counting chickensThings are really hatchin’ around here! You know we had that one baby banty a month or so ago… he/she is still hanging around doing its thing. For the purposes of this blog, let’s call it Blackie, because we just don’t know if its a he or a she, yet. We weren’t too sure if Blackie would last , what with 3 mama’s and all, and there was a time when Blackie was being severely picked on by one of the other hens, but so far Blackie is a survivor.  Blackie is also camera shy. I haven’t been able to get a photo of that chick for many weeks now… always running to hide behind something or some other chicken. When we first had to put Blackie in a cage out of harms way of the flock, it ran and put its head under a clump of grass… just like an ostrich! I had never seen that behavior in a chicken before.Right now, we have Blackie in a brooding cage with one of the other Banty Hens. Sue found the chick hiding in a corner, so that tells us its being picked on again by the mean black hen. We had her isolated for a few days hoping that the dynamics would change, but – alas – they did not and it didn’t take long before she was chasing Blackie around again. Sue caught Blackie and moved him to a broody cage with a hen that is currently setting 10 eggs. She had been stealing them from the other hens for a few days.  So, we don’t have any trouble with the flock this time, Sue’s keeping them away (up on the porch)  until they are big enough to fend for themselves – with the aid of an escape hatch. Well, I shouldn’t be counting my chickens either, so we’ll just see how many of these boogers hatch.

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Yep – there’s a chick back there.

The other hatching news is one of the Three Sisters, who we let try some eggs when she went broody, has managed to hatch one little chick. She’s still setting on two eggs, and we’re not sure they’re viable. We’re on day 23 here, just don’t want to throw them out if they are simply a bit slow to hatch. Sue tried to get a little photo of it. We’ll have to call it Blackie 2. Mom is being good a protective. Not sure where to put her though. Especially if she hatches another one or two. Sue’s thinking of dividing up the bottom brooder so the ducks are on one side and this Sister and the babe are on the other. That could work for a bit.

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Chicken Tractor 2

The thing is, we’ll be having a few more chickens arrive in a matter of weeks. Sue has started to build another chicken tractor so the Red Rangers can go out in it by the time the next chicks arrive. Everyone is growing so fast.  She started working on this today and got the whole frame together by the time I came home at around 12:30. She’s getting fast! I think, after working on the RCW, she’s feeling pretty confident about making these others… nothing as difficult as the RCW!  Which, by the way, is working perfectly! We’re going to move it this coming Saturday to give the Chickens fresh pasture area. They are thriving out in their field. Pretty cool!

And, you now, speaking of growing quickly. The ducks and the goose are getting so big! We’ve separated the ducks out from the rest of the flock of littles because we think that Octave (the goose) was nibbling on their downy feathers. But before we did that, we gave them their first little bath. Sue waited to do it until I got home, because I really wanted to get a video of it to share with you. So I was all excited, they got in their little bath and I took a video. We let them play until it looked like they were done. We dried them off and let them chill out a bit while we cleaned up stuff. Then, that night when I was going over the photos and the video from the day. I discovered that I got 2 seconds of bath time. Dang it! AND the video I did get is the wrong way (but thankfully YouTube turns it around for you). Sometimes I amaze myself. Oh well, I know we’ll do it again, until then – I’ll leave you with the bad video and, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather: Well, we’re back to hot for this week. No rain in sight for a while. When we got back in from doing the chores around 3:30 p.m., it was 98°. Weather app thingy says it currently 75° with 35% humidity. Wind is at 5 mph – which is really nice! This weekend, we had a total of .95″ of rain. our Year Accumulation, according to our weather station is 5.13″. I didn’t recall that it rained all that much this winter/spring. So I was surprised to see that.

Egg Report: Saturday zero goose, 1 duck, 30 chicken eggs. Sunday zero goose, 1 duck, 27 chicken eggs, Monday zero goose, zero duck, 24 chicken eggs.  Seems they really liked the cooler, rainy weather on Saturday.