of them are hens, we could use some more egg production. August's egg count:

Pullets had 65 eggs (8 less than previous month), Bantams had 91 (48 less), for a monthly total of 156 (47 less). The yearly total is now 1,174.

End of Farm Report.

     

Farm Report: Hybrids, Freezer Burn, Egg Count

In a previous post about our new Hybrid Cochin/Bantam chicks, who I called the Three Heathers, I speculated that some of the Heathers might be Heathcliffs. Well as it turns out, two of them are. Here is all of the Hybrid birds together:


In the center foreground is Heather the hen. Behind her are her two brothers, Heathcliff and Heathcliff Too. Peaking in on the right, is our white-faced hen, "Freezerburn". You may recall that she was hatched later than the other three, from an egg I had accidentally put in the refrigerator for two or three weeks.

Andy bet me that it wouldn't hatch after being refrigerated, so I tried it as an experiment, and well, it hatched! She was raised by a Bantam hen who hatched the egg. She turned out smaller than the others, with a white face. I called her "Sputnick", but Andy and Pat call her "Freezerburn" because of her white face and her, uh, history of pre-hatching refrigeration. I've relented and gone with their name for her, because, well, if the shoe fits...




Freezerburn was not accepted by her siblings at first, because she was born later and hatched by a different hen. I had to keep her and her surrogate mom in a separate cage at night, let them loose in the daytime, and put them back each evening. Because of that she was handled a lot and became very tame. When her mother weaned her, Freezerburn imprinted on me for a while, because she had no siblings to hang out with. But slowly, gradually, her other hybrid siblings accepted her as one of the gang.




They hang out together pretty regular now. They all have feathery feet like their mom, so I call them the Feathery Foot Club. They can all fly, almost as well as the Bantam's can, and better than their Cochin mother (who can't really fly at all). The Orange-brown rooster seems to be growing a bit bigger than any of the Bantam roosters, but it remains to be seen if he will grow big enough to cross breed with the Pullets.

The Egg Count for June was as follows:

Pullets had 74 eggs, Bantams had 129, for a monthly total of 203. That's 15 more eggs than the prior month.

Hopefully we will have two more Pullet hens coming on-line soon, as our three new Buff Orpington's are maturing. Here they are with Pat:




One of them is a rooster, so if the Hybrid Rooster doesn't get big enough to cross breed, this rooster may be able to fulfill that role for the bigger birds. The three Orpingtons are living in the nursery section of the coop right now, to get used to being with the flock. They will probably get their first venture outside, free-range, this weekend.

End of Farm Report!
     

Farm Report: The May Egg Count

This report is kinda late. I've had a lot of other stuff to do that's kept me from blogging much, but if I wait much longer, it will be time for the June Egg Report as well. So here is the count for last month:

In May, we had 125 bantam eggs, and 63 pullet eggs, for a total of 188 eggs. That is 3 more than last month, but the amount of large eggs is less. We need more large hens, and so we got three Buff Orpington chicks from the local feed store:


I took this photo yesterday, they were much smaller when we got them, here they are already about 5 or six weeks old. They are two hens, and one rooster. The little blue-eyed monsters grow fast. They're very active, but have a mellow and tame temperament. You can read more about Buff Orpingtons here.

Egg count total for the year is now 612. I plan to put the data into a spread sheet, so I'll be able to make a graph and start tracking it that way.

Other farm news: here we have the ongoing progress of our "Dinosaur Food" plant, with the latest picture at the bottom:








Notice the large cones in the center at the bottom of the plant. Those are the plant's flowers, I believe.

End of Farm Report!
     

Farm Report: Egg Layer's Union makes trouble

Loafing union members, during a "work slow-down"

Last month I started the Monthly Egg Count for the Farm Report. But since then, we've had some "broody" unionists causing a work slow down at the Robin's Wood Egg Factory. Here is this months figures:

In April, we had 100 bantam eggs, and 85 pullet eggs, for a total of 185 eggs. That is 54 eggs LESS than last month. What could be the cause? I suspect it's the Egg Layers Union of Broody Hens.

When the hens get broody and start sitting on the eggs, they stop laying. We hatched out some chicks last month, so that would account for some of the drop. Also, I'm aware of at least one illegal renegade nest, in the wheel barrel behind the shed. I will have to do a raid on that today.




Of course the mommies expect maternity leave, with all expenses paid. And they get get it. Sometimes you just have to compromise with these unionists.

Fortunately we still have enough eggs for our own use, so we can't complain.

Total for the year so far: 573 eggs.


Last month, I posted a photo of our Dinosaur Food Plant, which looked like this:



Here it is this month:



It's getting to be Dinosaur-size pretty quickly.

End of Farm Report!
     

Farm Report: "Heather has Two Mommies"

Last month the first chicks of the year began to hatch. I've been letting the chickens hatch eggs from Turendot, our Chinese Cochin hen, because I want a hybrid cross of her with the Bantams.


I nick-named the first chick "Heather", because she has TWO mommies. The Hen on the left is Turendot, her biological mother, and the hen on the right is the Bantam hen who hatched Heather.

Heather imprinted on the Bantam that hatched her, but also was attracted to Turendot; she would run excitedly back and forth between the two hens, taking turns napping under each one. Both hens started to treat her as their own, and shared the chick; hence the name "Heather" (from the controversial book).




But Turendot has since hatched two of her own eggs, and now there are three hybrid chicks. The third was hatched on Easter Day. Here are the three "Heathers" with their two mommies:

Maybe they aren't all Heathers. I'm hoping there is at least one Heathcliff in the batch. I'd like to have hybrid rooster; it would likely be larger than the Bantam roosters. The Bantams are too small to breed with our full size Barred Rock, Bluff Rock or Road Island Red hens.

Hawks have killed our big hens because they are slow and can't escape quickly. The Bantams can fly and escape quickly, but their eggs are too small to be useful for much. I'm thinking that if I can cross breed the two kinds, using the hybrid rooster as a kind of plumbing "step-up" to... "make the connection", the resulting birds would be medium sized, with some of the Bantam's speed and agility, but with bigger eggs. Anyhow, it's an experiment.

We have a fourth chick now, it was from a hybrid egg that I discovered that I had accidentally put in the refrigerator for a few weeks. Andy said it would not hatch out, but I put it under one of the Bantam hens anyway, to see what would happen (yes, another experiment). Well, it worked:




Eggs that have been refrigerated can indeed hatch. Whodathunkit?

The mommies and chicks have the run of the yard in the daytime, and I lock them up at night. They seem to get bigger every day. Now we just have to wait and see what the little thuglets turn out like as they mature.

Never a dull moment on the farm!
     

The "Flip Ultra" quick video Farm Report

Photo taken from Flip Video, via Muvee software

I got my Pink Flip Ultra camcorder this week, and have been trying it out. Is it any good? Ultimately, I'd say "yes". But it depends. Let me explain.

[WARNING, 11-29-30: before buying the Flip Ultra, you should know that I am returning mine. You can read my update review to see why.]

The footage it records is better than a cell phone video, but not quite as good as what you get with a real camcorder, such as my Canon ZR 800. Still, the Flip Ultra IS pretty good. BUT... when you go to upload it to the internet, the file it creates for uploading is not as good as the original it creates. But fear not, there are ways to get around that.

The camcorder comes with "Muvee" software in the camera, which it uses to save videos (in the AVI format), and to convert them into another file format (WMV) suitable for uploading to the internet. Here is a quick sample of a WMV file created by Muvee:



bit rate 550 kbps, 496 x 370, size: 5.89 MB

I find the sound quality and image in the above video clip kinda crappy, like you would expect from a video made by a cell phone. So I saved the original AVI video file made by the Flip camera to my hard drive, and then used my preferred video editing software, ArcSoft ShowBiz 2, to convert it for uploading. I saved it in a higher resolution WMV file, resulting in the following:



bit rate 2015 kbps, 640 x 480, size 21.2 MB

This, I think, is not bad. The sound and image are better. Blogger dictates the size of the video frame on this page, but I think when posting in other venues I would be able to post this in a larger size, and still have good quality.

In this clip, you may notice at one point, I do a short zoom-in with the camera's built in zoom feature. The focus goes ever so slightly soft when the zoom is used, and gets sharper again when zoomed back. I was a little disappointed by that, but it's not severe, and therefore not a deal-breaker, at least not for me.

The sound quality is excellent. When walking around with the camera, some of the movement can seem a little bit jerky, compared to a conventional camcorder.

The original file created by the Flip was in AVI format, with a bit rate of 177 kbps, 640 x 480, size: 50.1 MB. The still shot at the top of this post was taken from the original file with the Muvee software.

Ideally I should show you a sample with people and voices in it, but I got our burn permit this week and have been busy this weekend on the farm, burning piles of brush we collected over the summer. Oh all right, here is a brief sample, with Yours Truly waking through the house. I hold the camera up to a mirror so you can see it's size; it's no bigger than a cell phone, but the lens is bigger than the ones that cell phone camera's use, so the quality is better:



bit rate 2015 kbps, 640 x 480, size 12.5 MB

Note when I zoom in on the TV screen, the slight blurring that happens. But all things considered, I think this camera is great for what it is: an easy to use, simple and convenient device that can record up to an hour of video on it's built-in memory. Great for making quick videos for video blogging. However, if you are making family archives for posterity, like your son's birthday party or your sister's wedding, you might want to go with a more conventional camcorder.




As I put the Flip Ultra through it's paces, I'll be showing a lot more videos and will likely give a more comprehensive review at a later date.

Oh, and for the "Farm Report" part of this post:

The video is of our Mama Bantam hen, with her 9 chicks she secretly hatched out last month. In the video she's bringing them into the coop near sunset. She was waiting for me to come in and let them into their little nursery area, where they can eat and sleep without competition from the bigger birds.

She still sits on them in the nesting box, even though they are getting quite big. Watching her do that is like watching one of those little cars in a circus, that has a 100 clowns inside; you wonder, how does she fit them all under there? It's becoming increasingly difficult for her.

We've had some cold nights, with temperatures going down into the 30's, but the chicks seem just fine. They have their feathers grown in now, so as long as they eat and fatten up they should be fine.


Related Links:

Farm Report: two chicks in a screen test

Farm Report: Our Humming Bird Heaven
     

Uh-oh. Look what turned up yesterday...

Yesterday afternoon this proud mama shows up with NINE of the little... "darlings" she hatched out secretly somewhere.

There is another mother hen who's been missing too. Is she going to show up with... this is starting to feel like "The Camp of the Saints". Enough already!

Pat has more photos here: Underage naked chicks
     

Farm Report: Summer sliding into Fall

The past two nights there has been a slight autumn nip in the air. The alder trees are starting to drop some of their leaves, but haven't really started changing color or dropping lots of leaves yet. Seasons here seem to slowly overlap and slide into eachother.

We've had a cooler summer than usual, and some of the flowers have bloomed a bit later as a result. Here is a photo of South African crocosmia lilies from last year:



Here is the same patch this year:



It's much thinner this year, because earlier this spring I dug most of the plants out and spread out through out the farm. These are the few that got left behind. They should multiply now that they have more space. The transplants have been doing pretty well:



I wasn't sure if they were going to bloom this year because of the transplanting and the cool weather, but they have.



I expect they will be larger next year, when their roots have become more established.



Here is one of the clumps I planted near the edge of the forest:



The three small birds in the foreground are the last of the baby chickens that hatched out this year.

Speaking of chickens, my favorite one, Turenditto, the Cochen-Bantum hybrid, died last night. It was sad because she was the most tame chicken I had. She was the first one to hatch this year, and I had to raise her because her mother abandoned her. Here she is at 3 weeks old:




She turned out to be really interesting, and I had hoped to breed her. But she had some trouble integrating with the other chickens. Somehow, she got an injury on her wing joint. The injury was hidden, I didn't notice it until she started acting droopy and listless. I think she got an infection. I put her in a cage and moved her inside to keep her warm. We put neosporin on the injury. She was eating and drinking yesterday, so I had high hopes she would recover, but this morning she was dead.

I don't have a photo of her all grown up, but she turned out beautiful. Her feathers grew in two-toned. I wasn't expecting her to die so soon, I thought I had plenty of time for photos. This video clip from a few months ago is the only footage I have of her at her oldest:

Farm Report: two chicks in a screen test

Well that's life on a farm. Things are born, and things die. I'm glad I had her while I did, it was a real treat. I'm going to bury her this afternoon, under a clump of crocosmia lilies.

End of Farm Report.

For more farm photos (better ones, actually), see Pat's recent post:

Garden report - our first naked lady of the year
     

Farm Report: two chicks in a screen test

Here is my first video for the Farm Report. It's the two chicks I photographed in earlier reports. They're juveniles now, not as cute as little baby chicks.


This video is just a test really, to try out my new Canon ZR800 camcorder, and to see what was involved with uploading it on-line, and how it could be done. It was not as easy as I had imagined; there are various decisions to be made in the process.

For instance, this video I've uploaded. It's in the format of a .wmv file, and the size is 22.3 MB. It plays for about 1 and 1/2 minutes. It took 2o minutes to upload it to my blog.

The best copy of the video is in digital format. But this same video as a Digital Video file is 373 MB. That would take over 5 hours to upload, even with my broadband connection! The image quality is much better as a DV file, but 5 hours is a lot of time for such a short video. A longer DV video could take days at that rate.

There is also the question of widescreen vs standard square screen. My new camera does widescreen, and it's beautiful. However, my video editing software (ArcSoft's ShowBiz DVD 2) will only save my widescreen footage in widescreen format as a DV file. If I save it in another format, it gets scrunched up in a square screen, making everything look tall and thin.

This video clip I've published was the highest resolution I could get in the .wmv format. I could have made the file smaller in terms of megabytes, but the quality would suffer. Yet I don't want to spend DAYS uploading video files either.

I said I have broadband at home, but it's via satellite dish, and I think uploads are only done at 128 kbps. I may have better luck uploading it at work in town, where we have DSL.

And I have yet to try uploading videos to video hosting sites like Youtube.com and Vimeo.com. There is still lots to learn. It's not hard to learn, it's just new. And like all new things, it just gets easier as you know more. I'm looking forward to doing some fun things with video and the internet.
     

Sunday Chick Pic of the Week

I was going to do a short video, but I unpacked the new video camera, charged the battery etc, only to discover I don't have the video tapes that (I thought) I had ordered along with some of the other accessories. Darn.

So hopefully, there will be video next week.
     

They're still growing...

I didn't do my usual Weekly Chick Pic this past weekend, as there was a bunch of other stuff that needed my attention. And, I'm sure pics of baby chicks growing aren't all that interesting to most people. They are to me, because I handle them every day and they are almost like pets.




But also, birds are just plain difficult to photograph. They move around a lot. They often look away from the camera or flap their wings or run or otherwise make sudden movements that ruin a potentially good photograph.




Thank goodness for digital cameras, I couldn't afford the wasted film trying to photograph birds. I once read that Lucille Ball would not allow any pictures of birds in her house, because she loved birds and felt that pictures could never do them justice. I tend to agree, in the sense that much of what makes birds beautiful to look at is their movements.

I got a new video camera about a month ago, the ZR800 which I had talked about in an earlier post. I was actually hoping to do a short video of the chickies for the Farm Report, but other priorities took over. Maybe next week.
     

Farm Report: More Naked Chicks

That title should do wonders for my site meter tally from Google searches. The older chick is now 3 weeks old, and the younger, 2 weeks. The oldest seems to have most of it's feathers now, and likes to fly a lot. I think it sees itself as more of a bald eagle than a chicken:



The younger one does it's best to imitate the older one, and has learned to fly also, but just barely. It can fly up to the rim of the blue box they live in:



Here they are with their surrogate mom (me):



They stretch their wings and legs in the big wide world, a.k.a. the back porch:



I still see "Mutt & Jeff" whenever I look at them together.




Related Link:

Farm Report: The Weekly Chick Pic