Oh Brother Winter, Where Art Thou?

What a mild winter this has been! Our cold-hardy girls have been out wandering the yard in January, February and now March, and egg production never waned, averaging 9 eggs per day for 13 hens, (and that primarily because Beatrice & Eugenie, the banty silkies, had gone a bit "broody").  I absolutely loved walking out to their coop this past weekend, with my LL Bean 'barn' coat unbuttoned and no gloves, to gather the eggs and give them a little Eggo Waffle treat. On March 9!  Let me say that again - my coat unbuttoned. No gloves.  No hat.  No scarf.  Not yet the middle of March. Ahh....the simple pleasures of life, pleasant weather during months when we are used to extreme cold, a warm egg in the hand (worth two in the bush?)  Other treats this past week were a head of iceberg lettuce, apples which had over-ripened indoors, and applesauce. You should have seen them with the applesauce, they cleaned the dish until it was bare. Now that the weather is warming though, we're looking at our yard differently....areas which have become bare need to be re-seeded, and we can't do that with the chickens having full range. So! We've purchased some new fencing, and the plan is to give them a wide spot at the back, southwest corner of the lot, with full access to the compost pile. I will miss seeing them wandering up by the house, but it's for the good of the lawn to move them around a bit and quarantine them when necessary. More to come and pictures too.

Chicken Rx

We had our first potential medical issue this weekend, reported by our chicken sitter who called while we were out of town to let us know one of our silkies (Beatrice) was not coming out of her nest box all day and didn't appear to be interested in doing anything. She's done this before and I assumed she might be broody, (Beatrice, not my friend) so I told her not to worry about it. We were in the D.C. area and there was really nothing we could have done, and I could not imagine subjecting my friend to an all-day chicken-vigil or vet visit.

On my first full day at home, I too noticed her inactivity and reluctance to be removed from the nest, although there was no egg under her. We wondered if she was egg bound. We had heard of this, where a chicken's egg would not come out. If the eggshell cracks inside, (and even if it doesn't) it could be fatal. A cracked shell can cut them enough to cause internal bleeding. Or it can cause a prolapsed vent or just even backed up plumbing.  That's all I knew about it.

So we did a little online research (the computer is the modern suburban chicken farmers bible) to find out what we could do, if anything, to help Beatrice, and found out she needed -- a bath!

We brought her inside to the kitchen sink (I lined it with a small towel so she wouldn't be standing on the slippery stainless steel) and filled it with very warm water. We placed her in the bath; she didn't put up a fuss really, but we did hold her wings in and held her in the water until we felt she was calm and then let go. She just sat there. She started taking some sips of the warm water, which I thought might be a very good thing if she was really bound up, and sure enough, in about 15 minutes she did poop. We kept her in for the full 30 minutes and then some. Drained the sink, towel dried her, and set her down on top of the towel where she could preen herself. She did appear to be having some pulsing movement near her vent, I thought she was either going to lay an egg, or poop again. But nothing came out.

She's resting now in a towel-lined box in the "library."  If she doesn't lay an egg tonight/tomorrow, we may need to do a little exploratory work on her, but hopefully not. Something tells me she will be fine.

Scaredy Chicks

Spent the day with my mom today, and cooked up half a dozen of our eggs for her and my sister, which they raved over (you can call my family the Polite Ones, because no one ever says a bad word about anyone, but I could tell they liked their scrambled eggs, nonetheless).  The color of the yolks is so bright, almost an orange tint as opposed to the usual weak, butter yellow color of commercially raised eggs. And a very rich taste. (According to my nephew, this is because the fat content in the yolks of brown eggs is higher; he especially likes them for making ice cream and for baking.)

When I got home, I had purchased some farm-fresh veggies at a local stand, including a dozen ears of corn, so I took a couple of ears we had been saving for a week out to the girls. They were enjoying them and I was cleaning out one of the waterers, when all of a sudden there was a huge rucous behind me, with about half of the hens seeming to rush forward, (Foul, fowl! Off sides!) half running, half jumping/flying in the way that only rock-heavy birds with weak wings have. They were all making a racket; some had run under nearby bushes, one went underneath the side porch, and yet another hid underneath a third bush to my left. Cackling was going on all around me, yet I couldn’t pick out yet where all of them were located. I had a sense that some terrorizing hawk could have swept down behind me and taken off with one of them, and I didn’t feel comfortable until all were accounted for. Except they weren’t coming out of hiding. I called my usual call (Chickeeeees! Here chick-chick!) More cackling in hiding. I started roaming the yard to look for them and try to get a count. I found the Silkies Eugenie & Beatrice, thanks to their stark white feathers which stand out in the shadows, and the youngest chicks Princess Catherine, Oprah, and Whoopie, all under one bush near the old fire pit. I found Pansy & Violet under the magnolia tree.  Rose was under the porch and would not come out, no matter how much I sweet-talked her. Where was Grace? Where were all the black hens? Slowly a couple of the black hens peeked heads out from under bushes. One was hiding in the herb garden. Still, I didn’t feel comfortable. Even came out with some cucumber skins I had peeled a little earlier, no budge. Joe came out and joined the search. We were getting concerned; this wasn’t like them at all. “Why don’t you try the corn scratch?”  (This never fails to get them to RUN across the yard).  I handed the bucket to Joe and he began the customary Shaking of the Corn Bucket. They didn’t budge. They cackled on and on for a good 10 minutes before they would venture out to get the corn.  A chicken that won’t come for corn has been severely traumatized. By what, I’m still not sure. It could have been a large bird I guess, swooping into the yard. Luckily, all the girls were eventually accounted for, and my “short-attention span theatre” hens have forgotten all about it. Tomorrow they will wake up and think it was all a bad dream. 

Two-Day Take

I'm told we can expect our hens to lay an egg a day (or every other day); so far we're getting anywhere from 4-7  from our 13 hens, so they're not all laying yet. This is our "two-day take" -- as you can see, my standard size chickens are laying more eggs than my two banties, as we have retrieved only one banty egg (the light colored one above). I've read that this is typical of banties, they tend to go "broody" which means they only want to sit and lay on an egg once they have one, and are not as productive. So if egg production is your "thing," you don't want to go with banty hens. But I wanted to keep the white silkies just because they were fun to look at and hold, and don't really care that they aren't the best layers. They're like the "high maintenance" girls in the chicken world -- fancy feathers, bling, turning the heads of every cock around, and not really into work. That's my Eugenie & Beatrice.

An Egg in the Hand

Collected these two eggs this morning.  The top egg is a bantam chicken's egg, while the bottom is from a full-size chicken.  Bantam's are half-size chickens, so their eggs are much smaller. Our bantys are white silkies, so their egg is a very light color. We now have one full dozen banty eggs, and 3 dozen medium to large.