All in all, my experience with Welsummers has so far been good. And so was the Chick Adoption process. Fleur, my Belgium bantam, was a great mother to these three until they got a little too big for her! She still keeps them in check every now and then, and they still steal food from her beak! Cheeky Summers!
It has been ages since I posted anything about our 3 super cute chicks. Well, it is perhaps unsurprising to say that they are no longer cute little fluff balls! They are now approaching 16 weeks and developing their wonderful Welsummer colours. I have 2 pullets and 1 cockerel. This was not in any way a surprise as it was evident from their distinctive markings when they were chicks that I had 2 girls and a boy. I must say that I rather like the Welsummers for this reason... The cockerel, as beautiful as he is, will not be able to stay once he starts crowing. At the moment though he is being bullied by my bantam girls including the pint sized Belgiums. He is incredibly greedy though. Actually I should say that the Welsummers eat a huge amount. Maybe I am not used to proper sized chickens but they do seem to devour anything they come across and constantly eating. They even eat the plants that my bantams girls do not. For example, succulents, marigold leaves, lavender, apple tree leaves, the little fruit on my fig tree. As a consequence, I've had to move my small potted plants out of the chicken yard. As for their personalities- they seem to be well tempered birds and not at all bossy despite their size (also probably because they are the youngsters in the group). However, the Welsummers are very skittish birds. Again this could be because they are young. They run away from me when I step into the chicken yard or move in their direction, UNLESS I have food! It is incredible that such skittish birds will then come right up to me and eat out of my hands like my bantams. All in all, my experience with Welsummers has so far been good. And so was the Chick Adoption process. Fleur, my Belgium bantam, was a great mother to these three until they got a little too big for her! She still keeps them in check every now and then, and they still steal food from her beak! Cheeky Summers!
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The last couple of days have been rather exciting with the arrival of three little chicks into our home. If you read my previous post, you will know that our chicks have been living in a baby bathtub in our laundry room instead of a proper brooder. It has all been going very well as the chicks have been happily cheeping in their makeshift home. Until last night... We had suburb wide power outage! We were told that the outage might last four hours...potential disaster for our chicks. However, it just so happens that two of our girls have been broody, Fleur (Belgium bantam) and Matilda (bantam Wyandotte) for the last few days. I had re-housed them from the coop (where they were hogging the only nesting box) to the Brooder Box (for which I do not have a heat lamp) in the garage. I had been contemplating trying to get one of the girls to adopt the chicks but had been apprehensive about doing this just incase the chicks were rejected. This power outage forced me to attempt getting one of the girls to adopt the chicks. There are some great videos and blogs about how to get hens to adopt chicks. For my step-by-step guide i.e. summary of what I have learnt and links to these other sites check out my Chick Adoption (soon to come) page. Essentially, most of the sites recommend that it is done at night as quietly as possible and in the dark. I did this by flickering candle light and not as quietly as I would have liked. Both my broody hens aka broodies were cuddled in the pink tray when I opened up the Brooder Box. I thought I would test their 'sleepiness' by putting a piece of cardboard near them. Matilda repeatedly pecked at it with great ferocity which led me to think she would probably peck the chicks immediately. Thankfully Fleur did not peck- she grumbled but she did not get violent. So I moved Matilda to a cardboard box lined with pine shavings (and yes she was very angry about it at first and then settled!). Then I gave Fleur about 5 minutes to settle down whilst I collected the chicks from the laundry (they were quiet...presumably sleeping). I decided to place all of the chicks simultaneously next to Fleur so that they would not get separation anxiety and start cheeping crazily. I stood by and watched closely just incase I needed to quickly pull the chicks out. Fleur remained calm with the newcomers but the chicks were not making efforts to get under her. So I gently nudged them towards Fleur. Still nothing. So I lifted Fleur's wing and nudged two chicks under and then the third. This did the trick. I think the chicks realised Fleur was a heat source and eagerly began to nudge themselves under her. Fleur made a some mild 'broody' noises but let the chicks get under her. Yay!!!!!!!! I did check every 30 min for the next two hours just to make sure the chicks weren't being squashed/pecked and staying with Fleur. It was all good. So I left them for the night after closing the lid on the brooder box and covering the opening with a towel to . 15 min after I introduced the chicks to Fleur the power came back on!!! Oh well. :-) I checked on them first thing in the morning and thankfully all three chicks and mom were doing well together. So far so good. I picked up 5-7 day old Welsummer chicks up and a second hand Brooder Box for them to live in today. We are very excited but a little nervous too as it is our first foray into raising chicks. There was only one big problem- I picked up the brooder box after I got the chicks. This is absolutely not advised...I was meant to collect the box a couple of days in advance but for various reasons this did not happen but I could not delay picking up the chicks. When I did get the box home along with a brand new E27 heat bulb (red bulb so there is minimal light only heat) I discovered that the bulb could not be installed. The ceramic bulb holder's copper lining had come away! I would have been annoyed at the seller for not pointing this out but its always possible they did and I failed to register as it has been 'one of those' weeks. In any case the box alone would have cost at least twice what I paid for it not to mention the time. It did mean though that I had no brooder box for my chicks. Normally, the brooder box should be set up with bedding, food and water and be super warm for the little arrivals. In lieu of this, I pulled out our fan heater which can pump out 32 degrees Celcius hot air and heated our small laundry room. For the brooder box, I used a baby bath tub and filled it with about 3-5 cm thick layer of pine shavings. A little container of water with washed pebbles from my garden (to prevent chicks from taking a swim or worse drowning) and another with medicated chick starter feed (medicated to protect from chicks from contracting coccoidisis). To keep the chicks contained (I found out when I was picking the chicks up that one could jump at least 10 cm high!), I used a bit of lace curtain draped (nice and taught) over the tub. I was going to use cardboard punched with air holes but found this cut out all the daylight- instead it made a great hot air deflector! This is only a temporary setup- just until a new bulb holder arrives in a few days. Chicks in their indoor playpen. A vegetable box lined with bubble wrap to stop the pine shavings from falling through. The central chick in the centre might be a boy as it is much lighter in colour along its' back and has less well defined V shaped marking on its head; just have to wait and see if this is so. I got a shock today when I saw Fleur, one of our Belgium Bantams, fly onto the roof of the chicken coop today. This was preceded by a rather intense shrieking from one of the chickens so I can only assume Fleur was spooked by one of the others. I knew my little chickens could fly but not 2 m from the ground without an intermediate platform. I was so amazed at this feat that I grabbed the camera and took some snaps. As I was doing this, it occurred to me that perhaps Fleur was enjoying the view a little too much...enough to make the leap over the hedge to 'freedom'. Using a broom handle, I coaxed her off the roof and back onto the ground. Hopefully, there are no further incidents of this nature. Nevertheless it has got me thinking that perhaps it is time I snipped those flight feathers....
The (almost) very first thing we did when we got home from our mini trip was to check the chickens and collect eggs. We left on Saturday afternoon and got back Monday afternoon. We were pleasantly surprised to find lots of eggs in the nest box- 14 to be exact! Amazingly none were broken and thankfully Matilda and Phryne had not become broody (apparently the sight of eggs accumulating can trigger broodiness)! As a special treat to our hardworking girls, I chopped up some spinach and fresh coriander.
After staring at the slightly angled central yellow post from my kitchen window, I had a moment of higher brain function! I realised that I really did not need a central post to hold up the chicken wire. Chicken wire really isn't very heavy. So I cut away the cable ties and re-homed the site post. By repositioning the post, I actually made the end post and stake more secure and now it no longer looks like a leaning tower. And now I have an unobstructed view of the chickens and coop.
Our gorgeous black silkie Midnight has died. She had been losing weight over the last few weeks but had no other symptoms. She had been eating really well and only more recently seemed to have gone off her food. I had separated her from the flock and kept her nice and warm near the heater in her own cage with feed and water. Had been hand feeding her as much as possible but realized in the last 2 weeks that it was not making any difference. I had given her probiotics, lots of honey and scrambled eggs. Even wormed her as well. But she just kept losing weight. She died overnight and we said our good byes to her today. It is always sad time when we lose a chicken and this is the second Silkie we have lost for mysterious reasons. :-( Yay! At about 20 weeks of age, Biscuit is the first of our two Pekins to lay her egg. I found it in the dirt patch under their coop! I knew she had been doing the SQUAT but had been too sick (or looking after sick kids) to train her to use the nest box in the Cottage coop (she sleeps in the Little Coop). Two days after finding the egg in the dirt I found Biscuit squawking and appearing to be searching for something/somewhere so I picked her up and put in into the nest box. She stayed put and layed in there so hopefully she will start catching on.
Her eggs (from the three I have collected thus far) have been about 33 g in size, a light cream tinged with brown coloured egg. I think not a bad size for a tiny chicken. This also means that I can move my Pekins into the Cottage Coop as they can all eat Layer feed. Tilly, the other pekin is also the same age so its okay to move her to the Layer feed as well. Well Nina and Ella have decided that they are bored of their much smaller patch of grass since the fence went up. They have now started to dig out the soil in my raised veg beds and potted plants. This afternoon I found my poor potted apple tree's roots under attack by Nina. Ella was busy unearthing something in the vege bed. Looks like I created a problem for myself by sectioning them off. I now think I will have to redo the fence line to exclude the beds and pots or somehow build a greenhouse type structure over them to keep the chickens out. Yikes! more work! :)
I finally decided on a very simple fence 'system'- something that I could uproot, roll up and tuck away if I should ever need to. I found the perfect 1500mm Site Posts in a yellow colour that matched my coop door at Bunnings. In addition to these posts, all I needed was a hammer, a small wood block, black cable ties, tin snips (to cut wire) and chicken wire. I had thought about using the plastic 'fencing' roll but decided against it because of its inorganic look. Although if you want something that is easy and won't require wire cutters or do not want to spend some times twisting wire ends then the plastic stuff is worth a go.
Anyway, I decided to space my posts depending on the 'view' from the deck. I did not want the coop front to be obstructed so just used that to demarcate where the posts would go. Then it was relatively simple albeit a little labor intensive to hammer the posts into the soil. I used a small off cut wood block to cushion the blows otherwise the lovely yellow paint on the posts could be chipped off. I also made sure that the posts were level periodically and took a few steps back to make sure it was in the right spot. Once the posts were all in, I unrolled and cable tied the chicken wire making sure the wire was level etc. It would have been easier with two people but I managed on my own but it took longer as the chicken wire kept curling back! I cabled tied one post at a time in as many places as possible. Where I intend to place a gate, I also hammered in some wooden tomato stakes so that I could attach metal hinges to later. I am not sure if they will stay in place with the weight of the gate but will sort it out later. With the chicken wire; once I cut and end, I twisted the loose ends and then folded them back on itself so that there were no sharp points on which children, chickens or myself could get hurt on. Then I cable tied these loose ends between the stake and post to make it all neat. One mistake- I should have painted the stakes but in my haste I decided not to...now I wish I had. So I think I will get a can of spray paint to do the job- messy but at least it might look better! |
AuthorBased in Canberra, Australia, I am a mother of two gorgeous little girls. I would describe myself as a 'retired' molecular and cell biologist, now a full time mum, part-time student, lover of cute cakes, builder of one chicken coop and possibly also a crazy chicken lady in the making. Categories
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April 2016
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