A compilation of information and links regarding assorted subjects: politics, religion, science, computers, health, movies, music... essentially whatever I'm reading about, working on or experiencing in life.
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.
We're letting three of the feathery-foot daughters of Turendot, our Cochin hen, have their own babies this year. So far I've counted 5, with #6 trying to hatch out yesterday. Here is a recent photo, with a bold blond chick. The others have a tendency to run and hide when I take out the camera. But not our little Lana Turner. She can't wait to be discovered.
We are having all kinds of flowers here on the farm, from the fruit trees (apples, plums) to the daffodils:
But we are still having night temperatures in the 30's. We could yet get some snow, but who knows? Rainfall this year has been below normal.
January: Bantams 49, Large Hens 37, for a total of 86.
February: Bantams 68, Large Hens 26, for a total of 94.
Current total this year: 180.
We would have had more eggs, but since we have three hens sitting and hatching, they stop laying eggs until they raise their chicks. We also lost a hen in a hawk attack a few weeks ago. A rooster, too. That's one of the things that prompted me to let the chickens start raising their babies early this year. We need replacements. That's the way it goes on the farm.
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.
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.
I liked this rose dripping with dew the other morning, so I took photos:
We've had more summer rain and drizzle than usual this year.
It's been nice, because everything is still very green; the plants are loving it.
It's just starting to get dry now, and a bit dusty. That usually happens sooner, so the extra moisture was nice while it lasted. The water level in the well is dropping too, but slowly.
We've had plenty of flowers but the best is yet to come. I think we have more flowers in August than at any other time of the year. I always look forward to it.
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.
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.
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:
Last month, I did a report about how our local egg factory here on the farm went back into production. I keep notes on the production, so I thought I would do a monthly report on the output.
February was the beginning of their cycle. We have twenty-eight chickens; seven of them are large hens, fifteen are bantam hens, one is a small Cochin hen, and five are bantam roosters. We have ducks and Guinea fowls too, but they haven't started laying yet, so I'm leaving them out for now.
Last month on the first of March, I counted the total eggs for February, and we had 82 bantam eggs, and 67 pullet eggs, for a total of 149 eggs.
In March, we had 132 bantam eggs, and 107 pullet eggs, for a total of 239 eggs.
Total for the year so far: 388 eggs. Not bad. One of the large hen's is not laying, because she's been ill. Not eating, wasting away. We got some antibiotics from the local feed store that we've been giving her twice a day. At first she perked up quite a bit. But she's still weak, and she's not eating. I'm not sure there is anything more we can do for her if she won't eat.
Below in the center of the photo is a leafy green plant which we call "Dinosaur Food", because the leaves and the plant grow to be quite large. In the Botanical Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate park, they grow so huge, that they look like props from a movie set.
The plant in this photo is only just beginning to grow. Perhaps appropriately, it's surrounded by the contemporary versions of the Saber Tooth Tiger, and assorted Velociraptors. A farm yard full of fowls is a bit like having your own Jurassic Park, in miniature.
The more you get to know them, the more thankful you are that they are... small.
